TOTP on BBC4

[longeared]

TOTP on BBC4

It can't be as bad as the Powell episode I've just watched. Started out passably enough with Evelyn King, then went to Dire Straits and that turned into a useful metaphor for the rest of the show. One of the worst repeats there's been, that.

I see we missed Sting doing Spread A Little Happiness in one of the Yewtree shows.

[Jah Womble]

TOTP on BBC4

longeared wrote: I see we missed Sting doing Spread A Little Happiness in one of the Yewtree shows.

So, not all bad then. (Actually, given the character he played in the song's parent film, there's something of a grim irony in the fact that his performance didn't make the repeats...)

The last edition I saw featured The Pinkees with the infamously-hyped Danger Games. And what an inadequate bunch they were, eh? Made Racey look like Mastodon by comparison.

(I'll concede that it gave me a two-day-long earworm, however.)

(Edit: Hurrah - top of page 100...)

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

TOTP on BBC4

Jah Womble wrote:

longeared wrote: I see we missed Sting doing Spread A Little Happiness in one of the Yewtree shows.

So, not all bad then. (Actually, given the character he played in the song's parent film, there's something of a grim irony in the fact that his performance didn't make the repeats...)

The last edition I saw featured The Pinkees with the infamously-hyped Danger Games. And what an inadequate bunch they were, eh? Made Racey look like Mastodon by comparison.

(I'll concede that it gave me a two-day-long earworm, however.)

(Edit: Hurrah - top of page 100...)

I thought when I saw the Sting single in the chart rundown that most of the sales must have been to people who didn't see the film, or at least who bought it before seeing the film.

Up to October now and there's a strange phase of re-releasing going on. I can understand the 20th anniversary of 'Love Me Do' being a thing, but can't find a logical reason for 'House of the Rising Sun' being a place behind in the charts, nor the recent appearance of 'Freebird'. In fact on looking up the latter it had gone close to the top 40 a couple of years previously as well.

I've just tried to wow Thing One with the fact that, while 'Love Me Do' looks ancient even in the middle of a 1982 TOTP, it was about as old then as 'Killing in the Name' was when it got propelled to Xmas No 1 (not quite though, the latter being just over 17 years old at the time), and followed it up with the well-worn, "of course Smells Like Teen Spirit is over 25 years old so when you listen to that now is like an 18 year old in 1982 listening to early Elvis...." but he evidently doesn't have the same awareness of the passing of time as I do.

While typing that he's asked 'who's that?' to Bauhaus doing 'Ziggy Stardust', and I suspect that my reply starting 'remember I was telling you about Love and Rockets that time, well....' has tipped him over the edge.

[longeared]

TOTP on BBC4

Watched four episodes today, so I'll be humming Yellow Pearl for a while now. You can feel another of those temporal shifts going on - diminishing chart returns for big names of the early 80s such as Adam Ant, Imagination, even Dexys, while the mid 80s start to hove into view in the shape of Culture Club and Tears for Fears, with Wham to debut in the next month or so.

Love Me Do did indeed look ancient in the context of the show, though I suppose it demonstrates how much music had gone through in the intervening time. Twenty years ago from now was the Spice Girls.

[SydneyToon]

TOTP on BBC4

I see that the Top of the Pops Christmas special 2016 is on BBC1 on Christmas Day at 1.50pm.

I used to always watch it in the 80s and 90s. I was in the crowd when the Darkness performed "Christmas Time (Don't Let the Bells End)" which would have been used if they had been Christmas Number One 2003. Sadly it was not to be!

[Jah Womble]

TOTP on BBC4

Can't say that I was especially heartbroken about the short-lived nature of The Darkness's success, personally.

longeared wrote: Watched four episodes today...

What a glutton for punishment you are, sir.

Other than via the actual passing of time, there's no comparison between the twenty years from the Beatles of Love Me Do to 1982 and the Spice Girls to now. Pop music underwent at least four seismic revolutions (and countless re-inventions) between the former dates - whereas almost nothing has re-shaped it since the turn of the millennium.

