Would you buy a second hand Top of the Pops from this man?
01/03/84 (David Jensen & John Peel)
Matt Bianco – “Get Out Of Your Lazy Bed” (17)
A buoyant start to a bouncy show and the song boing boinged up two more places.
Van Halen – “Jump” (20) (video)
Leaping into the charts with their first of two top ten hits, Jump being the biggest reaching its apex at number 7.
Alexei Sayle – “Ullo John Gotta New Motor?” (35)
Alexei goes from 0 to 60 in about 1 second flat with his dance routine and drives his Motor up twenty more places in the chart!
Soft Cell – “Down In The Subway” (30) (video)
Their final single which peaked at number 24, but edited out of tonight's 7.30 showing.
Break Machine – “Street Dance” (11)
Their dancing was obviously not quite up to Alexei Sayle's standard, but they didn't do too shabbily, and Street Dance went up to number 3.
Wang Chung – “Dance Hall Days” (42)
Performing their only hit and it peaked at number 21.
Slade – “Run Runaway” (10) (video)
Going all Highland fling, with a bit of gurning thrown in for good measure, Run Runaway went up three more places.
Nena – “99 Red Balloons” (1) (rpt from 16/02/84)
At last we have a number one to watch again! The first of three weeks floating at the top for Nena.
Julia & Company – “Breakin’ Down (Sugar Samba)” (38) (audience dancing/credits)
Their only top 40 hit, peaking at number 15.
📺 Watch Alexei Sayle attempt to persuade BBC Breakfast Time to broadcast the video for ‘Ullo John! Got A New Motor? #TOTP [ARCHIVE CLIP] pic.twitter.com/2Kg9cTo3YQ
— BBC Four (@BBCFOUR) July 7, 2017
Next up is March 8th.
I remember buying the Alexi Sayle record when it was first released in 1982. He also did a funny Dexys spoof called Pop Up Toaster as Alexi's Midnight Runners.
ReplyDeletehosts: looking very smart in their tartan dinner jackets (was there any particular point in doing so?), although i don't think that combination of black and yellow is particularly appealing. also, was there any reason for the extremely unfunny "nothing french" intro?
ReplyDeletematt bianco: could it be that basia only does scatting because her english wasn't very good at that point? and yes as someone has already pointed out, either she's particularly tall or mark reilly is particularly short. but despite that and his facial defect he's still one of the coolest guys to ever appear on the show
van halen: ironically given their reptuation for having the world's greatest rock guitarist in their ranks, this is very synth-dominated (i remember once actually working out the riff in question, having found the exact same patch on my own synth!!). although obviously eddie and dave hog all the attention, i always thought the bass player had some presence in an understated way as well
alexei sayle: i never understood the appeal of this guy, as in my view he was simply aggressively ranting and not humourous in the slightest. nor did i see any point in this rather-laboured observation of mockney stereotypes a la minder. i was once strolling down oxford street when he walked past me, wearing the same ill-fitting mod-style suit that he used in his act - and looking equally intimidating!
soft cell: oh dear, it seems a long way from 1981 and their glory days for them now. this rather simplistic and rocky effort actually reminds me of the doors, although i don't know if that was their intention or not. i can't make out if it's a badly-programmed drum machine, or someone actually playing real drums badly!
wang chung: despite their american success and chinese-sounding name, this was a bunch of brits who originally called themselves huang chung (after the sound their effects-heavy guitar sound supposedly made). but when they started getting noticed in septicland having failed to gain any interest here, they were made to change that to a more phonetic spelling by their american label so that punters didn't have trouble buying their records! i did hear one of two earlier efforts of theirs and thought they sounded quite interesting (i must make an effort to check their albums out), but this was a big disappointment
julia & company: one i remember hearing at the time and thinking it sounded pretty cool. but i never actually acquired it, and when i heard it for the first time since then about 1o years ago i felt it very much showed its age. apart from making the title extremely clumsy, i have no idea why it has "sugar samba" in parentheses as it contains about as much samba as the average modern romance record (i.e. none), instead being a fusion of then-contemporary dance music and jazz that doesn't quite gel. and the melody is somewhat limited and repetitive to put it mildly!
I think the Francophobic rant was due to England's footballers (who had already failed to qualify for Euro 84) suffering an embarrassing defeat to France the night before this show went out. Plus ca change...
Deleteit was around this time that england fielded what was considered their weakest-ever team at that point, with journeymen like john gregory and sammy lee being roped in to fill the midfield/playmaker roles. of course, that team probably now looks like world-beaters compared to what's available to play for england these days!
DeleteFrance beat England 2-0 shortly before this show and there was also a French lorry drivers strike.
DeleteIt seems remarkable in retrospect that Bobby Robson survived all the way to Italia 90, given how poorly England did early in his tenure (they of course also flopped at Euro 88). He did have to regularly run the gauntlet of tabloid abuse, but if he had held the job 20 years later I don't think there is any way he could have survived failure to qualify for a tournament.
