https://vimeo.com/155177946
Ahem...... I do believe I have now served my suspended sentence, BBC4....
13-5-82: Presenter: Dave Lee Travis
(35) DURAN DURAN – Hungry Like The Wolf
Became a howling success and the band's second top ten hit when it peaked at number 5.
(7) YAZOO – Only You
On its way to number 2.
(4) JOAN JETT & THE BLACKHEARTS – I Love Rock ‘N’ Roll
In the studio this week but got no higher in the charts.
(40) FUN BOY THREE – The Telephone Always Rings
The third single taken from their eponymous top ten debut album, this one made it to number 17.
(13) SIMPLE MINDS – Promised You A Miracle (video)
At its peak.
(9) HOT CHOCOLATE – Girl Crazy
Went up two more places.
(30) THE ASSOCIATES – Club Country
The follow up to Party Fears Two, reaching number 13 in the charts.
(10) SPANDAU BALLET – Instinction ®
At its peak.
(1) NICOLE – A Little Peace
She beat the England football squad to the 500th number one, and stayed there for two weeks.
(24) BLONDIE – Island Of Lost Souls (crowd dancing and credits)
Re-releases aside, this was Blondie's final top 30 hit, until Maria in 1999!
Next up then is May 20th 1982
Many thanks to Darnall 42 for making this one available. I think we can safely assume that DLT is now persona non grata on a permanent basis on BBC4, even though his sentence has now expired. When you consider that the Beeb was quite happy to let a convicted murderer star in Eastenders for a good few years, the hypocrisy is quite breathtaking, but such is the mad world we live in.
ReplyDeleteOur host is actually in good form for this show, keeping the links simple and straightforward and doing a slick, efficient job. Duran Duran were now entering their imperial phase, and this is a confident, assured performance, the band preempting Miami Vice with their rolled-up sleeves. The song itself I am not so keen on - the production's great, with some nice synth washes, but it never quite does it for me. Joan Jett presumably recorded this performance just after her brief encounter with Master Bates the previous week. Good to see the band in colour this time, and there is some entertaining air punching from the audience.
The FB3 turn up for the second week in a row - at this rate, they will become the new Showaddywaddy! At least you can see them clearly this time, and it's a pretty good tune, though the primitive computer game flashing away behind them is a bit distracting. I'm getting bored of Promised You a Miracle now, and the video wasn't terribly exciting, except for the spooky bits where the skeletal hand was poking around in the bag. Jim appeared to be wearing the same outfit he had on in the studio - it must have been a tough one to keep clean!
This week it's Hot Chocolate's turn to get obscured, in their case by Zoo and those godawful bodybuilders. Pretty embarrassing all round, though at least Errol wore something a bit more dignified this time. Best performance of the night was by The Associates. The song is considerably better than Party Fears Two, with far less irritating vocals from Billy, and I couldn't take my eyes off the statuesque Martha as she played her violin. It was great that she also got to briefly visit the front of the stage to trade vocals and mess around with Billy.
Nicole celebrates getting to number 1 by picking a dress from a wardrobe marked "1974." Not for the last time, the England football team had been trounced by the Germans! The show ends on a bit of a downer with a lacklustre effort from Blondie, whose glory days were now well and truly over. It doesn't help that those ghastly musclemen are posing and preening all over it, either...
This new entry by The Fun Boy Three was one of their flops, and although we talked about the shambles of last week on the end of the show with Bananarama, the Beeb seemed to make up for it and give them a big stage this week on their own. Pity they could not come up with a decent track, and this new one did not make any significant strides in the chart.
DeleteOn the subject of 'served sentences', also note Boy George on The Voice & locally for me in the West Midlands, a chap by the name of Ashley Blake(Google it!).
DeleteBoth have served time & been let back on peak time BBC TV!
all those ex-jailbirds mentioned here were banged up for offences such as drunk driving, drug possession, ABH and murder - none of which are sex crimes, and therefore much more pardonable it seems (even if like DLT you don't actually end up in jail as a result). such double standards reminds me of convicted inmates believing their crimes are somehow more honorable than the "nonces", which therefore gives them the moral right to judge and persecute such offenders to the point where they often have to be put in solitary confinement (or at least isolated in some way) for their own safety!
