Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #56 (Part 4): 25.12.1983 – Oh Dear!! A Bat Bit You

Episode Date: January 8, 2021

Finally, the Gang’s all here when the Rock Expert pitches up, and the journey into the heart of the 1983 Xmas Top Of The Pops goes on. Adam Ant’s crown begins to slip, The Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boys from Quality Street look upwards, Bucks Fizz get all hard-hitting and mature, an American police officer has a bit of a dance, and Carol Kenyon makes your dad drop his Satsuma… Video Playlist | Subscribe | Facebook | Twitter | The Chart Music Wiki | Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. The following podcast is a member of the Great Big Owl family. This will certainly have an adult theme and might well contain strong scenes of sex or violence, which could be quite graphic. It may also contain some very explicit language,

which will frequently mean sexual swear words. What do you like to listen to? Um... Chart music. Chart music. Chart music. Chart music. Hey up you pop crazy youngsters and welcome to part 4 of episode 56 of Chart Music. Here we are, well here I am, in the cellar. Actually quite a nice place to be if you're thinking about serious things.

You might be asking why I'm here on my own. And, well, it's because everyone else involved in child music, so that's Sarah B, Neil Kulkarni, Simon Price, Taylor Parks and David Stubbs, they're all in the house. And having you in the house as well means that we're now breaking the rule of six. So we decided that one of us had to self-isolate, and they all decided it should be me. So, let's kick on. Let's take you back to...

Hang on a minute. The Rule of Six isn't even a thing anymore. And I'm the host of this podcast. And this is my fucking ass. And Boris Johnson is a cunt. Oi! Where is that? Nah!

You bastards! The movie was Flashbacks The lady who was doing the dancing was Jennifer Beale And of course it was Irene Cara A guy who's had a great year in 1983 And the state's hand in this country is over here It's Adam Ant and his Pussy Boots. Born Stuart Goddard in London in 1954,

Adam Ant is Adam fucking Ant. After scoring two number ones and seven top ten hits from 1980 to 1982 as the overlord of the insect nation he split the ants up last year kept marco peroni as his right hand man and immediately scored a number one with goody two shoes in june of 1982 after the follow-up friend or foe got to number nine for two weeks in October He closed out the year with Desperate But Not Serious Only getting to number 33 in December At the beginning of this year, he assembled another band around him Consisting of former members of Fingerprints and The Q-Tips And commenced a tour of America

Which was cancelled for two months after he suffered a knee injury on stage in Cleveland and he spent his downtime working with Peroni on his second solo LP, Strip. This is the lead cut from that album and his first new material for nearly a year. It shot straight into the charts at number 21 at the end of October and took two weeks to get to number five and here he is in the studio with his new band and their very new shiny leather trousers. Nils mentioned quite a time or two that you know he always wonders what Mark Boland's early 80s career would be like if he'd lived and I looked at this and thought hmm I stroked a chin and sucked a thoughtful tooth yeah i'd ask

him but he's over there with his head into a big bowl of crisp so i'll ask you instead simon i i've interviewed adam um a couple of times and i've i've worked with him um on a couple of things and um one thing that he's often mentioned is that he's probably one of the few artists of his generation who's not influenced by David Bowie he's quite anti-Bowie he quoted this thing to me that one bit of advice McLaren gave him Malcolm McLaren gave him was you'll never learn anything from Bowie Sonny and I can kind of understand what McLaren was getting at in that all Bowie was was the sum of stuff that he'd learned from other people which you can probably say by a lot of artists but the point being that for Adam Ant it's all about Mark Bolan he's such

a huge Mark Bolan fan in fact these days his gig usually finishes or at least encores with a cover of Get It On. Yeah. And you can see that, that he wasn't a neuromantic star. He was a glam rock star. He was maybe, you know, the sort of last glam rock star. And this record,

it's kind of a glam rock record. It's an 80s glam rock record, not in the sense of Motley Crue or anything like that, but it is almost what would happen if someone like, well, I'd say Bolan, but it's almost more basic than that. It's almost Alvin Stardust or dare I mention Gary Glitter. What would happen if somebody of that level who made those kind of really sort of rudimentary

glam pop records was thrown in a studio with an 80s producer because one of the big changes between the Ants and this is in the drums obviously you had the whole tribal Burundi thing on Kings of the Wild Frontier in 1980

which is a very organic and very physical sound but here he is in 83 Phil Collins on drums on this album. Production from Hugh Padgham. You can hear it, can't you? Yeah. Hugh Padgham producing.

Hugh Padgham, one of the pioneers of the gated drum sound, that reverb technique that ended up dominating the second half of the decade. I'm normally not a fan of that gated sound. I don't mind it here because it kind of works with that almost nouveau glitter band sound that'sated sound. I don't mind it here because it kind of works with that almost nouveau glitter band sound that's going on. It's kind of literally pantomime here because, you know,

Puss in Boots. But previously, Adamant videos had essentially been pantomime, you know, Dick Turpin and Prince Charming and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. And here he is sort of kind of reprising or resuming that aspect of of his of his career um i i remember the time not really loving this record um i was thinking oh well you know he used to be kind of good but this is i wouldn't switch the radio off if it was on but i'm not going to rush out and buy it either.

No. But I have to admit that having watched this episode, it's just stuck in my head. I've been walking around going, boots, Puskats, bursting out everywhere. Puskats, Puskats. Yeah, yeah. It's very, very catchy, I've got to say. It is somebody nearing the end of their chart relevance,

but it's not a bad one by any means, I would say. No, not at all. Yeah. Before I talk about Adam Ant, so I'll just mention Get It On. I've had Get It On in my head for the last week, and I was thinking, why? I haven't played that record for about a year.

And then it struck me last night. I opened the fridge, got out this bottle of Sainsbury's balsamic dressing, and it says on it, tangy and sweet. I've been seeing that every day for a week, and it planted Get It On in my head subliminally. But, yeah, the obvious problem with this record. You've got a ton of telegram spam you covered and we got is this the humor we're going for now

solid gold peasy action yeah all right see it's just it's low humor it's low humor anyone can do it but yeah the problem with this record yes yes, is where to go, right? Where to take this. That's the thing. I mean, for a start, he's at that ominous point in any 80s pop star's career where he's just trying to slightly tone down the flamboyance, right? I mean, only slightly. The video to this is just as crazy as his earlier videos.

But it's not as lush and carefully styled. It's like he's trying to get a bit more natural and raunchy. And they all did it at some stage, all these 80s people. And it was always right at the point when they were just over the hill. He's still very image orientated. So he's trying to play up that kinky naughty side of the ants right which was always there but he's trying to turn that up whipping my valise and all that stuff yeah yeah yeah but it's now he's trying to use that as a replacement for the impact of the

full pirate outfit right but for some reason adam was never less sexy than when he was trying to be explicitly sexy yeah and never more sexy than when he wasn't yeah maybe i haven't thought about that last bit at all i just said it um but it's it's interesting but it is slightly painful to watch this struggle to to change and progress like an artist yeah you know not that adamant is inferior to a a great artist i'm not saying that but it's you can't it's not the same it doesn't the thing that makes all those ants records so amazing obviously is the way that they use rhythm almost as melody and the melody is just like a weird garnish on the side of the rhythm um and on these solo singles there's a bit of a pulling back from that because the the

brunji drums is an old sound now but they haven't got a replacement idea so what you end up with it's just a simple pop song which is not that amazing because it ain't got a brundy gimmick it's it's still all based around the beat and the percussion because that's all they can do yeah uh but the beat and percussion is less exciting strangely despite the presence of phil collins so it all sounds a little bit second rate by comparison to the earlier records. And he obviously knew it because the next thing you know, he's doing Apollo 9 and trying to sort of retreat a bit back towards that old sound. It doesn't work.

Like it never does. On a song named appropriately enough after the most boring of the Apollo missions. It's the one where they just went into low Earth orbit and tested the lunar module docking and undocking procedure, which is really the short straw to have drawn if you're an Apollo astronaut. Well, apart from Apollo 1, obviously. So what you hear on this record are all these attempts

to take this non-song and do whatever's necessary to liven it up. And I really appreciate the lack of preciousness there um if you want to look at it that way and the lack of fear about appearing gimmicky which is never something of which one could accuse adamant but i just don't think it completely comes off you just end up with all these stop start bits and hysterical mannerisms and all these like restless key changes you know trying to keep it interesting but the strain is showing and it's not a bad record but it's not a particularly good one yeah and you know you have to say it sounds like time is beginning to run out. It's like, look, you had a great idea or someone had a great idea and now it's gone.

And because of the path you've chosen, you are only what the little girls choose to make. And soon that's going to be redundant. Yeah. And I love Adamant, but that's the way it goes. Part of what was great about Adamant's years is that you always knew it wouldn't last and this was going to happen next. You have a bit of a drop-off where it's not quite as good.

