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    TOTP on BBC4

    Flintlock - I remember them being in Look-In every week (I think they might even have had their own comic strip) but that's the first time I've ever knowingly seen them in the flesh.

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      TOTP on BBC4

      Dion had issued his first album in yonks the previous year - the Phil Spector-produced Born To Be With You - and it had bombed spectacularly. I recall hearing that he was part of some package tour that came to Europe in 1976, so presumably his people needed to get his name back into the spotlight. It worked: the reissued 'Wanderer' made a return to the UK Top 20.

      Streetheart was his 1976 album release. It was majorly hyped as a return to his roots after the (brilliant) failure of Born to Be With You. I'm not certain, but I can see why The Wanderer might have been re-released as a promo for the album.

      Does anyone else remember Dave Lee Travis's Radio Caroline days? His Leader of the Pack rip-off intro: "This is the SOUND OF THE TRAVICYCLE!!!!!" is — sadly — unforgettable. Or I haven't been able to anyway.

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        TOTP on BBC4

        My first reaction to Flintlock was mingled relief and disappointment that they weren't actually dressed as highwaymen, a strong possibility on the alien planet that is TOTP 1976. Their song was quite catchy and in a different arrangement could have been an indie hit during much of the last 30 years.

        Sharing the WTF points with The Wanderer this week were the Surprise Sisters, who would surely have avoided custodial sentences for murdering their stylist. Was it really a dragged-up David Bowie positioned second left for most of their performance? Apparently their records were produced by Tony Visconti, so the idea isn't as outlandish as it might seem.

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          TOTP on BBC4

          dalliance wrote:

          Firstly, why was Dion's The Wanderer back in the charts in 1976 and secondly what was that choreography with the girl that went with it all about? The producer had discovered multi-screen and was using it pretty blithely without anything interesting to put in one screen yet alone three.

          So you had this weird shot in one of the windows of her disembodied hand clenching and unclenching and another one of just her ankle moving slightly from side to side. I was thinking Boxing Helena I was.

          Bryan Ferry is a cool fucker. Not only is he in a very small minority of men who can carry off wearing white shoes (I tried and failed myself circa 1985) but he teams it up in a double act with a Portuguese waiter pencil moustache and it still looks cool. I'll never understand why Jerry Hall ditched him for the considerably less suave Mick Jagger.
          I watched this episode last night with a full bottle of wine inside me, and that routine with the girl dancing to The Wanderer totally confused me. Now that I've watched it again this morning I still can't understand what it's supposed to be about.

          I've never understood why Bryan Ferry is held up to be the epitome of cool. Last night he looked like a 'Lebanese Pimp', to quote one of Alan Partridge's guests on KMKY when Alan grew a similar pencil moustache.

          Noel Edmonds' triangular haircut deserves a passing mention too.

          I'm now beginning to appreciate the full significance of that famous phrase, "Why Punk Had To Happen."

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            TOTP on BBC4

            I suppose you have to appreciate Ferry within the context of the time and compared to the bad teeth, bad hair and bad fire risk from all that nylon around him then he truly was some sort of cool bastard.

            All the same, I think he has always looked cool. I was walking along Kensington High St once and saw him coming in the opposite direction. It was a non-descript and grey spring midweek morning but he still looked like he was walking towards a camera in a music video about to break into Avalon, all windswept and nonchalant.

            I remember also the flight thing where a mad guy tried to break into the cabin of a BA flight heading to Kenya causing it to drop 10,000 feet. Bryan was on the flight in Crooner Class and someone took a blurry picture of the chaos in the cabin as crew and passengers finally managed to subdue the mad guy. Yet in frame there's Bryan, running his hand through his hair and looking studiously but cooly concerned and still looking cool despite a not too far from death ordeal.

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              TOTP on BBC4

              Alderman Barnes wrote:
              Flintlock - I remember them being in Look-In every week (I think they might even have had their own comic strip) but that's the first time I've ever knowingly seen them in the flesh.
              I remember them in the mid-70s being on an kids ITV show with Pauline Quirke, who had the hots for the drummer, who also was one of "The Tomorrow People"

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                TOTP on BBC4

                Horrendous rendition of Got to Get You into My Life by the Surprise Sisters to kick off proceedings. Edmonds calls it sumptuous and his record of the week. What a dip-shit.