DeleteIs Ashley Blake really back on the BBC, Westy? I haven't seen him.
DeleteI ask because he is without doubt one of the worst presenters I've ever seen - that alone should mean that he should never be on TV again. Mind you, almost everyone on our local news programmes are dreadful.
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Delete"The statuesque Martha" was Martha Laidly, formerly a member of Martha and the Muffins (and not THAT Martha!)
DeleteShe is now a professor at OCAD University in Toronto, Canada.
david i don't know if you're new to reading the blog or just to contributing to it, but there's been plenty written about the statuesque martha in previous editions. personally i think not only was she as pretty and sexy as kim wilde (if not more so) but also obviously a lot more talented too. and yet she never had a hit single of her own whilst ms wilde cleaned up in the charts!
Deletesadly the continued "ban" on dlt despite having now done his time means that we miss out on one of the great tracks of the era in "club country", and also one of the most entertaining totp performances. fortunately it's on youtube so i decided to watch it again for the sheer hell of it. billy and the band all look cool and martha looks great in her natty skirt suit. but she looks even better in this video specially made for a french tv show (that has only recently been exhumed from the archives), where she's wearing a fantastic 50's-style full-skirted dress:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i38fCDsrKIg#t=239.981
Big thanks to Darnall 42. I’d never actually heard that thunder noise at the start of the TOTP intro before.
ReplyDeleteA decent performance from DLT, not so annoying this time round and happy to give the non-mugshot chart numbers. Make notes, Bates!
I really wish someone had tripped that slappable Simon le Bon on his way through the crowd. Fashion statement with the bassist’s bandana under his fringe.
I liked the way those ‘slaves’ tried to whack DLT’s nostrils with the mic before the Yazoo repeat, sadly shorn of the first two 'All About Alf' laughter lines.
Joan Jett, recorded the previous week? Superb audience participation which must have made the likes of Leo Sayer wonder “What did I need to do to get that?”.
Nice mention by DLT of the band backing the Fun Boy Three, but where are Bananarama? Come to think of it, where was the tune?
A top 13 smash for Simple Minds, and mention of a VT by DLT! Sadly, said VT was on the Visage side of pretentious.
So, Hot Chocolate’s song’s called “Girl Crazy”, so we’ve got a Tony Hollands impersonator blocking the view at the front. Clever. Errol Brown was the prototype of “Where’s Wally?” on that stage.
Methinks that gal in the leopardskin stockings prior to The Associates was standing on a box for obvious ‘sussie’ camera effect.
Talking of which, performance of the night by The Associates. Enjoyable and scamp-like, with the lovely Martha on violin (note the accompanying backdrop) and vocals.
A repeat of Tony ‘Timber’ Hadley and the lads, followed by Nicole’s decent live vocals on a piece of country unt western, then a real downer. Did Blondie really release ”X Offender” and “Rip Her To Shreds” back in the day? Planets away from this marshmallow effort, made worse by those two preening idiots blocking the view. Island of lost souls indeed.
Indeed with Fun boy Three this week with a song called The Telphone Always Rings, it was a case of erm, don't call us we'll call you, and a big hang up on the phone, as this was a big thumbs down for me, after the highpoint of the last two singles with the emerging Banarama, both of which made top ten.
Deletei don't know what the signficance of the backdrop behind the associates is, but it's certainly striking and adds to the performance
Deletealso, i'm assuming that tony hollands is some contemporary "sleb" as i've never heard of him?
Tony Hollands was a muscleman who won "Opportunity Knocks" six weeks in a row with his routine.
Deleteapologies arthur - i remember that guy now with his rippling muscle routine (a bit of a one-trick pony i would have said, so the competition couldn't have been too hot), although i would never have come up with his name. i did actually wonder if you were referencing the guy who co-created eastenders!