Yeah, the clock struck midnight for Prince Charming. Yeah, and then out on the street within three or four years of his majestic peak. You know, that's the deal. People go on about the jam splitting up in 1982, and that was a huge deal, but Adam losing the ants was also a very significant moment, I think. And initially, he will have thought he made the right call

because, obviously, Goody Two Shoes, massive number one hit, and he probably thought, this is going to be a piece of piss. You know, who needs those ants anyway especially with marco peroni who needs the answer when i can perform with cannon and ball we've already talked about billy jean of course that performance where he does the moonwalk for the first time at that motown 25th anniversary show yesterday today and forever adamant on that singing where did our love yes which is just bizarre yes so he was still sort of he was still box office or at least considered box office by people who booked big tv spectaculars you know big american tv spectacular yeah yeah he's obviously tried to make a go of it in america

this year he moved over there didn't he yeah he's going out with jamie lee curtis at the time so you know yeah there's that i suppose and. And this is the era when Slash, the young teenage Slash, used to babysit Adam's girlfriend's kid. Yeah, you know about all that. But I mean, how much is in a name? Because the ants in their probably final incarnation was basically whoever Adam decided they were.

It's not as if there was this sort of like, you know, timeline that's just four stripes, a sort of red, yellow, green and blue stripe along the Wikipedia page. There are lots of stripes on the Ants Wikipedia timeline, let's put it that way. So really, he could have called this band the Ants and nobody would have blinked.

It's just whatever. As long as Marco Peroni's there, wrote the songs. But just somehow it it just seemed seemed that uh something's missing even though tangibly it's just a bunch of guys yeah and also just as if that sense of being just over the brow of the hill wasn't strong enough his hair is visibly on its way out oh well yes well, yes, it is. I mean, I thought about it. Howie B, right? Howie B had a single in the late 90s

called Angels Go Bald 2. And I thought about this a lot while watching this clip. There's something very poignant, I think, about a good-looking man going bald in the public eye, right? Especially a man who cared a lot about image. And Adam Ant is a very good-looking man,

and he's a man who cared a lot about image and adamant is a very good looking man and he's a man who cared a lot about image and yeah his his hairlines being battered by the recession as so many of us were in 1983 it's like dimitar burbatov yes but in fact in the same way in the in hair loss is always hardest on the chaps with very pale skin and very dark hair because the contrast really accentuates it. But, of course, nowadays a man in his position would have a transplant down Harley Street. He'd take off six months between albums, get it reseeded.

Actually, it wouldn't even be a secret, he'd put pictures on his instagram of him with a purple scalp covered in dots giving a thumbs up you know off to pound his in hounslow yeah yes yeah giving a little plug so they gave him 20 off um because it's all out in the open like you know when you watch football and they've got those pitch side ads that just say hair transplant in Turkey. And there's a little picture of the surgeon and he's called Dr. Cynic. There's a name you can trust.

I know it's not pronounced like that in Turkish. But I spoke to someone who'd been to Istanbul relatively recently. And apparently the city really was full of blokes walking around with bandaged heads sightseeing. Like combining a city break with a visit to Dr. C. But back then, you couldn't really do it. No. And you couldn't wear a wig and you couldn't shave your head unless you were in the National Front or the Flying Pickets. And so he's just got to place it carefully,

use a lot of hairspray and hope for the best. And overcompensate with a mullet so it looks like the old thing's just slid down. Yeah, oh God. And he's right to do it because the early adopters who got those primitive hair transplants, it didn't look wonderful.

Gary Newman's glued on doll hair. The early adopters who got those primitive hair transplants, it didn't look wonderful, you know. Gary Newman's glued-on doll hair. Yeah. Russ Abbott's failure. Yeah. So Adam just held on tight as long as he could and then coincidentally got really into wearing hats. Yeah. I think the really poignant thing about his outfit,

because in this one he's got sort of like a powder blue, sort of like if Show Waddy Waddy decided to go new romantic. Yeah. He's got one of their coats. It's almost a success coat. Yes. It's a partial success coat. Yes.

Yeah. Tied black leather trousers, and he's got a red silk blouse thing with some ridiculously long cuffs. You know, I hope he doesn't wear that when he's on his lathe you say ridiculously i would totally wear that obviously but yeah yeah yeah but the really poignant thing is he's got one earring of a skull and crossbones you just look at it and just go oh you used to be adam and the ants it's a shame because when i started at school there was a few kids there mainly girls in the fifth year who were seriously into adam and the ants to the extent where they

do the adamant logo on their folders and everything and that's a fucking intricate logo to to put together you've got to be a massive fan oh with the well the feathers and the ant yes yeah yeah yeah yeah i mean a jam logo you can piss that out your arse after about 10 minutes practice. But the Adam and the Ants one, that was devotion to the insect nation. Yeah, fair play. And to those people who were into Adam and the Ants at my school, they were the ones who were just, just Miss Punk. And now he's this.

I mean, he's been on the telly the day before. He was on ITV in the afternoon, the Prince Charming review. He's still box office, but more for what he was than for what he is. Yeah. It suddenly dawned on me, if all those Granada kids' pop shows

had still existed in the 80s, that's where he would have ended up. Those Muriel Young, you know, like Get It together and lift off and all that stuff super solid there would have been a home for adam on those programs because that's where all those guys used to finish but even that had been taken away so he had to just go and live in luxury with a fabulous looking girlfriend or whatever he had. It's got to hurt when you're that kind of pop star who has sold millions of his ant music for sex people

and suddenly he's selling ant music for six people. That's got to be tough. So the follow-up, Strip, was put out a couple of weeks ago, hovered up to number 41 but this very week it's dropped to number 53 stripped and getting to the top 40 that's mental and live aid is coming oh yeah well the suits and the knives are coming. Let's get the sketch. We're happy to hear.

I'll be your man. What a wonderful performer. It is nice to be back in men's clothes. In 1983, just one band went straight to number one in the singles charts. Who were they? Duran Duran. That's right. And this is how they did it in March this year.

Please, please tell me now Please, please tell me now Please, please tell me now Please, please tell me now Smith finally up that's the fucking door again Jesus fucking Christ who could that be at this time of night it's none other than rock expert Is that... That's the fucking door again. Jesus fucking Christ. Who could that be at this time of night?

Ah! It's none other than rock expert David Stubbs. Come on in, David. Oh, hello, hello. All right. What kept you? Well, well, well. I thought I'd... Well, I'd look in, as one does.

The snow is gently falling outside, and I'm... It's lovely. Peckish for some cranberry sauce and perhaps a dash of eggnog. You've come to the right place, Dookie. Come and sit on the settee. We're watching the 1983 Christmas Top of the Pops, don't you know? Right, I'm plumped up.

Did you have a good Christmas, Scott? I did. I had a lovely Christmas, actually, you know. Good. Yeah, I got nicely into the spirit of everything. You know, I do sort of feel that kind of like yeasty Dickensian thing coursing through my veins. I sometimes affect to be a Christmas cynic, but I'm not really at heart.

I got into the, yes, the bells jingled and the spirit prevailed. I heard you watch the Christmas Top of the Pops. What the fuck's wrong with you? Yes, yes, I did. I decided to. It's the first time I've done it in years because I've always had this thing,

and it's kind of relevant in a sense to sort of chart music and Top of the Pops, that what we discuss is something that's extinct. It's an era that I often think there isn't really, because there isn't such a thing as Top of the Pops anymore, there isn weeks and weeks it was like it was like a kind of a monsoon you know it was like you know everyone was everyone got wet wet wet you know everybody was aware of it and now nobody is a completely underground concern now whatever's you know charts and so it has that sort of different relationship you know i guess to you know pop craze youngsters and oldsters alike and so yeah so i watched it it was obviously it was covid compromised it was presented by clara and pho and um fern cotton in the kind of customarily inane way but not actually in the kind of despicably inane way that you get with like your edmunds is and your baits with their kind of nun jokes or anything like that it was just

you know just straightforward links but i think what was interesting overall is that it wasn't, in a sense, quite as massively different an experience than the top of the pops of the 80s and 90s in some ways. You had a couple of really cracking tunes. You had absolute rubbish. Even you had something for the mums and dads, i.e. Craig David, you know. I feel so fucking old!

You even had a sort of novelty thing. There was some sort of little beardy, Jeanette Cranky type creature that some Australian busker that had a freak hit. I thought that sort of thing was extinct now, the novelty hit. But no, I think they're beginning to creep back in, it seems. Absolute cracker at the beginning,

Joel Corrin, Eminem, which I really, really like. Just a sort of piece of bouncy sort of housey thing. Just an irresistible hook. I thought it was great. And Eminem has got this wonderful sort of like, you know, kind of queer presence or whatever. And like I said, I'm just imagining my granddad. I mean, if he thought it was seven days jankers

for Roy Wood, I mean, it would have been a sort of, you know, 30 year stretch for this chap. Yeah. And then in between, you know, it's a little bit kind of mediocre you know you've got these sorts of this is horrible the contemporary side of singing that's very enervated and it's just like you know man up i just find slightly irritating then you've got the whole housey things where the the drop is kind of chugging in for about half a mile away around

the hills you know like the little drop that could. And, yeah, and it's really... I mean, the sets and the costumes, actually, I just found were kind of really quite rich. It was almost like, you know, making up for a sort of host of multitude of mediocrity in some respects, but they were all just really quite imaginative and interesting. They were actually very, very good.

