Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - Chart Music #51 (Part 1): March 20th 1975 – Guys ‘N’ Dolls Get Ready To Bomb Iraq

Episode Date: July 2, 2020

The latest episode of the podcast which asks: a party held by the Osmonds, or a party held by the Rollers?The LONGEST EVER EPISODE OF CHART MUSIC finds your host and his chums still on lockdown but DILL DANDING, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, which gives us the opportunity to pick out an episode from the Dark Ages of the mid-Seventies and properly wang on about it. The Saxons are at their flappiest, the collars are condor, Tony Blackburn has been uncrated and set free, and all is as well with the world as it could be in 1975. If you ignore the fact that three of the acts involved would go on to kill later this year.Musicwise, it’s the usual Seventies lucky bag, tainted with the musk of deceit and treachery: Kenny sport the kind of trousers Our Simon saw Rick Witter trying on at Portobello Market. There are obligatory appearances by Cliff and Lulu. Wigan’s Ovation have a massive wazz on the burning torch of Northern Soul. Guys ‘N’ Dolls do a biscuit advert, and Mike Reid makes a Northern boy cry, which is Bad Skit.But there’s also Britfunk in the form of the Average White Band and, er, The Goodies, Pans People having a proper flounce to Barry White, and a Whatnautless Moments – whipped on by the Top Of The Pops Orchestra – seize the opportunity to tell us how much they like girls. And the Bay City Rollers rip down the goalposts of the #1 spot, while the Osmonds forlornly look out of their window wondering while no-one has showed up to their do.David Stubbs and Taylor Parkes – the Humphries of Pop journalism – join Al Needham and dip their elongated critical straws deep into the milk bottle of 1975, pausing to veer off on such tangents as the glory of radiograms, what it would be like to get caned and watch porn with Tony Blackburn, our magazine plans which never came to fruition, a lament for Timbo, the importance of nipples and a big argument over a Kung Fu vest and pants set. Swearing? Loads of it.Video Playlist | Subscribe | Facebook | Twitter | The Chart Music Wiki 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. My name's Jason Fleming. The More Than My Past podcast will see me talking to a wide range of inspiring people. People who have confronted and overcome addiction or imprisonment or both and turn their lives around. I did mad things that was hurting myself and hurting other people. Everybody grows up in a house called normal. Heroin addiction and chaos was my normal. Some people don't understand the word moderation and I was definitely one of those people. The More Than My Past podcast. don't understand the word moderation and i was definitely one of those people the more than my

past podcast 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 listening to? Um... Chart music.

Chart music. Hey up you pop-crazed youngsters and welcome to the latest episode of Charm Music, the podcast that gets its head right down the back of the settee on a random episode of Top of the Pops. I'm your host Al Needham and by my side today are David Stubbs and Taylor Parks. Good afternoon. Boys, by the look of you I can just tell that you're simply bursting to tell me of all the

pop and interesting things that have occurred in your life since we last spoke. Spill it on me baby. Yeah, feeling pretty good but Al, have you heard about this virus that's going around it sounds terrible it does doesn't it i'm joking of course because we all need laughter at this difficult time yeah i don't know i think all these years in a way what this country's been waiting for is something to make us all more isolated and suspicious of each other.

Taylor, the pop-crazed youngsters have been tugging me coat asking about you. They've been fretting about you, mate. Have they? Put their mind at rest. Oh, you know. You're dill-danding, aren't you? Feeling good. Looking great.

That's for other people to say, but, you know, it could be worse. David! All right. What have you been up to? Well... God scamp you. Yeah, so the very last thing that I did before lockdown clamped down was I gave a talk with a chap, a friend of mine, who wrote a book about craftwork. And, yeah, I remember starting the evening with a very weak coronavirus joke,

not remotely imagining that, you know, that it was going to do what it did. And ever since then, I've not moved more than about half a mile from where I'm sitting right now at any particular point. Terrible. And not even in most directions. And I don't really mind. It's kind of sad, really. It's frightening, isn't it?

Yeah, I don't really mind. It's not that much different from what my life was before really i think everyone's got their own weak coronavirus jokes though aren't they yeah because like a week before it all kicked off i did a big shop for my mam i was just rammed down with big shopper bags i thought fuck this i'm getting a taxi and we're talking about it he just said oh you heard on the news that the first case of coronavirus has happened in nottingham and i said yeah and it's me and as soon as it came out my mouth i regretted it and what made it worse was i actually started choking at the shitness of my own joke and turned into a coughing fit and it was an awkward silence yes uh for the for the rest of

the journey and since then every chance I've had to get a taxi, I've taken it in the hope of seeing this driver. Number one, see if he's still alive. And number two, just to fucking apologise and give him an absolutely massive tip for being such a knob all those weeks ago. It would have been about 10 weeks ago, man. It's costing me a fucking fortune.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The one good thing about lockdown Is we've learned about each other Haven't we There's been all that list shit that went down Very early on before everyone got bored with it But we learned about one of your old jobs Didn't we David

You did that list where here are 10 jobs that I've done And one of them's a lie Yes that's right One of them which was the truth Which I was hoping to be the truth was... A scarecrow. David Stubbs used to work as a scarecrow, everyone.

Yeah, as a human scarecrow. I was actually pretty much dressed for it. Wurzel Stubbage. Wurzel Stubbage. These were the post-punk days, you know, the kind of long third-hand overcoat or whatever and like, you know, trousers sort of cut off at half-mast or whatever and hair you know trousers sort of cut off at half mast or whatever and uh hair kind of poking out in all directions up top and um yeah and you know because basically

it's no use having a kind of static scare so you know one of the farms you know the idea of like you know somebody was kind of an actual human being you know rather than um you know and i just sort of take me look paperback book and stride around and uh yeah what were you reading um nausea by jean-paul sartre what has got his french philosopher head on want to say any more about it david you know because this is this is going to be good careers advice for a lot of people in the post-corona world now i mean i suppose it's ironic that the tune i was listening to the most at that point was The Dignity of Labour by The Human League. It's really, though, those lists were getting me down.

It's the way that lockdown, like, everyone thinks, oh, it's a time to be, you know, to contemplate and to find some deep truths. All that's happened is it's exposed everybody's shallows, you know, and everyone's doing top 10 lists and sort of boring restatements of old consensus stuff it's like everyone's too spooked to look deep into themselves or deep into anything so you just end up with all this trivia you know what i mean it's driving me nuts it's very blokey as well i mean it's real bloke's gonna bloke stuff isn't

it but having said that here's's one that I thought of. What's the least played side in your entire record collection? Mine would be the B-side of Snot Rap by Kenny Everett, which is snot rap brackets instrumental. It's like if there was a version of the Kenny Everett show where it was just a pure white screen for half an hour and he never came on. Oh, and here's another.

What song's got the creepiest opening line? My vote is for She Hangs Out by the Monkees, the opening line of which is, How old do you say your sister was? It's not meant that way. He's expressing concern for a welfare yeah but pop stars will be pop stars but it's yeah it's i mean i wouldn't say i was having a great lockdown i mean better than the ceo of skype it must feel like quite the tit at the moment um but i've

actually had quite a lot of interesting experiences in lockdown. Unfortunately, all of them are exactly the same. They can't really be discussed in public. It's like Christmas in reverse, isn't it? It's like a massive, drawn-out, negative, sunny Christmas. But I'm trying to stay positive as usual because, I mean, usually my life is all about envy, rage and shame. And at least now I get a temporary break from two of those. I mean, I do really miss seeing people.

