Hello, is it a creepy sculpture of my head you're looking for?
22/03/84 (Janice Long & Peter Powell)
Depeche Mode – “People Are People” (29)
The ever more gothic Depeche Mode get us underway this week with what would become their joint biggest hit, peaking at number 4.
The Weather Girls – “It’s Raining Men” (5) (video)
Still storming up the charts and the forecast is that it will peak at number 2.
Shakin’ Stevens – “A Love Worth Waiting For” (22)
With his 'fifteenth consecutive hit' which peaked at number 2.
Culture Club – “It’s A Miracle” (14) (video)
'The story of the band so far' and the fourth and final single from their number one album Colour By Numbers, it peaked at number 4.
Bananarama – “Robert De Niro’s Waiting” (8) (video)
On its way to number 3, but edited out of tonight's 7.30pm slot.
UB40 – “Cherry Oh Baby” (28)
The fourth and final single from their number one album Labour of Love. and Peter Powell's favourite, it peaked at number 12.
Sade – “Your Love Is King” (9)
With a very similar performance to last time, but at least they spelled her name correctly tonight! It went up three more places.
Lionel Richie – “Hello” (1) (video)
The first of five weeks at number one.
Phil Fearon & Galaxy – “What Do I Do?” (7) (video/credits)
We play out with a video this week, and Waht Do I Do went up two more places.
Next up is March 29th 1984.
Hosts: PP still seems subdued despite not being paired with Bates, when will he cheer up? A shame Peel wasn't co-hosting, I think he'd have made more of Janice's 'first time I've done it with you' comment at the start.
ReplyDeleteWeather Girls. The video's special effects made TOTP's lightning flashes look state of the art.
Shakin Stevens. Part of the video for this was made in my home town of Farnham so I hope it gets shown on a future show. Possibly the most exciting thing to happen there in the last 30 years.
Lionel Richie. Claymation, Noel Edmonds' jumper, slightly pervy teacher.
I'm hoping we get the normal TOTP studio back soon, this show felt really claustrophobic.
Yeah, I also like Angelo's Weather Girls pun of 'storming' up the charts. Boom boom!
DeleteAgreed regarding the awful makeshift TOTP studio, now into its fifth week. Please get us out of there soon.
PP and Janice would become an item by the following October, so maybe this show was the start of a slow but gradual process of bringing him out of himself. Not that the relationship would last that long, anyway...
DeleteI did notice his clinches with her on more than one occasion in this show, aye aye!!
DeleteFarnham, eh? Nice town, especially the cobbled streets area. A year later in these re-runs I got chatted up at work (Thorpe Park) by a customer who I went out with for a year or so. At the time of meeting I was 23, it turned out she was a 16-year-old Howard Jones fan, and she lived in the nearby village of Normandy. Near to you, that is - she lived 30 miles from me!
DeleteIt is, very expensive though which is one of the reasons I don't live there anymore!
DeleteI didn't know PP and JL were an item. He later hooked up with Anthea Turner of course after she'd finished with Bruno Brookes.
They seemed to do the rounds on Radio 1, didn't they? I think the best relationship man from the R1 team was Ed "Stewpot" Stewart, who met a girl 16 years his junior when she was 13 and stayed together and married for 30 years!
Deleteso does that make stewpot a pedo? and as such, did the yewtree squad pay him a visit?
DeleteI can't recall Yewtree paying Stewpot a visit but as most of Stewpot's turns on TOTP were before Yewtree kicked off it wouldn't have affected the re-runs much.
DeleteAccording to Wikipedia, he waited till she was 16 when they could get married, and he was already 32. Nowadays it would be frowned upon, but in those days no-one batted an eyelid, and I expect he did everything correctly and lawfully for that time/era.
DeleteI think Alan Clark (the politician, not the Hollies frontman) met his wife-to-be when he was 28 and she was 14, and he also married her once she turned 16. They stayed married for more than 40 years, though quite how that happened given his numerous affairs is a mystery...
DeleteFarnham Normandy Thorpe park what a triangle !!!
DeletePoor Janice is teamed up with Peter Powell this week but at least she's dressed more age appropriately and wisely left the zebra skin at home.