I found them quite sort of... But the worst bits for me were when the um the white males coming in and sort of presenting as something slightly superior than pop so harry styles you know he's all grown up he's not in his um um you know his boy band thing anymore he's got a guitar now and he's oh right jamie cullum of course you know who you know descends the kind of you know pop earth but of course he's got a jazz pedigree in this kind of studious blandness. But the worst is like Lewis Capaldi. And apparently he spent 78 consecutive weeks

in the singles charts. I'm about to break in the previous record. Why, yes, of course, Ed Sheeran. And it just means that there's always somebody like that that's sort of willfully anti-style and, you know, that's, you know, ultra sort of hetero, reassuringly kind of white and male and wearing a blank T-shirt if it's just something you throw on. Because of course, you know, that's, you know, ultra sort of hetero, reassuringly kind of white and male and wearing a blank T-shirt if it's just something you threw on. Because, of course, you know, on the one hand, a false modesty or it's just something I threw on. I don't really go for that whole style thing. I'm not very stylish.

isn't that a relief? And, you know, there's that slightly worrying thing, I'm sure Neil would probably be on his high horse, that, yeah, there is a lot of that, you know, there's a counterweight, this miserable counterweight in contemporary pop, you know, to the sort of more outre things that are going on. So that was kind of annoying. So at the beginning, you had the wonderful thing,

you had Joel Corey and Eminek, and then at the end, you've got, like, Lewis Capaldi to reassure us that, you know, all is calm, all is white. Well done, David. Thank you for doing something i didn't want to it'll be the televisual equivalent of going on facebook to look at photos of all the girls you used to fancy at school with um french flag filters over them yeah yeah i guess this was weird is that that obviously top of the pops added a whole dimension to the kind of the pop lives of anybody that was on it. And it's just not a dimension that's available to people anymore.

So, David, Christmas of 1983. What memories are sparking in that keen head of yours? Well, at this particular point, right, so this would be lunchtime, presumably, isn't it, Top of the Pops? It would have been lunchtime. Yeah, two o'clock. About two o'clock. I would have been eating meat for the very last time in my life. I had a turkey dinner, and then that was it. And then after that, I resolved to go vegetarian.

I had a boiled egg sandwich in the evening, which was my, you know, and that was that. I decided to go vegetarian, actually, because me and Simon Reynolds used to hang out a lot, you know, at Oxford. We used to go around sort of various dining halls, whatever. And I just remember one time sitting next to him, and he was demolishing a state and kidney pie with such obscene relish. And it was the most disgusting thing I'd ever seen. There were fibres were hanging off his teeth. It was like a kind of throwback to that. He wasn't teasing it. He was having oral sex with it. Oh, it might have been. It just seemed to me

the kind of, you know, we're recoiling to bestiality basically, and I just thought, we're better than this, we're surely better than this. So I thought, right, I'm going to try out being vegetarian for a bit, and I stuck with it. So yeah, so basically,

as this episode was going on, you know, I was tucking into my last ever turkey dinner and my last ever sort of flesh slain in anger. Poignant memories. Yeah. And then I suppose generally culturally my position, so I'd just started my second year at university. I was beginning to get clubs and things going.

This episode generally i would have seen myself as the kind of the mark of a certain decline or whatever from the high expectations of built up in 81 and 82 you know in fact by this point rather pompously you know and i wasn't shy of telling anybody this that the only things i was listening to were imported funk 12-inch singles and 20th century classical music and And people said, really, Dave? You're great, aren't you? And I said, yeah. Yes.

Well, you know. And your mum said, oh, that's nice, our Dave. Yeah, exactly. Do you want a turkey sandwich? No, I'm afraid I can't do that. Yeah, about this time, my – obviously, you have what are called scouts, basically people who come and clean your rooms.

There was this nice old lady that came around. And during the holidays, because I was into the 20th century classical music tip, you have what were called scouts, basically people who come and clean your rooms. There was this nice old lady that came around. And during the holidays, because I was into the 20th century classical music tip, I'd left behind one of my Stockhausen albums. I didn't bring it back home with me for the Christmas holidays. And while I was away, the first time the scout came in after the holidays, started chatting with me, says,

oh, you know, I'll tell you what you really like. I had played that Stockhausen album that you left behind. I started playing it and I thought it was very interesting. And I was like, you see? You see? The common person gets this stuff. It's just that they're not exposed to it. And, of course, it was all a bloody prank. You know, my next-door neighbour had gone and got it.

I was going around for ages. Vindication, you see. If only normal, ordinary, humble people could hear this music without the mediation of the commercial set. You know, yeah, so I was well and truly pumped there. Yeah, but I think now, though, listening to this episode, I suppose I look at it in slightly different ways. Let us return to it.

Smith, finally out of his widow twanky gear and now dressed like an 80s Buttons, tells us what a performer Adamant is before pivoting to a video of the only single to enter the charts at number one this year is there something i should know by juran juran oh and by the way just a little note for mike smith um first of all drag is only embarrassing if you don't commit so getting out of it halfway through and going, it's nice to be back in men's clothes.

Yeah. All right, mate. And also a scarlet blazer with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows and a dickie bow with piano keys on it. It's not men's clothes. No, it is. It's cunt's costume. It is the costume of the cunts.

We covered Duran Duran in Chart Music No. 39 when they did Careless Memories in May of 1981, and a mere 18 months later, they were catapulted into the top rank of pop, sweeping the board in the 1982 Smash Hits Reader's Poll. In the same month that poll came out, this was recorded as a stopgap single between the Rio and Seven and the Ragged Tiger LPs,

and according to legend was written by Nick Rhodes after the rest of the band were pissed off about another of his songs, Too Shy, giving Kajagoogoo a number one, while Duran Duran hadn't had one yet. Duran Duran hadn't had one yet. It came out in March as the follow-up of Rio, which got to number nine in December of 1982, and entered the chart at number one, knocking Total Eclipse of the Heart out of the box, the first single to do so since Beat Surrender by The Jam four months ago. As they've been too busy playing five dates at Wembley Arena for the first leg of the Sing Blue

Silver World Tour to drop into the studio, here's another chance to see that video, directed by our old mate Russell Mulcahy again. That's mad, isn't it? Duran Duran in 1983 fretting about not having a number one yet, because

by this time, they could have recorded the sound of them throwing a bin down some steps and it would have been a massive hit which is kind of what's happened here i think they only had two british number one and that's ridiculous yeah isn't that insane this is the first one of them although weirdly considering it was their first number one hit this is almost like the forgotten jiran jiran song do you know what i mean it's like it's not so well remembered possibly because it's a little bit unusual for them it's one of the few singles they did that isn't an obvious rip off of mid-70s roxy music um it's got their usual giant drum beat and the the cokie sub funk bits but it's really based around this sort of 60s

guitar riff and you know it's it's just one of the few songs of theirs that sounds like a traditional song rather than something that emerged out of a jam you know i mean i'm not mad keen on it now but i would at the time have truly truly detested it like you know like Hitler or whatever in the sense that I was involved at the time in Oxford in a sort of pop culture war I was running a club that was sort of attempted to be a bit more kind of avant-garde contemporary funk meanwhile up the road in Oxford he had the fucking era club you know which loads of people went to because it was playing the five things that nervous white kids wanted to dance to you know and like capitalist cunts that they were, you know.

And I actually had a confrontation with them. Oddly enough, she was a daughter of John Houston who went to my college. I won't name her beyond that. But she kind of got a bit angry at my kind of defiant avant-garde philosophy, you know, in my club. And she says, suppose I wanted to bop to Duran Duran. It's my right as a consumer to bop to Duran Duran. And you're denying me my rights.

That's so narrow-minded. And I kind of gave a sort of rather windy and pompous, you know, sort of declaration or whatever. But, you know, I play things like, I play Sister Mercy, then Chuddlefunk and Screech and Civil Mind. It was deeply idealistic. And, of course, no bugger came. I mean, really, you know, I was presiding grandly over a kind of you know regular club with a sense of roughly zero um because of my principles you know and i thought that was absolutely right and uh good for you david did you did you dance on your own i did dance on i like like yes of course you did yeah definitely but the thing

about the club i mean obviously i think that a lot of the reason it was kind of on the edge of um oxford town you know beyond the town center and it was a gay, obviously, I think that a lot of the reason, it was kind of on the edge of Oxford Town, you know, beyond the town centre. And it was a gay club. And, you know, there's a lot of homophobia around the time. It was on a weeknight. And it was weird. What happened is if you're approaching, you could see right from the actual sort of door, the entrance door, right up to the DJ booth or whatever. It was a straight line.

