Oi Santa! Where's yer beard?
16-12-82: Presenter: Jimmy Savile
(5) MADNESS – Our House
Such a great shame we can't see what was maybe Madness's finest Top of the Pops moment on BBC4, and Our House was now at its peak.
(17) PHIL COLLINS – You Can’t Hurry Love (video)
A future number one.
(28) SANTA CLAUS & THE CHRISTMAS TREES – Sing-A-Long-A-Santa
Made it to number 19.
The JK bit:
(US CHART) PAT BENATAR – Shadows Of The Night (video)
(US CHART) MEN AT WORK – Down Under (video)
(US CHART) JOE JACKSON – Steppin’ Out (video)
(US CHART) DARYL HALL & JOHN OATES – Maneater (video)
(30) DAVID ESSEX – A Winter’s Tale
Told a story all the way to number 2.
(19) MALCOLM McLAREN – Buffalo Gals (video)
Became the first of two top ten hits for the former manager of the Sex Pistols, when it peaked at number 9.
(27) DIONNE WARWICK – All The Love In The World (video)
Became her final top ten hit when it peaked at number 10.
(21) CLIFF RICHARD – Little Town
Peaked at number 11.
(20) BUCKS FIZZ – If You Can’t Stand The Heat ®
On its way to number 10.
(13) ULTRAVOX – Hymn
Went up two more places.
(1) RENÉE & RENATO – Save Your Love (video)
First of four weeks at number one.
(22) DONNA SUMMER – I Feel Love (crowd dancing) (and credits)
This remix went up one more place.
Back to BBC4 next with the live edition from December 23rd 1982.
Santa Claus & The Christmas Trees - do you think it took them a long time to think up this name for their group for this Christmas song? Indeed the appearance of Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer mid-song coming down the stage to join them was indeed another of their surprises.
ReplyDeleteThe JK section - now here was some real class, and I mean Joe Jackson with Stepping Out, which is one of my favourite songs from the 80s. Indeed this one and Men At Work's Down Under, both on this week's JK section, became big hits a month later in the UK in January 1983, with Men At Work making it to no.1 here in the UK.
With regard to Pat Benatar, she never made it here in the UK until 1984, so this 1982 clip on JK's bit was an early glimpse of her, but the British public at this stage were not bought in like the other two tracks on JK this week.
Malcolm McLaren - although I remember this song, it don't recall the video, and seeing it now, I still don't understand the point that Mr McLaren was making on this track. First it was buffalo girls going round the outside, and then it was buffalo boys going round the outside. Good Lord, I feel dizzy already just sitting down writing this!
While we are gracious to Neil B and gia for sending us their VHS copy of this show through WeTransfer, it was stopped in the middle of the No.1 song, and we didn't see the playout song with Donna Summer. If anyone has a full recorded copy, then please let's have it on WeTransfer if possible, and this can be pasted on the top of the blog to replace the current copy with the end of the show missing.
Glenn Marshall has posted the bulk of the playout on YouTube:
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=areIdfJtUrU
Fantastic John. Wouldn't it be better if the full UK Gold copy of the Jimmy Saville edition could be posted on the our blog, so that we can have the full show with the Donna Summer playout, as the playout was the best part of the show this week. Has anyone got the UK Gold flu show for us instead of watching part on WeTransfer and the missing part on the Glen Marshall tube posting.
DeleteNeil B has provided both an original BBC version on WeTransfer and a UK Gold version on Dropbox. Unfortunately the UK Gold version has no JK section included and also cuts off before the end.
DeleteI used some video editing software and linked the two clips together so other than losing a bit of the Renee Renato video it's more or less complete. Just want to say a huge thank you to everyone for posting the missing episodes and keeping the run complete. Please keep them coming in 1983 (if possible) and a happy new year to everyone on this blog and really enjoy reading your reviews. And as the kid would say..' Good Love to you all!'
DeleteHave you got a dropbox link for the UK Gold version brie?