ReplyDeleteI remember liking this Depeche Mode track at the time. Martin Gore is going for the safe option of a belt and braces for his leather strides but he looks a bit cold in his vest. Meanwhile Dave Gahan has gone for that Mallen streak look hairdo that was popular with Dave Vanian from The Damned at one point. Must be something about being called Dave, although I never had my hair done that way.
Ah the Weather girls video. This is very funny and not taking itself too seriously. The chroma key effects are v cheap and don't quite work but that helps give it kitsch-fun appeal. The guys strutting around in just their underpants and a mac reminded me of Keith Allen and Peter Richardson in the Professionals spoof The Bullshittrers. Are they going to end up having a cuddle in the rubble?
Not much to dislike about the Shaky track but it's nothing to get too excited about either.
It's American was the original title of It's A Mirace, I forget why. I liked this video at the time because like Queen's video it includes clips of their old videos, which were impossible to see at the time, it ties in with their Colour By Numbers album sleeve in the form of a board game and it gives two fingers to The Sun who were poking their paparazzi noses into George's life a bit to much at the time.
Thankfully Bananarama were snipped out of the early showing so I don't have to think of anything to say about it.
Tina Turner STILL at number 40. It's the top spot you want to hold week after week, not the anchor position. She's getting it all wring. Has that ever happened before where an act remains at the bottom chart position for three weeks? Her manager must have a garage full of Help singles. SoulSonic Force have dropped so we won't be seeing them. A few new entries this week not featured in the show, ie The Special AKA, Siouxsie and The Banshees, Simple Minds and Madonna but we get to see Sade and bleedin' Bananarama again. Swizz.
They seem to have given UB40 the smallest stage on which to perform. I found the original of this by Eric Donaldson on a trip to Record and Tape Exchange in Notting Hill a few years before this and so I knew and loved this song a lot. Thier version is okay but
Ali's laid back singing style and the dirgey synth-heavy doesn't do it justice. Is this their first hit not to include Brian's distinctive sax?
Slade, sorry Sade makes a return appearance but it is basically a carbon copy of the first. Her glossy red lipstick is starting to get on my nerves.
And Lionel, or should that be "Mr Reynolds" at number one with more-or-less the whole video where we get to see The Bust at the end.
Playout with the video of Phil Fearon and galaxy which is filmed in London and is very funny. Nice to see a good old fashioned record shop. Interesting to see a poster for Mel Brooks' single in the window (he's advertising rival chart hits1).
Bama, the 40-minute TOTP shows of 1983, were now cut down to 35 minutes every week in 1984, and as a result, how could they fit in Special AKA, Siouxie, Madonna, etc? A year later it got worse when Eastenders was launched in 1985, and TOTP became 30 minutes forever, cos Eastenders took over the feature of Thursday night viewing, and the 10 million TOTP viewers every week would surely rocket down to half of that after 1985 because of the Eastenders takeover of our Thursday nights.
DeleteI remember being disappointed by this at the time, because I didn't know what the fuss was all about with Eastenders. I still think it is crap in 2017, with no TOTP on the same evening anymore.
I think Rockwell was being advertised in large letters below that record shop counter.
DeleteNot much to comment on this week, with the highlight for me being the videos from The Weather Girls and Culture Club, with extraordinary use of colour and costume that typified the 80s upbeat nature.
ReplyDeleteCulture Club - superb video, especially when they danced round in circles, and the sexy union jack outfit on the girl dancing alone on the floor. The song hits a chord too. Brilliant stuff!
It was difficult to figure out who had more make up on this week: Boy George, Banarama or Sade....it's a close run thing you know, but Sade wins the prize of most dolled up person in the studio, and Boy George in the video of the week.
Phil Fearon & Galaxy - it seems that Galaxy were trying to look and walk like the Wham girls, i.e., Shirlie and DC Lee, cos Pepsi had not arrived yet till summer 1984, so this was a taste of what was to come, even though we didn't know it yet! Overall the video was as bad as Break Machine, still lodged at No.3 this week for the second week running.
Rather like the weather forecast you get on the third day of your camping holiday in Taleacre - this isn't getting any better, is it ToTP?
ReplyDeleteSister Cheggers is a fine Pops presenter but she is doing it tonight with Smile-In-The-Voice who is the antithesis of a fine Pops presenter.