                The Real Thing were a vast improvement, even though the vocals seemed to be a bit off-kilter. Mind you they could have taken a collective dump in the lead singers big hat (fedora?) and that would have been better than what preceded it.

                Boston Tea Party? Boston Strangler more like. If you're gonna call yourself Sensational then you don't come out with meandering shite like this. Did Delilah follow or precede this? Do I really care? Thank Christ for Archie Bell and his Drells. That's a record and a half that is.

                Flintlock look a jolly bunch. All teeth and hope. Did I clock Chris 'Motorcycling' Spedding in Ferry's film? Can't help but launch into Jerry Hall's yelling routine on her cue. I can't be alone in this, surely to God?

                Wurzels at No.1. Can't be worse than No Charge. Not even the Surprise Sisters. Or Edmonds's tie.

                Young Hearts run free...

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                  TOTP on BBC4

                  'Delilah' preceded 'BTP' by a year: both good records. And yes, that was Spedding behind King Spiv.

                  The Flintlock single was their one and only hit record - and even that stiffed at #30. Way too 'ITV' for TOTP. (The Surprise Sisters didn't even manage that, you'll be unsurprised to learn.)

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                    TOTP on BBC4

                    dalliance wrote:
                    Bryan Ferry is a cool fucker...
                    ...I'll never understand why Jerry Hall ditched him for the considerably less suave Mick Jagger.
                    Didn't she just want to avoid becoming Jerry Ferry?

                    I'll get my coat.

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                      TOTP on BBC4

                      Mind you, Jerry Jagger sounds like a mid card wrestler from the 80s, Intercontinental Champion at best.

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                        TOTP on BBC4

                        The lyrics to Candy Statton's 'Young Hearts' are really quite dark, aren't they?
                        Mind you, Ruby Kipper, or whatever they're called have just made a complete cunt out of it.
                        The bit where she's bemoaning her man 'loving every woman that he can' involved a Cosmo Smallpiece-type character in a flat cap perving over The Sun's Page 3.

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                          TOTP on BBC4

                          I imagine Dion was back in the charts so that I could do my full-blooded dance to "The Wanderer" as it played on our mam's Dansette for the delight and delectation of any guests. Oh, yeah I used to give it some.

                          edit -what rubbish, it was "Runaround Sue"

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                            TOTP on BBC4

                            Fucking hell, look at Mud's trousers.

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                              TOTP on BBC4

                              What is this..the third..fourth appearance for Mud with that song?

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                                TOTP on BBC4

                                Calvert W. McCutcheon wrote:
                                The lyrics to Candy Statton's 'Young Hearts' are really quite dark, aren't they?
                                Yes, and spot on, and she has that sob in her voice ... was talking about Candi Staton tonight.

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                                  TOTP on BBC4

                                  Is it possible that that was the last live performance by T-Rex? I Love To Boogie was their last top 40 hit before Bolan's death just over a year later.
                                  On a side note, does anyone else think that Bolan's death was hugely overshadowed by the death a month earlier of the hugely overrated cabaret artist and club singer Elvis, who died a month earlier and was still number 1 when Bolan died? I'm pretty sure there were no re-releases of any of Bolan's tracks to mark his death.

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                                    TOTP on BBC4

                                    Pretty sure 'I Love to Boogie' would've been Bolan's last TOTP appearance, yes. Not sure whether 'Soul of My Suit' (April 1977) was given a slot, and the BBC certainly wouldn't have gone near the (pretty dismal anyway) 'Celebrate Summer' single (August 1977) as it was the theme to Bolan's ITV show.

                                    What is this..the third..fourth appearance for Mud with that song?
                                    Mud were, for some reason, one of the BBC's favoured acts of the era, hence 'Shake It Down' received disproportionate play for a record that didn't even make the Top Ten. (I think Les Gray was friends with DLT, as well.) Other acts shown BBC 'favour' at the time included Cliff Richard, Showaddywaddy, Barbara Dickson, Darts, Kiki Dee and Fox: all could pretty much guarantee blanket airplay for whatever they might put out, however lukewarm its public reception might be. (Likelihood is that they shared the same management?)