DeleteYeah, I would also like to see that dropbox link please
DeleteThe link is this https://www.dropbox.com/s/gu8u962jaqyp1id/TOTP%201982-12-16%20.mp4?dl=0
Deletebrie, this is no different to what Angelo has posted up on WeTransfer. What I'm really looking for is the UK Gold copy (or original 1982 broadcast) with the full Renee & Renato No.1 as well as the Donna Summer playout. Someone must have it surely, if it was broadcast on UK Gold.
Deleteanother sort-of review cobbled together from youtube scraps as don't have access to iplayer at the moment, and i certainly wasn't prepared to register with wetransfer. but in a way it doesn't actually matter that much i suppose?
ReplyDeletemadness: i hate to use the word "genius" when it comes to anything art-related, but whoever thought-up the idea of having the band in the "living room" certainly came close to that. if you hadn't seen the promotional video already, then you would certainly have believed it was that until the roof sort-of comes off at the end revealing they are actually in the totp studio. i like suggs's new non-flat top haircut, but chas smash's face fungus is not a good look at all i'm afraid
santa claus: no totp performance on yt, but there was a recording of it i could listen to. and now wish i hadn't
malcolm mclaren: something i remember despising at the time, and i have to wish to be reminded of it again
cliff: i thought he didn't get into exploiting the xmas market until the 90's, but i see i was wrong about that. things seem to have gone a bit quiet on the cliff vs beeb & plod front lately, however i wonder if he's been following the adulation for the late george michael - a man who (unlike him) was willing to come out of the closet... which if anything made him more-loved than he was before
donna summer: i can't say i remember this from the time. i can't say i'm sad to have missed it either, as this "remix" is essentially some idiot adding superfluous squelchy noises to the original disco classic
You don't need to register with WeTransfer, just click download and away you go!
DeleteThe Madness performance was on the festive TOTP compilation BBC4 showed on Christmas Eve. So we did get to see it on BBC4, but it's a shame we couldn't see it in context.
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ReplyDeleteMany thanks yet again to Neil B for plugging another Yewtree gap, and with a copy of the original transmission as well. Jim'll has "Thank You" plastered across his t-shirt, but never enlightens us as to who or what he is thanking. This would be the last time he would ever host the show solo, and it is a pretty standard-issue performance, augmented for a couple of links with an alarmingly phallic-looking Christmas decoration...
ReplyDeleteThis oft-repeated Madness performance must be up there as one of the most famous TOTP moments, and indeed it was on the Christmas hits compilation show just the other day. It's all very nicely staged, and I like the way the camera pulls back to reveal the audience and the wider studio at the end. We are now fast approaching the point from which I can trace my earliest musical memories, and this Phil Collins cover of a Motown classic is one of the first songs that I can remember hearing. While I am no fan of Phil's solo work in general, as covers go this is quite good, being both well-produced and slick. I could do without multiple Phils in the video, however, and he should really have rolled up his shirt sleeves as well as the ones on his jacket!
Santa Claus and the Christmas Trees herald an onslaught of festive tunes. I've no idea who these chancers were (the singer looks vaguely familiar), but they are trying to jump on the medley bandwagon a year too late. At least it's quite an entertaining, OTT performance thanks to the dancing reindeer and snowman. JK gets in the Christmas spirit by presenting his segment from a variety of seasonal New York backdrops. He once again reminds us that he had a UK hit with Gloria in 1979, though he fails to mention it only got to 65! Most of the songs he features here are familiar, and we will be seeing more of both Down Under and Steppin' Out before too long. I like Pat Benatar's voice, and her later hits Love is a Battlefield and We Belong are both excellent, but this one sounded like generic power balladry of the worst kind. Having said that, the aviation-themed video looked quite good, as did Pat herself.
This David Essex performance was also on the Christmas Hits show. I'm not sure if Dave is singing live here, or is just miming to rerecorded vocals, but it's a pleasant rendition of this rather lovely Mike Batt song. The highly annoying Malcolm McLaren finally becomes a chart star in his own right with this dismal bandwagon-jumping rap 'n' scratching effort, which does nevertheless point the way, sadly, to the musical future. The video is chiefly noticeable for featuring some breakdancing, the first time I think that it had appeared on TOTP.
