Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #77 (Pt 1): 27.12.71 – Six Tins Of Batchelors Peas

Episode Date: January 20, 2026

Taylor Parkes, David Stubbs and Al Needham prepare to set about a rare Sixventies episode of The Pops – a gloriously fecund time where the death of the Mopfabs creates a massive void. Who’s gonna fill it? We’ll find out in this end-of-year special. But first, it’s a leaf through the music papers of the day and a frank discussion on the rights and wrongs of having it off after a Sunday dinner...       Video Playlist| Facebook | Twitter| Bluesky | The Chart Music Wiki | Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 this to? Um, chart music. Chart music. You pop craze youngsters, and welcome to the latest episode of chart music. the podcast that gets its hands right down the back of the settee

on a random episode at Top of the Pops. I'm your host, Al Needham, and standing with me today are Taylor Parks. Nice to meet you. And David Stubbs. To see you nice. Boys, come and sit on my knee and whisper in me ear all the pop and interesting things that have occurred of late. Well, I have been fighting the good fight against fascism.

Oh, have you now? I think Edmundies must have seen at some point these kind of great avenues of flags. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Staple to lamp hosts. And it's deeply, genuinely pressing. And I've seen them in two places recently. St. Mary Cray, which is a shit-hole near Orpinton. Hello, our Alpinton listeners.

No, no, no, not Orpinton. Alpinton's nice. St. Mary Cray, absolute shit-hole, only sort of glued together, really, by its ethnic minority community. It feels like in Nuremberg, 1933. It really does. it's deeply depressing. What's intriguing about it is it's not a kind of bottom-up initiative. It's a top-down thing.

You can really tell that. You can tell that this has been kind of financed, organised, from somewhere, I don't know, dark money from somewhere or whatever. By the fact that they kind of stapled in exactly the same method and the flags look exactly the same, whether it's St. Mary Creer, whether it's Rochester. And so anyway, I was up in central London. I went for a drink with my friend Bernard and, you know, we had a bit of a... A few shandies, yes.

A few shandies. Anyway, I saw this union flag. and flag of St George that some asshole would like put up on those railings right dead in the centre of bloody London I just thought unbelievable I just, you know, blood was boiling

my blood was possibly slightly toxic but anyway I clamoured up and I tried to get to that reach down and I managed I couldn't quite get the Union flag but I managed to get the flag of St George Garned a snap the handle across my knee Oh like Brian out of the sweet. Pretty much

Yeah it was a teenage rampage wasn't it David? Yeah so well Oh, yeah, I recognise my age, certainly. Anyway, I just shout out, no fucking fascist in my town. And this bloat nearby is, I think not a young Muslim, which I was a bit quiz, because what are you doing? I can't explain, you know, I said that this is a sort of thing,

and said, oh, nice one, you know, high-fived, you know, so went home, did a kind of Facebook post, you know, garnered immense likes, you know, had a photo of evidence. Well, you know, sort of humble bragging almost, but, you know, more, more pride, really, deep pride. And, you know, it's, well done, David, nice one. Yeah. Anyway, the next day I happened to be coming back into town to see a screening of this film, Saipan, which is coming out in January.

It's a story of the whole Roy Keene Mick McCarthy 2002 World Cup saga, with Steve Coogan playing Mick McCarthy, actually. And it's not all bad, but anyway. So on route, I thought I'm going to have a look at my handy word. See if there was a blue plaque up there, yeah. Exactly. So I went to the spot, and, well, I could see that the flag that I demolished, that had been removed. but the Union Jack flag, that was still up. And it was fluttering above a mobile souvenir shop.

Oh, fucking out. These flags were just the market. These were just the souvenir shop. Obviously, it gets trundled away overnight, and he leaves the flags there rather than taking, you know, get the bother of taking them down. So, yeah, I did feel somewhat chastened. You know, I did think that perhaps what had happened here

wasn't actually a blow in the struggle against fascism. An attack on small businesses. Exactly. Well, it was an old man committing a minor act of criminal damage. So, yeah, I took the wind out myself. And I had to sort of, I had to spill the beans on Facebook. And a few hearty laughs at my expense. But there you go.