But in truth, most of the people I really miss, I wasn't going to see them anyway, you know, either because they've gone forever or because they were only going to ring and cancel two hours before they were due to come around anyway. It'd be too late to arrange anything else. And I was going to end up sitting on my own watching old Italian horror movies and fretting about how isolated I'd become. So, you know, really the only difference from normal life is the sense of being surrounded by death on a scale not seen in my lifetime. And the knowledge that I or the people I care about could be next.

So I'm taking a tip from an article I read by someone with a posh name in a big garden. They said everyone should stay positive. So that's what I'm doing. I think telling myself that adds a bit of spice to the experience of staring through glass at the sky waiting for a visit from nurse ratchet because i mean i haven't left my flat for i haven't left my low ceilinged gardenless stuffy flat for 81 days now um because i my chest isn't very good so i don't want to risk

it um and so yeah i say let's at least have a little bit of sympathy for all of us who are perfectly healthy but still paying London rent to effectively live in a shipping container drifting through interstellar space with a picture of a street pasted up where the window

should be you're not missing out though Taylor trust me so I've been told. No, he's just standing in a big queue to get into fucking Lidl. Yeah. Distrusting everyone. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I've got to say it's a bit of a letdown because all the hypothetical national emergency scenarios I grew up with did seem to include an awful lot more casual sex than this one. Yeah. That's the one thing that's absolutely off the menu isn't it this is just a constant oscillation between boredom and fear um which

is what they say it's like being in the sas so this is basically this is like being in the sas but uh without all the bumming. I don't know. I'm almost slightly ashamed to say that I actually quite like certain aspects of it. I actually quite like Zoom. I like the idea of the virtual pub trip, but where at the end, you know, we say you click off,

you're not faced with a 90-minute journey across London to get home. Yes. Is one particular thing. What's your background, David? Sorry? What's your Zoom background? Oh, no, no.

I'm just my books, my books, you know, my books. What are the books you've written? I've written so many. Specifically, you've got a bookshelf with all your books on them. Multiple volumes, of course, including the Spanish edition of Mars by 1980, which I can't give away to anybody. But, yeah, I've got four or five copies of that going.

Sonidos de Marte. Any of the Pop Craze Young Steros want a free copy of that? Yeah. Hola a tu boy, as they say. Yeah, absolutely. Yes. Yeah, because me and Taylor, we found a cache of old ATV presenter backgrounds, didn't we?

I'm not even doing Zoom, man. I can't even handle that. Yeah, yeah. You know, I get invited on Zoom things and I just can't do it because I'm just sitting. The thing is, right, it's awkward for me. You know, you wouldn't know it, but I'm a very shy lad.

And, you know, when I'm out with people in a pub, you know, I do kind of like meld into the background and just sit there. It's even worse on Zoom because, you know, it's like you're sitting in a pub but you can see your own fucking face and it's like you know everyone's gassing on everything oh look at the fucking state of me yeah yeah there is that it's horrible man it's like it's like someone's put a massive mirror on the table and just go look at you you cunt while you're

talking shit or just listening a lot of bars a lot of bars have those mirrors anyway, don't they? The kind of mirrored walls. So you quite often get that experience. Yeah, no, I avoid them. But I've got a brilliant background, Taylor. I might lend it to you because I'm not going to use it. You know that news footage of the IRA dirty protest where those two blokes with the Jesus beards

have made a play school style house on the wall in their own shit yeah that's what i'd use as a zoom background right that's what that's what you're telling everyone anyway great if you went on a zoom date and you had that yeah yeah i know what you mean though i there's something horrible about when you're trying to concentrate on talking to other people about looking at your own faces I mean one of the nicest things about lockdown is I haven't had to look in a mirror

because I'm not going out so I don't give a fuck you know what I mean it's a real weight off your shoulders to not have to get a daily reminder of your slow decay that's one of my favourite things the other being the fact that they can't make telly anymore which i'm really enjoying because i'm just getting a real sort of schadenfreude

out of that also i like the fact that it means they have to show old stuff and i'm almost hoping that the lockdown drags on and on and on just to see how far down the barrel they're going to sink oh god we may yet be sitting there in 2023 watching old episodes of Night Network or those American stand-up comedy programmes from the 80s that they used to put on at one in the morning. You know what I mean? We'll be sat there watching telly.

It's just a brick wall. A bloke in a pleated suit comes on. So what about this AIDS thing? Pretty scary stuff, huh? I can't wait. In any kind of way,'m just going to sound slightly pompous unlike me but um i think the banality of the spectacle has taken a bit of a hammering throughout all of this really even and i'm not just talking about necessarily you know crap tv but actually even sports i don't know anybody who doesn't feel that they don't give a shit whether the football season is completed or not.

They really don't. And that's despite the huge investment a lot of people, a lot of friends I have having football, most of them feel, I don't really care. It's almost like this has kind of acted as a sort of mass deconditioning for the irrationality of being into sports or whatever. All I'm bothered about is UEFA finally cancelling the Champions League so I can have Nottingham 2 London one day. I'm sitting here waiting

for the fucking thing and it's June for fuck's sake. I want to shoot my bolt and I'm not being allowed to man. I'm being edged. But it could be worse. We could still be living in a time when all of us would have become rich and successful

off the back of our extraordinary talents. And who knows, we would then, you know, we'd have to self-isolate in a mansion like Joe Wiley's with a beautiful young woman paid to pretend she could stand to be around us. And we'd be, you know, we'd end up releasing video messages to our fans where we sit a little bit too close to the lens and emit detached positivity you know or you know write all these columns about how we are all binging on netflix yeah you know before sneaking off to break lockdown rules on account

of being a maladjusted narcissist you know well no. As things stand, at least we have what remains of our dignity, right? And no fucking spiky ball is going to roll over that. Which reminds me, I never want to see that bloody thing ever again. Do you know what I mean? Right, everywhere you look on TV or newspaper articles, there it is, the fucking coronavirus. You know, these days they try not to use big front page photos of spree killers and lone nut gunman and stuff because it gives them the twisted fame that

they crave and it's upsetting for relatives yeah you think this could be encouraging copycat viruses yeah this everywhere you look this fucking evil conker he's over everything it's all you ever see is it i say fuck him little cock blocker don't give him the satisfaction if you don't get to fucking evil conker. He's over everything. He's all you ever see. I say, fuck him, little cock blocker. Don't give him the satisfaction. If you don't get to see Leader of the Gang

on a Top of the Pops repeat, you shouldn't have to look at this fucking spiteful, armoured bollock while it's rolling all over the world, you know,

crushing everybody's fun. Yeah. Bastard. It's not like we're not grown-ups, you it's like it's like we can't focus on the biggest national crisis for 75 years without a picture of this cuntish globule you know to provide a childlike visual it's not helpful no but i got plans right i've got big plans i was in the supermarket before all this kicked off

and while looking at the magazine rack i could now but notice that contrary to all these premature reports of print medias calamitous and irreversible decline um there is apparently room in the market for three different magazines devoted to carp and carp fishing. Right. It was amazing. There's one called Carp World. Right. There's one called Carpology. And a third, which clearly fancies itself the punky young upstart of the bunch, which chooses call itself total carp do you get it um so that's

my strategy if i'm still alive when this is all over uh using tried and tested publishers logic i'm going to take every penny i've saved during lockdown and start a fourth magazine devoted to carp and carp fishing copying the other three down to the very last detail and in the spirit of a post-covid 19 world bruised but uh hungry for a bright new day i'm going to call it carp dm and i think this really could be the thing to propel me out of the seedy and frankly demeaning world of podcasting back into the bustle and glamour and the only approved response to the near total absence of money will be to accumulate as much of that money as possible and keep it for yourself. So I'm not going to be left behind, right?