Deletei believe the reason bumbling bobby didn't get the sack after the 86 world cup was only because england rallied after making their customary poor start and scraping through the group stages. but that was wasn't down to his tactical nous, as he insisted on making the united "pedigree" pair of captain robbo and butch wilkins his midfield fulcrum whilst ignoring peter reid - who had not only won the league with unfancied everton the previous year, but had also been voted the fourth-best player in the world. and reid (plus fellow evertonian journeyman-made-good paul bracewell) had to wait until robson and wilkins were sidelined through injury and suspension respectively, before helping transform england from no-hopers into potential world-beaters!
Deletesorry, i should have put butch "the crab" wilkins - as he was nicknamed for having the habit of passing the ball sideways rather than forward!
DeleteAnyone remember Butch Wilkins very unpolitely asking the ballboy to give him the ball back in very close range to a pitchside mic during a dreadful goalless draw against Morocco in the World Cup?
Deletewas that part of the same incident where butch got sent-off for chucking the ball at the referee? if so, then three cheers for the man in black!
Deletealso, does anyone else remember when butch (or rather plain old ray by this time) gained a bit of extra fame for his unique "non-plussed" style of match-commentating, to the point where he did a parody of himself in an ad for some fizzy orange drink?
I got the game wrong. Boo boo boo! Ray Wilkins' famous "Gi'us the f#cking ball!" comment happened in a friendly away to Chile in 1984.
DeleteI remember the "Relax!" - "Don't do it!" routine, I thought it was very daring! Ah, youth.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, Matt Bianco up first, maybe this is better if you think of it as a pop record and not a jazz record? They seem to have acquired an invisible drummer - or couldn't he fit on the postage stamp-sized stage?
From no drums to way too many drums, seriously, how many of those skins would actually come in useful? But Van Halen with their most recognisable record, oddly as Wilberforce mentions synth-based with the odd guitar interlude. David Lee Roth showing off how bendy he was distinguished this from the average performance video. Must admit I preferred the follow-up, but you hardly hear that.
Alexei Sayle, a novelty record which like Jasper Carrott's Funky Moped it was suspected people were buying it for the B-side, which was Mr Sayle yelling every swear word he could think of, and yes, he did go as far as the C. As for the A-side, it was incredibly stupid, but it does make me laugh, which is more than can be said of many a novelty record. Alexei's crowning achievement will always be Stuff, which was hilarious.
Hmm, Soft Cell were edited out of the late showing too, a cock-up in the scheduling perhaps? Because I couldn't see anything unduly offensive about it, unless you were a fan of The Creatures and objected to Marc and Dave ripping off their sound.
Break Machine, it's a pity they didn't leave the Cortina for this lot to gyrate around, just to show Alexei how it's done. Were those prescription sunglasses?
The lyrics of Wang Chung's hit unsettled me as a kid because I couldn't work them out, was he suggesting some kind of contortions? Hearing it now, I'm still not sure what they were on about, but this had a sleek 80s sound which was presumably why they were bizarrely asked to provide the soundtrack for the action thriller To Live and Die in L.A., thus dating the movie far more than any of the fashions in it.
Yes, the Slade video for Run Runaway, trying to out-Scottish Big Country - did anyone ever ask that band what they thought of this? Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and all that. That caber will have someone's eye out.
And Nena finally get to the top, with a repeat showing of her (their?) previous appearance. Was that Paul Naschy on the guitarist's T-shirt? Don't think it's Christopher Lee.
As the audience dance in a confined space, we hear Julia and Co (any relation to Legs & Co?) with the very fast singing and a jolly little tune, quite pleasing this one, should have gone higher.
i was labouring under the delusion that "to live and die in la" was a michael mann film (it was actually directed by william friedkin), as it has his traits of flashy style-over-substance and (then considered groundbreaking) noisy rock music used as the score instead of something of a more refined nature by specialist soundtrack composers. the latter (which presumably also influenced tarantino?) is a real no-no as far as i'm concerned, to the point where i won't even watch any such films as a result if i can help it!
DeleteTo Live and Die in L.A. was reminiscent of Mann's TV show Miami Vice, it's true, but it's mostly remembered for Friedkin's attempt to outdo his French Connection chase by filming a pursuit the wrong way along the motor- sorry, freeway. It's a fantastic sequence and worth sitting through the rest of it for. Star William Peterson was poached for Mann's Manhunter the following year (he's probably most famous for nine billion episodes of CSI now).
DeleteThe Rhythm Pals are dressed like a couple of faded music hall comedians, but they largely play it straight and keep the joking around to a minimum. Their best bit by far was the sly, ban-baiting quotation from Relax that they insert into one of the links.
ReplyDeleteMatt Bianco make for an uninspiring start, and the men look very slappable in their preppy white trousers and buttoned-up polo shirts. Van Halen had been huge in the States since the late 70s, but it was only now, and for a fairly brief time, that they penetrated the British consciousness. They were evidently trying to keep up with the times by adopting such a synth heavy sound, and it certainly creates a memorable riff that stuck in my four-year-old head at the time. I don't think the song has aged that well though, and the chummy goings on in the video belie the fact that relations between Dave Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen were deteriorating badly - Roth would leave not long afterwards.