At least we begin with a bit of a good un. Depeche Mode were never my favourites but this is one of their best - all clangy and hammery, but its a fine tune with a nice line in counterpoint harmony ( or something). But they do drop points for the appalling rhyming couplet "people are people so why should it be - you and I should get along so aw-full-y".
The Weather Girls video is cheap as chips and thankfully is quickly curtailed.
Shaky drinking in the Last Gasp saloon. This sounds like a lot of other songs, but nowhere near as good as any of them. Time, I think, for my namesake to exit stage left.
Culture Club. Someone else running out of ideas is Boy George as he heads willfully towards the total pile of pish that is The War Song. This isn't quite as bad as that, but it certainly isn't helped by the terrible video.
Cherry Oh Baby. Everything that could be said about UB40s descent from hip, left-wing rabble-rousers to this chicken-in-the-basket cover band has already been said. I would just like to add that, from my viewpoint, its a great shame they couldn't - or wouldn't- maintain that initial glorious period.
Sade bores again and Mr Richie is at number 1.
Another week - another low score. The Depeche chappies were the pick of the bunch and ( the unseen in this edition) Bananarama came a close second, but the rest were useless. 4.
Sister Cheggers did ok but she was saddled with a double-denimed Powell and that is enough to see her marooned on a score of 5.
PP and Janice get to know each other a little better prior to becoming a couple, though PP was apparently more interested in Sade on this occasion. He still seemed fairly subdued, certainly compared to his ever-enthusiastic co-host, but at least this time he did actually look as if he wanted to be there.
ReplyDeleteThe Mode are back in the studio for our opening performance, which starts unpromisingly but gets better as it goes along. Dave and Martin both seem to be suffering from a bad hair day, and I was intrigued by the piece of corrugated iron near the back of the stage with PUS written on it - were the band suffering from an acne problem at the time? The Weather Girls next, with CSO effects that make those in early 70s Doctor Who look like the height of sophistication in comparison - still, a fun enough video, I suppose.
Shaky delivers a standard-issue Shaky performance as he trots through this pleasant but formulaic little ballad. Culture Club then proceed to muck around on a giant game board, with Roy Hay seemingly determined to upstage George with an outrageous mullet which may have served as an inspiration to Pat Sharp. It didn't quite look real to me though, so I am wondering if he used extensions. This is the weakest single from Colour By Numbers in my view, but it still has a decent chorus. However, it would be all downhill for the band from here, and the flashbacks to earlier videos do in retrospect look like an acknowledgment that their glory days were coming to an end.
Robert De Niro's Waiting is apparently about a woman trying to forget about an assault by retreating into a world of fantasy. This is perhaps hinted at in the opening kerb-crawling scenes of the video, but it ends on a nice upbeat note as the "mafioso" turns out to have a pizza delivery in his violin case - a much more enjoyable twist than the grisly one Lionel subjects us to later on! UB40 plod on with a release that is pretty much interchangeable with dozens of other from them, though I did quite like the underlying synth sound on this. They looked uncomfortably squashed on that small stage in the emergency studio - presumably the Beeb was still suffering from industrial problems at this point, and indeed the 5 April show would not be made at all due to a strike.
As Angelo mentions, the Sade performance is so identikit I don't know why they bothered coming back in, but at least they get a bit more room to breathe than UB40 did. Another video to close out, as Phil Fearon takes advantage of not being confined to a tiny stage to do both a flip and a cartwheel, in between harassing his "coconuts" in a record shop...
didn't the chorus of the bananarama song go "robert de niro's waiting, talking italian"? well, mr de niro was only italian-american on his father's side (and i've just discovered that he left both his wife of non-italian descent and son when the latter was only two years old, as a result of coming out as gay!). so i would say given his upbringing it was highly unlikely that de niro actually spoke any italian!
DeleteI suspect you're right that Mr De Niro does not speak Italian in real life, though as the song is about a fantasy version of him, I guess he could do anything in this context!
DeleteRobert De Niro speaks Italian in the movies The Godfather Part II and 1900, so presumably he knew enough to get by.