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                                      TOTP on BBC4

                                      David Agnew wrote:
                                      Fucking hell, look at Mud's trousers.
                                      Do you mean the lime green colour or the obscenely tight crotches on display? Enough to make me splutter as I sipped my glass of Cab Sav.

                                      These shows are great from a history point of view, but the music on display is dire. I might watch with the sound down next week.

                                      One of the things I noticed this week was the medallion and open necked shirt look. I'd thought that was one of those '70s stereotypes that wasn't as common as people recall, yet DLT had one, as did one of the Brotherhood of Man singers. Pete Frampton had the open necked shirt (or was it leotard?) but without the medallion. Was this the must have male accessory in the summer of 1976?

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                                        TOTP on BBC4

                                        Bolan was a shadow his early 70s pomp. Touch of the Margolyes with the hair and bloated face by this time and he forgot to put his shirt on before his tie. Frampton was much more on his game. Nice Crucifix too. I always associate Gallagher & Lyle with Ken Bruce for some reason; bit too sedate for TOTP really

                                        Dalliance's favourite hardman was back on, with Brotherhood of Man doing a more or less identical follow up to their biggest hit. I bet they still do that dance routine at Butlins or wherever they play nowadays.

                                        Also good to see that stereotyping was alive and well with Ruby Flipper; aside from the perve the Hattie McDaniel look imposed on the main protagonist yearning for a release from her drudgery was somewhat offensive. Young Hearts Run Free was and is awesome, untainted by this performance thankfully.

                                        Can't help thinking that Liverpool Express were trying to recreate I'm Not in Love with their contribution. Nice enough, mind. And the versatile Murray Head (brother of Tony - once snogged Peter Finch on the mouth) was enjoyably surreal.

                                        BLT's crashing of Mud's performance was a bit much, prompting Les Gray to take his shades off. Maybe he was gonna give the Hairy Cornflake a going over afterwards. Now that would have been worth the licence fee.

                                        Aung San Suu Kyi would not have been impressed, methinks...

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                                          TOTP on BBC4

                                          Bolan's vocal on I Love To Boogie seems to be live, not mimed.

                                          There was a later appearance: Laser Love 7/10/76

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                                            TOTP on BBC4

                                            TOTP in this era seems totally uninterested in putting the music into any kind of context. In 1971-73 we know we are watching mainly glam; in 1981-83 mainly electropop and the last dregs of new wave; but 1976 has no personality at all.

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                                              TOTP on BBC4

                                              satchmo76 wrote:
                                              ...but 1976 has no personality at all.
                                              Wasn't it the zenith of 'pub rock', with Dr. Feelgood paving the way for punk ...or something?

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                                                TOTP on BBC4

                                                Yeh. My 76 wasn't that bad, we (the lot who became punks in 76/77) were listening to Bowie, and a lot of funk/disco (James Brown, Candi Staton, Donna Summer, Tavares) and the Feelgoods, and towards the end of the year, Pistols and the Damned. And old stuff, rockabilly, the Monkees, the Shangrilas. Some were into Ramones and the NY stuff, I was a bit but not that much, apart from the VU who I'd loved for a while.

                                                Among my fave records in 76 were the Station to Station album, Anarchy and New Rose, of course, but also Young Hearts, Brass Construction's Movin' On, James Brown's Get Up Offa That Thing, Johnny Guitar Watson's Girl I Need It, Boz Scaggs' Lowdown, the Isley Brothers, Cross the Track by Maceo and the Macks or whatever the JBs were calling themselves ... there was quite a range of music that year.

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                                                  TOTP on BBC4

                                                  "Punk had to happen" is something I've always instinctively understood as being the case, watching these has just driven that home.

                                                  Not that everything has been pish, far from it. There's just an atmosphere of rubbish that seems to (unfairly) taint everything.

                                                  Mind you Gallagher & Lyle should've been strangled at birth.

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                                                    TOTP on BBC4

                                                    Oh my, 'Save Your Kisses For Me' had a rubbishy charm but this Rosalie thing is horrendous.

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