Like THX, I thought that Alexei Sayle's Stuff and his other BBC2 sketch shows could often be very funny, but this is pretty painful to listen to. The performance is impressive for the energy Alexei puts into it, but as you can't see his eyes it also feels weirdly impersonal and even a little bit disturbing. As has already been noted, Soft Cell were for some reason left out of the late showing as well, but YouTube reveals this farewell single to be a decent effort, even if they move in the opposite direction to Van Halen by minimising the synths in favour of a heavy percussive sound. The video is simple but effective, with Marc wearing a t-shirt saying "Skins" some 23 years before the TV series of that name was conceived...
The Break Machine guys are back, though it's not until very late in the performance that they actually do some proper breaking - something to do with the small stage, perhaps? The singer makes the bizarre decision to wear some comically outsize shades, which I doubt would have encouraged people at the time to see them as much more than a novelty act. Wang Chung prove in their performance why they never really broke through over here. The song itself occasionally threatens to burst into life, but is too muted to ever really get going, and the singer has a rubbish haircut and is also very ugly.
Slade of course are no great lookers either, particularly when Nod decides to gurn, but they certainly knew how to knock out a great tune. This good-natured video positively wallows in Scottish stereotypes, but is no less enjoyable for that. The number 1 then gets featured for the first time in 6 weeks, before Julia and Company are assigned playout duties with a fine dance number - Mr Oversize Shades from Break Machine notably gets on down with the audience here...
Agreed regarding the Alexei Sayle drivel here. I must admit I was focussing on the tall leggy miniskirted lass in the audience dancing behind him, i.e., the one with the very skimpy orange miniskirt, who I thought was the best performer on this track.
DeleteI remember Alexei Sayle's Dexys parody, which I much preferred to his only hit.
ReplyDeleteI also remember 'Wholly Humble Heart' by Martin Stephenson & The Daintees; despite being afforded a fair amount of airtime on Radio 1 in '88, this finely executed if somewhat restrained offering did not enter the Top 40. Both its chord progression and its intermittent guitar riff reminded me very much of 'Dance Hall Days' - which has stood the test of time.
Wang Chung may have been bigger stars in the USA than at home, but at least singer Jack Hues' son Jack Ryder has become well known in this country as an actor and, more recently, a film and theatre director.
Soft Cell's final hit (excluding reissues) was actually penned by Jack Hammer, aka Earl Burroughs - who has a co-writing credit on 'Great Balls of Fire!'
i was wondering why the wang chung singer had a different surname from his son (who i'm not familiar with by the way, but then again i stopped watching "eastenders" decades ago), and i've discovered that his stage name jack hues was a pseudonym and play on the french expression "j'accuse"!
DeleteI just checked out the Soft Cell video on YouTube. Marc is wearing a tee shirt with Skins on the front - which was a photography book about Skinheads published around this time - while Dave appears to be channeling Ralph Richardson from the 1939 film Q Planes with that bit of business he does with this walking stick.
DeleteSomething strange is happening. Acts are appearing once or not at all whereas not so long ago we had (say) three showings of Gillan who were hovering in the low 20s with ‘New Orleans’. Here we’ve reached the stage where the excellent Billy Joel single ‘An Innocent Man’ has reached no8 and somehow not been featured, Henry Mancini’s excellent ‘Thorn Birds’ theme has been repeatedly ignored and Cyndi Lauper and Queen have featured just once with landmark singles. Instead we’re treated to two dreadful singles; Wang Chung outside the top40 and something truly irritating from Alexei Sayle.
ReplyDeleteMatt Bianco – Get out of your lazy bed – Nice picture of the band on the back cover of the single sleeve. Single is about the right length for the novelty sound not to wear off but I don’t think I could stomach the 12” extended version.
Van Halen – Jump – So are you in the Van Halen or Pointer Sisters camp? For me this record is an absolute classic of its kind and the thing that really makes it complete is the excellent guitar and keyboard solo capped with that drumming. Just wonderful. The American record buying were spot on putting this at no1 for five weeks, but at least we didn’t miss out totally in the UK. I’m definitely with Van Halen. The parent album ‘1984’ had a controversial sleeve showing a winged toddler smoking.
Alexei Sayle – Ullo John gotta new motor – Awful novelty record. Alexi redeemed himself a year or so later in ‘Revelation of the Daleks’.
Soft Cell – Down in the Subway – Had to track this down on YT and it’s the video that was shown and more Dr Who effects in evidence. Looks like Marc is being repeatedly exterminated. Soft Cell definitely ‘waving goodbye’ by this stage.
Break Dance – Street Machine - …or was it the other way round? Didn’t wait to see.
Wang Chung – Dance Hall Days – So how did this get on the show? Was Billy Joel not available or his video not yet shot? Jack Hues the lead singer would collaborate with Tony Banks from Genesis in 1995 on the ‘Strictly Inc’ album featuring the epic ‘An Island in the Darkness’ which showed off his vocal skills a lot better than this somewhat tuneless track. In fact I liked the album so much I penned a review on Amazon back in 2002 as ‘A Customer’ and it’s still on there!