Deletei don't know exactly how much italian (if any) that de niro spoke for real, but apparently he employed his renowned method-acting technique to learn how to speak the sicilian dialect required in "godfather II" - to the point of even living in sicily for 3 months
Deletethe way, even de niro's father was half-irish, and the man himself had none of the olive-skinned complexion associated with mediterranean types... to the point where he was known in his youth as "bobby milk"!
Incidentally, this show went out on a momentous evening for Doctor Who, as Colin Baker made his debut in The Twin Dilemma part 1 and promptly alienated half the audience with his appalling dress sense and his attempt to strangle his companion in a fit of post-regenerative psychotic rage. This really marks the moment when the old series began its slide towards cancellation, even though it did limp on for another five years.
ReplyDeleteA reasonable episode this week. Shaky would score a deserved No.2 with this well-crafted Billy Fury soundalike, which was penned by the same team that came up with The New Seekers' hoedown number 'Good Old-Fashioned Music'. You don't remember that one? It was the song that featured Lyn Paul on skiffle board - check it out on YT.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, Culture Club - aided and abetted by unseen keyboardist Phil Pickett, formerly of Roxy copyists Sailor - come up with a memorable salsa-flavoured lament for American popular culture and society. Indeed, the song's original title was 'It's America', as bama points out above, but this was presumably altered in order not to alienate Culture Club's growing Stateside audience. As John G states, however, the band had now peaked. Does anyone on this forum remember hearing the keyboard riff somewhere before? That's right - in Gilbert O'Sullivan's 'Matrimony'!
UB40, now boasting two tambourine players, turn out a competent if unspectacular cover of Eric Donaldson's Jamaican reggae smash.
Hollywood storytelling aside, whether you love or hate Lionel Richie, you cannot deny his songwriting talent. His support act on tour around this time was Tina Turner - who may have stiffed with 'Help', but would conquer the world with her next single release.
"Matrimony" got oodles of radio play but didn't even chart over here, which surprised me.
DeleteIt came out in 1971 but wasn't released as a single until 1976. By then Gilbert had fallen out of fashion (bar 'What's in a Kiss' in 1980).
DeleteI think Matrimony is a hideous song, but Julie is right that the keyboard riff is very close to the one on It's a Miracle.
DeleteJanice seemed to be bringing Pete out of his shell this episode, which was sweet.
ReplyDeleteDepeche Mode with their hippy-dippy lyrics and decidedly non-hippy-dippy sound, sort of like a cutlery drawer being booted around a kitchen floor. One of their most popular tunes, I like the shared grin between Dave and Martin, and as mentioned one of the most awkward rhymes ever in the chorus.
The Weather Girls with one of the most expensive videos ever made. OK, maybe not. I hope those men had a soft landing, or it would be carnage out there in the streets.
Shakin' Stevens, the novelty hadn't worn off for the record-buying public and he would have even more hits to come. This sounds like a cover of a 50s original, complete with Buddy Holly pizzicato, and is really rather pleasant on the ear. Shaky remains unchanged in performance.
Culture Club, here's a better video, simple idea but it's highly amusing, plus everyone in the band gets to play dressing up for a change. As for the song, it does sound a lot like the wringing the last drop from the album sales, not bad but not inspiring either.
The 'Nanas menaced by the cast of Mean Streets, or facsimile of, such a serious song gets a curiously lighthearted punchline, but who doesn't like pizza? Quite stylish, this one, cheap but well presented.
Oh, there is someone else in the studio, it's not all videos, here's UB40 with their working men's club (ironic!) version of yet another reggae hit. The song survives the rendition, but again, why not listen to the original?
More Sadism in the studio, what a huge mouth she has. At least Pete enjoyed it, I'm already finding it difficult to stay interested.
Lionel, ah, here's the punchline! Still makes me laugh. Any suggestions for which 80s footballer the bust looks like? Better get used to this one.
Phil Fearon going the Madness imitating route with his video, as so many British acts did if they wanted to project a fun image. Hard to see with the audience in the way, but was that Tony Blackburn making an appearance on the screen? Is that why they cut back to the crowd at that crucial moment, to avoid embarrassment?
I've forgotten who Lionel's bust was compared to but wasn't it Nick Hancock who made the observation.