I'm going to ride that carp as far as it will take me, over the rainbow to Shangri-La. That's interesting that you've had your magazine idea. I didn't want to discuss the magazine idea. I had it know if I've discussed the magazine idea I had in the late 80s and I think it's actually revivable any time, albeit with a different person. I was in a magazine called Diana and every

month it would just have a big sort of flattering photo of Princess Diana or whatever and inside there'd be the lead article, main article would be a very sort of banal, effusive piece all about Princess diana or whatever you know um of great interest to royal watchers etc etc the rest of the magazine would be devoted to kind of relentlessly grueling avant-garde music or whatever revolting cocks

our groom whatever young gods or whatever all the way you know and this magazine would just sell on the back of the diner thing so you know all this stuff would then get this kind of mass exposure you know it'd be kind of uh riding off the diner thing it could be done today it could be done with you know kate middleton or something like that similar sort of thing well my magazine idea nearly came to fruition i was working at dickie desmond's wank factory and i just realized that there were bin bags full of photos sent in by readers that weren't up to standard for Reader's Wives. So you can imagine what they were like. And we also had loads of photo shoots that were just fucking insane and just never got used.

So I thought, you know, in the spirit of recycling, why don't we take all these and put together a pornographic version of Take a Break called Have a Wank. And we did a dummy copy of the first issue. And the only thing I can remember from it was a story that I wrote based around a photo shoot of two women essentially rolling about in someone's back garden with a load of dildos,

indulging in very workmanlike uh girl on girl action and i wrote a story called look dad there's lesbians in the back garden it was essentially a story about uh an old bloke in mansfield whose wife had just died so his son tries to get him interested in an obby so he buys a load of dildos and whatnot and he leaves them out in the back garden and they sit in the upstairs bedroom every night um hoping for some feral lesbians to turn up and you know sure enough they do and uh the only line i can remember from it is uh the son turning around to his dad at one point and saying is she giving her a wash dad and you know everyone in the office thought it was a really good idea and you know helped me put it together and of course it got

presented to desmond and he turned it down because he couldn't understand it because he's a fucking cunt yeah there's a surprise yes i was going to say did it get pitched to mr desmond yeah so yeah broke my heart that thing is normally thing is, normally people are always getting a, if there's a cat on your bird table, oh, it's going to keep the birds away. You have a cat on your lesbian table, it's going to bring them. So that's how we're getting through lockdown anyway.

Anyway, you know how we go about on Chart Music. Before we do anything else, we stop, we drop, and we bow to the brand new Pulp Crazy youngsters who have signed up to Patreon and put a little jingle in our G-string this month. Martin Young, Andrew Fielder, Sean Feeley, Elizabeth Kerrigan, Johnny Carey, Ian Boffin, Faceless Man, Dave Caffrey, Richard Berry, Jane Watson, Keith Bayliss, Bumsy Villian, Jason Branigan, John Furlong, Jonathan, Chris and Jen, Mark McDonald, Dave Hewitt, Darren Saunders, Jim Brown,

and Howard Jones as Anal Fisher. Marvellous people. Marvellous people. And let's not forget the $3 section. They include Chetanka Dodwala, Jim Prentice, and Rob Moore. Thank you, you beautiful, pop-crazy youngsters. forget the three dollar section they include chitanka dodd waller jim prentice and rob moore thank you you beautiful pop crazy youngsters and stephen dowell thank you very much for jacking your contribution right up over the odds here's a very special shake of the arse just for

you standing in my doorway banging a saucepan with a wooden spoon. Yes. And of course, those people like everybody else who subscribes to our Patreon account get to tinker about with the brand new Chomp Music Top 10. Hit the fucking

music! We've said goodbye to Insolvus Costello. Taylor Parks has 20 romantic moments. Haven't we just? Dean Spunk presents a tribute to Olly Murs. A Danger Freaks! Which means two up, one down, a re-entry and three new entries. It's a re-entry at number 10 for Lesbian Door Factory.

New entry at number 9, Lion Bell End. Up from number 10 to number 8, it's Dave D, Creephead, Twat and Cunt. Good. New entry at number 7 For the English Rock Defence League Up 2 places From number 8

To number 6 Jeff Sex Down 1 place From number 5 To number 4 Here Comes

Jism The highest new entry Straight in at number three, The Bomber's Conger. No change at number two for Romo Ralph Wiggin, which means... Britain's number one. Still there at the top of the chart music top ten, Chip Pants People.

Nice. Oh, what a chart. I always say, Oh, what a chart. I always say, oh, what a chart, but oh, what a chart. We're living through the sort of 1981 and 82, the golden years of this chart, aren't we? Most definitely. So yeah, chip pants people still hanging in there. The new entries, Lion Bellend.

I think that's Rager, isn't it? English Rock Defence League. Rockne. And the Bummers Conga. Well, it could only be. A twist on the two-tone sound that rocked the nation in the 80s. Yes, I think so, yeah.

So don't forget, Pop Craze Youngsters, if you want in on this, and who wouldn't? You take your little fingers over to the keyboard, you tap www.patreon.com slash chart music and you give all you can, if you feel

like it, obviously. There's no pressure there at all, is there? None. So, this episode, Pop Craze Youngsters, takes us all the way back to march the 20th 1975 and oh it's only the second time we've snuffled around the crotch of 75 isn't it we did uh did it last time in chart music number six way way back in the day with neil and simon and uh yeah it was a it was a proper mixed bag of mankiness, to be honest with you.

I think this episode's a bit better. Yeah. I mean, there's definite peaks and troughs. Yeah, there's certainly an intimidatingly large amount to talk about. But yeah, it's 1975. It's that dark, empty space in the middle of the 70s. All rabies and borstels.

Yes. 1975, it's an interesting one because obviously pop-wise, there's a sense in which it's kind of an idea. But we talked about this a little bit before, that it wasn't just because the pop was rubbish. Don't forget this is the year of Joni Mitchell, Kraftwerk's radioactivity. There's actually stuff going on all over the shop.

King Tubby meets Rockers Uptown, that's just been released this week. Blood on the tracks, physical graffiti. Robert Wyatt's Ruthie's Stranger Than Richard. Cannes landed. Another Green World, Ryan Eno. John Martin, Sunday's Child. Roy Harper. HQ Parliament, Chocolate City, Burning Spear. Tangerine Dream, if you want a bit of that.

Smokey Robinson did A Quiet Storm, Steely Dan, Earth, Wind and Fire, All Over the Shop, Gratitude. And even Born to Run, if you like that sort of thing. There's a case of all kinds of things happening anyway. Meanwhile, the things that are about to happen, you know, that year. So in 1975, it's the year that Perubu form, Throbbing Gristle also, Stranglers have just got going, Talking Heads form that year,

the Ramones just signed their first contract that year, and of course the Sex Pistols themselves, you know. And, you know, so it's not just that punk's about to happen. All kinds of things are happening that are going to sort of like transform the future in multiple ways. But, you know, there is definitely a sense of alienation in 1975 because you need...