Slade – Run Runaway – I liked ‘Runaway’ by the Corrs years later but that song lacked the power of this little beauty. The video in Scotland is superb too, despite Noddy seeming to have a gobstopper in his mouth!
Nena – 99 Red Balloons – Repeat, so nothing new to say, other than after 5 weeks of not seeing a no1 we finally get back to normal.
Julia & Co – Breaking down playout – Not a favourite.
Hosts John and David (teamed together yet again!!!) are presumably premiering the ‘King’ look 10 months early. That’s where their hearts yearned for obviously…
I have to agree I find it totally mystifying that - spoiler alert - Billy Joel's "An Innocent Man" (wonderful song in my opinion) didn't get a single scheduled outing on TOTP, even though it spent three weeks at number 8. Coupled with the fact that "Tell Her About It" only got one showing, and that was when it was already at number 4, it makes me wonder if Mr. Joel had ruffled someone's feathers at the Beeb.
DeleteCyndi Lauper was plain unlucky - she got shown on her second week in the top 30, shot up to number 2 the next week then tumbled behind Queen (when a non-move might have prompted a re-showing) and that was it. Had Cyndi been shown on her first week in the mugshots, it could all have been so different.
I notice in this week's episode of Preacher an extended scene of extreme violence was soundtracked with Mr Joel's Uptown Girl. Difficult to tell if the producers were Billy fans or not from that.
DeleteThe Slade video was actually filmed at Eastnor Castle in Herefordshire, not Scotland. On a display board in one of the main rooms, they still mention the fact!
DeleteAlso, I'm not sure Billy Joel ever made a video for An Innocent Man.
Seriously...another week and another song goes missing from the late night rpt. This time it's Soft Cell.
ReplyDeleteAnyone got a link to the full version?
It was featured in saturdays repeat as it was a 35 min one.
DeleteIt's crazy to think that the Saturday repeat has the full version of the show which was not represented on the Thursday late showing. Seems like we need to record both the Thursday and Saturday late repeats in order not to get caught out.
DeleteThe R Pals are wearing jackets last worn by Madness in the video for Embarassment. Not sure why but they look quite dapper.
ReplyDeleteMatt Bianco return and seem to have had an argument with their sax player who is either on a different stage somewhere in the studio or only on film. This performance is slightly better than the last but I'm still distracted by the singer's uni-cheekbone and the the throbbing vein on keyboard player's head. No wonder he shouts at one point.
The video for Jump which we have already seen in the JK US chart segments. While I hated the image of the band I did have a soft spot for this superb slice of soft rock. Oddly as the lyrics are about suicide I'm surprised that this wasn't banned but the BBC were always very slow for picking up these things.
Nice to see Alexi Sayle in the chart with his comic rap clearly revived because of the repeats of The Young Ones.I like his spoof of Break Machine's dance moves. Interesting that he name checks Billy Joel in the lyrics, when this record was first released in 1982 Billy Joel was in a fallow period but this re-release was well timed as Billy was of course back in the charts.
Which leads me to wonder are there any other chart records that mention other number one artists? And even more specifically - any number one hits that mention other number one artists? I can think of at least one.
Break Machine return and seem even better the second time with some seriously impressive body popping and break dancing.
There are a lot of film and TV related records in the chart this week - Mel Brooks, The Fraggles, Henry Mancini and the Bolero and thankfully they don't opt for any of those because we would no doubt not be allowed to see them due to rights issues (the videos would be bound to include footage) so instead we have Wang Chung. I really liked this at the time but never understood the words. I thought he said "we were cool on Christ" which was quite daring for a pop record to use religion but it seems he sang "we were cool on cries".
The Slade video is quite funny, I wonder if any of it was supposed to represent Scotland? A lot of mugging going on here for no obvious reason. Noddy in danger of morphing into Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson at one point.
Nena and her band topple Frankie at the top and we play out with Julia and Co with a song that had slipped from my memory but is quite good and a great track to end with.
Not sure why Billy Joel hasn't been featured yet, or Soft Cell for that matter.
The obvious number one single mentioning another number one artist (as it wasn't long ago in this re-run) is the reference to Johnnie Ray in "Come On Eileen". You could say The Beatles did it twice, with "Lady Madonna" and "Ballad of John (Lennon) and Yoko". To top it all, there's Doop, whose number one hit title was also their name.
DeleteWere the tartan dinner jackets possibly an extension of Noddy Holder's previous clobber for Slade's Skids rip-off single?
I'm assuming Bolero was there because of Torvil and Dean and not Bo Derek? Although... had Torvil and Dean seen 10 before making their choice of music? And Bo made a film called Bolero in 1984 too, though it featured no ice skating.