DeleteHot Chocolate already at No.9? Good Lord, they seemed to have Floella Benjamin from Play School at the back of the stage, as if it was like something out of the square window on Play School on this TOTP performance.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile Errol Brown was looking like another member Zoo, by the way he was positioned among the Zoo dancers on stage. As John G mentions above, a similar sort of chaos to last week's FB3/Banarama fiasco at the end of the show.
P.S. I enjoyed more the two girls embracing DLT at the beginning and end of Hot Chocolate's performance.
Ah, but wait, I see the Zoo dancers from the Hot Chocolate performance (including Floella) were back at the end of the show, dancing to Blondie's last hit of the 80s. All is forgiven!
By the way, has Nicole got a surname? I mean it would help, considering she won the award for 500th British No.1.
At this stage she was Nicole Hohloch, she's now Nicole Seibert - a 51-year-old grandmother! That really brings it home.
DeleteWas her album called Never Mind the Hohlochs?
DeleteSo you mean that she was only 17 when she was at No.1 with this song?? Like Sheila of Monsoon?
DeleteShes turned into a very foxy older woman imo. Check the google images. Like a fine (German) Wine.
DeleteYeah, just checked the Google images, hmm, very tasty, and she'll be 52 this month, so indeed she was only 17 years old on this week's show in 1982!
DeleteUnfortunately the sound kept going out of sync when I played this, but better that than not seeing it at all, I suppose.
ReplyDeleteOne of my favourite Duran Duran songs to start (which might not be saying a whole lot), this has a fine chorus and singalong backing vocals. The jacket sleeves rolled up in its nascent form, i.e. not quite at the elbows yet.
In your face, Cherie Currie! Nobody went to see Foxes! Is probably what Joan Jett was thinking as she enjoyed a global hit, though the audience have something of the Nuremberg Rallies about them. One of the few interviewed Americans who returned to perform the following week.
Fun Boy Three with a great number that deserved to go higher, but maybe people were missing the 'Nanas. Superb production on this, love the sinister piano, though not sure what the lyrics referred to.
Simple Minds on video, with what looks like Emily Lloyd guesting, though it can't be, she would have been too young. Somehow the visuals don't match the pompous tune.
Hot Chocolate with our own Dory's theme song, though given the unisex treatment in the studio. They certainly got their money's worth out of any Muscle Marys they booked, didn't they? Stage unusually bright for a change.
The Associates, another weird winner from the terrific Sulk album. Everyone's having a fine old time in this performance, and it's infectious. Agreed it's the highlight of the episode.
Nicole actually playing her guitar this time around, though it's not mic'ed up. If the Scottish World Cup Squad had covered this it would have been called Gie's Peace.
Blondie to end on, I know this song has a reputation of the beginning of the end for their quality control and indeed their hits, but I really like it. It has a pretty, mournful melody with a tropical twist and takes its title from a classic movie. The rest of the album may have been rubbish, but this wasn't.
I suspect JJ recorded her performance when she visited the studio the previous week. Couldn't be shown in the Simes fronted edition as Dicky S had introduced the video the previous week.
Deleteas a result of the changes in opportunities to watch the "official" broadcast version of these shows, i have now decided to revise my stance on not watching the "banned" ones. so here's an overview of the rest of this one:
ReplyDeleteduran: the verses and choruses are catchy and this is probably the only one of their upbeat efforts that i can naturally groove along to. but the middle 8/breakdown is a real car crash!
joan jett: not only do i hate her haircut, i also hate her snarling gum-chewing noo yoik vocal style as well. the audience punching the air on the off-beat is highly irritating and reminds me of uncool white people clapping along in the same manner to music that is often of black origin
fb3: i have a dim memory of the swinging laurels being part of the pseudo jazz/jive scene that was around in the early-to-mid 80's, other practitioners including the likes of carmel, rent party and the shillelagh sisters (one of whom later joined terry & co's chums/collaborators bananarama). i think the problem with this is not so much the tune (or perceived lack of it) as the musical backing, which drags somewhat to say the least
simple minds: they were going through a spinal-tap situation with regard to drummers at this time, hence derek forbes bashing away on some tom toms as well as his customary bass guitar
hot chocolate: errol brown may well be girl crazy, but i suspect he was less keen on pec-flexing musclemen. however as the gracious man he was he tolerates them cluttering up the stage, although the drummer looks less-than-happy. i find them revolting in any circumstances, but here there really is no justification for their presence whatsoever and thus baffling to put it mildly!