Simon made this point when he talked previously in Chart Music. If things aren't happening in pop music, then that really is the kind of crucial and terrible gap, really. And you needed you needed something spectacular you did need a sex pistol for that reason you know i mean danny baker always makes this point about you know like it's ridiculous to say that nothing was going on or whatever and he's always he's a bit down on punk these days despite you know having been there with like sniffing glue and all that because he just thinks it's kind of an insult to all that

kind of great music whatever that i listed you know and all that but i don't know that he kind of gets it quite right, really. Although he does make one interesting point. He reckons that punk wasn't so much a reaction against prog rock and stuff like that. It was a reaction against things like the sleekness of things like Queen and ABBA and ELO and Rod Stewart. Nevertheless, you know, despite all of, like, what's happening right down in the underground and what's happening sort of way up there in the skies and all that. You need a palpable sense of excitement to be happening

and to be kind of transmitting onto the sort of Top of the Pops stage, really. Otherwise, yes, otherwise things are a bit down. I mean, there are only 10 episodes of Top of the Pops from 1975 that are still available. All the rest have been lost forever. That doesn't help, does it? No, no. It feels like a black hole, 1975,

even for people who were there at the time. It's a curious time. There's a general feeling throughout this show, though, that, like, state of music, it's not anything. It's weird. It's like the kind of sort of facsimile of stuff. It's not rock, it's not pop, it's not soul. It's this kind of weird additive adult entertainment.

It's like Cadbury Smash or Angel Delight or whatever. It's this kind of synthetic fascinating. That good? Yeah, in some respect. Yeah, but you have periods where the best music being made is all in the charts, right? Like the mid-60s or the Aventus. And then you have periods where none of the best music being made

is in the charts. So when you don't have this momentum in the charts of like great acts inspiring each other or you know acting as a counterpoint to each other that doesn't mean that there's nothing in the charts it means that anything can get in the yeah so you end up with these kind of ludicrous mixed bags which we always see when we do a mid 70s episode you know and as far as punk i remember the last time the three of us were here um we did i think it was 76 there was a little brief bit of soul rail replacement service i think it was the stylistics were playing or you

know the song was playing they showed you the audience sort of shuffling around in their blue gray shapeless leisure suits and stuff with sort of just gray empty faces and i remember saying at the time that no that's it if you want to know where punk came from or why you know what punk was reacting it's nothing to do with with prog rock or you know and it's that it's just that that's what that's what it looked like. You went out of your house, that's what you saw. That's where it came from. There's also a funny feeling about pop in 1975.

You know when things like The Beano, they'd have a Roger the Dodger storyline in which he ends up meeting some pop star and it's something like Danny and the Dazzlers or something like that. Yeah, or Elvis Parsley. That's right. Or it's some old bloke in Dundee's idea

of what pop music is. And what's happening in 1975 is, that's quite accurate. It is all Danny and the Dazzlers. It's that kind of... Just in time as well. That was a big one

on the Bash Street kids. Yeah. And he actually looked like Teacher with a blonde wig on. Yes. Which was strange. The funny thing is, of course, the Beano did actually anticipate punk. Do you remember Dennis and the Dinmakers?

Yes. 1973, with Dennis on the vocals, Walter on bass, and Nasher on drums. And that was 1973, that. Fucking hell. Let's get stuck in. Hello, I'm Justin. And I'm Lucy. And together we are the hosts of Plenty Questions.

It's a very straightforward general knowledge quiz. We ask you 20 questions, one after the other, five second gap in between, and you shout the answers out. And then you tweet us to let us know how you got on. See if you can get 20 out of 20. No one has so far, but that's because we haven't started doing it yet. But we will. And there's also going to be some fiendish brain teasers.

So join us for Plenty of Questions. Five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. In the news this week, Harold Wilson announces that his government recommends that Britain join the Common Market in the forthcoming referendum. Aristotle Onassis dies at the age of 69 and leaves his wife Jackie Kennedy $100 million. Parliament votes to let John Stonehouse continue to draw his MP salary, even though he's not been in there for four months after faking his own suicide and pissing off to Australia. The Met are investigating a link

between a murdered bunny girl and her appearance in Mayfair magazine. The Shadows, in Stockholm for the Eurovision Song Contest, have asked the BBC to hold official inquiry as to why their song is only number 32 in this week's charts. The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi returns to the UK for the first time since 1967

and announces a new age of enlightenment from a Kensington hotel. Gary Brown, an 11-year-old from Winchester, has been banned from school for going to the local barbers and getting a full-on Kojak cut. The army have been called in to empty the bins in Glasgow after a dust cart driver strike. Evel Knievel is in talks with the East German government about a jump over the Berlin Wall, which sadly doesn't happen. Leeds have knocked out Anderlecht in the quarterfinal of the European Cup. The Football League announced that the average admission to First Division games next season will go up to 65 pence and even as much as a pound for the big clubs. But the big news this week is that Elvis has made his first public appearance in Las Vegas in six months and looks

dead fat while his doctor claims that he's been eating 10 ice creams a day fucking hell and that's just what he told his doctor so therefore it's 20 yes yes all the shit that was going on with Elvis in his life at the minute that would be the one thing that would have electrified the playground. That would have impressed me more than any fucking cars or houses. Ten ice creams a day. Yeah, you'd go, he must be the happiest man in the world. Yeah. Yeah, as big as the

Olympic torch. With a 99 the size of a child's arm, no doubt. On the cover of the enemy this week, bad company. On the cover of The Enemy this week, Bad Company. On the cover of Looking, Pilot. The number one LP in the UK is 20

Greatest Hits by Tom Jones. Physical Graffiti by Led Zeppelin is number two. Over in America the number one single is Black Water by the Doobie Brothers. And the number one LP is Physical Graffiti by Led Zeppelin. So, boys, what

were we doing in March of 1975? I would have been in my first year at secondary school, St. Michael's, just about getting used to it, really. It felt like penal servitude when I first

went there. You know, it looked like cold hits to the place and I was desperately, desperately miserable. But I think that, you know,

by March, I, you know, made a few mates and I was kind of getting into the swing of things. Also, I discovered that I was a pretty bright lad as well,

you know, in terms of exams and stuff like that. You know, I was, I wasn't cock of the playground, but I was kind of, you know,

sort of... Who could be in the first year, though, David? You've got to work up to that. Well, no, no. Well, yeah. I mean, you were cock of your year. I mean, it's like boxing. You had, like, you know, a cock per year.

Yeah. Obviously, you know, you're not going to take on the prefects, but... No, no, no. 1975, generally, was the year of typically tropical, which I think, you know, came while I bade us. And, you know, shortly the round about this time you know we did actually we went on holiday um to um to wales um which was always pretty dismal whatever time of the year whether it was early or late season uh you know the um it was always like a

trip to the slate mine museum or what have you it was a crazy gold fish and chips but they hadn't taken the bones out of the fish you know know, dismal, dismal stuff. But we actually went to Bomaris. So we adapted as our sort of sing song, like the journey along. And I used to sort of adapt the lyrics from typically tropicals Barbados. And it went something like, oh, we're going to Bomaris. Oh, on the island of Anglesey. Oh, very good. Yeah. Drive away onto the M60. on the island of Anglesey drive away

onto the M60 merge onto the M62 all together now I'm 12, I'll be 13 later that year but I was pretty happy with the world and I felt that like I didn't really feel like pop

was in a state of crisis actually I was very happy and I felt that like you know I mean I didn't really feel like pop was in a state of crisis actually um no I I was very happy and it felt like you know that like light and the world of light entertainment popular entertainment was kind of it seemed to be almost like set up to please a sort of reasonably bright 12 to 13 year old boy actually everything seemed to be pitched directly at me you know I didn't think you know there were a few things like Dave Allen or whatever a bit above my head or what have you and stuff like that but um but generally you know i felt that the world i felt i was i was pleased with the world and i felt a happy boy taylor were you even around yeah i was two or three in fact no i'm going to change that i was one or two because

i'm knocking a year off my age uh as a result of this lockdown bullshit because i is yeah yeah this doesn't count yeah it's the way i see it if i don't get, yeah, this doesn't count, does it? Yeah, it's the way I see it. If I don't get to live it, I shouldn't have to lug it around with me like dead skin. Exactly. So let me correct myself. I was one or two.

