Thursday 6 July 2017

Wouldn't it be Top of the Pops

Welcome to this edition of Top of the Pops from February 23rd 1984, which, due to a scenery workers strike, came live from 'the canteen' but that didn't stop 9.7 million diners merrily munching on the music.

Who would have guessed that Rockwell was in fact a 1000 foot giant?



23/02/84 (Janice Long & Mike Read)

Hot Chocolate – “I Gave You My Heart (Didn’t I?)” (28)
As confirmed by Mike Read, this was Hot Chocolate's 30th chart hit, and it was also to be their last, not counting later re-releases and re-mixes. It peaked at number 13.

Rockwell – “Somebody’s Watching Me” (7) (video)
A little too early for Halloween, and helped out in the chorus by Michael (and Jermaine) Jackson, this was Rockwell's only hit and it peaked at number 6.

Marilyn – “Cry & Be Free” (39)
Peaked at number 31, but was edited out of the 7.30 showing tonight.

Kool & The Gang – “Joanna” (10) (video)
Kool seems to have a thing for older women here! Joanna reached her peak at number 2 and was the band's biggest hit.

Nik Kershaw – “Wouldn’t It Be Good” (9)
A mix of studio performance and video now from Nik and Wouldn't It Be Good went up to number four.

Carmel – “More More More” (35)
With her second and final top 30 hit, More More More (no, not a cover of Andrea True Connection) peaked at number 23.

Howard Jones – “Hide & Seek” (15) (video)
This mystical sounding third single from his number one album, Human's Lib, peaked at number 12 for birthday boy Howard who had just turned 29.

This was followed by a Jensen and Peel style top ten video show, although Matthew Wilder didn't have a video so we got a clip of his studio performance, and then finally Mike Read left it to Janice Long to announce that Frankie Goes to Hollywood were still at number one! And it was to be their fifth and final week.

Re-Flex – “The Politics Of Dancing” (34) (+ credits)
In the studio to close the show with their one and only hit, which peaked at number 28.

On BBC1 tonight...


Next up is March 1st 1984.

60 comments:

  1. Poor Janice is teamed up with pompous Readie this week, fresh from his banning Relax. Not sure what she's come as, possibly a backcombed zebra. He looks like a lesbian librarian.

    Hot Chocolate come up with the goods once more for their swansong with another pop nugget. I had stopped paying attention to their records by this point but this is pretty good in an electro-Motown sort of way. I see Errol and the bassist have done a two-for-one deal on leather strides. Mike Hurl is clearly aware that there's now a lack of professional dancers on the show and throws in a couple to accompany the band on a podium in the foreground. It works well.

    Even at the time I disliked the Rockwell track, to call it a song would be to risk being done under the trade descriptions act. He quite clearly can't sing, can't dance and has the cheek to mime to the Jacksons' vocals.

    Talking of pretend pop stars here's Marilyn with his second bite of the cherry. This brave gospel inspired song is okay but not good enough to be a big hit. The intro reminds me of Faithless by Scritti Politti. Just checked out the video on YT and it's a blatant copy of Culture Club's Victims.

    Kool and The Gang are an act I found it very hard to fault until this song which is cheesy schmaltz with an equally cheesy video to match. It seems to be saying the song is a tribute to their favourite ageing diner waitress.

    I always put Nik Kershaw in the same department as Howard Jones ie solo synthi songwriters with bad performing skills. Not entirely sure what Nik is wearing. It looks like a four-sizes-too-big zip up lime green fleece (although he being the size of an action man it's probably normal size) plus his trademark snood and elbow length fingerless gloves. This time we get to see the video on a Son-of-Toppatron screen and Nik live in person. Two for the price of one (or should that be a half?).

    The Charts with poor Elbow Bones stuck at number 33 for the third week in a row (I bet their manager had a garage full of singles by now). Good to see Soft Cell but this was their last hit.

    While I loved Carmel's later song You're All I Need these early songs of hers I found harder to get into but hearing/seeing it today I thought it was pretty good. Despite the singalong gospel feel the crowd seem a little underwhelmed. And they get the same dancing duo treatment Hot Cho got, well they paid for them, they might as well use them. Carmel could be a ringer for the similarly single-monikered Madonna.

