TOTP on BBC4

[Wyatt Earp]

TOTP on BBC4

It's simply false to say that Kevin Rowland didn't, just because he doesn't when you look at those pictures now.

[dalliance]

TOTP on BBC4

Spolis it when you think he had stockings on under those dungarees.

I have heard it all now, Yes Sir I Can Boogie underpinned by anxiety and pathos. Next you'll be telling me that Sorry I'm A Lady is a complex song about transexual gender dysfunction.

Here's a couple of one hit wonders from a little later than 1976 which were belting songs with or without pathos and anxiety.

Clout - Substitute

Exile - Kiss You All Over

This one was a dog which did nothing more than inspire one of my favourite HMHB songs:

Dean Friedman - Lucky Stars

And one I could never make my mind up about.

Marshall Hain - Dancing In The City

[George]

TOTP on BBC4

That's Ken Bruce's Desert Island Discs selection isn't it?

[historyman]

TOTP on BBC4

Why at Last! wrote:

It's simply false to say that Kevin Rowland didn't, just because he doesn't when you look at those pictures now.

Heh, I'd forgotten about Dexy's finest. But it's hard to believe that anybody who bought the single and saw the video and performances seriously thought that the Mid-West Dustbowl look was cool.

[Sean of the Shed]

TOTP on BBC4

This is Dexy's finest.
The Emerald Express were just a bunch of smelly old crusties and soap dodgers.

[Calvert]

TOTP on BBC4

Why at Last! wrote:

Yeah, but you don't really do pop, is it. There's pop, and there's things that are your cup of tea.

Well, totally, but my opinion's as valid as anyone's, surely, and that's all it is - an opinion.
I have a friend who cracks up laughing at Catatonia's Road Rage, there are just some things that make you laugh for some reason.

Just watched a Dave Davies documentary on BBC3.

Thundering Christ, they were fucking brilliant.

[laverte]

TOTP on BBC4

dalliance wrote:

I am struggling to think of anyone apart from Agnetha from Abba that I would still fancy watching them as an adult.

Whereas for fans of slightly soppy men with cheekbones, tight sparkly trousers and long hair, this is the golden era. Even the clothes, awful as they are, have an endearing homemade feel to them: there's a boldness in the androgyny which I really, really miss. I mean, this last episode had a big Greek bear with the shapeliest, thickest eyebrows I've ever seen, wearing mascara and dressed as a Coptic priest. These are my people!
The hippy-drippy songs are insipid, and no doubt by 1976 their relentless niceness — that New Seekers song is the kind of thing we used to sing in church — were quite out of date. But it's almost shocking, now, to see male sexuality being performed in such a sweet, decorative way. I'm certainly inclined to view in the punk movement a reassertion of particular kinds of masculinity, as well as the better-known class-based and generational arguments.

I mean his closing one last night beggared belief "We close with Good Vibrations by The Beach Boys, I suggest if you want some good vibrations then why don't you go and sit on your washing machine"

To me it just flagged up the innocence of the era. I mean, if Chris Moyles or Davina McCall said that now, you'd know straight away that they were talking about masturbating. But when Diddy Hamilton says it, I just picture him as a seven-year-old — with a brushover already — fooling about in a launderette. And I don't know whether to be sad or thankful for the 35 years that have passed.

[Calvert]

TOTP on BBC4

The more I watch this TOTP re-run the more preposterous it seems.It's proper weird.
Diddy Hamilton's joke about Tony Blackburn's library actually seemed to get a genuine laugh in the studio, people trying to dance to that dirgey Alex Harvey band song, Lee Garrett's demonic neck-high trousers and performance, and that canned applause before and after Art Garfunkel with the weird audio fade out when the punters are still slushing from side to side while Art's still mouthing the words.
Never knew the Real Thing were from Liverpool either.

[Nishlord]

TOTP on BBC4

Oh, it's that cunty guitarist off the Alex Harvey Band again. Do you think he was dressed like that as an ironic comment about miming, or did he always carry on like that?

[G-Man]

TOTP on BBC4

dalliance wrote:

Here's a couple of one hit wonders from a little later than 1976 which were belting songs with or without pathos and anxiety.

Clout - Substitute

Exile - Kiss You All Over

My initial response was: "No, they weren't one hit wonders. Clout had a great follow-up with Save Me, and Exile had a git with You Thrill Me." The I looked them up in my Guinness Book of British Hit Singles, and they were indeed one hit wonders in Britain. Of course, Dexys are regarded one hit wonders in the US, so one wants to be careful using that appellation.

[Calvert]

TOTP on BBC4

Great typo in there, G-man.

[historyman]

TOTP on BBC4

laverte wrote:

I mean, this last episode had a big Greek bear with the shapeliest, thickest eyebrows I've ever seen, wearing mascara and dressed as a Coptic priest. These are my people!