But 75 is the year from which I have my first memories, the first things I can clearly remember and date. For instance, my mum and dad had a load of mates around for a party and they spread out the rugs that we would take to the beach on the back garden. And what I remember most clearly, it's a single photographic memory, like a snapshot, of me being in the front room, looking out through a window

at everyone else having a good time. And I remember thinking, OK, I get it. Oh, like a Dickensian urchin. Yeah. I was probably one of the boys having a good time. Well, this is a very important month for me because it was the year that I finally found out that I wasn't going to die.

Oh, wow. It all started about a year ago because I was a really picky eater as a kid. All I'd eat was chips and it drove my mum fucking mental. You know, she'd even buy steak, which cost an absolute fortune on her salary. And I'd still cock my nose up at it and give it the dog. And she got so infuriated by it. She picked up the paper one day and there was these photos of a famine uh that was going off and she just

shoved it in my face and pointed at it and said if you don't eat that's how you're going to end up and uh i think it was a week later we were doing music and movement and we just finished it we're in the classroom and i'm standing there in my vest and pants and i just looked down at myself i'm a really scrawny bella and i just go into a full-on screaming fit and the teacher's going what's what's up how what's up how and i just went i'm gonna die miss and for a year i was convinced i was gonna die just got it in my head right and i went through this routine every morning for a year i'd get up earlier while my mum and dad was still in bed and i'd stand by the side of the

bed on my mom's side and i'd shake her awake and i'd just look her in the eyes and say this is me dying day ma'am and she said oh all right and then we get up and i decided i'd worked out that if i had an egg in the morning it was it gave me a really good chance of not dying that day so she'd do me one egg with no soldiers or anything like that and i'd eat the egg and then i'd throw it up because i hated egg and then i'd go to school and just go around telling everyone you know i might die today so you know just keep an eye out for me it went on for a year and we just moved two months ago to the to this new estate so i'd started at a new school and i don't know what happened but i think one of

the teachers noticed me on the playground doing this other routine that i had i basically worked out that i was gonna die and there was nothing i could do about it but there was one way i could find out that it was imminent. And, you know, like the first stage of my imminent death was my nipples disappearing. So I would spend all day at school with my hands up my T-shirt, feeling for my nipples to see if they were still there. And obviously one of the teachers was looking out across the playground and going, that lad, that new lad who no one talks to,

he's just standing there playing with his nipples. So I think they sent a letter to me mum and they basically hooked her up with a child psychologist. So I remember going to the hospital to see this psychologist and she sat there on the desk going oh yeah i've heard you're gonna die oh and i said yeah he said oh well i don't think you are actually and she had a stethoscope around her neck and he said you see this you know what it does then i go oh yeah yeah and she put it on my heart he says can you hear that that's your heart it's a perfectly healthy

heart you're not going to die and i just said oh all right then because an authority figure had told me i wasn't going to die and that was it i was cured and i remember this week just standing in my front garden talking to the other kids on the street saying oh you know what i'm not going to die nice so yeah a joyous time for me i even remember the t-shirt i was wearing it was gray and it had an elephant in a world war one biplane so yeah there we go happy times for me i even remember the t-shirt i was wearing it was gray and it had an elephant in a world war one biplane so yeah there we go happy times for me like a resurrection music wise i'm not feeling it at the minute yeah as i said in in the previous child music where we covered 1975 this is a the period where my dad is staying in a bit too early and it all depends whether he wants

a pint or not, whether I can watch Top of the Pops. I haven't got Tony Bones' mum anymore, so it'd be me sitting around after tea time, basically trying to encourage my dad to go out and get pissed so I could watch Top of the Pops. Because, I mean, the big problem was is that $6 million man's on at the same time,

and he liked that. He wasn't that up on the bionic woman, though. Oh, yeah. the same time and he liked that he wasn't that um up on the bionic woman though i don't think he liked the idea of uh machine women but no bloody point having a bionic woman soon as they brought dishwashers in a chaps oh dear but the thing about the bionic woman was you know steve austin to show how bionic he was, they'd show him jumping over buildings and, you know, giving people a good biffing. Jamie Summers, she just squeezes a tennis ball. That was it. That was the extent of her powers.

I think that was supposed to be symbolic, don't you? Yeah. Yes, I think so. I'll tell you what I don't like about the $6 million man. He's really unimpressive now. Because you know how the price of electronics just drops and keeps dropping? You know when you see adverts from 1981 for Curry's or Dixon's, and it's like a calculator is 100 quid.

It's like $49.99 for a fucking toaster. So I'm just thinking if the if you look here yeah so I'm thinking if the 6 million dollar man was around now he'd be about 300 quid yeah and the size of your fingernail the downloadable as free software man

yes this is a proper pendulum of an episode isn't it this one it swings back and forth like the flares sported by a lot of the people on this episode oh i mean you know the thing about me at this time i mean i you know top of the pops it was still you know the highlight of the week i mean it was yes it was the chips it was the salt and vinegar chips on the plate of my of my life yeah i mean a week that i went

without top of the pops did seem like a wasted week in my life at this time. Yeah, that would be unthinkable. So before we go any further, we do our usual thing of dipping a hand into the crates and pulling out an issue of the music press from this week. And this time, I've managed to find Melody Maker, March the 22nd, 1975. Shall we peruse, chaps? Do.

On the cover. Yes! Yes! 160,000 times yes! Screams the main headline on the cover. Announcing Yes's forthcoming UK tour, which will be taken in gigs at Stoke City and Queen's Park Rangers. They will be doing a two and a halfa-half to three-hour show, playing selections from all their albums,

together with snatches from the solo LPs, says manager Brian Lane. Yeah, and if you like that, they'll do a fourth song. The bottom half is taken up with a photo of the Bay City Rollers, who have announced their new UK tour, which will commence in a month's time and culminate with a gig at Wembley's Empire Pool at the end of June. They've also announced a new manager for their forthcoming push into America, Sid Bernstein, who promoted the first Beacles, Stones and Kinks tours of the USA

and promoted the Beakles gig at Shea Stadium. In the news, a full page has been given over to a review of the final night of the Rainbow Theatre in London featuring Kevin Coyne, Richard and Linda Thompson, Procol Harum, Hatfield and the North, John Martin and Sassafras and Steve Lake wasn't impressed. The whole shebang was a suburban scaled down version of Fillmore The Last Days, he writes, before recalling the time that Miles Davis played there and there were banners strung about that spelled his name wrong and he was served watermelon backstage. The Rainbow would reopen a couple of years later

before shutting down for good in 1981. It was goodbye. Goodbye. Yeah, I used to live near the Rainbow. It was a depressing sight. Because, you know, it eventually became a money church, which I think is what it still is. Yeah, it is, yeah.