    And here's Howie J, sans jumpsuit and Jed with a song that has no discernible chorus and sounds like half finished demo with shaky vocals. I can't believe this got so high in the chart.

    "The video Top Ten" squeals Janice ignoring the fact that ugly bug Matthew Wilder hasn't made a video and we have already seen two of the real videos already. And as if to rub it in she mumbles that FGTH are still number one while we are distracted by Jeff "Reg Hollis" Stewart's frizzy hair and green vest.

    I never quite understood what Re-Flex meant by The Politics Of Dancing, I conjured up images of Maggie thatcher tripping the light fantastic (Mike Read would no doubt approve of that). This is a good dance track very much in the style of Lodger-era Bowie (they even have the cheek to namecheck "Station to station" in the lyric) but no one seemed to notice that at the time.

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    1. Not only do Re-Flex namecheck Station to Station, the singer even adopts a Bowie accent at that point in the song! Rockwell may not be able to sing or dance, but when Berry Gordy is your dad such trifling considerations don't amount to much...

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    2. Great use of Toppatron there, Bama! For those not in the know, that was a name coined on this blog by someone wittier than me for a big projector screen used to display the act / video either on a studio wall or somewhere within the, erm, heaving throng of the audience.

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    3. Re-Flex, despite scoring only one real hit (which was even bigger in Canada, Australia and NZ), have a most intriguing history. Encouraged by Thomas Dolby in their early days, their embryonic line-up included future Level 42 members Phil Gould and Mark King. After supporting Police on tour, Re-Flex worked with Sting on 'How Much Longer', an environmentally conscious subsequent single, and recorded two songs for the soundtrack of 'Superman IV'. Talking of the big screen, 'The Politics of Dancing' was featured in the romantic comedy 'Edge of Seventeen' in '98.

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    4. well done bama for being first out of the blocks for a change instead of your usual late charge!

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    5. @Julie: I read your comment about Edge of Seventeen and thought, wait, I don't recall Hailee Steinfeld jiving to that, but on examination on IMDB there are two films with that title. Also, the earlier one looks like it spent all its budget on the soundtrack.

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    6. Bama, interesting point you make about Kool & The Gang, although I thought the opposite, in that their career in 1984-1985 was a marked step up from their earlier 1979-1983 offerings. I say this because I think Joanna was the first good video they did, not least fun video, and was beginning to show their soft side, and this was to be taken to higher level when they did the superb beach video for Cherish the following year in 1985.

      Joanna I thought was their best single single up to now by Feb 1984, and I remember this in my O Level year getting ready for the big exams that summer, with the song resonating in my head throughout the first half of the year, which is when I really got into their music to buy the back catalogue of singles. Everything they released from this point on was sheer magic.

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  2. Mike and Janice are paired for a second time, and despite having a competition to see who can manage the biggest hair seem to get along famously once more. Mike is in a particularly perky mood, and his Kid impersonation during the Top 10 video show was actually quite good - it momentarily had me fooled, anyway...

    As Mike mentions at the start, a strike has this week reduced the set to just two stages with no balconies. Not that this affects Hot Chocolate, old pros that they are, as they appear in the studio for the umpteenth, and presumably final, time. While this isn't one of their best songs it chugs along pleasantly and soulfully enough, with the cameraman getting lots of shots of Errol from low down. Errol seems to be enjoying himself here, even though he would quit the band not long afterwards. Rockwell's video looks a bit primitive by 1984 standards, and his semi-rapping is woeful. Having said that, this ode to paranoia does come alive whenever Jacko opens his mouth for the chorus, and young Gordy would have been well advised to keep his own trap shut during those bits.

    Marilyn is once again backed by Claudia Fontaine on this so-so gospel track, which might have been better if a more capable singer had been unleashed on it. Kool and the Gang, meanwhile, are sexually harassing an ageing waitress in a diner somewhere. While at first sight it seems quite refreshing that an older woman should be the subject of attention, what we see of the video seems to suggest that the band are more in love with the memory of Joanna in her younger days than they are with her now. It's a decent enough tune anyway, to my mind one of the better Kool hits.