Deletei've never seen "10" (mainly due to being perplexed by the hysteria over the braided bo derek), but i'm pleased to say i was introduced to the magnificence of "bolero" (i get such a thrill when it modulates at the end!) a year or so before those renowned "sportspersons" torvil and dean brought it to the attention of middle-aged housewives throughout the nation. that triggered a dim memory that nick beggs of kajagoogoo fame did a pop version of it in the 80's, and this was confirmed with an internet search. i'd never actually heard this before - and listening here, i rather wish i hadn't now!:
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C44QkjuvPcI
i am presuming the mel brooks effort in question is "to be or not to be"? i remember the video being shown on "the tube" which caused a bit of a stir at the time with its nazi/s&m imagery and mr brooks strutting about as the fuhrer. listening again all these years later, take mel out of the equasion and it's really funky in a kid creole way. but in actual fact the mastermind behind it is none other than our old chum peter sutcliffe - sorry, pete wingfield of the olympic runners!
DeleteTHX - yes, Bolero was there because of T&D, who famously won their Olympic gold on Valentine's Day 1984. It will be on the show very soon, though BBC4 viewers will not get to see it.
DeleteArthur well done, re Number one hits that mention other number one artists, it was Come On Eileen I was thinking about. I suppose you could also stretch it to include The Young Ones' Living Doll where Rik mentions Cliff. A near miss is Wizzard's Angel Fingers which name checks Dion who had a number one in the USA.
Delete...others that immediately come to mind are Marvin Gaye (Charlie Puth), Christina Aguilera (Eminem's The Real Slim Shady) and Freddie (Mercury) (Mika's Grace Kelly).
DeleteReading the comments I've just realised that the BBC only showed the full version including Soft Cell on Saturday and of course I missed. it (I am going to have to record ALL broadcasts of each ep in future in case they do it again).
ReplyDeleteCam someone upload the full version on a file sharing site or Vimeo?
Van Halen's 'Jump' was significant in being the first 'serious' use of the Yamaha DX7 keyboard. It had already become established in several lightweight, fluffy, annoying pop records but this turned it into a serious rock instrument. A similar baptism occurred with the 'clap trap' (Gary Glitter, Pilot and later Stars On 45) when it was used by the Eagles in 'Heartache Tonight'.
ReplyDeleteWang Chung: anybody else remember the computer company called Wang back around that time? It seemed such a ludicrous name back in the 1980s but now of course we've got Google.
The football team for my neighbouring town were sponsored by said computer company and had "Wang" on their shirts for a couple of seasons, as indeed did Oxford United. How we laughed.
Deletedon't forget that around this time brighton & hove albion fc had the rather unfortunate sponsor name of "nobo" (stop sniggering at the back)! and even more amusingly, one of their players was dean saunders, whose first claim to fame before going on to success with liverpool fc was being photographed in their team line-up with some of his genitalia in full view - although sadly it appears to be more a case of bollock exposure than "nobout" ho ho!:
Deletehttps://thegoldstonewrap.com/2013/07/18/dean-saunders-leaves-himself-exposed/
and on the same theme from the same era: i remember watching "the tube" and jools holland cracking this then-topical(and still highly amusing in my view) gag:
Deleteq: what happens when you wear russian underpants?
a: chernobyl fallout!
harking back to 20th's reference to the yamaha dx7: although i never owned such a synth, i once tried to use one in a studio my band of the time was recording a demo in. it was the first digitial synth on the market, and was supposed to make its analog predessors obsolete. but unlike those where you just fiddled about with various knobs and sliders until you found a sound you liked, the only way of programming it was using a tiny multi-level menu option LED screen (a bit like phones and stuff now). of course, unless you were einstein it was hopeless trying to imagine sound as bits and bytes (which was certainly the case for most musicians, myself included), so everybody just used the pre-programmed patches - which is why so many records from the mid-to-late 80's have the same synth sounds on them!
Deleteok I'm gonna expose myself as a synth nerd here and say that Jump actually used an Oberheim synth, which is an important distinction as the DX7 was the first of the new generation of digital synths and the Oberheim was a traditional analog synth (though extremely powerful and much sought after now that the digital-is-better notion is long dead, mainly for the reason pointed out by wilberforce.)
DeleteRegardless though, there's a period for two or three years from where the repeats are up to now where the DX7 will become ubiquitous, to the point where it wasn't usual to see two of them once for some bands. One of the nice things about these repeats are that they allow you to closely follow the order in which things happened; I was therefore interested to see who was the first person to actually get a DX7 on-screen on TOTP and I believe it was Howard Jones on 8/12/83 (the synth on top of the piano, correct me if I'm wrong...)
*wasn't UNusual, I mean... I should really register here properly so I can fix my typos afterwards.
Deletei've never considered myself a synth nerd (as with cars and computers, my view is that although they are extremely useful as a means to an end - but i don't give a flying fuck how they work!), but at this time i used to borrow a roland juno 60 analog synth for use in the bands i played in (on which i once fiddled about to get a fair approximation of the "jump" sound, that was a fairly standard synth noise of the era). after the ballyhoo over the new digital synths making such things obsolete, roland replaced that with a digital synth of their own (i fail to recall the model in question, but drykid may be able to help). but after punters complained they couln't work out how to alter the settings, they then backtracked and manufactured an analog-style bank of knobs and sliders that you could connect to it as an attachment!