And they had all posters like billboards up all around it that they'd paid for with sort of women, like testimonies. People go, my son had cancer until I went to this church and now he's all right and all that sort of thing. Until I saw Boer. Yeah, exactly, yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I'd rather have been watching Sassafras with Steve Lake.

Elton John has announced that he's boycotting British television after pulling out of a performance on Top of the Pops when the Musicians' Union demanded that he recorded a new backing track for his latest single, Philadelphia Freedom, and he counted the allotted time that he'd been given to do it three hours was insufficient the article points out that until the beginning of this year the mu had ruled that a band or artist had to re-record a new backing track for each specific show elton has been supported by andy scott of sweet roy wad who points out that as he plays

everything on his records it would take ages to do it and ian benson of pilot who says if you're on tour and have a record in the charts and this is the way things are usually planned by the record companies you would have to take two days a week off to fit in the sessions for top of the pops and obviously you're going to try your damnedest to recreate the sound as closely as possible so what's the point union madness you see it's like carry on at your convenience isn't it although the musicians union genuinely was a bunch of dicks um a lot of the time i mean the thing about that is that everyone just used to get around it anyway. You'd just ring up your engineer and say,

can you do a very slightly different mix of the new single? And they'd just give them that. And they'd go, oh, you went in and re-recorded it? Yes, we did, yeah. You can tell the rubes who take them at their word as well in this particular episode. Naming no names as yet. One act who have quite clearly re-recorded their record.

And my God, does it sound like it's done in three hours. Brian Connolly and Steve Priest of Sweet have been informed that they face a six-month jail sentence if they ever set foot in Belgium again. That's going to be a tough one to live with. After, quote, obscene behaviour at a gig late last year.

Reigning power, Steve. Oh, yes. Yeah. Elvis Presley has been announced as the male lead in the forthcoming Barbra Streisand film A Star Is Born but it never comes off as the Colonel wouldn't let him and the part goes to Chris Christopherson

instead. Oh, Elvis. It could have been a bit like Apocalypse Now, really, if he'd turned up at that point. Yes. Like Marlon Brando, didn't he, on the set? Can you imagine, though, if he went through all that shit in Apocalypse Now and in the end there's Elvis in a cave with a fucking massive 99?

I love the taste of monkey blood in the morning. Radio Trent, the new commercial radio station for Nottinghamshire, announces their new signing. Kid Jensen of Radio Luxembourg, who is currently presenting the ITV kids pop show Rock On 45. of Radio Luxembourg, who is currently presenting the ITV Kids Pop Show, Rock On 45. And Robin LeMessurier, the son of John LeMessurier and Hattie Jakes,

and his new band Shambles have been signed to RCA. Says the maker, you may know him better as the Womble, who got busted. Yeah. Intimate knowledge of the Wombles was a given back then. Yeah. Inside the paper, well, Brian Harrigan nips up to the ATV studios in Birmingham to record A Day in the Life of New Faces, the Saturday evening talent show,

which has already given the world show-woddy-woddy and sweet sensation, and follows around the harmony group fresh air and the folk band flaky pastry isn't that the most mid-70s name for a band ever yeah that's a band who don't really want to be successful yeah it's a punch ticket plus flaky pastry yeah you know harry out of um the sultans of swing that's he'd call a band flaky pastry wouldn't it but if this is 1975 i would imagine brian harrigan probably didn't go far because i believe he would have been the birmingham stringer at that point. And as only really remembered as the big metal head of the British music press, I suspect he wasn't that impressed by a televised talent competition.

No. Am I right? He discovers that most of the acts are far from new, having been in the likes of Candlewick Green and the Midgel Five. One of the contestants, the soulettesick green and the midgel five one of the contestants the soulettes are actually the rebelettes who are currently backing duane eddie in his comeback and he muses that rock acts are poorly served by a judging panel which includes arthur aske by the end of the night

we learn that peter grant of led zeppelin is being lined up as a judge and the green room is bum-rushed by Billy Wright, Shaw Taylor, Mike Reid and the cast of Crossroads who pile into the rider of bottles of brown ale and scotch eggs. It sounds like some of the dreams I've been having in lockdown. Jeff Brown pops over to Paris, which is now the second or third home of Sparks, who have just announced their involvement

in the Jacques Tati film Confusion, which is to be the final Monsieur Hulot film. They talk about how much they're looking forward to it, that they're thinking of permanently relocating to France, and that their next single will be called Get In The Swing. Alas, despite writing

the theme tune, the backing for Confusion never transpired and the film never happened. That is tragic. Can you imagine Sparks and Jacques Tati? That could have been... Chris Charlesworth files two interviews from New York with two

singer-songwriters, Harry Shapin and Don McLean. The former introduces himself as a hard-ass liberal who uses TV cameras and giant screens in a proto-multimedia stage show, while the latter hopes his next single, about a one-legged hobo who dies when he falls off a train and is then mummified and displayed around America in a travelling carnival will make people forget all about American pie. Oh Madonna didn't cover that one did she? I genuinely did

get confused between this Don McLean and the sidekick to Peter Glaze and thought they were one at the same you know they'd be like Ken Dodd you know you've got your serious music career and your career as a sort of tatty hilarious mirth maker Yeah I got a really clear memory of walking into boots in kidderminster when boots used to sell records

and had the top 20 on the wall and it was there uh crying don mclean yes i remember just standing there with like my head exploding asking my mum about it she didn't fucking know alan jones goes to the lyceum to investigate their monthly ted revival night and start shitting himself when the taxi driver refuses to drop him off anywhere near the venue he links up with the dj team the wild wax show who tell him that business has picked up right across the country. They've started to do loads of sets at US airbases. You have to spend at least 80 quid on an outfit that passes muster.

Modern day Elvis is ridiculous now. And last night they played a TED pub with a stripper, but she got booed off for doing her routine to the Alex Harvey band. Jones also has a natter with Kevin Coyne at Virgin's

offices in Notting Hill, who talks about his forthcoming LP Matching Head and Feet and says that if this release doesn't put him over the top he'll ask to join the stylistics. Ooh. Ooh. I would have liked to see. Yeah.

Jones also does a phony with Emmylou Harris, who talks about her working relationship with Graham Parsons and hopes that she'll get to play a few dates in the UK before long. Meanwhile, Alvin Lee confirms that ten years after are officially no more and he's been spending his downtime working on his vegetable garden, or at least watching his gardener work on his vegetable garden, and he talks about his new band Alvin Lee & Co. Oh, can you imagine them on top of the pubs?

The centre spread is called The Selling of Rock and features Ray Coleman at Carnegie Hall to cover the world premiere playback of Justin Haywood and John Lodge's new LP Blue Jays, and Stephen Gaines dropping in on Tommy Knight at the National Association of Record Merchants in Los Angeles as Polydor drums up interest in the forthcoming soundtrack of the Tommy film. On the singles page, Colin Irwin is in the chair and his single of the week is i ain't gonna stand for this no more by ace much more obvious and poppy than how long it swings gently

with just enough punch to let you know it means business five times it has revolved around the mmoffice record player and it remains as compulsively listenable as the first time a monster-sized hit. I miss that kind of music writing. It's like Krusty the Clown doing voiceovers. He's just got the car, he goes, Hey, hey, hi kids. And then you just hear a car pulling off.