    Nik, resplendent in a green snood this time, once again pours his energy into physically miming along to the lyrics, while part of the video gets played too - the special effects that replace Nik's body look like a forerunner for the similar effects that would be seen in A-ha's famous Take on Me promo the following year. I thought this Carmel effort was a bit better than her previous hit, but this highly trad soul style sounded out of place in 1984, and it's no great surprise that she struggled to achieve a real breakthrough. She must have got hacked off years later when Joss Stone came along and started selling millions...

    Mike shouldn't have bothered wishing Howard Jones a happy birthday, given his "present" to his fans is this utterly turgid and tuneless dirge, which seems to have borrowed footage from David Attenborough's Living Planet (shown straight after this edition of TOTP), to pad out an equally dull video. Truth be told, Howard peaked with his first two singles and would never match them subsequently. Unsurprisingly, it's Janice who mentions the still-banned number 1, before the badly mulleted Re-Flex close the show with a song that sounds heavily indebted to both Bowie and Joy Division. The best moment in this performance was when the camera picked up some grumpy-looking guy with a moustache standing stock still at the edge of the dancing audience; he then seems to notice the camera, and obligingly moves out of shot!

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    1. Incidentally, I'm glad the video show solved the mystery of why Mick Talbot was wearing cycling gear in the studio the previous week. Interesting also to see him wearing a helmet, as they were hardly de rigueur for cyclists back then, though it does have the unfortunate side effect of enhancing his ugliness! I'm also gratified to hear Janice say that even at the time people thought Alannah from the Thompson Twins might be bald...

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    2. I thought the Re-Flex singer looked like Denis Lawson.

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    3. Hey John, it was my birthday too on the same day of this TOTP transition way back in 1984 , so not just Howard Jones' birthday, and I actually thought that the Howard Jones song was class, not dirge, but hey, I would say so when sharing a birthday with Mr Jones!

      Suffice to say that I turned 16 on that day, so happy birthday to me and Mr Jones. Suffice further to say that I also share a birthday with my sister-in-law who doesn't read this blog!

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    4. Happy birthday for February, Dory!

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  3. Nice bit of easy, sleep-inducing viewing there at 11.20.

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    1. More like an incentive to lock up the sleeping pills.

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  4. There's a strike on, they have a much reduced studio space, so obviously TOTP packs about a thousand people in to get in the way of our view of the acts. And what has happened to Janice's hair? It looks like she's acting out the "wear the fox hat" joke.

    Hot Chocolate with a nice little tune that still pops into my head every so often. One of their downbeat lyrics/cheery little melody numbers, it's simple but effective.

    Don't worry Rockwell, nobody is watching you now, in fact nobody's been watching you for over three decades. It's a clunky ditty, but worms its way into your mind thanks to the Whackson chorus (is Rockwell naked?!) and his way with speak-singing the verses in a cod-British accent (oddly). Amusing "scary" production on it, prefiguring Ghostbusters.

    Marilyn following in the footsteps of Elvis Presley as a white man tackling gospel, with surprisingly not as accomplished effect. OK, not surprising. The backing singers are outperforming him.

    Kool and the Gang aim for the granny market in a St Winifred's style with this syrupy tune. So middle of the road it could replace the cat's eyes. Bring back the funk!

    Nik Kershaw doing exactly the same performance as last time, right down to his fashion sense, so they had to liven it up with one of his typically snazzy videos. He doesn't get mentioned enough for artists who truly embraced the format.

    Carmel, looking a bit like a blonde Eddie Reader, with a song I didn't think I recognised until it reached that basic but catchy chorus. More gospel I suppose, but more convincing here. I checked out the video as Mike suggested and it was absolutely... er, OK. Directed by a slumming Lindsay Anderson, apparently.

    Howard Jones, I thought I recognised this one at the chorus too, but wasn't sure, probably because as mentioned above there is hardly any melody to discern. Video worryingly reminiscent of Sir Cliff's Millennium Prayer.

    According to Mike he never banned Frankie Goes to Hollywood, it wasn't in his remit, but he's changed his story so often it's difficult to know what to believe. Last time this absence will trouble us, as by Christmas everyone knew what "come" was slang for.