Still, La Lutra Continu and all that. You didn't notice the little cartoon Bobby in the middle of the flag. Well, you're practically pissed on Princess Diana's face there, aren't you, David? Yeah, pretty much, pretty much. I think what we need to do is we need to make some flags of that picture. of Dev and Deirdre snogging on that bed in Coronation Street. Yeah. That would bring the nation together.

Do it for Neil, Pop-Craise youngsters. He fucking loved that image. Yeah. Because all the fascists would be so turned on by looking at this picture that they just wouldn't be able to be fascists anymore. Exactly. Taylor, spill all the tea, mate, out of your flask. You might have to forgive me if I'm a bit soft-brained this time around.

Does I spare the whole of September, October, and November convalescing from some minor surgery that got complicated and a bit less minor and ended up hurting really a lot for a very long time. So I lost the whole autumn and first part of winter to the worthless dark enlightenment of perpetual agony. Like a medieval seer fasting or scourging, being granted entry to these visionary states that reveal only the grimmest and least useful information,

most of which you knew already. And it's not good for the brain, so apologies in advance. Obviously, the one positive aspect of this is that they gave me some hardcore painkillers and got to spend a couple of weeks more doped up than snor bits. But we're not at to stop it. Got pretty rotten, pretty fast. Interesting fact about schnawits, by the way.

This is not well known, but Bernie Winters was a massive fan of the Who. and he loved the way that Pete Townsend used to smash his guitar at the end of every gig. So for a while, every night at the end of his show, he'd kill Snorbit. Like ripping her up, throwing all their guts around in a barrage of feedback with a load of smoke bombs going off. But nobody ever knew because he did it in private. Oh, right.

So then you'd get another dog that looked sadly the same in the audience the next night. I'd never know the difference. but in the end he had so many St. Bernard's on higher purchase. It got so expensive. His roadie would sometimes have to sit up all night gluing one back together so he could use her again for the next gig. Where's that commitment in modern comedians?

Don't see it, do you? But, you know, I can't complain too much. I've got series two with a Sweeney on Blu-ray. Oh, there we go. I can now watch Patrick Troughton deliver the line. I've tumbled you, Alan. You're all bunny in high definition. still some joy left of this life.

Obviously, I'm still fizzing about the live show we did at the London podcast festival, which was skill, wasn't it, David? It certainly was. I don't like to blow my own trumpet, but Toodoo-Doole-Doo, as they say. No, no, it was another try. A lovely day, a lovely opportunity to meet some of the pop craze youngsters. I do hope I got to thank all of them personally before they staggered away from the pub afterwards. It was a fucking mint day.

Thank you for turning up. And yeah, let's do it again some time soon, eh? Anyway, less of the past, more of the future, because you know how we go about on chart music. Before we do anything else, we stop, we drop, and we bow the knee to the latest batch of pop craze youngsters who have got involved with Patreon of late and have shoved a handful of shrapnel right down our G-strings.

It jabs, but it jabs good. Those people are in the $5 section. James Harris. Paul Kane. Ian Evans. Michael Douglas. Jay Fresh. Louise Duke.

Handy Herbcock. Ewan Wallace. Tracy B. Mark Cowan. Legion AOD. E.JP. Spotlight Kid. Padrake E. Moore.

Brendan. Andrew Lowe. Boehamper, Mike McLaughrin, Ali Bain, Steve Collins, Tim Woodall and Matt McMillan. Fucking oh, you're gorgeous, we love you. Marvellous people. Messied cricket applause. And in the three dollar section we have Russell Parsons, Dominic Robottom, Neil Francis, J.P., Justin Thomas, Chris Gilbert and Gavin Hogg. Oh, you're lovely too.

Thank you so much. Indeed. And as always, chaps, if I've missed you out, that's because you either joined us after this recording or I've mislaid your name. So please, please, please kick this ass for a man and I'll rectify. Oh, and by the way, a massive tar to Doug Grant

and Daniel Sullivan for their little Christmas box that are sent to as well. More than little. Thank you very much, chaps. You didn't have to. But we're so grateful. you did. We are indeed. We're surrounded by lovely people, aren't we?