What about that drop for Bardo in the charts? About 20 places! That's Morrissey solo single numbers.
ReplyDeleteBardo had dropped 15 places. It should be pointed out that the chart was compiled up to shops shutting on a Saturday, so "One Step Further" probably made number 2 on the back of patriotic pre-Eurovision sales just before the final, which is why they appeared on TOTP at number 2 having finished 7th in the competition. Once Eurovision had been forgotten about, sales dropped off quickly, though it's safe to assume a contest win or a much higher placing would have kept Bardo's single higher up the chart a bit longer.
DeleteBardo had been at 2 the previous week, and here was at 21, so that's a drop of (adopts Winnie the Pooh think think think stance) 19 places.
DeleteWas there a follow up to One Step Further that did nothing much?
Bardo only recorded six tracks which were released as three singles before they were dropped by their record company. The two follow-ups to the big hit were "Talking Out Of Line" and "Hang On To Your Heart". Incredibly, through using these six songs plus a number of re-mixes, a Bardo album was released recently!
DeleteMaybe I missed something but, according to the Polyhex chart stats website, which is usually very accurate, Bardo’s chart run went 43-16-6-2-6-21-33-61.
DeleteAh, I should have known better than to pit my wits against the man with the facts at his fingertips! This compression of three weeks into one had me forgetting that the England Squad were at No.2 the episode previous to this one. Sorry for messing you about!
DeleteNo worries! ;-)
DeleteCouple of observations about DLT:
ReplyDeleteFirstly, when he introduced his "slaves" he briefly looked and sounded very uncomfortable once he had clocked the young lady to the left.
Secondly, his introducing the Horn section with FB3 was pure and utter Partridgeseque!
Cashback! back of the net!
DeleteThanks Darnall 42 for giving us the choice to watch or not…
ReplyDeleteDuran Duran – Hungry like the Wolf – I bought this ‘cos I thought it was great and still do. Checkout the 12” version, especially for the ‘groans’ towards the end! I only recall seeing the video on TOTP so maybe I never saw this edition at the time. B side was a live version of the flop single ‘Careless Memories’.
Yazoo – Only you – Repeat, missing the first section where something went wrong so they saved Vince and Alf’s embarrassment by omitting it here.
Joan Jett – I love rock n’roll – Again, I don’t recall this in the studio reinforcing my belief that this is the first time that I have watched this episode.
Fun Boy Three – The Telephone always rings – Lacklustre effort. My lips are sealed on what my favourite FB3 track is.
Simple Minds – Promised you a miracle – So just who was the girl in this video?
Hot Chocolate – Girl Crazy – Love the presentation except for ‘muscle man’!
Associates – Club Country – Marginally more tolerable than ‘Party fears two’ but still a strange vocal.
Spandau Ballet – Intuition – “Steve from Eastenders” again with a fast paced song given the ‘busy’ looking performance to match.
Nicole – A little Peace – Pleasant without being a classic euro winner. Nicole’s follow up ‘Give me more time’ gave Nicole precisely one week in the chart…at no.75. We had to wait a few more years for the 600th number one and that was a classic..
Blondie – Island of lost Souls- Insipid effort from a once great band.
just to show you the rubbish i remember from reading the rock and pop papers and magazines back then: in one of them (record mirror?) it was reported that neville from fun boy three was boasting about his new pop star girlfriend but refused to reveal who it was, only that she "was in the top 20". so the periodical listed all those concerned, and patrice rushen was one of those speculated on. but perhaps unsurprisingly in the end, i think his new squeeze turned out to be one of the bananarama girls...