    Re-Flex to end on in lieu of the number one, and this is a groovesome item with pompous, nonsense lyrics and a neat line in synth poppery. The keyboard player putting his foot up was a bit desperate, mind you.

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    1. sorry thx but the funk was never coming back as far as kool and his chums were concerned, as sadly it just didn't pay the rent!

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    2. Having the video and a studio performance running at the same time was a bit peculiar in the case of Nik Kershaw this week, and I did not find this easy, and agree with Janice Long saying it was a bit too much for her to have both at once.

      With regard to Carmel, it was more like something out of Later With Jools. I bet Mr Holland would have loved to perform on that song with Carmel, as it would have been just down his street.

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  5. hosts: mr read was obviously on autopilot for his section of the chart countdown, otherwise he might have made more of the fact that two tracks right next to each other shared a link as in being related to "the thorn birds" tv series. tragically one of those was one of only two top 30 hits for the legendary film composer henry mancini, and the other one 20 years earlier was a duffer too. quite incredibly none of his classics such as "moon river", "the pink panther theme", "baby elephant walk" and "peter gunn" scored as hits in blighty - not his versions of them, anyway

    hot chocolate: i was actually thinking of a completely different song of theirs before i listened to it on yt! yet more mock-motown, which as usual does little for me

    rockwell: in contrast, motown themselves were now releasing anything they could that didn't actually sound like motown. all i remember about this was that wacko sang the hook whilst the talent-free credited "artist" talked his way through the rest of it. but not something i wish to refresh my memory with. by the way: so how did you get into showbiz, mr gordy?

    marilyn: now he's got rid of the silly dreadlocks he's back to looking much more like the prettier marilyn of old - maybe that was what did for him, as potential punters found it a bit disturbing (unlike boy george, whose androgynous style was very much a clown in contrast to marilyn's princess, and thus not something to be worried about). music wise it's not one i remember, but although it's all a bit cod-gospel (which again does nothing for me) he does sound to me like he had a decent set of pipes - if sadly too similar to his on/off chum mr o'dowd! so like hot chocolate he now shuffles off into the sunset - or in his case the gloom to spend much of the next 30-odd years in his mum's lounge with the curtains drawn!

    kool & co: everything they did after "ladies night" was utter crap as far as i was concerned (not that they were bothered, as they were too busy laughing all the way to the bank), but not quite as crap as this (presses virtual FF button)

    carmel: oh dear, more cod-gospel from ms mccourt and her chums. as far as i'm concerned it's definitely a case of less, less, less please

    re-flex: it's really annoying that a quality piece of latterday synth pop like this struggles to make the top 30, whilst rubbish like nik kershaw and howard jones sails effortlessly up the charts. it might not have helped their cause that (going from their mugshot) one of their members was a slaphead?

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    1. mr rockwell wasn't the first performer who was fortunate to get a record deal because his dad happened to own the record company - the same thing happened with frank sinatra jr and the reprise label started up by ol' blue eyes in the 60's. but although he was no sinatra (well he was actually, but you know what i mean) unlike gordy jr at least he could carry a tune!

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    2. There was also Dino, Desi & Billy. They were a 1960s trio that included Dino Martin (Dean Martin's son) and Desi Arnaz Jr (son of Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball).

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    3. oh yes, guess who's label nancy sinatra was signed to?

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    4. Don't forget Gary Lewis and the Playboys, Gary being the son of comedian Jerry Lewis who was pals with The Rat Pack.

      While you're at it, go to YouTube and check out the Jerry and Dino reunion during his 1970s telethon - they hadn't spoken in years, and Sinatra brought them back together. Dino is pissed out of his mind (on drink), Jerry puts on a brave face, and Frank has A GUN which he hides in the piano. What the Hell was he expecting?!

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    5. yes indeed thx gary lewis was the son of jerry lewis, but i don't think his dad owned the record label that signed him up (which is what this thread is about). and according to wiki, lewis sr wasn't even aware of his son's aspirations until he got himself a deal... although the guy that mentored him (tommy "snuff" garrett) was well-aware of his heritage and looked to exploit it accordingly!

      if anyone wants to expand this to simply pop stars who had famous parents (and as such likely had some inside track and/or connections that us ordinary folks lacked): apart from the obvious lennnon ones, i'll kick off with crispian mills of kula shaker fame - the son of hayley mills, who was herself the daughter of sir john mills

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    6. Tara Newley (daughter of Anthony) briefly tried her hand at being a pop star, she had a Top 40 miss with E-Zee Possee.