But we've done that, obviously.

[longeared]

TOTP on BBC4

SydneyToon wrote: I see that the Top of the Pops Christmas special 2016 is on BBC1 on Christmas Day at 1.50pm.

Presented yet again by Fearne Cotton and Reggie Yates, who would both be long departed by now if the programme was still shown weekly.

Just watched the deeply strange Bates Halloween episode. Noticed he put a snake in the pot. Either a real snake so animal cruelty, or a plastic snake so fakery. For shame, BBC.

[Jah Womble]

TOTP on BBC4

Aside from chucking a few costume-cupboard props at the assigned DJ, I don't get the impression that any prep was done whatsoever for the presentation of TOTP at that time. Once the acts were booked in (to mime, ffs), Michael Hurll seemed to leave everything else to chance, thereby letting Bates (or whomsoever) make a total tit of himself.

The only presenter who still managed to be amusing in spite of this was obviously Peel, who'd have gone off-script anyway.

[Satchmo Distel]

TOTP on BBC4

Historical question: miming was banned by the Musicians' Union in June 1966; the ban was still in force at the time the Beatles were promoting Hello Goodbye in December 1967, so they could not use the Beatles promo and TOTP showed clips from A Hard Days Night (incredibly enough) instead to accompany the song.

How long did this ban last?

[Gangster Octopus]

TOTP on BBC4

Saw the two most recent episodes last night. Reminded me that when I came down to London to start my first job down here, Culture Club had just gone to number one, and they were arriving at Sheffield station to play at the Leadmill (I think) as I was leaving to start a new life as a cockernee geezah.

[Satchmo Distel]

TOTP on BBC4

Love Me Do charted higher in 1982 than 1962, and was followed by reissues of all the Beatles singles on their 20th anniversaries, with diminishing returns. There was a Beatles soundalike band on Parlophone in the same chart called Scarlet Party doing an antiwar song, 101 Dam Nations. Did not make TOTP because it peaked at 44:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qP527qpdgIQ

House Of The Rising Sun - nice version from an early edition of The Tube by Eric Burdon, Alison Moyet and Jools Holland:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zidYwA-XVmU

I don't know why it charted in 1982* but it had already had one successful reissue on RAK in 1972 (HP 25).

*Hypothesis: WH Smith at this time had a section called Old Gold where you could buy reissues of this nature. One incentive is that the B-side would usually also be a famous old hit by the same act. Sleeve looked like this:

http://www.bigboppa.co.uk/45-sleeves/UK/oldgold/16b.jpg

Thus there was a market: 60s nostalgia already kicking in. People in their 30s buying stuff they heard as a teen. Similar to the Ted revival around the mid-70s.

[Diable Rouge]

TOTP on BBC4

Jah Womble wrote: Can't say that I was especially heartbroken about the short-lived nature of The Darkness's success, personally.

Watched four episodes today...

What a glutton for punishment you are, sir.

Other than via the actual passing of time, there's no comparison between the twenty years from the Beatles of Love Me Do to 1982 and the Spice Girls to now. Pop music underwent at least four seismic revolutions (and countless re-inventions) between the former dates - whereas almost nothing has re-shaped it since the turn of the millennium.

But we've done that, obviously.

But that said, Don't Let The Bells End still goes down in history as the very last addition to the regular radio canon of Christmas songs, so while a failure that year, it has endured. There had been a significant time gap before then, with arguably only Stay Another Day enjoying regular airplay after Mistletoe and Wine, and nothing has become a Christmas regular since.

[longeared]

TOTP on BBC4

Heh, we had a discussion along those themes in the pub a little earlier. Agreed that 1994 was the last year of significant festive music - Bon Jovi, East 17 (which FWIW I think is not a Christmas song) and that bloody awful Mariah Carey one. Since then all we've had is the Darkness and that inexplicably popular Michael Buble album.

[Various Artist]

TOTP on BBC4

Christmas Time (Don't Let The Bells End) reached #2, so hardly a "failure", either – other than that it missed out to Mad World on the Saturday sales having led the race all week previously.