And so what happened is, like, the owner of the bloke, this guy called Peter, he'd see people coming. And he'd say, right, get the dry ice going turn the music up you know and so they'd see people would nervously peer in they'd see all this kind of smoke they'd hear these kind of banging tunes they'd hand over their two quid then they'd get in and the smoke would rise and they'd realize they were the only people in the place you know yeah got them so i suppose because of that you know and so for me i mean even listen to it now it it's just, I just find it very big and boxy and empty and clumsy and sort of bereft of that kind of wonderful, skittering nuance that I was used to from people like the Associates and Simple Minds and ABC. It's just, you know, and as Taylor says, it's that very 60s thing. It's almost like, let's try and, you know, strain the buttocks of the mediocrity and shit out something a bit Beatles-like. You know, bow, bow, bow, bow, bow, bow. That's the kind of thing George Harrison might have done.

And I can never get beyond that, I suppose, really. I mean, like a lot of people, like George Michael, I came to like a great deal towards the end of his career and towards the end of his life. And it's similar with Simon Le Bon, actually. I found him very, very likeable in interviews, especially later on. Apparently he felt guilty of not

being a bit more political retrospectively and stuff like that and it was just a yeah he's just a very engaging kind of character i also like slightly later duran duran music but this at the time no i like it a lot yeah and i did at the time in fact it's sort of astonishing how much i like and don't resent the members of Duran Duran as well to me they're a really likeable group and I know a lot of people really disagree I like how

I only found this out recently John Taylor's real first name is Nigel and he was just like yeah well fuck that no John is fine, thanks. I love how Nick Rhodes was the only one with really strong Brummie accent. Of all the members of Duran Duran, he could have sound like that.

It's Nick Rhodes. I love how they got into doing monstrous quantities of coke and never came close to being rock and roll casualties. Man. And I love how they still look great, even though they're all about 91. It's like they're almost as... Have you seen them lately?

Almost as creepily ageless as A-Ha, who are the real child's blood guzzlers of ages. Have you seen A-Ha lately? Fucking hell. Just the same. Just the same as they were in the 80s which is really weird because you'd think that spending six months of the year in darkness they'd be all puffy and sallow but it's something we've talked about before with david essex that thing of being fortunate good looking successful and cocky with it and still somehow coming across as likable and decent company which i think duran managed to do and it's a really tough one to pull

off because it's easy to feel well disposed towards people you really admire who work very hard and were very talented and all all that crap you know. But with Duran, you just think how fucking brilliant it would be to be like these guys. Just enough talent, lots of luck, and very few complications. Just the perfect recipe for a life of pleasure. And you don't begrudge a thing. It's bizarre. But I like this record too.

I really do. grudger thing it's bizarre but i like this record too i really do i just it's not that it's uh you know a milestone in the history of popular music but i don't know what there is to dislike about it i think there was another thing with me when it comes to like you're about this really has a nuclear war come on nuclear war was so four years ago. You come poncing in now. You should have been in there in the basement in 1980. Some bloody girls on film. That was my email address for a while. There was a company that bought up domain names or whatever they are

so that your email could be like, you know, Marvin at whatever name you chose off the list,.com. And one of the ones they had out of the thousands was nuclearwar.co.uk. So I chose that. And so for a while, my email was about as easy as nuclearwar.co.uk until they went bust and.com crashed. All the accounts were just trashed, so everything was lost forever.

I mean, it's a turn of phrase that I've used on my nieces and nephews when they've been playing up. But they don't understand it, though. Thick cunts. What's a nuclear war? It's a wrong lyric as well, you know. Because, you know, 1983, the year of Abel Archer, when we discovered that a nuclear war was quite

easy to sort out yeah you know what i mean you don't have to put too much effort in to start a nuclear war yeah pretty much yes press a button and duck for cover yeah yeah that's true yeah talking to which taylor was asking who would hate Duran Duran. My answer is practically every male at my school. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Fucking hated Duran Duran. Yeah. Only the nice girls from the posh estate were into Duran Duran.

And it's very easy to see why. Number one, they're dead lush. Number two, they've got just enough artiness about them. Yeah. As can be seen in this video. Yeah. They can do all that Channel 4 rubbish and get away with it. But one of the jokes that was going round at the time was, you go up to your mate and you'd mime the pressing of a button

and you'd say, what's that? One of the standard answers was, oh, is it a nuclear war? It's like, no, that's Duran Duran making their next single. Oh, take that. Despite the fact they actuallyuran making their next single. Yeah. Take that. Despite the fact they actually were quite a good band. Yeah, they were an actual band, and they were still getting that shit. Yeah. Someone should have just handed you a bass guitar and gone,

all right, smartass, play Rio on that. Yeah. The other slur as well is that they were obviously all gay. Oh, of course. Yeah, that's why they all had supermodel girlfriends. Yeah. That's what gay blokes do. Yeah, you just can't win, can you, with Duran Duran?

We've got to talk about this video, haven't we? Yes, we must. The only thing I grudgingly admired at the time was the quality of the video. I just thought, damn, this is impressive. The slow-mo walk in those split screens. This will never date. this is impressive they'll slow-mo walk in those split screens this will never date and it's got a lot of emoting upwards which is like the real current thing in 1983 you have the camera above you you have a fan blowing your hair back and you emote upwards and it's very

flattering the angle especially for someone like simon lebon who had to watch his figure um it's like the old myspace bathroom shot you know like camera held up in the air and pointing back down at you instantly lose two stone and one chin yes and yeah you try and look all desperate and pleading like you're fighting your way up from the depths you know and he does it with some real gusto as well and there's lots of awkward steps as well yeah you know one of those where you think oh i can do these steps two at a time and then you realize you need to stretch a little bit more than you first anticipated yeah it's not one of their more expensive looking videos either this one no it's all studio well mostly studio bound

and the bit that isn't is obviously done in like a clearing in a wood just off the motorway outside London, you know. But there's a lot going on in it. All of it bullshit. But I would rather have that bit of sort of pseudo artiness than slushy romantic. Like what you get now, if you have a Duran Duran type band now, it's all lyrics about like if they were going out with you

their fan what you would want them to say to them about I love you so much or oh my last girlfriend really broke my heart and all this sort of stuff Duran Duran you never got any of that it was meaningless bullshit yeah posing as poetry just all the way through which is fucking great and aloofness as well you know as opposed to ingratiation i guess yeah i mean so many of their videos are bullshit with slightly that insulting suggestion that what you're watching does mean something and is somehow part of a larger unseen narrative right like in new Moon on Monday, they're resistance fighters in a fascist Britain or something. And in The Wild Boys, they're like outlaws

in this post-apocalyptic bunch of comet. But this is just a shameless scattering of random bullshit just all over the place. There's no logic to it all and you're just expected to pick the bones out of it like simon lebon dressed as a co-pilot for air columbia wandering around he's got like a a sparse forest of dark prongs rising up out of the floor so he looks like uh he's microscopic uh stranded on a balding scalp, possibly adamant.

He does a sort of pursed-lipped, shrugging face on the line, maybe next year, maybe no go. That makes him look like a young Trump. Have a look. He really does. Yeah, and he goes upstairs a bit too tall for him, like an elderly dog. And he's next to a chair with a pyramid on it,

while his friend fiddles with a sextant. A small boy dressed as Windy Miller carries an orange football through a cot. Businessman in bowler hats, man. Huge clouds of white powder blowing off a table like someone's opened the window in gerund gerunds hotel uh they're fired um the boogie woogie bugle boys from quality street for the with the emphasis on bugle for the uh nuclear war line uh nude baby and computer in dubious proximity that baby could wipe out the global computer banking system with a single swish of his finger think about it man and if you want to feel young that baby is still not 40 oh and a dog snuffles in a briefcase

to get some treats placed there by the video director um and then the best bit is where simon looks momentarily confused as though all this were real like oh what's going on and then you just close with uh token shots of the the drone and worker members of drandra including very briefly the one who isn't good-looking. I mean, this is not just bullshit. This is merda del toro. This is minotaur shit. You have to take off your hat in honest admiration for this.

It's a bit like those Christmas perfume ads, isn't it? I mean, you know, it's all bullshit. It's calculated bullshit. It's just stuff they throw at you that appears, you know, that might have significance. The way I see it, I think Duran Duran always understood that a little bit of bullshit is toxic. And a lot of bullshit, just a fucking raging torrent of bullshit

is kind of spectacular. That's right, yeah. It's still not as good as the Wild Boys video, though, which is my favourite because it's got Rusty Lee in it. It genuinely has Birmingham represent. She turns up on the video screen that the big animatronic head is looking at on her way back from the fire.

It's like the last surviving fragment of the old world or something, you know, from before the event. It's like the last human face you'll ever see. It's Rusty Lee. It's funny, if you do a quiz at that point and say, which person that appears in this video eventually joined UKIP, and you'd be like, Rusty Lee. Fucking hell Anything else to say about this?

You mentioned earlier on about Simon Le Bon and his weight problem He's one of these people that always had this association of fatness He's like Frank Lampard Bloody hell, I wish I was that fat Yeah, it's true Yeah, I know

That is People did it, it stuck to him The other great thing about this record, by the way, is that when you're at school, you could use it as a call and response track so that when he sings, please, please tell me now, is there something I should know?