Certainly are. I wouldn't say surrounded, but, you know, three sides. And don't forget the pop craze Patreon people get every new episode in full with no adverts days before Gen Pop does. They get all the exclusive bonus content and they get to rig the chart music top 10 compiled in association with Gallup. Are you ready for the top 10 chaps? Yes. Hit the fucking music!

We've said goodbye to Motorhead Arrington. Right, said Don Estelle, the goalkeepers of rock, my fucking car. And here comes jism. Which means non-up, three down, two non-movers and five new entries. New entry at number 10. The cunt beast. of Bodmin. New entry straight in at number

nine, Narada Brian Walden. Excellent. Another new entry thuds in at number eight. Al Needham, the dancing fool. Down one place from number six to number seven, bummer dog.

Last week's number three, this week's number six, ghost face, siller. Into the top five. and no change at 5 for the provisional O-R-U-R-A. And it's no change at number 4 for the bent cunt who aren't fucking real. Into the top three and another new entry,

David Van Day's decks its midnight runners. Yes. It's finally happened. Last week's number one, down one place to number two, the Birmingham Pistrol, which means, Britain's number one Straight in at number one

The highest new entry Monster Munch Kempsex party And the universe of Chalk music is completely upended Because what a chart boy It's fucking out Yeah

Yeah The Ravens have left the tower Here comes Jizum They're gone Yeah Oh try it up So chaps those new entries The Cunt Beast of Bodmin

I don't know about you Clearly, Nawabaham, I think. Yeah, oh, no, absolutely. Yeah, that flies. Narada Brian Walden, I'm hearing a jazz funk version of Nantucket's sleigh ride there, aren't you? Yes, yeah.

Lots of weak ars, but yeah. I'll need of the dancing full well. Obviously, a white, bold Darrell Pandet. David Van Day's Dex's Midnight Runners, I really don't want to think about it. No. Back in 60, Hayden and swears he clapped. Oh, fucking hell.

No. No, excuse me please, but you're standing in my space. You go over here and you're going to see how charisma works. Poor old Kevin Reloam selling ice cream from a van. A monster munch chem sex party, well, I think it's electro-clash. Yeah. Don't you? Yeah, sleazy avant-garde hybrid.

Yeah. A lot of sub-base. Yeah. And if you heard that and you're currently crying into your here comes jism silk scarf and you want justice, well, you know what you need to do, sir or madam. getting on Patreon and write that wrong straight away. Depending on what tier you join, you get the latest episodes in full with no adverts long before everyone else.

And you also get access to the bonus episodes, including the latest hit the fucking play button, where me, David, and our very special guest, Pop craze, Paul Putner, rolled deep on the crop of the flop segment of the two roddies. That was a lot of fun, wasn't it, David? That was a belt of that one. Everybody learned something that day, I feel.

Yes. And we got a few juicy ones lined up in the new year. Let me tell you. So remember, fingers, keyboard, patreon.com slash chart music. Tips in the G-string, make us jingle. So this episode, Pop Craze Youngsters, takes us all the way back to December the 27th, 1971. A very rare treat, don't you think?

chaps because there's not too many episodes from 71 knocking about and most of them are presented by jingle nonce and even some of them have no sound in the presenter links which will be an absolute ballache if we ever choose to cover them in the future so say that every morsel of this one pop craze youngsters yeah panel if i were to say to you the music of 1971 what is immediately bursting out of your lovely heads like in scanners I was seven at the time, and one of the very first memories actually have off top of the pop to sing Paul McCartney performing Let It Be. Right. Obviously, you know, the Beatles, basically.

So I just managed to intersect with the era of the Beatles, you know, be conscious of that. You got the arse end of the Beatles and you got the Moon London's and Mexico 1970. You bastard, David. I wish I was old. I know, yeah. I got that all under my belt by the time I was like eight to nine, definitely. Yeah, yeah. What do we have, Taylor, the fucking space shuttle.

What a swim. I missed a space shuttle going up the first time. Let's do a cross-country run. Oh, man. But yeah, in 71, I really keenly felt that, like, something had, with the Beatles splitting, that this was going to pressage an era of, like, decline. This had this huge gaping hole, and all was lost. We'd have to listen to Freddy and the Dreamers.