DeleteThere was a reference to the Hello video in this blog about a statue of Ronaldo unveiled this year:
http://www.radiox.co.uk/funny/statue-ronaldo-madeira-airport-reactions/#bFIYLJHrbU4hmulg.97
was the lionel's bust look-a-like brian kilcline?:
Deletehttp://www.whoateallthepies.tv/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/@BeardedGenius-panini.jpg
Worth waiting for? Well it was better than the previous week’s edition and the producers must have heaved a sigh of relief when Billy Joel went down a few places!
ReplyDeleteHosts – They’re cute together I thought. Quite a contrast to the stern John Peel and unfunny Mike Smith.
Depeche Mode – People are People – Not the best single every released but quite good, but don’t mention the haircuts!
The Weather Girls – It’s raining men – The hosts seem to adore this but I absolutely detest it!!
Shakin’ Stevens – A love worth waiting for – Sounds much like many early 60s hits instrumentally but it’s very catchy and SS continues his run of popularity.
Culture Club – It’s a miracle – No it’s not.
Bananarama – Robert De Niro’s waiting – I just love this! Great video. Feel-good finish and don’t the girls look great? I remarked on their make up on the studio appearance a couple of weeks ago and it’s fabulous again in this.
UB40 – Cherry oh Baby – Hadn’t they run out of singles to release from the ‘Labour of Love’ album yet??
Slade – Your love is King – Sorry, Sade! Can’t get into this still. Sorry Mr Powell….
Lionel Richie – Hello – So good. Had completely forgotten that the final emotional scene started up the chorus again after the record had ended.
Phil Fearon – What do I do – Ok, so it’s not so bad after I dismissed it a couple of weeks ago. Good disco, dance fodder. The video is great though! Where was it shot I wonder? What Record Shop was that? I thought it was Tony Blackburn THX.
Dr Who – The Twin Dilemma – As noted by John G, this is probably the worst story ever made. Colin Baker’s debut and he got very cross with the ‘Dr Who Magazine’ for printing a readers poll in full many years later where this was voted least favourite story by magazine readers.
I was never a fan of the Colin Baker era. But I thought everyone said Warriors Of The Deep was the worst ever episode with the cumbersome/laughable Myrka monster and only one survivor at the conclusion who The Doctor rather cruelly left on the planet on his own.
DeleteHere is the DWM Readers Poll that I was referring to, conducted in 2014:-
Deletehttps://theparadoxcycle.wordpress.com/2014/05/31/doctor-who-magazine-474-2014-poll-results/
Timelash and Time and the Rani are also regularly touted as "worst stories ever". The former (another CB story) is truly dire, apart from a scene-stealingly hammy turn from Paul "Avon" Darrow. The latter certainly has the worst-ever regeneration scene, as Colin understandably refused to film a farewell story after being sacked, so Sylvester McCoy had to don a blonde curly wig and pretend to be his predecessor while a crap effect was applied to obscure his face!
Delete....and of course, let's not forget that the companion was Bonnie Langford for this 'memorable' regeneration!
DeleteI stopped watching Dr Who when Colin Baker took over - the series long story they did the following year (Trial Of A Timelord?) was truly awful. Paul 'Avon' Darrow, mentioned by John, would've made a fine Master - just the right amount of charm, hamminess and nastiness.
DeleteI hated Colin's Doctor at the time, his rudeness and bombast coming as a nasty shock after that nice Peter Davison, and I also abandoned the show (although I jumped ship before The Trial of a Timelord). Watching that era in full recently, I have now come to the view that Colin was a decent actor let down by some bad scripts, characterisation decisions and a truly hideous costume, and it's fair to point out that in more recent years his Doctor has enjoyed a very successful second life in a series of audio plays. I agree that Paul Darrow would make a great Master - it's not too late...
Deletepaul darrow ruled as avon in "blake's 7"... to the point where nobody was really that concerned about what happened to the titular character. although he of course didn't write the line, the way he responded to a query about what happened to somebody or other by sneering "i don't know... and i care even less!" was a classic avon moment!
Deleteby the way, colin baker made a memorable guest star appearance as a rather manic villain called "bayban the berserker" in a later episode of the show - could that have played a factor in securing his role as one of the timelords?