DeleteThe Yamaha DX7 was soon followed by the Roland D-50 (which might be the synth you're thinking of) and the Korn M1; the technology varied but they shared the same limitation of being tough to program. Eventually they started creating digital synths with banks of sliders and controls to match those on analog synths (the rather OTT-looking Roland JD-800 for instance.) But by that time the prices of old analog synths had started rising again and suddenly"virtual analog" became the next big thing. But I digress...
DeleteI think most musicians see synths as a means to an end, and like yourself don't really care too much what they use as long as they get the sounds they're after. And that's how it should be really. But there's also a lot of collectors out there nowadays too, who are often more concerned with owning things than actually palaying them. And those are the ones who push the prices of old analogs up to silly values.
Korn=Korg *sigh*
DeleteThe Clap-Trap is name checked in the original 12 inch version of Frankie's relax.
Deletei had a roland sh-09 monologue synth that cost me about £200 (!) in the early 80's, and kept hold of it for many years afterwards. in fact i would probably still have it now, had i not made the mistake of loaning it to some band that got it smashed up when their van collided with another vehicle! although i got the lion's share back of what i originally paid for it through the insurance claim, i would still rather have kept the synth as it looked really cool and made some great noises!
Deletehttp://www.synthfind.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/roland-sh-09.jpg
Thanks for the info drykid, I just assumed it was a DX7 because it was 'that sound' (a faintly accordion-like quality) which was common at the time. Was it a DX7 on the Pointer Sisters' song of the same name? And - jumping the gun a bit - what's the synth used on Maria Vidal's 'Body Rock'? That one is another real period piece.
DeleteOn the subject of Wang - although I have no recollection of them, it was around this time that we got our first home computer, which appropriately enough (keeping with the Chinese theme) was a Dragon 32. I spent many happy hours playing games like Donkey Kong, Frogger and Crazy Painter on it until the joysticks packed up a few years later. The main problem was that the game tapes were often very difficult to load - unless you had the volume setting on the tape recorder just right, you would just get endless error messages on the screen.
Deletei remember an episode of "frasier" where he wrote and directed his own play for his radio station, and the sports broadcaster (who was a jock in more ways than one) was asked to play a chinese character called "mr wang" - which had to be changed to "mr wing", as the guy kept sniggering and cracking up whenever the name was mentioned!
DeleteCurates egg episode.
ReplyDeleteSoft cell video should have come with a health warning! Never seen that before. Not sure I remember the song but it was quite good.
Huang Chung - Was this the first tine they featured a 'just outside the 40'? Perhaps they expected it to do better. I misheard 'in phase' as 'in France' - thought that that explained all the France references :-) - presumably there was French strike at the time?
Slade - Noddy was a bit manic. They didn't seem to putting much effort into miming in time, though.
The Doctor Who story being broadcast that night was "Planet Of Fire" which saw the exit of almost totally forgotten K9 replacement Kamelion. Clearly the Slade number should be seen as a tribute to the shape shifting robot/android/whatever.
DeleteBad karma, Kamelion! I'll get my coat.
DeleteIn a massive coincidence, the lyrics to 'Run Runaway' could be misheard as 'See Kamelion lying there in the sun, all things to everyone, run runaway' which as a summary of the plot to 'Planet Of Fire' is pretty good!
DeleteI'll watch this show when I get a chance (family life being hectic and fecking painful right now) but I will say that the Alexei Sayle tune showed a simple way of trying to avoid rhyming couplets - just repeat the line again!
ReplyDeleteThis is another episode with the last link trimmed (when you see what they cut it's getting quite surreal as to the BBC's logic, frankly. Usually you could argue they don't want to confuse people with references to upcoming episodes they'll be skipping, but that doesn't apply here.)
ReplyDeleteAnyway luckily Neil B has provided the full version:
https://www.4shared.com/video/CMmZwwozca/TOTP_1984-03-01.html
And I've now done my usual thing of editing the cut material into the BBC4 HD version:
https://www.4shared.com/video/CMmZwwozca/TOTP_1984-03-01.html
Thanks Neil and Drykid - I now have the full version with the Soft Cell video and the JK mention.
DeleteThe Beeb are getting ridiculous now, and are so hypocritical. Their HQ is a building designed by Eric Gill, a self-confessed paedophile:
https://antagonise.wordpress.com/2012/10/26/jimmy-savile-the-bbc-eric-gill-lessons-in-hiding-in-plain-sight/
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/apr/09/eric-gill-the-body-ditchling-exhibition-rachel-cooke
And in the last week I saw a documentary where David Dimbleby happily celebrated the work of composer Benjamin Britain who famously had more than a passing interest in teenagers.
Thanks for this, always a treat to see a Peelie show, even though he seemed a bit restrained on this one.
DeleteGreat music from Van Halen, Wang Chung, Slade and Nena. At the other extreme was Alexei Sayle - sorry, never did rate him. I can remember someone saying at the the time that all he did was piss about and there's no talent in that.
Looks like the BBC have at last got a colour video projector. It's noticeable that it's nowhere near as bright as the old black & white Eidophor, which is presumably why that lasted for so long. The 1970s 'Toppatron' was, I believe, just a blue screen which didn't actually display an image in the studio?