It's so easy. It's funny, but someone like Colin Irwin, he was a melody maker and he wrote lots of really beautiful stuff, but I could fully imagine him doing that as well. I mean, he was absolutely really, very, very expert on folk music or whatever. He did have a sort of slightly skew pop sensibility.

He went on to edit number one magazine. So maybe this is that side of Colin, you know, perhaps manifesting itself. He's a funny bloke as well and he uh he co-wrote the that abba biography with andrew lou golden yeah wow which is you know not perhaps not the most historically rigorous abba biography i've ever read but it is one of one of the the funnier ones tangled up in In Blue by Bob Dylan is equally frothed over. The outstanding cut from the Blood On The Tracks album and in single form must split the chart apart.

The only blight on its chart potential is its length, over five minutes, which will seriously threaten David Hamilton's waffle time, but it's got to be a rhino-sized hit. It failed to chart. Irwin surprises even himself by praising Take Your Mama for a Ride, the new single by Lulu. There she is, all cosy and warm with her crummy Saturday night TV show,

but every so often she comes up with a really good single. This is one of them. However, it's a coat down for some way, somehow I'm keeping you by the times. An incredibly boring old song, as a passing dustman has just so rightly commentated it could have been made any time in the last 12 years the welly boot song by billy connolly gets a thumb at right angles scottish ancestry prevents me from saying too much except that it's connolly typically lovable slash loathsome depending on whether you like celtic idiocy erwin points out that New York Girls, the latest single from Steel Eye Span, has a special guest playing the ukulele,

Peter Sellers. He likes it, but doesn't think it'll be a hit. He was right. In fact, none of the singles reviewed in Melody Maker this week made the top 100. Fucking hell, that's a poor strike rate. I never realised that Tangled Up In Blue was released as a single. I didn't even know that.

In the LP section, the main review this week is given over to Blow By Blow by Jeff Beck, and Steve Lake thinks it's cat shit. Shed a tear for Jeff Beck, the man who gave us guitar feedback and one of the early 60s great rock innovators now reduced to chasing fleeting images of what he might have been and generally proceeding with all the directional sense of a headless chicken, he writes. The debut LP by Ian Hunter, called Ian Hunter, gets a meaty thumbs up from Chris Welch. Whatever problems and pressures Hunter, that bruised and battered master of superstardom, has undergone under the past few months, he swiftly throws caution to the wind and shouts loud and clear his commitment to rock. The soundtrack to the Tommy film

has been covered by Michael Watts and he deems it a necessary companion work to the original Who album. Really? Yeah. But it's a coat down for Mad Dog by John Entwistle's Ox. His music sounds like it's been salvaged

from a K-Tel or Music for Pleasure album, says Alan Jones. Kiss, the debut LP by Kiss, has finally been released in the UK and Alan Jones immediately recognises that they stink of unwashed

cock. It becomes agonisingly clear after the first couple of numbers that Kiss are closer in spirit to the more obese and wretched forms of rock and roll as previously represented by the likes of Rick Wakeman and Argent than they are to the MC5, Flaming Groovies and the Stooges. Journey, the debut LP by Journey, Extravaganza by Stackridge and sunday's child by john martin appraised while sold out by scaffold peace and love by dadawar and turn of the cards by renaissance

are lobbed in a bin woodley direction in the gig guide david could have seen Lou Reed at Hammersmith Odeon, Ampeables at Dingwalls, Stackridge at the Greyhound, or Ace at Victoria Palace. But probably didn't. Taylor could have nipped out to Barbarella's to see The Times and Ampeables, Ossie Beeser at Aston University, or Caravan and Renaissance at the Birmingham Town Hall. Neil could have checked out Soft Machine playing a benefit for the Triumph Workers' Cooperative at Manchester Poly and fuck all else. Sarah could have witnessed Hunter Ronson at Sheffield City Hall,

Charles Aznavour at the Wakefield Theatre Club, Gilbert O'Sullivan at the Fiesta in Sheffield or the Rubettes at the Hull City Hall. Al could have seen the Spinners, the folk version, at Nottingham Albert Hall or gone to Leicester to see 10cc at the De Montfort Hall. And Simon could have seen the Roubettes at Brangwyn Hall in Swansea, one of the last gigs the Groundhogs would ever play at Glamorgan Polle,

Steve Harley and cockney rebel at cardiff capital theater or manfred man's earth band in treforest polly fucking hell all going on in wales in the letters page the main topic of conversation is alan jones's article last week about a movement he calls drip rock where he bemoans the service of soft lads with guitars who have sprayed their musk upon the first half of the 70s pete waddington who runs a record shop in manchester is dead sarcastic and asked jones if he can send a list of the records he has in stock for him to vet david yates in london asks him not to be so vindictive and just mellow out man while richard stackett and anthony eden of rains park take offense at his coat down

of crosby stills and nash we can see nothing particularly anemic in the words of our house it is the celebration of two people enjoying living together and taking stock of the things around them. Bollocks. It's a fucking awful song. I hate that song. I mean, I'm weirdly tolerant of Crosby, Stills and Nash. I like the sound of them.

But yeah, as soon as Graham Nash pipes up, it's, you know. Crosby, Stills and Gash, more like. I mean, Jonesy, I think, is at this point, I mean, he's clearly beginning to sort crosby stills and gash more like i mean jonesy i think is at this point i mean he's clearly beginning to sort of ruffle feathers and i think that's kind of what he was brought on board to do and i mean he is a kind of harbinger of what's eventually going to happen in the next sort of phase of the music press yeah yeah definitely um as are all those letters responding to somebody saying that they don't like something by going, well, I don't see anything wrong with that.

Well, good for you. Good for you. Perhaps if you could write that in a slightly more entertaining way, you could come and do this for a living. But it's like, you know, these so-called critics, they can't even do their job. All they do is criticise. Could I give the shadows a very valuable piece of advice?

Don't waste your bus fare going to the eurovision song contest your song is a non-starter writes leslie bleasdale of shipler the whole system is cockeyed at the moment a better idea would be to give the viewers a chance for a short list of groups not songs then let the group or its usual songwriters produce its own material. If the success of ABBA is anything to go by, something fresh and original will be needed to win. Oh dear, still, there's always next year. Yes, there was, Brotherhood of Man.

Did the Shadows ask Eurovision for an inquiry as to why they didn't win? Yes. And Chris Jenkins of Stevenage writes, Did the shadows ask Eurovision for an inquiry as to why they didn't win? And Chris Jenkins of Stevenage writes, I still can't believe that water has to be frozen before Steve Harley can walk on it. Oh, and the following advert appears in the back pages. It's all happening at Pountney's Hounslow Hair Centre. Pountney's, famous with Melody Maker readers for many years,

has helped and advised many superstars. It's always been ahead on modern hairstyling, quoted to be London's most up-to-date hair establishment with four divisions to deal with hairstyling, hair transplanting, hair loss and hair replacement problems. Poutney's hair transplant method is performed by qualified surgeons. This is a method of transplanting your own hair to the balding parts after which the hair grows continually it's a medical solution at any stage of hair loss find out more by calling or phoning pountney's hair transplant clinic and

hair styling center own private car park yeah space is a premium in Hounslow. Yes. Do you like having chunks of your ripped out pubes plunged into your head like a plastic doll head while aeroplanes fly overhead about three foot above the roof? Then come to Poundies. Famous with Melody Maker readers. Which of the many superstars have they helped and advised and won? I bet Elton's been there. Well, I'm looking at the picture on this advert. It appears to be a picture of Captain Beefheart playing the bass. I wonder why

he wore that hat. Who would risk a hair transplant procedure in 1975? Can you imagine it, man? Getting your head under a massive fucking Singer sewing machine. It really was. And it was like you know four months later you know you open a cupboard door in your kitchen and bump it onto your forehead and it all falls out yeah didn't that happen to like russ abbott or somebody yeah elton john or something i mean elton john's was probably it was like christian barnard and

the first successful heart transplant wasn't it wasn't it sent me Christian Barnard and the first successful heart transplant, wasn't it? Wasn't it? It was sent to me to God as the first successful hair transplant. And it was just atrocious, wasn't it? I thought, you know, if you're going to go to this kind of follicle by follicle... Did they do the first hair transplant on monkeys first? Just having to go out into the wilds to find a balding monkey. All the kind of excruciating pain and the follicle by follicle treatment and the money he must have spent on it. You could have come up with a better barnet than that.