Colin Baker had already been a Time Lord on Doctor Who before he was the actual Doc (just like Peter Capaldi had been on the show in another role). But apparently he got the job because the producers met him at a party and he was a great and funny raconteur, so they thought he'd be good in the part. He might have been if they hadn't made some of the nastiest and tackiest TV of the 80s with him.
DeleteAvon quote for me is "Do it... and do it now!" - usually aimed at the hapless Vila
DeleteMy favourite Avon performance was towards the end of the run when he wanted to throw Vila off a spaceship (I think the episode was called Gold). Brilliant performances by Paul Darrow and Michael Keating. If I remember correctly, John 'Fred Eliot off Corrie' Savident was one of the baddies in it.
DeleteSteve - the episode you have in mind is called Orbit, and Darrow is downright chilling in that one.
DeleteWilberforce - Colin Baker's B7 character was called Bayban the Butcher.
Thanks John. I can remember the Baker episode too, City At The Edge Of The World. Avon makes no bones about the likes of Tarrant being dispensable in it.
Deletesorry john - i know a guy who claims that's one of his favourite B7 episodes and always refers to the character in that manner, so i assumed he must have been correct!
DeleteNo need for apologies - "berserker" might have been a better name, anyway!
DeleteYou reminded me of a WWE wrestler in 1992 called The Berzerker who took on The Undertaker, and tried to stick a sword in the Undertaker while lying on the canvass during the gruelling 5-minute match:
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbmFm7fZXXw
thanks dory, but the only wrestling that interests me is the old 70's "world of sport" saturday afternoon bouts ("greetings, grapple fans") featuring the likes of mick mcmanus, kendo nagasaki and catweazle. like many the highlights for me were the tag team events, and in particular those that featured "the royal brothers"...
Delete...Who were Bert Royal and Vic, er, Faulkner.
DeleteMy personal fave was Les Kellett, a joker who was as hard as nails to boot.
as i suspected: they were actually brothers, but burt didn't use the family name. here's the full story:
Deletehttp://www.boltonrevisited.org.uk/p-vic-faulkner.html
i remember les kellett, although like jackie pallo (who had much the same act) he was in the autumn of his career by the time i watched him. my favourite solo wrestler was mark "rollerball" rocco as although (or maybe because?) he was a "baddie", he was also possibly the most atheletic and talented of the lot and i don't think was ever defeated. in the mid-70's it still had a good balance of serious action and entertainment, but of course it eventually turned into out-and-out panto with the likes of big daddy and giant haystacks - which in the end was probably what killed the goose that laid the golden egg!
Looking at those programmes, I had to 'Wiki' where Arthur Negus was this week as it wasn't the name of a Womble, and it turns out Temple Newsam is a Tudor-Jacobean house in West Yorkshire with grounds landscaped by Capability Brown.
ReplyDeleteMention of British Caledonian Airways in "Question Time". Memories of when they
took Brighton and Hove Albion, the team they sponsored, to the FA Cup final in a suitably logo-heavy helicopter.
Good thing it wasn't Arthur Negus enjoys Capability Brown...
Deletehosts: i never knew janice and pp were "an item"! i once went out with a woman who without make-up rather disturbingly reminded me of her brother - did pp feel likewise and that he was shagging cheggers?
ReplyDeletedepeche mode: pet hate. next!
weather girls: housewife classic (© noax). next!
shakin' stevens: pet hate. next!
culture club: a so-so single and a rather pointless one given the album sold strongly and there were already three big hits from it. the tragedy here is that the best cut on it by miles was never even released as a 45 in this country, a classy piece of funk-rock called "miss me blind" where roy hay demonstrates his love for the isley brothers - especially in the guitar solo!
bananarama: nothing more to add
UB40: another dull cover. next!
sade: in the interests of finding some old recordings of ms adu & chums old funk band pride, i have discovered several lo-fi demo and live tracks as proffered on the internet by the original drummer featured here. he was very much the pete best of the band in that he was jettisoned quite early on (in his case replaced by technology and session drummers) whilst the others went on to become multi-millionaires. and not surprisingly he hasn't been too happy about it since, to the point where he has litigated with sony who own the rights to the "diamond life" album he was involved in (and where some of not all his contrubutions have been wiped and replaced on consequent re-issues of it and/or tracks used in compilations!)
lionel ri(t)chie: housewife classic (© noax). next!
phil fearon/galaxy: nothing more to add
in summary: with only two exceptions (and my comments there barely relate to the actual singles themselves) there was practically nothing of interest for me on this show whatsoever, and so didn't even bother making the effort to find any of it on yt to watch. so definitely a contender (if not outright "winner") for worst show in the run so far!