Dionne Warwick enjoys another hit with a classy Bee Gees song, though once again we are denied the record and have to put up with a live version. Thankfully this one is better than the Heartbreaker performance we were subjected to, and I think this song suits Dionne's voice better. We were still 6 years away from Mistletoe and Wine at this point, but here is Cliff with an earlier festive offering, a deeply naff poppification of various well-known carols and, erm, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. This really has no redeeming features, and sounds uncomfortably like a forerunner to the dreaded Millennium Prayer.
Good to see Ultravox in the studio, with a song that I am liking more with each listen. The only thing that spoils this is Billy Currie's bizarre jumping around when he isn't playing his keyboards! Renee and Renato colonise the top spot for Christmas, and then pom poms take over the studio to accompany this rather sacrilegious remix of the classic I Feel Love, released just 5 years after the original. As well as sounding unpleasant, it also seems pointless given that, as Wilbeforce says they have just added some stupid noises to the original track. It's like someone has defaced the Mona Lisa...
I do know a bit about the chancers Santa Claus and the Christmas trees - they were a north west Kent pub band - I went to see them in 1983 at a gig they did in a Dartford pub under the name of Gambler - I went with a friend of mine at the time, Simon, whose younger brother Toby Chapman was the keyboard player. I can only remember two songs that they performed that evening - an excellent rendition of Shakatak's Invitations, and then towards the end the pub audience had a real treat when they were joined by a guest vocalist and perfomed one of his two big hits from the sixties - none other than the late Crispian St Peters, with whom they'd been doing some work, who belted out Pied Piper. (Toby later released a single of his own, and also wored with Spandau Ballet for a tour they did when they required their main members to be stage front with supporting musicians at the back of the stage.)
DeleteThanks for the info Nutty - it sounds as if that was a great gig!
DeleteMaybe Jim'll knew it was going to be his last solo TOTP and he was trying to say "Thanks for everything and ta-ra" via his apparel?
DeleteI suspect it was a thank you for some charity thing he had been doing. Jim'll would cling on as a co-host for 7 more shows during '83 and '84, but he becomes an ever more marginal figure from this point onwards.
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ReplyDeleteWow John G. I too am thinking this is amongst my first memories of totp and indeed pop music in general.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, I think my first tape recording of the top 40 is around the corner and I remember contained Phil Collins, men at work, fun boy three, belle stars and I forget who else. I would have been 12, quite a late comer to pop.
My parents always watched TOTP in the 80s, so I can remember watching it from the age of about 3 or 4. 1983 is the first year that I can distinctly remember stuff being in the charts, particularly Karma Chameleon and Every Breath You Take.
DeleteI've still got another couple of years before my first radio tape recording, although it wasn't the top 40 but a load of songs from the Janice Long song including 'Into The Groove' and 'Don Qioxote' (apologies if that's spelt wrong). I do have some Bruno Brookes era Top 40 tapes somewhere in the loft though.
DeleteSorry meant Janice Long show not song. She was sitting in for Steve 'big show' Wright, who I couldn't stand then and don't much care for now, particularly his habit of cutting short his last song to fit in his theme tune.
DeleteThanks again for Neil B for making it possible. Interesting that two performances from this show were plucked out and shown on the ‘Christmas Hits’ edition this year (as noted by John G), so the Beeb obviously have watched this one internally!
ReplyDeleteMadness – Our House – This is one shown on ‘Christmas Hits’ and is definitely worth seeing. Love the way Suggs bursts in and they jump at the ‘bomp’ bit of the chorus! Soon to come of course were the Maisonettes…
Phil Collins – You can’t hurry love –The first single off ‘Hello…I must be going’ called ‘Thru these Walls’ flopped badly. Phil writes in his Autobiography that he felt that this Supremes hit (which reached no3 in 1965) had been overshadowed by their other hits so covered it himself and then released it as the second single. The rest is history.