      Lest we forget, Edwina Currie's daughter whose name I can't recall released a single as 'proof' of how easy it was to hype a song into the charts. It missed the Top 75 entirely....

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    7. i forgot about zak (son of ringo) starkey and jason (son of john) bonham - although both have established themselves as in-demand drummers in the rock biz (unsurprisingly often performing with mates of their dads), neither ever actually made it in a band of their own. there's also baxter (son of ian) d(r)ury , whose album "happy soup" stormed to 110 in the charts in 2011. plus a couple of offspring of bob marley that cashed in his fame...

      a few years ago someone told me they were looking at a pic of macca at some social event surrounded by a few of his rock peers, plus some much younger tubby bloke he didn't recognise - when he read the credits he discovered the fat guy was "musician james mccartney" - pleasing proof that having the wealthiest rock star in the world as your dad can't guarantee you success!

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    8. if only the same fate had befallen stella...

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    9. ... but maybe fashion houses are easier to bribe than record companies?

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    10. Edwina Currie was in the strange position of having a Spitting Image puppet which actually looked better than she did.

      Baxter Dury's material was surprisingly decent, no idea where he is now though.

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    11. i know the life and times of ian d(r)ury has already been made into a movie, but if dave robinson or anyone else wanted to film the story of stiff records then baxter would be the ideal man to play his dad!

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    12. ... and not forgetting lily allen of course - i don't know if dad keith ever made any records or not, but he was known to be a massive fan of UB40. given the current mess they've got themselves into, the rather intimidating mr allen would be the ideal man for the job of knocking the campbell brothers' heads together and getting them to sort out teir differences!

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    13. Keith Allen did indeed make records, under the name Fat Les where he got his celebrity mates to make a godawful racket in the name of football supporting.

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  6. It seems our mate Kennedy “Rockwell” Gordy secured a deal with Motown without his dad knowing - I guess had Berry known, he wouldn't have agreed to sign such shite. Rockwell followed up “Somebody’s Watching Me” with “Obscene Phone Caller” and a later single of his was called “Peeping Tom”. Can you detect a thread of insecurity here?

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    1. arthur: berry gordy would have signed any old shite (including his son, or even his dog for that matter), as long as it made him a load of dosh. don't forget, we're talking about a guy who co-composed something that featured the lyrics "i want money, that's what i want" when everyone else was writing moon-in-june love songs!

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    2. Gordy is also the man who thought Marvin Gaye's concept album What's Going On was a waste of time and wouldn't sell. Like most record label bosses he has zero taste/idea as to what's good or bad.

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    3. i was wondering how wacko got involved in the rockwell recording, given that he and most of his brothers left the motown label in acrimonious circumstances several years earlier. there was a rumour at time that he did it as a "favour" to gordy sr, but i think it now more likely that he and junior were chums in his motown days so therefore helped him around the small problem of not actually being able to sing!

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    4. The Jacksons had performed at the Motown 25th anniversary concert in 1983, when Jacko did his famous moonwalking Billie Jean performance, so relations had evidently thawed by this point.

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  7. Not much to tickle my fancy on this show really and a very strange looking Janice partnering Mike.

    Hot Chocolate – I gave you my heart (didn’t I) – There last (and 30th as Mike clarified with Errol) chart hit. A small number of single misses during that span including the excellent ‘Changing World’, ‘Blue Night’ and ‘Mary-Ann’ but otherwise pretty impressive. This one was written by ‘R Gower’ who was, of course ‘Mr Racey’ (RAK label mates with Hot Chocolate). Not my favourite hit of theirs by any stretch. Bama mentions the lack of professional dancers on the show at this stage and I have noticed the lack of Sandy Borne in recent weeks, so she’d obviously been dropped.

    Rockwell – Somebody’s watching me – Cheap looking video and I could have done without hearing Jacko on this.

    Marilyn – Cry and be free – Don’t really recall this but it’s pretty dreary; I suppose the ‘ambiguous’ novelty hadn’t worn off yet.