Oh and while I'm at I always assumed that the previous restorations I've done (of which there are quite a few now) could be easily located by going to 4Shared and typing "TOTP" in the search box. That's how I've always found Neil B's uploads, but it doesn't work for mine. You'd think it would be some kind of public / private setting in my profile there, but try as I might I can't figure it out.
ReplyDeleteAnyway I've created a separate link page to all the restorations that I'll keep up-to-date. So if you use the link below you should be able to find all of them in one place:
https://drykid.github.io/
Advert over!
Time for Record Label Ramblings With Arthur Nibble.
ReplyDelete“Ullo John!“ and the Dexys spoof “Pop-Up Toasters” (the latter complete with dance moves on the back of the sleeve) were two of the three singles I know of released on the Springtime label, through Island, the other being “Classical Mudley” by the famously dreadful Portsmouth Sinfonia which reached number 38! The original three releases (Alexei’s hit being a re-issue) had unusual label designs in that the company had two logos, both imprints featuring solely on the B-side labels.
Right, that’s enough – start the car!
pop star ex-members of the portsmouth sinfonia were brian eno (they were featured on one of his albums) and the synth player from blancmange...
DeleteAlexi's other Midnight Runners (on the sleeve of the single at least) were none other than Rik Mayall , Nigel Planer and Ade Edmonson. Not sure what happened to them.
DeleteJust listened to Pop Up Toaster by Alexei Sayle, it didn't quite take over from The Twist as the hot new dance craze, did it? Gotta wonder what Kevin Rowland thought of it. He's famous for his great sense of humour, so probably loved it. Ahem.
ReplyDeleteOh, yeah, according to my friend the greatest thing Mr Sayle ever did was that Ford Cortina documentary for Arena. Which is excellent, it's true, but I still prefer Stuff.
DeleteI noticed there has been no Shakey Shakerson on this blog for quite some time. I wonder if he has stepped off our bus, or coming back at some point? Any other regulars missing recently?
ReplyDeleteI hope Shakey's okay. I still miss WeddingSuit, the bassist from Brendon.
DeleteCome on Shakey show yerself! If I can do it, you can too.
DeleteDid anyone else think The Rhythm Pals’ jackets were a bit of an “Embarrassment”? Ahem.
ReplyDeleteMatt Bianco – get off of my hazy screen!
Proper metal attire on David Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen. Special award for probably the biggest drumkit yet and surely the highest number of bass drums.
If Alexei Sayle’s motor was new, I think I’d sue the manufacturers. Interesting attempt at break dancing which came over more like ‘the dying fly’.
Some more top drawer acting by Soft Cell’s David Ball. A strange video and a strangely alluring track in my opinion.
Mister Red Break Machine is shown as having a teeth brace on the BBC iPlayer screen shot. Their dancing was way inferior to last time as they concentrated more on miming, but at least they had matching headbands, which pleased me.
No redeeming features to Wang Chung, who surely mistyped their name and meant the G’s to be K’s.
Noddy Holder showing more than a passing resemblance to Charlie Chuck (“Donkey!”), also known as Uncle Peter in one of the Reeves and Mortimer series.
Absolutely no recollection at all of that Julia and Company track. It made Shakatak sound like Van Halen. Now, Gill Saward in those trousers...
Arthur - I already made the Madness connection with the tartan jackets. No one gave a monkeys when I said it.
DeleteBreak Machine nicked the matching headbands idea from Alexi Sayle (see cover of Pop Up Toaster single).
Bama, I'd seen your comment and I was doffing my hat to you.
DeleteThank you kind sir.
DeleteI'm still trying to work out exactly why the R Pals were wearing those tartan dinner jackets. If they were opposing the French win over England then why wear something Scottish?
bama i see what you mean about alexei's midnight runners being a big influence in da 'hood in the bronx or wherever it was that break machine came from - not!
DeleteComing to ITV ad breaks the following year - Ian Dury voicing "Hello Tosh, gotta Toshiba?"
ReplyDeleteWell 'Hullo' everyone. Sorry about my recent hiatus - I quite foolishly committed myself to a writing project with fairly stringent deadlines that I thought I could meet without too much interference with the rest of my life.
ReplyDeleteTurns out I was wrong.
But it's done and normal service can resume, and can I just say I am mighty pissed off that I have missed my chance to comment on some fantastic singles in the past two months.
Anyway - March 83 already I see, and presumably our loveable European neighbours were up to their usual Gallic nonsense, at least judging from Monsieur Peel's opening gambit.
Tonight's opener is Matt Bianco, a group I never ever got round to liking. The jazzy piano riff kind of annoys me as does the 'badoobiedoobiedoobie's on the backing vocals. Kudos to Basia for giving it a good go performance-wise but Mark Reilly gives lethargy a bad name.
Next up on video the preposterously-coiffed Van Halen. Another group I have no interest in. This, their biggest UK hit, leaves me cold. I think its the 80s synth that does it, although the lyrics "got my back against the record machine" also grate. What record machine is that then Mr Roth? A jukebox? Record Player? Or was he ahead of his time in comparing the music industry to a machine?