ReplyDeleteIt was probably Karen from Banarama, seeing as Neville pinched her bottom in the video for Really Saying Something, shown on the 22 April edition with Peter Powell.
DeleteDuran Duran - I like most of their singles, and this is no exception.
ReplyDeleteI found it amusing that thanks to the Dicky/The Director/Alf (delete as applicable) cock-up, the song is now shorn of its first verse on repeat!
Joan Jett was lucky to be on, usually when an artist pops in to record something for the following week's show, their single goes down! As it is, I've had enough of this song now.
Fun Boy Three - Tuneless dirge.
Simple Minds - I didn't mind the video, and I especially liked the bit with the spotlights. At least we now know why Jim Kerr did those weird crouching down bits in the studio, he was obviously trying to recreate that part of the vid.
Hot Chocolate - I genuinely didn't think Errol was there at first, there were that many idiots clogging up the stage.
The Associates - As others have said, the best thing on the show and such a shame that this song has been Yewtreed entirely (or should we call it 'Human Leagued' now?)
It's a great performance and I love the messing around with the mics at the end.
Nicole - A better performance this time as she gets the words correct! Let me guess, on the next show they repeat the first one I bet....
Blondie - Just me and THX liking this then? OK, it's not up with their very best but it's a good pop song.
sorry noax, in my haste to escape the preening muscleman at the end i didn't even bother listening to the blondie track. i've done so now on yt (well, a bit of it anyway) and wish i hadn't bothered - after cod-disco, cod-reggae and c(od-)rap we now get cod-calypso. and there's an instrument (in this case the no-doubt synth-generated "oil drum") doubling the same line as the vocal, something i always find irritating (yes, gary numan and altered images, i'm talking about you!). an appropriate title indeed considering how far this once-mighty force had fallen...
Deletealso: that weird crouching thing that jim kerr did was pretty much his stock-in-trade to my recollection
as no one else seems aware or has seen fit to do so, it falls to me to announce the passing of the great rod temperton, writer of so many hits that we've seen on these totp re-runs over the last few years (and hopefully the next few to come) - in fact, too many to mention! and despite being a white guy from cleethorpes, he was surely one of the funkiest songwriters ever?
ReplyDeletei remember reading an interview with rod in (i think) mojo magazine about 10 years back, where he freely admitted that "with respect to bob dylan et al" lyrics were always the last thing he wrote for his compositions as he felt things like the groove were much more important - good on you rod!
My friend met him back in the late 1970s when he was signed to the same label as Heatwave and said he was a really nice guy. Very unusual in the music business.
DeleteThere was an article in the Daily Mail yesterday entitled 'The Pop Genius from a Fish Finger Factory' about Rod with 10 of his chart songs:-
DeleteThriller
Rock with you
Off the Wall
Boogie Nights
Give me the Night
Baby come to me
Sweet Freedom
Too hot to handle
Always and forever
Love is in control (finger on the trigger)
I'm sure everyone has their favourite. RIP Rod.
it's a hard choice to put it mildly, but if i had to pick one of his as my favourite it would likely be "the groove line". i have recently discovered this fantastic extended mix, that as far as i can tell was only released a decade after it was originally a hit:
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuJvyVUPpqI
ps - bama who was your friend that was signed to heatwave's record label?
Of those you've listed, Too Hot To Handle would be my favourite, that has funk in spades.
DeleteAnother great tune of his is 'Stomp' which The Brothers Johnson recorded of course.
DLT still on good form and the show gets off to a cracking start with Duran Duran. Although never a massive fan I really liked some of their early singles and this is a corker. I like Simon's slightly ungainly entrance through the crowd who don't really want to move out of the way but I'm glad the band have dropped all that New Romantic gear for more sensible suits. I see Mr Fairtarse is there as usual, at first I thought he was dressed in white bib overalls like one of the Chigley biscuit factory workers but it is a green string vest worn over a green cap sleeve tee shirt with white jeans.