Does anybody else see the similarity?

Demis Roussos



Giant Haystacks

[Sundeporino]

TOTP on BBC4

I dont know if I was watching the same TOTP rerun series last night but The Seekers (original aussie version) appeared.
They did "The Canival Is Over" and the singer (Judith Durham) was the spitting image of Karen Brady.
PLUS one of the fellers (Keith Potger) was the double of the "groom to be " on the film "Sideways".

[Stumpy Pepys]

TOTP on BBC4

historyman wrote:

Has any performer ever looked cool in dungarees?

Dungarees are pretty hard to defend, with the odd exception.

[G-Man]

TOTP on BBC4

[Jah Womble]

TOTP on BBC4

I'm not sure Minnie R (may the good lord rest her soul, etc) was ever 'cool', as such. As for Dexy's, they were way better before they started exposing armpits.

Exile's 'Thrill Me' only just scraped the Top 40 in the US - even America didn't need long to decide that they were also-rans. Clout frankly were only ever going to be OHWs in the UK - and they did themselves few favours on that score by releasing 'Since You've Been Gone' just ahead of Rainbow's version.

Marshall Hain's 'Dancing in the City' - yeah, I can still hear something in that...

[Nocturnal Submission]

TOTP on BBC4

Astonishingly, to me anyway, given that he was the size of a medium-sized Greek island 35 years ago ("Yeh, we had a week in Demis and then spent a few days in a lovely little villa in Roussos. Ever tried a retsina milkshake?"), the great man is still alive, thinner but less, well, jolly:



That dark-haired New Seeker was one of your countrywomen, dalliance, the lovely Eve Graham.

[laverte]

TOTP on BBC4



Not cool either, but Howard actually looks relatively un-ridiculous.

[Fussbudget]

TOTP on BBC4

historyman wrote:

dalliance wrote:

Demis Roussos is a curious one. He has a good voice, if not one that is necessarily to everyone's taste but his whole strained vocal delivery is surely caused by his morbid obesity and evident struggle to breath properly yet alone sing.

I have to confess a soft spot, or guilty pleasure for Demis Roussos. Well, the two songs that I've ever heard of his anyway.

A bit late to this, but the Demis Roussos classic is obviously this gem

[George]

TOTP on BBC4

I quite like Forever and Ever as well - although I'll keep it to myself in public.

At his 70's peak Roussos held court in a large French château complete with peacocks wandering the grounds and numerous attractive young women in tow. Even off stage elaborately sequined kaftans where de rigueur you'll be glad to know.

[G-Man]

TOTP on BBC4

Jah Womble wrote:

I'm not sure Minnie R (may the good lord rest her soul, etc) was ever 'cool', as such. As for Dexy's, they were way better before they started exposing armpits.

Exile's 'Thrill Me' only just scraped the Top 40 in the US - even America didn't need long to decide that they were also-rans. Clout frankly were only ever going to be OHWs in the UK - and they did themselves few favours on that score by releasing 'Since You've Been Gone' just ahead of Rainbow's version.

Marshall Hain's 'Dancing in the City' - yeah, I can still hear something in that...

That Minnie Riperton cover is dirty.

I didn't know Clout released a version of "Since You Been Gone". Cheri and Marie Curry (the former the ex-Runaways singer) released a version at the same time as well. At the time I preferred it to Rainbows's, but I might have had 13-year-old-boy lust...

[Jah Womble]

TOTP on BBC4

You and Kim Fowley, eh?

Yeah, odd that all these people wanted to cover 'SYBG' at the same time: Russ Ballard was in demand around that time. It was actually Clout's first single, but reissued in the UK on the back of 'Substitute'.

[MsD]

TOTP on BBC4

Girls in dungarees ..

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x11ss6_bananarama-cruel-summer_music

I've got a picture of me from that year in dungarees, I look quite cool, but very buxom. They're better on boyish figures, I think.

Kevin Rowland is a bold dresser, so sometimes looks really cool and sometimes a bit daft.

[dalliance]

TOTP on BBC4

I would never have guessed that Demis Roussos was still alive, he looked like he could expire at any time on that video. To be honest it is easy to be taken in, he looks like a horribly out of shape man around 50 and if you add on the intervening years then imagining he would still be alive at 85 would be a bit of a stretch.

Having just looked him up what is absolutely incredible is that he was actually 30 years old in this performance we are discussing. 30!!!!!!

[Come along, Min]

TOTP on BBC4

Jah Womble wrote:

I'm not sure Minnie R (may the good lord rest her soul, etc) was ever 'cool', as such

She appeared on an LP cover in her dungarees holding a spunky penis substitute.

And she sung this, this and this