You could shout back, yes, you're crap. You could always make the lads guffaw. The girls would gently punch you in the arm. It sits alongside those other great call-and-response classics like Do You Really Want To Hurt Me? Yeah. My dad used that a lot.

Do You Think I'm Sexy? Yes. And also, Ah ha ha ha ha, Span a body of gay lords. I know this much is true. I'd say it was like Associated London scripts in our school playground.

The press dubbed our school playground the Laughter Factory. Certainly people would often leave with aching ribs and tears rolling down their faces. Various reasons. So is there something I should know? Spent two weeks at the top before it was deposed by a single that's coming up very soon. The follow-up, Union of the Snake, got to number three in November,

while Seven and the Ragged Tiger spent a week at the top of the LP chart earlier this month. and the Ragged Tiger spent a week at the top of the LP chart earlier this month and they'd have to wait until May of 1984 for their second and final number one when The Reflex spent four weeks there. Is there something I should say That'll make you come my way Do you feel the same

Cause you don't let it go. Oh, oh, oh. Bond pull apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey gooey and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. My mate bought a toaster. We go through celebrities Amazon purchase histories so you don't have to keep calm and love Dom Jolly

novelty key ring and fridge magnets. The G-Spot. The Good Vibrations, guys. Green Dot Laser Sight Rifle Gunscope. I've bought that quite a lot of times, I think. Right, okay. The Sex Doctor's Guide to Keeping It Hot. Oh, interesting.

Did another child come along nine months later? Yeah. Loads of great eps up now, and new ones dropping every Monday. That's My Mate Bought a Toaster from Great Big Island. Round and round for one to two weeks, then they went to Australia for three months, and now they're back in the country doing live gigs. Back in the Top of the Box studio on Christmas afternoon, a box office, sheer glamour, and when we were young.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Bait! On the balcony with similarly tinselled-up youths tells us that Duran Duran have just come back from three months in Australia, where they lost all six Test matches in English cricket's darkest moment. They actually spent the time finishing off Seven and the Ragged Tiger,

filming the video for Union of the Snake, and kicked off the sing blue silver tour there fucking out sing blue silver always annoys me when i see that written down yeah why can't it be our big tour or whatever yeah how about this one duran duran live he reminds us that it's christmas afternoon again and tells us to prepare for some sheer glamour as he introduces When We Were Young by Bugs Fizz. We covered Bobby G, Cheryl Baker, Jay Aston and Mike Nolan's Bugs Fizz in Chart Music 11 when they were at number one with The Land of Make Believe in January of 1982.

Since then, they've had another number one with My Camera Never Lies in April of 1982, but they started this year with their first single, Not To Make The Top Ten, when Run For Your Life only got to number 14 this April. This was the follow-up to that single, which was put out as a standalone track when the band's management, concerned that the group's new lp hand cut hadn't performed to expectations felt it was time to reach for a more adult market to this end they gave front person duties for the first time to jay aston the sex one in the group it was put out in june entered the chart at number 23 and then soared 13 places to number 10 but could only stay there for another week before slithering downward like

jay aston on bobby g in the uh if you can't stand the heat performance and here they are in the studio and i'm guessing this is one of the brief flare-ups of daddisfaction in this christmas top of the pops it's uh it's not gone too well yeah you've got christine keeler sort of sitting on the chair parody there going on yeah yes yeah and of course the old basks business um it's funny i i don't remember this chap from the time um i have to be honest um no it's curious obviously you know what they're considered to be a sort of adult graduation. It faintly reminds me of, like, rather surprising people started doing dystopian concept albums

around sort of 80, 81, you know, when synth pop became ubiquitous. People like Mike Batt did one. Edgar Broughton Band did another one as well about the idea of the kind of global banking system being wiped from a kind of central computer and chaos ensuing. You know, everybody had this, you know, associated, you know, the coming of global banking system being wiped from a kind of central computer and chaos ensuing you know everybody had this you know associated you know the coming of like synths with um

impending dystopia in the mid to late 80s i mean and that's got the kind of feeling and also everything's done up in black and white you know to reflect the binary new binary reality of the future and all that carry on the way they are here um yeah and it's it's it's got that kind of lena lovitch hazel o'connor field with you know and sort of tick tock tick to. Yeah, and it's got that kind of Lena Lovitch, Hazel O'Connor feel to it, you know, and sort of tick-tock, tick-tock. But, I mean, it's weird because the song is about the idea of somebody that's hacked off with growing old, basically,

you know, when we were young. I don't know if it's kind of imagining, though, that themselves in the year 2020, their looks artificially preserved or whatever, but kind of moving in stiff tick-tocking type movements or whatever because they're kind of sort of mechanically preserved in some way i'm not quite sure i mean i like to think that the meaning of art isn't the exclusive prerogative of the creator and it can be open to interpretation on the part

of the listener so i hope i'm not you know but um i know it's either they've done battle in the theater of war when the war is with that implacable foe, time itself. I don't know. And that kind of irradiated feel that you get from the video as well. I'm slightly confused by it, I must admit, in some ways, I suppose, with what I'm trying to say. So, yeah, books for us are trying to reach for a more adult look. And how have they gone about this?

Well, Bobby G has essentially come as the man from Del Monte. Yeah, the man from Del Monte, he says nothing of interest. Cheryl's sat the wrong way on a chair like a cool teacher. Mike Nolan's off to the side in a dinner jacket with his hands behind his back like Prince Philip looking like his family have been made to do a piece at a posh dinner party and he's hating every fucking minute of it

and yeah Jay Aston's gone for the sexy ringmaster look trying to sound like Lena Lovage but oh dear the dart seems to have landed in Larry the Lamb sheer glamour yeah I mean I must say when I saw this seems to have landed in Larry the Lamb. Sheer glamour. Yeah.

I mean, I must say, when I saw this, my first thought was, I thought 9 o'clock news had finished. Yes. I mean, look, they had a major problem once they got sexy and became fucks biz in that only 50% of the group were capable of communicating raunch or even the condition of possessing sex organs.

And even then, only in this slightly strange and corny way, right? Like Jay Aston and poor Mike Nolan could sort of pout and pose. And it was at least possible to imagine them having sex. Possibly not with each other, but, you know, at least thinking about sex. Whereas the others, I mean, Eggs and Baker has got that congenital mumsiness going on. Yeah.

So she's got this, like, carefully styled 1931 Berlin courtesan get-up, slightly undermined by the fact that she's tied some tinsel around her wrist. It's Christmas. I, why not? And yeah,

Bobby G. I mean, the G in Bobby G clearly does not stand for grind or grunt or groan or groin. No, it stands for guppy and it always will. But Jay is absolutely flinging herself at this. Like, finally we're allowed to tackle some adult-orientated material, you know. Yeah, but too adult.

Fucking bit about being dead old. Yeah, but it's like she sees this as a chance to express herself through her performance right and if she's gonna have to dive off the side of this sinking ship sometime soon as she did uh my god she's gonna give this last desperate shot everything she's got you know uh yeah it just so happens that everything she's got amounts to a comical impression of Hazel O'Connor and the ability to pout in half profile one way then turn around and pout in half profile another way

It's four years out of date and four years in the early 80s that's a long long long time it's not like the difference between 2007 and 2011, you know, 80 to 83, 79 to 83 sorry I can't even do my maths, but nearly four years anyway, a long time. Yeah.

Yeah, and Mike just looks like he's serving, like he's bringing a tray over for the others in whatever Weimar Republic Sports and Social Club this is meant to be. Cheers, Mary, which is his actual middle name. Is it? Oh, yeah. Mike Nolan, yeah. to be cheers mary which is his actual middle name is it oh yeah mike nolan yeah well i mean according to my secret source of research which not everyone has access to no but yeah i mean they are basically shabba yes

i mean if they are in some way respect contemplating their own future perhaps you Yes. It's all of those tatties, isn't it? I mean, if they are in some way contemplating their own future, perhaps, you know, because age comes to all of them, it's funny to think that their actual future involved kind of mud-wrestling for their name and reputation with a sometime burger van owner. Yes.

Yes. Still, it is better than the video which is fucking bizarre yeah the video is to 1983 what neat ribena is to a black current it's just yeah i mean and those they do those c3po head movements in that as well yeah like in the early 80s like if you wanted to look alienated yeah like when the boomtown rats did like clockwork yeah yeah it's exactly the same thing you move your head and your stiff arms like oh they are too yeah it's really bad but to be honest all these when you sit and watch these uh rarely seen bucks fizz videos i mean rarely seen at the time because they were always available to be on your television program it didn't matter

oh yeah um crackerjack yeah but those videos are really enjoyable viewing now yeah i mean one thing you can say some of them are pretty out there i mean one thing you can say for this this operation is that the quality wasn't always there but somebody was always trying really hard yeah because it's it's essentially jay aston singing to a mirror and um she puts it down and it's just some old crone and she looks horrified in a in an early 80s video style and fashion but then cuts to what appears to be the the band playing a punk festival in chernobyl it's got that proper not the nine o'clock news punk parody video backdrop of electricity pylons yeah and a purple sky bobby and mike are dressed up like if malcolm mclaren

had opened up sex with laura ashley instead Vivienne Westwood, that's what they're wearing. Bobby's wearing a T-shirt that appears to be a cross between a Christmas tree and an octopus. Very fucking strange. It's like, what kind of adults are you reaching for here? Yeah. Well, I mean, what's interesting is it appears to have been fairly successful in Europe, Europe-wide, you know, the European territory or whatever, as it were. Which I can kind of see, actually. It has that sort of slightly, I mean, look, I love, you know, Europop, Telex, Yellow, DAF, all that kind of thing.