ReplyDeleteYazoo. At first I thought this was a repeat and they had cut out the dodgy bit at the beginning but it seems it was a new appearance but they did cut of the start which was a little odd.
Joan Jett appears to be channeling Noel Fielding here - a good performance but I've already grown a bit tired of theb song already. The well-trained crowd punch the air like they did in the video. Why not show the video which was better.
The Fun Boy Three - Terry certainly looks a lot happier than he did the last week and he appears to be wearing the same semi-sailor outfit which makes me wonder if this was recorded then in anticipation of it entering the chart. I bought this one at the time and I liked the discordant horns on it.
Interesting that both Terry Hall and Alison Moyet are both on the same show and ten+ years later they would both do guest vocals on Lightning Seeds albums (Sense and My Best Day).
Lots of weird and wonderful visual tricks going on in the Simple Minds video, or VT as DLT calls it (he's known by his initials, so why should video be as well?). I think the band look a lot better here than they did when they were on the show.
Michael Hurl's been on the funny pills again - last time with Hot Chocolate we had the cheerleaders and the band dressed up in aerobics gear dancing to the tune, this time it's Zoo and the band doing the same moves but it other clothing which just looks wrong. And why the two hairless muscle men? Shouldn't they be girls or is Errol secretly muscle man crazy?
The Associates - I loved this at the time even though i didn't have a clue what it was about and this is a superb performance with Billy M on good form playing a joke on Martha by pretending to steal her mic. Not sure I care for Billy's suit with the bum freezer jacket. During the first chorus there's one bit where they insert a shot from elsewhere in the performance which is a bit odd, not clear why they did this.
Then a repeat of Spandex - Martin Kemp looks such a knob end in those vile mishappen jodhpurs - did anyone actually find this cool or remotely sexy at the time. He looks like he's crapped himself especially when he stands like that.
The Top 9 and then A Little Peace. I just checked out the lyrics to the Nicole song and she really does sing "Just like a candle blown out in the wind". I'm surprised Sir Elton didn't sue. At the 1982 Euro song contest the Finnish Entry was the complete opposite of Nicole's winner being about nuclear bombs. Not surprisingly it bombed scoring nul points and the singer Kojo supposedly slagged off the song saying "What is a little bit peace?" and he had a go at Nicole calling her "an ugly German virgin". What a sore loser.
Playout with the Blondie song which I have no memory of at all. Hurl makes good use of his muscle Marys by having them posing again for no good reason.
Popscene lists the Yazoo performance as a repeat, and it definitely looked like it to me.
DeleteI thought I'd seen it somewhere before.
DeleteSorry I'm a bit late, I actually watched this last Wednesday evening but then spent a long weekend away from the computer. And I really can't be bothered to type stuff into the phone.
ReplyDeleteNot only thanks to Darnall42 for posting this but also kudos for setting up a new account after the last one was 'rumbled'.
Another show, I thought, which started off really good but tailed off towards the end. Sorry, but the Associates were a bit too avant-garde for me and I never was a fan of Nicole's Teutonic warbling.
It did seem a bit strange having the Yazoo performance crashing in halfway through the first verse; on YouTube on my primitive monitor the resolution wasn't good enough to see any problem with the original showing (apart from Richard Skinner quite clearly 'padding' and talking nonsense) but it must have been obvious on broadcast TV. The BBC would surely have wanted Vince & Alf to come back and do it again but they must have had other commitments.
I don't know if anyone else can remember the household consumable which was offering a free Top 40 single at this time, I can't, but I chose 'The Telephone Always Rings'. I'm not sure why - it's OK but I fail to see how it could have been a fave rave back then.
Today, the Simple Minds video is like watching every 1980s music video cliché packed into three minutes, but it was early on in the decade and therefore original, so credit where it's due.
And I agree with others about the Blondie number which finished the show. I've always felt that 'Call Me' was the last great Blondie single and wondered if those which followed were actually 'Blondie' at all, rather just a Debbie Harry vocal over an anonymous session recording.