It didn't matter, you know, there was plenty of good music around. It didn't matter. If there was no Beatles, all was somehow lost. And I think that kind of permeated the popular culture, and you get the impression there's a sort of even weird like the music that, you know, going to be hit now, and, you know, the quality of a lot of that music, there is still a sort of underlying depressive sense that the 70s, you know, strap yourself in because this is going to be a really bleak, beetleless ride. And yet music-wise, there's an awful lot going on on all different fronts, whether it's in, obviously, the Zepp and Floyd end of things,

or, you know, the kind of the Bowen T-Rex, you know, there's things undreamt of by the Beatles are going to happen. And yet still there is that terrible sort of feeling of lamentation that they split up. It's like the age of optimism is dead. The age of love is dead. Can you remember, David, the playground discussion when the beagle split off? Do you know what? I don't think that my particular set of contemporaries were very conscious of it. I think it touched me personally because I actually associate the Beatles with London from where I'm in exile.

Because really, they fucked off in Liverpool the moment they could. You know, nothing against Liverpool. But they just had to, as they said, they had to get down to London. And they're just associated them with London. I'd been born in London. I've felt exiled from London. I've been moved up to Leeds, you know, West Yorkshire, which I considered an absolute crap hole at the time,

a violent, sort of churlish crapphole of a place. And I yearned, I'd watch Ealing comedies. You know, I wanted to live in London. And in my early, very early childhood, my grandparents, on my dad's side, they lived in Wembley. And I remember, like, they had a dance set there. And I remember, like, a copy of Sergeant Pepper lying around

And my uncle Martin and his little kind of, you know, little sort of zip boots and stuff, his sway boots. And all of those connotations, I thought, yeah, this is me, this is where I should be. And then, of course, they're fucking well moved up to Leeds, didn't they? No. So that was the end of that dream. So I kind of felt all of that as well as the Beatles splitting up. You know, I just felt that things were just going to be pretty shit for a fair few years.

Taylor. Yeah, what's funny is how modern. a lot of this music sounds. Not contemporary in style, but not archaic compared to like a top of the pops from the 60s where everything sounds really tinny and a lot more old fashioned. The production of rock records specifically sort of peaked around this time, didn't it? It's only gone backwards since like turning guitars into these massive washes of overloaded static to disguise the fact that the idiot playing them is just strutely. in a way like a 12 year old and there's no actual music happening. And in the process you lose all the warmth and power and space. But 1971 is a bit of a classic year on the choir. Because there's still some connection between the Vanguard and the charts.

There's a lot of good non-commercial albums and a lot of good commercial singles too. Decent times for soul and reggae. I mean, it was before the drying out of the centre ground, which begins in about 72. So by 1974, Top of the Pops has turned into a sort of freaky Valdunican show. It was when you run down the records in this episode,

which were all big chart busters, it's not bad, is it? No, it's not. I mean, yeah, you're right, David. 1971 has been depicted as a bleak year, you know, the first year of a world without the Beatles, who more or less packed it in on the last day of 1970

when McCartney sued the other three. But that meant there was, suddenly a massive void which was immediately filled by an array of acts, some of whom have been biding their time since the mid-60s and were seizing the moment. I mean, practically all of the acts are going to kick the decade into life are starting to make their moves in 1971 and we're going to see a lot of them in this episode. Yeah. We're going to see quite a few 60s hangovers as well, but at the very least, they're trying to kick on into a new decade. Absolutely. And actually, the last thing we would have really needed was for the Beatles to kind of to carry it.

At one point, John Lennon in an interview he once said, if the Beatles had carried on, we'd be a bit like ELO. And yeah, I think they would be. They wouldn't have had much of contrary. There were far, far better things going on. And it probably actually was good for music, but this monomaniacal tendency that they represented was finally shifted. I think it liberated a lot of energies.

Yeah. There's also, it's weird about this in 1971. There's a certain amount of, I don't know, Hot pan energy. Oh, gosh, yes. Oh, yes. I say, you know. But it's also very ironic when you see young women swaying around in the audience.

They'll all be in their mid-70s now. Probably still wearing hot pants as well. Yeah. But they're called in Continent briefs now. But yeah, my record collection is fucking Ramo with 1971. And, you know, what's going on? There's a riot going on. Al Green gets next to you.