You know, I'm absolutely down with it. But obviously there was that sort of slightly sort of slow, clumsy pigeon pop as a second language euro pop you know and i think it sort of chimes in because it's a bit slow because it's a bit naff or whatever it kind of chimes in perfectly just there you know and just hits that hits the sweet spot but it is a weird way to go though isn't it it is a weird direction to take because you think what in their minds was the best possible end point of this approach right because when a group like bucks fees are sailing off into the distance generally their their vestigial audience is children and older people neither of whom are traditionally all that big on, you know, affected, scowling pseudo-Germans in their knickers. I mean, or on sort of lumbering pomp bubblegum,

which is what this is, you know. Yeah. And there is now no viable route by this point by which they can access the burgeoning goth market. No, that's not going to happen. Oh, man, we've only left. But they need to get this into their heads quite quickly, right? This attempt to sound futuristic, there is no future in it.

And at this stage, really, they'd be better off just getting some big, colourful jumpers on and doing songs about a dog called Bongo because that's the only cunts buying bucks for his record. I mean, it's incoherent. It's a cul-de-sac. It's for a futurist exercise. It's very outmoded. But it was probably at least for the time being a short-term success,

commercial success of sorts. But what can they do after this? How do they develop that? Where do they go? It was their biggest hit this year. Yeah, it was their last gasp, wasn't it? I mean, they had a few. What was after this? Talking In Your Sleep.

Was that after this? Yeah, London Town. These are not their best records. I mean, when they say they're aiming for an adult audience, they're basically saying, well, we want to carry on being on Radio 2. It's the time when Vince Hill was being played on Radio 2. Yeah. basically saying well what we want to carry on radio to vince hill was being played on radio too yeah yeah and you don't you don't have these sort of you know monolithic synth records of uh you know with this chorus that's supposed to sound like it's coming crashing in through your roof you know this is not how to get onto radio too either it's all a bit tragic i decided though that i do quite like uh cheryl baker because i never used to because she used to annoy me on the telly and all that sort of stuff never admired her work as

a tv presenter but i i like her a lot more after witnessing this debacle i can only admire this combination of professional commitment and a very obvious awareness that she can't hide the fact that she knows that this is preposterous bollocks right like you would she sat there on her backwards chair and when all the others get their close-ups they're really going for it trying to do the the moody alienated stare. She's really obviously trying not to giggle. I like it, really, because it just sort of lets down the performance. But, I mean, so what? It wasn't convincing in the first place. And I like the fact that she can't even pretend to take this seriously

and that it's a job of work. And as soon as the whistle blows, she's going to be back in her slippers with a massive glass of white wine and she's Rita Crudgington from Bethnal Green again, you know, and balls to their life, yeah. So the follow-up, London Town, only got to number 34 in October,

but they'd have a far worse 1984. Rules of the Game was put out in late November of this year and would take two months to get no further than number 57. The rot was stopped in September when Talking In Your Sleep got to number 15 but Golden Days only got to number 42 in September. And a year from now they'd all be recovering from a tour bus crash after a gig in Newcastle, which left Mike Nolan in a coma for four days. When we were young, when we were young, when we were young. You would think by now that they'd have enough money to buy those girls some decent costumes, wouldn't you?

Box Fizz there, well done to them. One of the best dance tracks of 1983 came from Lionel Richie. Got to number two in October. This is how it went. Yeah! The camera dollies back from the stage and ascends to the balcony where Smith, who has been found a woman who is dressed sort of just like him to stand next to speculates that the women of buck's fits should be able to afford

some trousers by now but it comes out as an insult i know he gets it all wrong it's just it's that old gag about scantily clad performers about how they couldn't afford any clothes. But he can't even do this sort of hack Sunday night at the London Palladium material without totally fucking it up. He says surely they could afford, someone could afford to buy them some decent

costumes. Yes. Who ever designed those Bucks Fizz outfits is just going to hear that. They're going to really have their feelings hurt. Yeah. On Christmas Day as well. The bastard. He then tells us all about, in his opinion, one of the best

dance tracks of 1983. All Night Long by Lionel Richie. Born in Tuskegee, Alabama in 1949, Lionel Richie was a tennis prodigy who got a scholarship at his local college but was intending to study as an Episcopal priest before dabbling with assorted college bands. In 1968, he joined the Commodores as a saxophonist and by the time they were signed

to Motown in 1972, had become an occasional singer whose songs had started to appear on their LPs. They scored five top 40 hits in the UK including Easy, Big Daddy's Theme which was written and sung by Richie before they hit the jackpot in 1978 when Three Times a Lady got to number one for five weeks. By the 80s, Richie was beginning to branch out, writing Lady F for Kenny Rogers and recording Endless Love with Diana Ross and was encouraged by Motown to put out his own solo LP, which came out in October of 1982.

And after it reached the top ten in America and the UK, was put under pressure to leave the band which he did apparently against his will. At the end of August of this year he put this single out the lead cut from his second LP Can't Slow Down and the follow up to My Love which got to number 70 in May. And while it got to number 1 in America for 4 weeks it spent three weeks at

number two here held off number one by karma chameleon by culture club and a single that will be appearing soon here's the video which was produced by michael ness smith and directed by rob raffleson who did head five easy pieces and the, and The Postman Always Rings Twice. And, oh, yes, this is fucking Huxtable Disco, this song is, isn't it? Very much so. But, I mean, it was actually startling when this song came out, I remember, that Lionel could do this because between, what, 78 and 82, he writes six different American number ones,

and all of them are gooey, sincere ballads. And he could have done that forever and disappeared probably. But it is records like this and Dancing on the Ceiling that give him a bit more longevity and appeal to younger people. It's a conscious effort to make an international party

anthem. You know, American pop is universal global language, i.e. colossal cultural appropriation. So three years before drake is even born richie is bringing jafakin accents to the top of the charts um and good on him i guess um yeah probably there should be loads of problems with this song there is a lot of stealing going on the influence of michael jackson's massive including the stealing of African bullshit. Yes. You know, he calls his friends at the UN to get some African phrases and learning that Africa is a continent that contains thousands of dialects.

And it takes weeks to come up with a workable translation. He just makes up some gibberish that kind of sounds Afro-Caribbean. And he got away with it. Yeah. up some gibberish that kind of sounds afro-caribbean and he got away with it yeah the reason being is it is as sensitive a portrayal as afro of afro-caribbean culture as i don't know what made the red man red is of native american culture but throughout the record the point is no harm done no you can't get angry because it's i think it's really great pop i mean and i know that because this is one of those records that has a Pavlovian response attached to it.

If I sung to you, All night long. All night. You'd have to sing back. Yeah, you do. You have to. You can't let it pass. Yeah, it's the law.

So, you know, there's space for everyone in this record, even though, you know, it has dozens of backup singers on it, including Richard Marks, by the way. Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. I just think it's a good party record. It's a great pop record. I mean, I do prefer my party records with a bit of tension.

I like my dancing and partying to have a sense of escape to it. There's not a lot of that here, to be honest with you. It's smooth, just like his voice. His voice isn't his that album that this song comes from virtually every track tries to rip off michael jackson to the point where you know you get a song with a stupidly big eddie van halen style metal solo on it um but his voice isn't cutting like michael jackson's it can't do tension it can't do the things that MJ does. There's no tension in the record. There's no conflict. It's as open to everyone as

calling the gang celebrate. There's no real motivation for the party. It's just time to party. And any troubles that are hinted at can just be danced away. But catch his foot, stays in your head, smooth frictionless pop. You can't get upset with it.