I wonder of Janice ever went "pop" the way Cheggers did? Perhaps Peter Powell can tell us.
Deletebama i think you're better off asking janice, as unlike her pp seems to have dropped off the sleb radar these days. whilst doing a "where are they now?" internet search for pp i came across this bizarre three-second video of him on yt, with someone rather hilariously noting that he looks like john lydon nowadays!:
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xN_-7TeyVzg
Ha, you don't have to give me credit every time you use that phrase, wilberforce (very kind of you, though!)
DeleteAfter all, it was me that coined 'Toppotron' years ago which I'm delighted that everyone still uses!
I agree "Miss Me Blind" was one of Culture Club's better tracks. It made number 5 in the USA, but I don't think it even reached B-side status in the UK.
Deletethis edition was so dire that i thought i'd rummaged in the lower regions of the charts that week to see if there were any gems there that never got a mugshot. sadly there wasn't much to write home about in that respect either, the best being this rather quirky dance track which seemed to peak at no. 90 (the charts had apparently been extended to a top 100 by this point):
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8j2ej5jqQw
That's a good track, and it appears on 80s Electronic compilations from time to time. Their later non-hit 'Bakerman' is even better.
DeleteSlightly off topic but for anyone interested David Hamilton has written a book about Radio One. As it's about his time there I guess he won't reveal whether Janice ever went pop (Bama) but there might be some insights into some of the older TOTP presenters.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if 'one take' Hamilton will mention his Rod Stewart intro gaff 'The Killing of Georgie Fame' after his drink was spiked?!
DeleteI'd forgotten about that!
DeleteThe shows have been steadily getting worse lately, and this is the first one for a fair while to not only get multiple 'FF's during playback, but the 'DELETE' button at the end of it.
ReplyDeleteNot helping proceedings is Peter Powell who (and I meant to mention this last time he was on) has now gone back to his awful OLD habit of emphasising completely THE wrong word.
Depeche Mode - The hardcore fans really love the mid-80s stuff from around this point on. I don't to be honest. This one is OK, nothing more.
Weather Girls - The silly video does at least make this song's presence more tolerable.
Shaky - Like many of his singles, nothing particularly wrong with it but I can't get excited about it either.
Culture Club - Average fare with a memorable video at least.
UB40 - Absolutely bloody dreadful.
Sade / Lionel Richie - Zzzzzzzzzzz
Galaxy - Another daft video. Is he trying to hype his record in the charts? It's something that was quite easy to do back then, as The Pinkees proved not that long ago. That's definitely Blackburn on screen, and the late version included an extended dance section after the credits had rolled where personally for once I'd rather they'd given us more of the video!
I didn’t realise PP and Janice were an item either!
ReplyDeleteBest song of the night for starters, though I agree with the views on the clunky lyrics. Dave’s hair looks like Pepe Le Pew meets Black Lace, he must have given his leg drumstick whiplash, and the set looks like Steptoe and Son’s yard.
A real timing error on that Weather Girls vid, where they say it’s going to start raining men just about half past ten but the studio wall clearly shows early doors they’re reporting on the 10:50 news! I need to get out more.
A very early Adam Faith backing vibe tucked away in Shaky’s effort, which I felt was decent standard.
An enjoyable Culture Club vid, complete with loads of dosh followed by a board segment (shown upside down) naming the record label who’d signed them.
Were those pizzas delivered to Bananarama from the same place as Joanna’s fried eggs? They looked horrible.
The start of the era of jerk-chicken-in-a-basket dull as ditchwater reggae covers from UB40.
Talking of Dull, here’s Sade again.
I love the thought that clay sculpture’s of Coventry City hard man Brian Kilcline!
So, Phil – “What Do I Do” to get higher up the charts? Target a chart store and DJ and hype the song? How about trying a better song for starters? And could you at least take those clips out of your hair for once so we can see how boingy it is?