Santa Claus – Sing-a-long-a Santa – Not had a medley on the show for some months now but we’re served up a seasonal medley here by one of Rock’s supergroups… Right for the time I guess.
JK Slot – As the camera pans down we see ‘Big Six’ displayed which was of course a Judge Dread single banned by the BBC in 1972. Love all four of the tracks shown with Men at Work and Joe Jackson (mmmm that bass line!) destined to hit our own charts soon, Hall & Oates already having done so and Pat Benetar having to wait until 1985 for minor hit with ‘Shadows in the Night’ (love the video).
David Essex – A Winter’s Tale – This is the second performance featured in ‘Christmas Hits’ and it’s again a worthwhile viewing with David singing this wonderful Mike Batt/Tim Rice song live.
Malcolm McLaren – Buffalo Gals – I loved this and still do! The biggest surprise for me at the time was to find it had been released on the Charisma label – I’m something of a Charisma singles buff and this was probably the strangest addition to their catalogue after such acts as Genesis, Lindisfarne, Clifford T Ward and errr Monty Python!
Dionne Warwick – All the love in the World – Great follow up to ‘Heartbreaker’ and another live performance, although I do miss the Bee Gees backing vocals.
Cliff Richard – Little Town – This was really quite good with plenty of dry ice in evidence. Never quite got the ‘Twinkle twinkle little star’ bit at the end.
Bucks Fizz – If you can’t stand the heat – Err no Jimmy, not live in the studio as it’s a repeat! But worth seeing again!
Ultravox - Hymn – Nice to see the band performing this and not getting cut short either. Billy Currie gives the knobs a cursory twiddle during the synthesiser bits!
Renee & Renato – Nothing more to say really other than this was cut short on the main download. No great loss!
Donna Summer – I feel love – Re-release with some ‘interjections’ (which I think we are all agreeing here are frankly awful!) added. Only five years after the original. Still a great song though. Nice one for Zoo to dance to, as did Legs & Co in 1977. Thanks Glenn for the YT posting.
Chart rundowns. JS mentions no song titles bar ‘Rio’ by Duran Duran and seems to get fed up with all the new entries!
It did indeed take a long time for us to latch onto Pat Benatar, whose first UK single back in 1979 was a cover of the Smokie hit "If You Think You Know how to Love Me". "Shadows Of The Night" was at least her seventh UK release, which included the surprise complete flop "Hit Me With Your Best Shot", and it reached number 50 when re-issued in 1985. Pat managed two top twenty ticklers, another which just missed the 20 and seven minor hits between 42 and 67 over here, "Love Is A Battlefield" being both a top 50 nibbler and then her biggest hit (number 17) when re-released.
ReplyDeleteI thought Sir Jim'll looked very tired on this edition, as if he was getting sick of the TOTP gig (which he apparently was).
ReplyDeleteMadness, classic staging of Our House, reminiscent of Toast by the Streetband, I wonder which sitcom donated their lounge set? That tiny saxomophone dusted off and brought out once again.
Now I remember watching this episode with my mum, and I asked her who Phil Collins' backing singers were because they looked familiar. Ah, youth. Anyway, bog standard Motown cover, which just about survives Phil-ification.
OK, who let the pub band in? Santa Claus (with his beard at his crotch) and the Christmas Trees (who are reindeer) chugging through office party singalong seasonal favourites. Pretty bloody awful.
I see a JK section for a change, and it's still annoyingly showing the briefest of clips of videos which cut off before you can get into them. Pat Benatar's I'm not too bothered about, it sounded terrible, and the others we'll see again or have already seen. I never thought that Stepping Out had a video, oddly!
David Essex, gorblimey it's a Winter's Tale. Never been quite sure if his voice suits this song, maybe it needed an Art Garfunkel to do it justice. Successful, mind you.
My other big memory of seeing this is Malcolm MacLaren's bandwagon jumping effort, and at the time it was like nothing I had ever heard, I was fascinated, it sounded so exciting. Years later I heard the Duck Rock album it comes from, which is fantastic, like listening to a New York pirate radio station. I prefer Double Dutch to this, but they're both great. Note the Rock Steady Crew glimpsed there, soon to have their own big hit.