No. Taylor? Yeah. Well, what's interesting to me after seeing this one, like previously we've seen the mid-80s in their 95% completed state with a couple of those records. Suddenly we're staring at like a premonition or a foreshadowing of the late 80s

in all sorts of ways and i mean it would be misleading to describe this record as ahead of its time but it's it's probably the only the only one here the the song and video which looks ahead to as far as 1987 in its style and presentation, right? It's got this sort of cokie wholesomeness to it, like overproduction, Coca-Cola advert aesthetics, smoothed out world music, cynical innocence, long established artist past a certain age, now contemporary again, super clean clean ultra scrubbed street kids

wearing primary colors um and a sort of incoherent message of peace and unity but it's still a good record because all that stuff is superficial in every sense um the track itself still communicates a kind of old-fashioned warmth and softness you know which would slowly disappear for the most part over the next few years as as those stylistic annoyances became the actual substance of most american commercial american records you know which all began to taste of coins which this one doesn't really. It just sounds like a nice record that does precisely what it's intending to do, you know. And I've got to say, I'm impressed that Lionel Richie called the album that this is from Can't Slow Down

because if ever there was an artist whose work suggests a speeding car gone out of control, it certainly is Lionel Richie. And I do like the video because I remember every out of control. It certainly is Lionel Richie. And I do like the video because I remember every element of it. I remember the little kids popping and locking. I remember that chauffeur, you know, who's obviously caning it,

throwing off his jacket and joining in the fun. And of course that great moment when the cop shows up. Yeah, he doesn't kill anyone. Nah, everyone thinks he's going to kneel on the neck, but no, he's just there to spin his baton around and to party with everybody bless him you know it doesn't matter even that lionel richie can't dance his grin is wide enough to get through this this kind of four minute spectacle and that's why you know mtv was still 83 a hostile place for black artists yeah but but all night

long went into pretty much heavy rotation immediately as it should do i mean because here you're seeing i mean even even you know in 1983 black people are still being portrayed as dangerous or different the beat it video for example yeah here you've got a video where it's mainly black people Look at them having a lovely time. The black people, a great bunch of lads, is the sentiment that's coming off this video. And it was much needed, I feel. Yeah, and, you know, I mean, Lionel actually, I mean, to be fair, yes, he is getting on at this point,

but he looks pretty good. I like the shiny PVC trousers he's got on. Yeah. You know, and after a while, you don't notice his Jafakin accent. You just kind of get on with the song. And this is the song after all. I mean, this propels Lionel Richie

into, yeah, god tier of pop stardom, really. It makes the album sell shit loads. And, you know, I mean, he ends up singing this, doesn't he? I think at the closing ceremony of the 84 Olympics. Yes. It becomes exactly what it set out to be. This global anthem.

This is it. As long as you're not Russian. Neil, you referred to the Jafakin accent. I mean, the one thing that struck me about Lionel Richie at this time is that when he was in the Commodores, he sounded so Southern. Southern American. He was proper country you listen to something like ceylon yeah and he's almost like he's an outcast or something

and that's and that's gone now and he did get slagged off a lot for being a crossover artist by certain people well i mean he's clearly an accent sponge because i think i think that the conceptual process around all night long he was genuinely genuinely at a Jamaican mate's house. And, you know, he remembers in interviews perhaps doing that accent, you know, even when discussing the song. But what's forgotten is just how big he was. Because this album that this is from. Yeah, he's enormous.

Enormous. I mean, this wins the, can't slow down, it gets album of the year at the Grammys next year. And that's the that's the year of you know what the other things that are up for that award

are things like Purple Rain and Born in the USA and Private Dancer which we would all associate with that era I don't think many people remember Can't Slow Down but it was a big winner

and you know I think this is the song really that proved that he wasn't just a syrupy ballad merchant and that he was now sort of pot royalty after this. And he stayed there for a good while.

Yeah. I can't remember off the top of my head, is he wearing his pleated PVC trousers? I don't think they are, Taylor. I don't think they are. I have no pleats. That must have been a bit late. I'll tell you, one of the things I like best about this record

is the completely unnecessary and sort of pernickety way it's titled All Night Long, brackets, All Night. It's like a gift to excessively strict pop quiz question masters. You can say no, the correct answer is All Night Long brackets all night i'm never like if i if this came out on one of the rounds in a here comes quiz i'm like quiz which i need to do more of and i will do in the new year punk rage youngsters if my non-art played all night long someone would come back and write all night long brackets all night and when i read the answer i would say yeah you you know you got it right but i don't tolerate smart asses so you're not getting any bonuses or anything. So, yeah.

There's quite a lot of songs like that, though, where the general public don't actually know the real title of the song, right? Like the song that's actually called Do They Know It's Christmas? A lot of people think it's called Feed the World. Yeah. Or the song that's actually called

Barbara O'Reilly by The Who, which a lot of people think is called Teenage Wasteland. Yeah. And you know that song Teenage Wasteland. Yeah. And you know that song Beko by Peter Gabriel? Yeah. A lot of people don't actually realise the real title of that song is The Phil Sivers Show. Talking about misunderstandings,

I was so upset when I found out quite late in life that Lionel Richie doesn't sing we're gonna party karate because he just conjures up this beautiful image of lionel richie just turning away from the buffet and saying oh you see that plank over there just get hold it up let me show you how fucking hard i am and then give me a brick to headbutt. He should have because he's culturally appropriating all over the place. So he should have thrown that in. If he's going to have carumba and siesta and all of this stuff,

yeah, why not a bit karate? Yeah, it's actually karamu, which is either a bushy shrub from New Zealand or it's the New Year's Eve do that's part of the Kwanzaa celebration. So yeah, right on, Lionel. And fiesta forever sounds like he's bigging up a wank mag. Yeah, it's Fiesta Forever, not Siesta Forever.

That's me dreaming of sleep. So tired. So the follow-up, Running With The Night is malingering in the charts at number 41 this week, but four weeks later it made it to number 9 and he'd have his biggest hit in the charts at number 41 this week, but four weeks later it made it to number nine, and he'd have his biggest hit in the UK

when Hello spent six weeks at number one in the spring of 1984. As Neil's already pointed out, All Night Long and Rich Air featured in the closing ceremony of that year's Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, and according to Rolling Stone magazine, when the American tanks rolled into Baghdad

nearly 20 years later, they were greeted by the locals dancing to this song as Lionel Richie was massive in the Arab world. Indeed, in December of 2006, Saddam Hussein joined in the tribute to Richie when he was secretly filmed dancing from the ceiling. Richie, all that wrong. No truth in the rumour that that song is about me.

Heaven 17 have had a great year apart from working with Tina Turner. They're here now with Temptation. I've never been closer I've tried to understand That certain feeling Carved by another's hand Janice, still in her thigh-slapping costume, essentially implies that she's a hard-loving woman

by saying that, contrary to rumour, the last song wasn't about her. Fucking hell, Janice, get you! Yeah, it's like if Thora Heard suddenly launched into a version of wet-ass pussy. Yes! It's really unsettling. It's off-brand, isn't it?

It would have been brilliant if, while she was saying that, there was Peter Powell in the background being carried off on a gurney, sticking his thumb up like the Help for Heroes logo. What a shame they didn't give that line to Simon Bates, eh? That would have been something. Oh, my God. Maybe it's wearing the kind of vaguely sexy pantomime outfit with a tricorn hat and a frilly shirt that's, you know,

sort of, like, got to her shirt that's you know yeah sort of like got got to her a bit you know a bit of cosplay going on yeah yeah it's like she's really internalized this idea that this is supposed to be the top of the pops christmas party yeah it's like you find a later behind a filing cabinet with simon bates yes she then unintentionally disrespects the soon-to-be auntie entity when she fucks up the timing of her intro of the next act when she says they've had a great year apart from working with tina turner oh janice what a heap of shit that was i think by this time they're reading off autocues aren't they because that's obviously someone slapped that up on autocue,

but they didn't put a dash in or something. Oh. Well, she should have said, they've had a great year. Apart from working with Tina Turner, they've also done this. Oh. Or something like that. Yeah, that would make sense. I don't think she was cussing down Tina Turner.

Although she's got that side to her, Janice. Occasionally the claws come out like you remember her intro to five star they're always in the charts they never seem to go away but they actually introduces our heaven 17 with temptation we've covered heaven 17 in chart music number eight and this their eighth single was the follow-up to Let Me Go, which got to number 41 in November of 1982. It's the second release from their second LP, The Luxury Gap, which got to number four in the LP charts for two weeks in May, and it finally put them into the top 40,

taking six weeks to get to number two in the same month, held off the topmost of the poperm most by true by spandau ballet here they are in the studio reunited with the singer carol kenyon a session singer who had worked with chris ria john and van gelis and dex's midnight runners who didn't appear in the video because she thought her appearance fee was well minged so so they got a Bond girl in instead. Typical communist. Chaps, I do believe it was us two that covered Heaven 17 back in the day. Was it play to win, we did?

Yes, it was play to win, yeah. And we were a bit iffy about it, but this year they've raised their game somewhat, haven't they? Yeah, this is just a storming record, isn't it? Isn't it? It's fucking mint, this song is. It's incredible. I think I'd only been sort of keeping very light tabs

on their career up to this point. I knew who they were. I was a huge Human League fan, but only since they went their separate ways. So for me, the Human League started with Sound of the Crowd and it was only when Being Boiled got reissued and became a hit that I heard anything with Ian Craig Marsh and Martin Ware on it, I think. So, you know, I think Let Me Go would have been the first thing I was really aware of,

which is a wonderful record. It is, yes. That should have got into the top 40. I cannot believe, yeah, yeah. I cannot believe it didn't make the charts. But to this day, you know, I can just stick on the 12-inch of that and just lose myself in it.

Lose myself. Yeah, that alone would have justified their entire career. But it's almost as if they looked at the failure of... I sure wasn't like that because they're both off the Luxury Gap album. They would have justified their entire career. But it's almost as if they looked at the failure. I'm sure it wasn't like that because they're both off the Luxury Gap album. They would have all been recorded in the same sessions. But it's almost as if they looked at the failure of Let Me Go to crack the top 40 and thought, fucking hell, what can we throw at it now? And like, okay, all guns blazing, boom.