Alexi Sayle with the annoying 'Ullo John' maintains Merseyside's dominance of the charts. It's a crap song (although the line 'Hes an Avon representative' makes me laugh) but Sayle does perform it with lunatic vim.
Break Machine. A decent-enough disco sound which obviously hit bigger than it should have because of the short-lived break-dance craze. The whole gamut of street dance moves are present and correct, the most impressive of which was the spinning-around-on-one-hand bit.
Wang Chung changed their spelling from Huang Chung cos Americans are too thick to pronounce foreign words correctly and promptly had a hit with this. We Brits were less enamoured and I think this is their only Pops appearance. Reminiscent of Men Without Hats/Nik Kershaw and as such deserves no further comment.
Slade nick Big Country's bagpipe-guitar effect for another of their patented festival singalongs. A rare video from them as well and a pretty decent effort too. Well played lads.
The gorgeous Nena at number 1. Saw her recently on (I think) the Pops 1983 programme and whilst she has aged pretty well, there is something a wee bit sad in seeing her look so young and adorable in this vid. A vivid example of what time does to us all.
Julia and Co take us out with a so-so effort which the crowd seemed to enjoy. Even if I didn't.
Right then to the scores. The Rhythm Pals were on fine form and look as though they have this presenting lark all locked down. Neat stuff inbetween the acts and they steadfastly refused to interact with the people around them (hello Reg from The Bill). They drop a point for Kid's 'Hitsville' thing (Or was it 'Chartsville'?) Either way the Russ-Abbot-dressed pair cop for a mighty 9.
Bit of a disappointment music-wise. There's some cracking tunes around, so I guess last week's edition would have been better. Nothing here that I could say improved my life or made it worse. 5
good to see you back on the chain gang shakey!
Deletethe huang/wang chung name change reminds me of when the james bond producers changed the original title of the second timothy dalton film from "licence revoked" to "licence to kill", as they were concerned that septics had no idea what the word "revoked" meant". plus of couse it also helps to sell a film to a gun-crazy nation with the highest homicide-ranking in the "civilised" world if it has the word "kill" in it...
the irony is that in more recent times the bond franchise released something called "quantum of solace", which even i as a uni graduate can't make sense of - never mind the average trailer park trash!
i thought in the totp 1984 doc that nena went suspiciously far in trying and make herself seem younger than she actually looks now (darkly lit, wearing shades and more make-up than max factor). i suspect the way she's going, it won't be long before she ends up looking like annie nightingale - yikes!
DeleteFair point, although having said that I'm not sure Gladys Knight singing "I've had my license revoked" would've worked so well...
DeleteI haven't seen a new Bond film for years (got sick to death of the megalomaniac-trying-to-destroy-the-world plot being used used for every single movie), I'm guessing with the daft names they have these days that they've given up trying to put the film titles into the songs.
Welcome back, Shakey!
DeleteWe get to see the Wangers once more with this track. They never made it onto the show with their song which contained the lyric "Everybody Wang Chung tonight"!
Probably the most notorious example of a film's name being changed is the "III" being dropped from "The Madness of King George," in case Americans wondered why they had never seen the first two films!
DeleteQuantum of Solace is a genuine Ian Fleming title, deriving from a rather weird short story in which Bond isn't an active participant, but is told a sad tale about a marriage breakdown by another man. Other Bond story titles that have never been used in the film series are "Risico" and "The Hildebrand Rarity," but I would guess that the producers probably wouldn't think either of those are sufficiently Bond-like.
'Quantum of Solace' is one of the short stories in the 'For your Eyes only' volume. So yes, that title was just used for the sake of it as was the parent volume title for the Roger Moore film. Ian Fleming would never written about Blofeld being scooped up by a helicopter and dropped down a chimney!
DeleteI expected 84 to be disappointing and I am fast forwarding through at least 50% of each show now. Ah well...
ReplyDeleteMatt Bianco are still a bunch of wankers.
'Jump' I probably like more now than I did then, but the Alexei Sayle song just gives me a headache. It's not remotely amusing, but I did enjoy his 'Stuff' series, especially Scouse comedian Bobby Chariot - 'How ya diddlin'?'
The first Break Machine performance was better, possibly because they didn't have to mime as well. And the comedy glasses definitely didn't help.
Wang Chung I like very much - they can only have been on because someone dropped out though. If it's not Billy Joel I'm not sure who it could have been, unless they were waiting for a 'Bolero' clip.
Slade & Nena are both enjoyable, Julia & Co were not particularly. And it would have been nice to see Soft Cell so well done BBC4 for that one! (and no, I'm not seeking out the Saturday repeat just for that)
regarding the matt bianco saturday superstore incident, i once knew a guy that worked at the beeb who told me so-called "live" programmes like that actually had something like a five-second delay so they could take the show-off air in the event of the unexpected happening. he was one of those responsible for monitoring such shows, but i don't know if it was him who allowed the "wanker" comment to slip through the net or not. but no doubt whoever did was an incompetent dolt that only got the job because their dad worked there!
Delete