Dionne Warwick with a nice enough mid-tempo follow up to Heartbreaker, though the staging (LLBS again?) leaves much to be desired. Did Nick Park see the drummer's bowtie and think, yes, I'll have some of that?
Cliff Richard's Christmas single, and so much more preferable to those number ones he would have at the end of the 80s and into the 90s. Winning little tune, light lyrics about the spirit of the season, and, erm, Cliff recreating Raymond Briggs' The Snowman (which debuted on Channel 4 this year and I can't watch because it's too traumatic).
Ultravox, decent mime along to a decent single, did they make a special request for their inscrutable logo's inclusion?
Renee and Renato about to commence their reign of terror at the top, and what Donna needed to end on: someone playing Galaxian through her iconic dance record. Liking the Chinese girl in the Christmas jumper.
If it makes you feel better about Renee & Renato, just watch this hilarious spoof of them by Kenny Everett. It had me on the floor rolling about in laughter:
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72M_4GfvVLM
i'm not sure if david essex's voice suits any song!
Deletegalaxian! i remember playing that regularly in a disco of all places back around 1980. and i was so skint at the time that even when a massed brawl broke out behind me whilst i was on it i wasn't prepared to move out of the way and lose 10 pence's worth of my miserable dole handout, so i just carried on playing!
DeleteBack in the mid-1990s the firm who supplied the fruit machine in my parents' pub was based just around the corner from the newly-purchased Relic Towers. I fancied having one of those table video games - Galaxian or similar - and they had one, the chap who ran the business saying that they would get it working for me. He then went and broke the glass and I lost interest. Those things are seriously collectable items fetching silly money nowadays. Oh well.
Delete@Dory, I well recall Kenny's spoof at the time, it was shooting fish in a barrel but absolutely hilarious all the same. It was pointed out that the audience start laughing uproariously at the beginning and continue laughing right to the end with no lull or break!
Deletethe galaxian machine i mention above was a stand-up one, but i do remember also playing the game on those table-top editions that were designed for use in pubs (so you could stick your pint on it whilst you played). i recently visited the media museum in bradford and was overjoyed to discover a whole room of vintage "muzzies" machines, where you paid the same money (10p or 20p) a game as you did 35 years earlier. i spent an hour in there (mostly playing the table-top version of "asteroids") and it was a fiver well-spent!
DeleteI too remember Kenny's spoof, it's up there with his Rod Stewart take off from the Thames TV days.
DeleteI too remember Kenny's spoof, it's up there with his Rod Stewart take off from the Thames TV days.
DeleteSanta Claus & The Christmas Trees?! So this was a real band with a real chart single?! I honestly thought it was the BBC engineers doing their annual festive frolics.
ReplyDeleteDavid Essex and Cliff Richard were both mimed performances as far as I could tell but Cliff gets a windshield on his mic for some reason.
The less said about that Malcolm McLaren thing the better. I seem to recall him appearing on the Tube demonstrating the technique of 'scratching' (surely the kind of thing that kids would do on their parents' radiogram and get a clip round the ear for it) with a stupid fake American accent.
But definitely worth seeing for the seriously good music in the JK bit (well, 3 out of 4, the 4th was the second helping of that bloody bass line in the same show!) and for Ultravox with no arty video or special effects.
A Summer hit in both name and time of charting seemed somewhat out of place at the end of this December show. Just a few added noises as far as I could hear, the art of truly murdering a 1970s classic had yet to be perfected...
Many thanks to Neil and Glenn!
Thanks to Neil B for this show. However, one again my PC f#cked up and stalled with the 8 minute download with one minute left meaning I had to start again.
ReplyDeleteThe final awful countdown from Jim’ll, who started by saying David Essex was at number 13 and not 30.
Greta staging and camerawork for Madness, clearly enjoying themselves. Was that backdrop Del Boy and Rodney’s lounge in “Only Fools and Horses”?