    Kool & the Gang – Joanna – For some reason when I watched the series ‘Dangerfield’ I used to hum this tune. Probably because Amanda Redman’s character was called ‘Joanna’. Anyway, nice feelgood record.

    Nik Kershaw – Wouldn’t it be good – Nick proclaimed a few years ago that four songs that he had written paid for his kids to go to private school and University; ‘I won’t let the sun go down on me’, ‘The Riddle’, ‘The one and only’ (no1 hit for Chesney Hawkes of course) and this song. For me this is the best of the quartet and an intriguing video too.

    Carmel – More More More – Less, less, less

    Mike Read – Happy Birthday to Howard Jones – Embarrassing.

    Howard Jones – Hide & seek – Gosh this is dreary. Riding on the success of the previous two hits. Things can only get better…..

    Top 10 videos – Top 8 actually, as Matthew Wilder wasn’t a video (as noted by Angelo) and we didn’t get to see the video for the number one record (thank goodness!). As mentioned it’s the first time we saw the video for The Cycling Council but wasn’t it also the first clip of Cyndi Lauper’s video too?

    Re-Flex – The Politics of Dancing playout – Agree with everyone above that this really sounds like Bowie? Don’t really recall this.

    Dr Who – Planet of Fire episode 1. This was the one shot on location in Lanzarote and episode 1 featured Nicola Bryant making her debut as Peri sporting a very fetching orange bikini. Elsewhere the series ‘Diana’ had reached episode 7 and I’m wishing that the BBC or some Freeview channel would repeat it as I did enjoy watching it at the time.


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    1. sct353, superb pun mention of Howard's single three after this one!

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    2. I collected all the Style Council videos from iTunes some time ago, but this was was the only one not offer to purchase, even till now, and I never understood why, and subsequently cannot complete my collection of all their videos, as only this one is missing from iTunes.

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    3. The return of the Top Ten video rundown was quite needed here, because Cyndi Lauper now having gone down to No.8, only got one showing in the TOTP studio at No.11, but had then peaked to No.2 so quickly that by the time they could have shown the video, she had already gone down to No.3, so never got another showing on the show. At least this slot on the top ten video rundown gave some solace to the situation.

      The same I remember happened to Men Without Hats with The Safety Dance a few months earlier, and they featured in the top ten video rundown having got as high as No.5 a week earlier, but only got a second showing/clip of the video when already going down in the top ten video rundown.

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    4. I had a memory of them showing the Madness Michael Caine video again but censoring it because of the mild violence, but maybe that was on another show.

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  8. Hide and Seek is great, but I didn't know it at the time at all. Shows he can do a good ballad as well as dance stuff. I also like the video, it captures the spirit and ambition of it.

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  9. Don't remember the Hot Chocolate, Marilyn or Kool and Gang tracks at all - Maybe I got home late that week :-) was the Joanna actress a real famous person?
    Loved the really bored bloke behind Mike Read after Carmel
    Shouldn't that have been the top 9 videos...

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  10. It’s the Mullet Twins! That temporary studio gave a much better atmosphere in my opinion.

    Easily one of the weakest shows of the re-run thus far for me. Four thin yoghourt songs to start with, and only one tune in the edition I liked (well done, Nik).

    Hot Chocolate about to remove the wheel clamps from their trailer in the car park.

    “Somebody’s Watching Me”? Not me, Rockwell - one of the easiest FF decisions yet.

    Don’t listen to Janice – keep it on, Marilyn! That voice wasn’t suited to this kind of song. I could imagine another relative flop of Marilyn’s, “You Don’t Love Me”, done justice if Tom Jones had a crack at it.

    That Kool and the Gang video got me wishing it had been shot with the cast of Victoria Wood’s classic “dinnerladies”. Those fried eggs looked bloody awful.

    Learn some proper moves, Nik! Do you really think you’ve got it harder than that poor bugger trying to keep warm by the brazier? You soft wuss!

    Anyone else notice the “The Charts” caption on the Toppatron after Nik which was completely different to the version shown just before the top 40 countdown?

    I don’t remember Carmel being that pretty and smiley. I agree re the comments about Jools Holland and the song’s , erm, quality.