Yeah. Yeah. Temptation just probably up there with something. It's almost sort of tainted love, Tia, in terms of being this sort of massive, emblematic synth record of the 1980s. And got to talk about Carol Kenyon. Yes.

What a vocal performance. Yes. It is staggering. I remember being convinced that she was going to become a massive solo star off the back of this. And she didn't. She had some,

there was a single called Warrior Woman. I remember it was pretty ropey. It came after this. And then I guess she just went back to backing vocals. But it's a flamethrower of a vocal performance.

It really is. And she's got this incredible presence. She's so forceful and dominant um i love the way at the start of this i don't know if you noticed but she's standing with her back to the camera just sort of looking at the wall just ignoring the audience and until glenn gregory starts singing and then she steps forward and it's her that's dominating the whole thing i've got to say at the time i thought she was really sexy as well i think i was i think my my 16 year old self was probably quite triggered by the the combo of the leather pencil

skirt and the lacy top and just her general kind of just you know uh just dominant persona it was just quite quite intoxicating i think at that time as janice has pointed out they've been working with Tina Turner I wonder what it'd be like if she'd have sung on this. It could have worked I mean they worked together previously hadn't they with the British Electric Foundation. Yeah Let's Stay Together. No Ball of Confusion is what I'm talking about when it was just

oh right. Yeah BEF on that album they did Ball of Confusion with Tina Turner and off the back of that they did Let's Stay Together which I think was probably the first Tina Turner record I heard and then went back and discovered all the other ones and I, let's give Janice

the benefit of the doubt and say she wasn't being sly and taking the piss there because I hope she wasn't anyway because I thought it was a really good version and whatever Tina Turner may have become in the mid 80s, whether you like all that private dancer business or not i really think that stuff she did with heaven 17 um stands out she'd have overwhelmed this record though i think um yeah it's better to have someone that no one's heard of who's just a good singer you know because it's this record is too good and too singular to be a vehicle

for a guest star do you know what i mean it's much better much better having having carol kenyon on it even though she spends the whole clip uh trying to look like she's flirting with glenn gregory which is a bit you know if glenn gregory looks like the main baddie from Death Wish 3, if he cut a grip and smartened himself up and gave up his life for crime and, frankly, mystifying levels of unprovoked violence towards the general public to bring mild Marxist satire to the dance floor.

The thing about this, there's a lot of records on this Top of the Pops which you can hear ushering in new elements of the 80s. And then there's others that are clearly still living in the recent past. But this is a record which couldn't be more 1983 because it's at that perfect midway point between semi-subversive new pop and just sleek major label 80s music you know which is you would usually use as a put down but i'm not necessarily using it as a put down here it's clever but it's not distractingly clever you know and they're like you know communists or whatever

but they could pass as young conservatives and the the whole thing is neither one thing nor the other and that's fine because that's how 1983 was you know i'm sure it was probably advertised in the pop press with a very graphic designy advert maybe with with a random rotated triangle in it, or a strap line saying, the board of directors of Heaven 17 Inc. invite you to enjoy our latest product, or, you know, something like that. It's the last gasp of all that stuff

before ZTT monstered it, basically. But it's great great and it sounds strong because unlike the Adam Ant record it's got a clear plan of how to get out of the early 80s having learnt all the appropriate lessons it's musically interesting

and it's sort of jerky in that contemporary way but it doesn't sound forced although obviously it's a record that's the product of a lot of thought and it hasn't come naturally but it doesn't sound forced and it doesn't sound like they're trying to distract you from a lack of something do you know what i mean it's like the gears don't grind and the only problem for them is that cruel fate would have it that on this program they are about to be

followed by a record which also does all of that but seemingly effortlessly and to greater effect which is a shame but this does survive the comparison because what it's got is verve and and wit and a sort of youthful charm you know know. It sounds like a whole record. It doesn't sound like a load of fragments of other possible records that have been bolted together, which is always the danger with this sort of stuff. I mean, my abiding memory of this song was in May. It was a bank holiday weekend. Me and my mates went to Skegge on a Jolly Boys arty

in my dad's local pub, because there was going to be a Scooter Boys rally there at the same time. And we ended up in a club and I'm in there wearing my wraparound plastic shades that I'd got from Pendulum Records. And I looked all right knobbing them, but I didn't care. And it's rammed out with Scooter Boys

who are, you know, not the most outward looking of people. The DJ was playing all the northern soul stuff and a bit of the meteors and all that kind of stuff and all of a sudden this came on and i knew the song but hearing it in a place like that it was like fucking hell what's he playing this for it's got sims on it and i'm looking around expecting people to kick the fuck off and just everyone went berserk yeah everyone just went fucking mancle over this song because it is a it's a northern soul song isn't it yeah it could have been yeah and i just think if they'd have played tainted love would that have got the same reaction and

i'm thinking probably not well tainted love much as i love it it's very flat it's all on one level it's just you know whereas this it's got it's got dynamics to it it builds and builds it's all on one level it's just you know whereas this it's got it's got dynamics to it builds and builds it's it's all almost literally to a sexual climax this is the thing that interests me about this record actually is that it is about sexual desire and um for synth acts of the early 80s that was quite a rare thing it's almost a forbidden thing yeah it's as if all the acts of that era all sort of neuromantic and synth bands, would probably name check I Feel Love by Donna Summer as being one of the founding texts of what they do. But they would take that and they would use it to sing something about

feeling alienated in Krakow or something. Yes. You know, or it would be a sort of fatally maudlin thing about being heartbroken but there wouldn't be any sex to it so it's as if heaven 17 actually thought you know what fuck it we're gonna go go back to that that kind of donna summer feeling and actually yeah be unashamedly sexual and it's probably just as well given taylor's not inaccurate description of glenn gregory but they do have carol kenyon there to sort of balance it out and to help him put that over.

Another thing about it is, Taylor's right that it's a very 1983-sounding record, but it does have the DNA within it of some things that came later. And I think particularly Handbag House, the sort of diva-led Handbag House stuff of the late 80s, stuff like Touch Me by the 49ers or obviously ride on time by black box i'm not saying that heaven 17 um invented that stuff it was probably going to happen anyway but it it is almost a sort of um uh early foreshadowing shall

we say of that stuff and you have to say of all the records on this top of the pops this is the one with the least predictable chord progression which sort of means something you know it's like you really do wake up when yeah you're listening to what as you say is basically a northern soul song but with these weird horror movie chords underneath it does stop your brain from relaxing yeah it gives it attention it gives it a dynamic to it absolutely yeah i just wonder if at this point heaven 17 was still holding out hope that their efforts to or their attempts to do something slightly different were going to be part of a general movement towards a less hokey and more thoughtful pop music, all world, which I think a lot of those new pop people

genuinely did believe for a while. I don't know. By this point, are they conscious they're fighting a losing battle, you know, or have they just thought, fuck it, let's just do us? Yeah.

Because it's weird how quickly that changed around this time, this fresh wave of cynicism, you know what I mean? And it's just before post-punk music lapsed into this eternal retro comfort food, you know? I don't know if that's gone yet. There's enough sort of deliberate tension

and attention-grabbing stuff about this record. I mean, it's not revolutionary, but unlike certain other acts on this Top of the Pops, they don't sound like they just can't wait to get home and open a can of beer in front of Points of View with Barry Peregrine Took. So the follow-up, Come Live With Me, got to number seven in July and they closed out 1983,

their most successful year, with Crushed by the Wheels wheels of industry which got to number 17 for two weeks in september meanwhile carol kenyon returned to the charts a year later when she provided the lead vocals for malcolm mclaren's madam butterfly which got to number 13 for two weeks in september of 1984 and although her solo output never got higher than the high 80s, she also provided lead vocals on Paul Hardcastle's Don't Waste My Time, which got to number eight in March of 1986. And although Diminishing Returns set in for the rest of the 80s,

the Brothers in Arms remix of Temptation got to number four for two weeks in November of 1992. And that, Pop Craze Youngsters, brings us to the end of part four of this episode. But trust me, we're not done. There's one more part to come, and you're going to get it in your tab tomorrow.

But if you cannot wait, you know what you've got to do. Shake that little arse of yours over to patreon.com slash chart music, shove some of that money down this here g-string and you can get the full episode without adverts right now so, on behalf of everyone else

see you in a bit, and I strongly advise you to stay pop crazed. Chart music. GreatBigOwl.com Hello, I'm Justin. And I'm Lucy. And together we are the hosts of Plenty Questions. It's a very straightforward general knowledge quiz. We ask you 20 questions, one after the other,

five-second gap in between, and you shout the answers out. And then you tweet us to let us know how you got on. See if you can get 20 out of 20. No one has so far, but that's because we haven't started doing it yet. But we will. And there's also going to be some fiendish brain teasers, so join us for Plenty Questions. So join us for Plenty of Questions.