Phil Collins – just horrible.
Santa Claus and the Christmas Trees were back in ’83 with a medley which, thankfully, stalled at 39. Both medleys were re-recorded with very adult lyrics and released in “X certificate” sleeves.
Tom Hanks’s detective mate from “Turner and Hooch” as a pilot in Pat Benatar’s vid, and was that Demi Moore as Joe Jackson’s chambermaid? The video was too smudged for me to work out. A clear mouthing of the F-word by Men At Work’s Colin Hay as he opens the camper van’s side door during their court case losing big hit, having nicked the tune from folk song “Kookaburra” for the flute passage.
David Essex’s song was well crafted but too sad and depressing for me to listen to fully.
I loved and bought “Buffalo Gals” not knowing it wasn’t a gimmicky one-off that would transport scratching, break dancing and widespread graffiti over here.
Dionne Warwick’s tune was okay but still too Bee Gees like for my taste.
Cliff Richard – see Phil Collins.
Worth another gander at Jay aston, sex on a stick.
Ultravox are at number 13, Jim! Not 14! You’ve just done them in the countdown! Shame we couldn’t have swapped Billy Currie for that Oliver Tobias this time.
Renee and Renato were only much loved by people over 55. I’m 54 now, and I still hate this, Just as much as the awful “Blue Monday” style trashing of Donna Summer’s defining moment.
even though it was greg ham in men at work who supposedly came up with the flute solo on "down under" that was later claimed to be plagiarism of an existing copyrighted tune, he never actually got any songwriting credit for it. so it's interesting that the publishing company that contested the case sued his bandmates that were credited for the composition (and their record company), rather than him personally. rather amusingly ham sort-of concurred he might have been unwittingly influenced by the tune in question whilst working on "down under" in rehearsals, due to being under the influence of recreational drugs!
Deletethis reminds me of another case where someone played a woodwind solo on a number one hit of 1983, and years later there was copyright controversy over it. in this case it was spandau ballet's "true", whereby steve norman (who like most other ex-members of the band was then sueing gary kemp fpr a share of the songwriting royalties) claimed as it was improvised/formulated by him (rather than pre-written by kemp) and as it was what people remembered most about the recording, he should therefore get a songwriting credit. whether his claims were justified or not, the beak threw that one out of court!
Surprised this Cliff track never got played on TOTP2?
ReplyDeleteAnother show with lots of 'new' stuff that we don't get to see (though in some cases that's not so bad!) and that Oriental girl who keeps popping up looks familiar as she looks like the girl who played Hsu Tai in The Tomorrow People (but I don't think it is her...)
ReplyDeleteMadness - At least we got to see this piece of fun on the 'Christmas Hits' show.
Phil Collins - Loved it at the time, less keen now but it's still one of his better hits.
Santa Claus & His Trees - Do they think it's still 1981? Holly & The Ivys essentially did this (better) the year before. I thought it was funny that the audience members with the banners the right way round for them but the wrong way for us showing 'OH OH OH' were clearly told to turn them around!
JK - 1 song we've seen, 2 we will in 83 and one that is drivel anyway.
David Essex - Not a Christmas song as such, and written by Mike Batt so of course it's brilliant!
Malcolm McLaren - Bandwagon jumping of the highest order of course, but job done as I thought it was new and exciting at the time. I still like it, actually.
Dionne Warwick - Of the 2 Bee Gees produced hits, I prefer this one. It's a better live performance this time too.
Cliff Richard - Surprisingly, even listening on Jan 3rd (!) I can tolerate this. Probably because you don't hear it at all compared to his other Christmas hits.
Ultravox - Denied this great tune again!
Donna Summer - I had a feeling that this would get a slagging, which is a shame. Partly because I think that the Patrick Cowley mix is pretty awesome actually (check out the 14 minute long version!!) but also because.....this was the first single that I ever bought. I didn't know the song from its first release so this remix brought it to my attention.
Aargh, just realised I missed out / forgot to download this, and now it is gone from wetransfer. Can anyone help me out, please?
ReplyDelete