TOTP on BBC4

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Yeah, but he looks like her manager in the video. It's actually kind of creepy.

[Mumpo]

Maybe this is the place to ask, but I was somewhat stunned to discover that A little respect was released in 1988, but also that, er, it only reached no.4 in the charts. Does anyone know what the three songs that kept it off the top spot were?

Official Singles Chart Top 100
16 October 1988 - 22 October 1988


1. ONE MOMENT IN TIME- WHITNEY HOUSTON
2. DON'T WORRY BE HAPPY - BOBBY MCFERRIN
3. WE CALL IT ACIEED - D MOB FEATURING GARY HAISMAN

www.officialcharts.com/search/singles/a-little-respect/ (click the '+' by 'Chart facts', then click one of the numbers in the 'Chart run' sequence)

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

cheers, but it was linked upthread.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

Good grief, I'd forgotten that Star Turn on 45 Pints abomination.

[Gangster Octopus]

Yeah, I heard that for the first time last night. Bizarre. Still S-Express! (on the recording that I was watching)...

[Squarewheelbike]

Good grief, I'd forgotten that Star Turn on 45 Pints abomination.

Reminded me of the club singer round on Shooting Stars!

[longeared]

Fucking hell, Star Turn on 45 Pints managed to be worse than Pat & Mick.

[Satchmo Distel]

One of the greatest No. 1s ever surrounded by loads of dross.

[Squarewheelbike]

Caught the Billy Bragg She's Leaving Home No1 the other night. Apparently a one take live performance with the lyrics at his feet obscured by dry ice and a technician dropping a dirty great ladder half way through. Fair play to the lad!

[Thierry Ennui]

Billy's clarified exactly what happened on Facebook. He was in America and had no idea the song got to No. 1 because he recorded it as an afterthought for a Beatles charity album months earlier. His manager then asked him to do TOTP the day after flying back.

He'd never performed the song live, so he put the lyrics on a sheet next to his feet when he rehearsed in the afternoon. When it came time to record the performance, they released shitloads of dry ice which obscured the lyrics completely. Billy started fluffing the lines and panicking.

About halfway through the performance, a technician behind the crowd dropped a massive ladder, which everybody in the studio could hear. Billy relaxed at that point, sure that they'd never use this version and ask for everyone to start again... but they didn't, and that was the version that was shown.

[Jah Womble]

Obviously, it'd never have had a sniff of number one if that Wet Wet Wet atrocity hadn't been on the other side.

[Benjm]

New Order's performance of Fine Time must be coming up round about now.

[Diable Rouge]

Official Singles Chart Top 100
16 October 1988 - 22 October 1988


1. ONE MOMENT IN TIME- WHITNEY HOUSTON
2. DON'T WORRY BE HAPPY - BOBBY MCFERRIN
3. WE CALL IT ACIEED - D MOB FEATURING GARY HAISMAN

www.officialcharts.com/search/singles/a-little-respect/ (click the '+' by 'Chart facts', then click one of the numbers in the 'Chart run' sequence)

OMIT being the theme of the Seoul Olympics.

[Diable Rouge]

Hothouse Flowers!

[Diable Rouge]

Incidentally, why used the bands to mime during performances, when it would have been easier to actually play - some Musicians' Union rule?

[Amor de Cosmos]

Yes. I think Ready, Steady, Go! eventually got around it by using a studio that was too small to accommodate the number of musicians on the record (or something on those lines.) TOTP didn't fall in line until several years later.

[Jah Womble]

There was also some kind of insistence from the 'powers that be' that the music heard on TOTP had to sound like the record. (Thereby maximising sales expectations ahead of the following week's charts, I imagine.)

No better way of achieving that than just miming to the record, I guess.

[Satchmo Distel]

Some acts were a total disaster when they did it live - New Order with 'Blue Monday' for example.

[Jah Womble]

Indeed. Simon May performing We'll Gather Lilacs was even-more-spectacularly bad a few years before.

[Sporting]

Some acts were a total disaster when they did it live - New Order with 'Blue Monday' for example.

Were there many acts which simply refused to mime?

[jwdd27]

...And All About Eve, who couldn't hear their backing track and sat in silence/inaction until prodded by a stage hand.

I think the sequence was: miming at first in the 1960s, then live performance as dictated by the union, then, when acts were unable to competently recreate their recorded sound live, miming or singing live to a specially recorded backing version of the track, with all musicians present at the recording. I suspect this rule was bent, waived or ignored over the years.
In the later years there were no rules, those used to miming did so, those who wanted to play likewise.

[Satchmo Distel]

Agreed. I think it depended on cultural norms rather than hard and fast rules, and each genre had its own norms. New Order tried to conform to "no miming" Indie norms whereas The Stranglers (for example) took the piss, making it obvious they were miming as a form of subversiveness in itself.

You had to be good vocalists to sing live to a backing track. Womack and Womack managed it, as did Lennon (Instant Karma); New Order obviously not.

[Simon G]

Kurt Cobain took the piss when performing Smells Like Teen Spirit in protest.

[Jah Womble]

I seem to recall a time when a number of TOTP guests had to sing (or mime) over the Top of the Pops Orchestra, instead of the recorded arrangement of their hit. It worked okay with acts like Peters & Lee, but - given that most of the studio's musicians were about seventy - I can recall Tina Charles among others kicking up a huge fuss about having to work with them.

Status Quo were another band that refused to mime - at least in their seventies rock heyday. By the time they'd become a cabaret turn in the eighties, I doubt they cared either way.

...And All About Eve, who couldn't hear their backing track and sat in silence/inaction until prodded by a stage hand.

Nick Heyward also had audibility issues when performing Whistle Down the Wind.

[Satchmo Distel]

Reggae acts were regular victims of the orchestra - e.g. Althea & Donna.