Yeah, it wasn't a follicle-by-follicle treatment in those days. It was like they just basically drew a Noughts and Crosses board on your head. And it was each bit just like a carpet tile sewn in. Oh, hair update pop crazy youngsters it looks fucking awful I'm now at the stage

where I'm a cross between those scientists and the T-Fol adverts and a testicle it's fucking horrible

and I can't get rid of it I made the big error of telling my niece about it and she was really upset

and said oh but you won't look like my al anymore and so to calm her down i said look well i'll tell you what i'll do next time i see you i'll let you shave it all off and now i'm bound to it and she lives in shropshire so it's going to be fucking god knows when i'm going to see her again she's got one word for you al poundness yes the place to be for the balding heads so yeah 64 pages 12p i never knew there was so much in it would you want to be a music journalist in the mid 70s you know we all talk about golden eras this doesn't seem to be one oh well i mean it was golden era i mean like you mentioned chris charlesworth um he was like um an american correspondent and um yeah he got paid obviously

he got his full wage and he would also have an apartment paid for him out in la or new york where it was whatever you know just to have as a base out there um yes they very much would have wanted to be a music journalist at that point yeah he, with two kilos of cocaine being courier-biked to your desk by the record company. The closest I ever got to that, I was doing the singles, and some bloke sent me a record on the press release. It had sellotape to it, a little bit of hash that was about the size of a pebble that you'd find in the bottom of a fish tank.

And he was like, hey, enjoy the gear. I hope you get a chance to review this record. So, you know, I reviewed the record. And at the end I said, it's bribe-tastic. Just, you know, just in case anyone was in any doubt as to why I pretended it was good. I never got anything. I didn't get any kind of inducements whatsoever.

I did once get sent a fish, a dead fish in the post by Elvis Costello after an ambivalent review I did of it with a little note attached saying I should take time out and slap myself around the face with it. So, yeah, it was a bit thin-skinned, I think, really. It wasn't like a kind of slag-off or anything. I sort of did, you know, kind of pro and anti Elvis Costello. And I sort of became a dual self, you know.

So the pros of Elvis Costello, the cons of Elvis Costello. And a sort of dialogue, you know, ensued. Socratic, if you will. So didn't he send you something nice as well? In the spirit of the article? No, no, exactly. I mean, see, I've got... Oh, Elvis! Yeah yeah he just took that

no exactly so what else was on telly this day well bbc one commences at 9 41 a.m with two and a half hours of schools and college programs then it shuts down for a quarter of an hour before coming back hard with the 607080 show the roy Hood show that does something for the oldens. After a five-minute news bulletin, it's Pebble Mill at one, followed by the Herbs and another hour of schools programmes before closing down again for 58 minutes. Then it's regional news in your area,

Play School, Dinsdale Landon reading The Man in Black in Jackanora, John Craven's Newsround, Lizzie Dripping Again, Barber Popper, The News, regional news in your area, Nationwide and they've just finished What Do You Expect, Tomorrow's World. BBC Two starts at 6.40am with an hour and a half of sexy Open University action and then we close down until 11 when Brian Kant does the very hungry caterpillar on Play School then it closes down for another 6 hours coming back at 5.25 with even more Open University they're about 10 minutes away from Newsday with Michael Charlton.

ITV kicks off at 9.30 with two and a half hours of schools programmes. Then Bungle learns about Near and Far in Rainbow. Then it's Flower Stories where Alan Taylor reads a story about a green elephant who wonders if elephants should roar or not. Hey, it's something we've all contemplated during lockdown, I suppose. Mike Smith, not that one, takes a look at the all-purpose handyman's machine in jobs around the house. Then it's first report with Robert Key. Then this week's Crown Court involves an argument over the sanity of a man who signed away all his money to the moon is

then it's women only with jan leeman followed by general hospital racing from doncaster around the world in 80 days then it's rock on with 45 where kid jensen presents hello and people's and the rubets from the hard Rock Disco in Manchester. After the news and regional news in your area, Meg Mortimer is balls deep into her wedding preparations and crossroads. We are currently 20 minutes into the

six million dollar man with Steve Austin teaming up with a beautiful girl with exceptional ESP abilities again to look for a missing scientist again in the Florida Everglades again. Well, that's me fucked. No top of the pops action for Al tonight then.

I would have watched every minute of all of that. Yeah. Telly, it was like a two-bar grill, basically. You just huddled around it. Yeah, anything. Fucking Women Only with Jan Leeman. You'd watch that. Yeah, it was like a two bar grill basically you just huddled around it. Yeah anything fucking Women Only with Jan Leeman you'd watch that. Yeah it was on. Moving pictures you see in the corner of your

room. Absolutely. Anything there jumping out at you Tony? No I've got the same listings in front of me and I'm thinking later on it gets pretty good there's Man About The House we can all think of one person who we may be meeting sometime very soon who probably wouldn't have been watching.

But other than that, yeah, the Sweeney. I think if I remember rightly, the man about the house is that Robin, there's some lockdown type thing, and Robin is looking forward to sharing a bed that night until he finds out who it's with. Yeah, hey, no spoilers. All right, chaps, I think we've laid the table if you will

for this episode of Top Ops so we're going to leave it here for a minute and extend an invitation to the Pop Crazinesses to reassemble

a day from now and we'll get stuck properly into this episode of Top of the Pops so thank you very much Taylor Parks alright

thank you very much David Stubbs no thank you George by the way george rober he would have been sleeping with just stop it stay safe stay comfortable but above all stay pop crazed sharp music greatOwl.com Oh, hello you. My name's Tom Price. Hello, I'm Dave Cribb.

You should come and join us. Every day we do a podcast called Cabin Fever where we talk to loads of comedians who've had to cancel everything else in their lives so they come on our podcast instead, don't they, Dave? Yeah, it's an isolation podcast. Dave, were you yawning at the start of that sentence, then? Was it just a little yawn?

Yeah, it's basically the Great Big Owl Isolation Podcast. We'll have people on from all our podcasts, from your Ruler 3s, your Brian and Rogers, your musicals, your bitchins. If you like any of our podcasts, if you like any of those people, chances are they'll be logging on to the Zoom call and just chatting because, let's face it,

they've got nothing else to do. Also, there'll be a quiz on the bell. All right, see you soon. Lots of love. Cabin F-E-A-3-7-O-9 O-O-O, that's our Twitter name