    Ooh! A triangular keyboard ensemble for Howard Jones. What would Rick Wakeman think?

    Judging by the top 8 videos and a studio clip, Joe Fagin’s got very chopsy for that Cyndi Lauper video, and I loved the stunt speed cyclists and Paul Weller’s jazz snood in the Style Council Video.

    The politics of feeling good by Re-Flex. Certainly not the politics of looking good – exhibit A, the bassist. Sorry, mate!

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    1. The Kool & The Gang video for Joanna reminds me of a similar video that Meat Loaf did a couple of years earlier in 1981/82 called More Than You Deserve, which was not released as a single in the UK (I think).

      It was also set in an American cafe, but rather than than the happy vibes of Kool & The Gang towards the cafe girl, Meat Loaf's storyline in his video was one of deceit, jealousy and rivalry towards his mates who he thinks were making out with the cafe girl, whereas it was just an illusion, and she really quite fancied him, but he did not take the opportunity, but instead played the mug in the video and missed out big time to pull, and left the cafe as lonely as he came in:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tL4jJ0_5p1Q

      Suffice to say that the song itself is an absolute classic, even if the video for it is a little weird.

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    2. "More Than You Deserve" was originally a 1974 US single by Meatloaf (one word back then) released on Robert Stigwood's RSO label. It was only released here on vinyl as the B-side to "Dead Ringer For Love".

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  11. Did anyone notice the marked revamp of the TOTP studio this week, in what was probably the biggest noticeable difference for ages. For a start the video screen on the main stage since 1980 on the left side of our screen was no longer visible, and the studio video screen on the Nik Kershaw performance was a different one for the first time, and difficult to know which stage it was. However, the Yellow Pearl theme at the start of the show has still remained since it was launched for the show in 1981, which is great, as I like that one.

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    1. I had another look, and I just realised that the original video screen of the same size and position in the TOTP studio since 1980, was now removed and changed to a bigger one and put in a different position.

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    2. Ah, but they re-recorded the "Yellow Pearl" theme (introduced at the same time as the amended 'falling discs' intro), and the current second version sounds less punchy and inferior to these ears.

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    4. ....attack, attack, attack is what it lacks....

      My favourite ToTP theme will always be the mid 70s 'Whole lotta love' rendition. Some of you may recall that this was also used as the theme tune for John Craven's 'Search' programme which predated 'Newsround'. I can't find any clips of 'Search' on YT to illustrate this point.

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    5. Dory - Mike Read mentions at the start that there is a strike on, and that they have been obliged to move into a smaller studio (or the "canteen", as he puts it). They remain stuck in there for the next few weeks.

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    6. At some point in 84 we get a 'guitar' version of Yellow Pearl for the chart rundown, I'm guessing this'll happen when the chart graphics are updated. As for favourite TOTP theme, mine is the original version of Yellow Pearl followed by The Wizard.

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    7. The 'guitar' version debuts in the 30/8/84 show which is the same episode as the London to Bristol train record attempt.

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    8. Thanks Zenon. That almost certainly means the debut of the guitar version won't be shown due to Jim'll's involvement - and isn't Smitty on that show too?

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    10. Smitty was on that show, and it was also of course the last regular edition in which Jim'll would feature.

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    11. On the plus side at least they paired up two of the banned presenters on the same show.

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  13. A bit late to this one, but as I didn't like many of the songs, that's no big deal.

    I only watched the 'Story Of' doc yesterday and was amused to see Mike Read change his 'Relax' story yet again and essentially blame Adrian John who conveniently a) most people won't remember and b) wasn't around to confirm or deny this.

    The Hot Chocolate song sounded dated to me even at the time and I can see why their career was about to end.

    Rockwell's video seemed different to the one I remember, mainly the bits with him standing in front of the tower blocks seemed new. Is there a different version?

    Marilyn's song is worthy but dull and Kool & The Gang's is terrible. Then Nik Kershaw with easily the best song on this edition.

    Carmel & Howard Jones were both like audio mogadon for me, and Re-Flex are OK but given that I really like synth music it's not one of my favourites. It used to turn up quite regularly on 80s compilations for some reason, but it's lesser seen these days.

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