There's a handful of more recent festive songs that have got decent airplay for the past few years: Coldplay's pretty awful Christmas Lights, George Michael's okay-actually December Song (I Dreamed Of Christmas) and Gabriella Cilmi's Warm This Winter – which neatly avoids all mention of Christmas so can be played with impunity in, like, October. I've lately been finding Leona Lewis' One More Sleep a real Christmas-song earworm, too, and really rather enjoy it, as she actually sounds joyful on it – rather than just boringly ululating away in a vaguely r 'n' b fashion to no real end like in all her other songs. In that respect, it's an exact parallel of Mariah's All I Want For Christmas.

[Jah Womble]

TOTP on BBC4

That awful Darkness effort sold over 350,000 copies in making #2, apparently. But there have been several Christmas releases since its issue in 2003 - it's just that nobody gives a fig about the legendary 'race for Xmas number one' anymore, because it's always some irrelevant X-Factor sh*t that gets it.

Coldplay's effort featured on that Britain's Favourite Xmas Songs rundown recently: however, Matt Everitt's assertion that it would go down in the pantheon of 'festive classics' was fanciful in the extreme. It's simply another Coldplay plod-along - someone said 'do a Christmas song' and Chris Martin dusted off the template and did one, is all that happened there.

Stay Another Day is a very good song, IMO. I guess it became a Christmas tune by the addition of bells and a few furry suits for Brian and his pals.

[Jah Womble]

TOTP on BBC4

(Ignore. Cannot do this new site upgrade.)

[jwdd27]

TOTP on BBC4

After overhearing Christmas Time (Don't Let The Bells End) on the radio at work, I was heartily slagging off The Darkness to a colleague, who as it turns out is quite a passionate fan of theirs. They're very clever, apparently, because they own the publishing. Tsshh.

An inexplicable recent addition to the Christmas canon is Christmas is All Around Us, the track which Bill Nighy's fictional faded rock star records in Love Actually. The whole point of the track in the film was that it was shit and a ridiculous Christmas cash-in. But I guess enough people liked it. I'm sure Reg Presley does.

[Various Artist]

TOTP on BBC4

Sadly he died nearly 4 years ago. Although I imagine his estate still benefits.

Er, Reg Presley I mean, not Billy Mack from Love Actually... so far as one can accurately speculate on the post-narrative health of a fictional character.

Is it really entering the Christmas canon in its own right, though? I've never heard it outside of the film.

[jwdd27]

TOTP on BBC4

I'd forgottwn Reg had passed. 2016 claims another one, for me at least.

There was talk of a sequel to Love Actually, so perhaps we'll find Billy Mack happily married to his manager, maybe involved in some gay activism, or perhaps launching a super injunction to protect his private life.

His song is on the rotation at the in-house radio station at my work (major retailer), although that might mean it's cheap rather than popular. The aforementioned piece of shit by Coldplay is also on there.

[Gangster Octopus]

TOTP on BBC4

Fucking hell, I've absolutely no memory of that Rolling Stones song. Brilliant.

[Outside Agent]

TOTP on BBC4

Damn good show this week (November 1982) with no shortage of big hit-makers - Maneater by Hall & Oates; Rio by Duran Duran; Mad World by Tears For Fears; Mirror Man by Human League; Young Guns by Wham.

I love how watching these shows regularly throws up a song I'd genuinely forgotten. Carly Simon's Why a recent addition.

[Satchmo Distel]

TOTP on BBC4

Is it possible that this repeat was the last bit of TV that George Michael ever watched?

[Sean of the Shed]

TOTP on BBC4

There has been some appalling novelty tunes in British chart history, but fucking Orville's Song must be the most vomit inducing pile of shit ever. I don't normally condone animal cruelty, but that green cunt needs his motherfucking head smashing in with a large ball peen hammer.

[longeared]

TOTP on BBC4

Ooh, Gary Davies.

[Benjm]

TOTP on BBC4

Was it an 'ooh' or more of a 'woo'?

He really was a gormless idiot, either way, even by '80s R1 standards.