This is Madness by the Last Poet. giving it back by the Isley brothers, Curtis Live, just as I am by Bill Withers, Blue, Maggot Brain, Shaft, Hot Pants by James Brown, roots by Curtis Mayfield. I mean, what a year it was for Black America, the saviors of pop, as always.

And it's ironic that in relation to the Beatles, there were even conspiracy theories that felt like the Beatles have been deliberately imported to stem the tide of like increasingly radical black music in the early 60s. There was a great deal of bitterness at Beatlemania in America on the part of a lot of creative black artists. They felt they'd been supplanted deliberately by manufactured Fab Four.

Until they got the royalty checks from those cover versions. Obviously, this is one of the Christmas episodes that you get round about this time of the year. And yeah, it is filled with people from the winner's circle. There's a lot of bangers in this one. So, yeah, I'm very much looking forward. I'm sitting here holding a knife and fork upwards and saying slew.

So let's not fanny about. Onward! Willie Hamilton, the MP for West Five, causes outrage in the House of Commons when he coats down the royal family for being sponging minge bags during a debate over whether we should give them even more money

and even goes on to describe Princess Margaret as a kept woman. Leaping to the defence of the Crown is Winston Hughes, a 54-year-old dental technician from Northampton. I have written to Mr Hamilton challenging him to a fight, giving him a choice of weapons, but suggesting that we meet in a ring with the gloves on, says the former amateur boxer. I have put on some weight since my last fight in 1938, but I still pack a punch. When asked about the challenge, Hamilton says,

I am not worried about this offer and I will not be taking him up on it. I have enough Tory nut cases to worry about without Mr Hughes. A 17-year-old Peruvian student falls 10,000 feet from a plane that disintegrates after it struck by lightning and is found alive 11 days later

when she stumbles into a lumberjack encampment. She goes on to become one of South America's former most bat specialists. There's nothing about that story that could be improved. Great news for Les Mastabateurs of Paris. The Bluebell Girls are finally getting some titat. For the first time in their 37-year history, the famous dancers at the Lido have gone topless this week

and getting an extra £1.50 a night for doing so. Some of my girls decided they wanted to work with our bras in the new show, says head recruiter Margaret Keller, better known as Miss Bluebell. So why should I stop them? It's the present trend and we have to move with it. A clockwork orange has its world premiere in New York. Alan Ball breaks a British transfer record when he joins Arsenal from Everton for £220,000. A whole 2.8 million in today's money.

Yeah. But the big news this week, Santa's been. What did he get you, David? Oh, I got a chopper. Oh, you big red chopper. You sure it's red, though, David? Are you sure it's not brilliant orange? Oh, yes.

You know what? You might be right, actually. Yeah. My mind might have reddened it over the years. Because I'm assuming it's a Mark I, because Mark 2s didn't come out until a few years later. Yeah. And the choices at the time were brilliant orange, golden yellow,

flamboyant green, Targa, Mussel. and Horizon Blue. And I don't want to make any assumptions, David, but I'm assuming no lad in Leeds is going to want to be seen riding something that's flamboyant green. That's absolutely correct. No. In 1971. Yeah, so I got a chopper, a Stubbs Major.

My younger brother, Stubbs Minor. He got a chipper, as we fit his junior state is. And my youngest brother, Stubbs Minimus, he got a little crappy little bite that used to be wrong to Stubbs Minor with the words chipper painted across the... And he was glad on it. He was glad of it. He was grateful. I'm grateful, father. He said the words to that effect.

Seen to remember. Tears in his eyes. He still talks about it to this day. You know, it scarred him. Poor old life has been a sort of attempt at compensation really for a dreadful disappointment. You know, you just had to have your wheels back in a little village outside Leeds in 1970. Definitely. You know, you're out of the house and then back for tea time.

And in between. If you want to make deals. Well, yeah. You know, if you couldn't ride a bite, you were an ostracise, you were an unperson, you were an unkid. And what was worse, though, is that in my village you had probably guardian reading parents who refused to have TV in the house. I mean, how could you be that cruel to kids? I know, I'd slip my throat. I mean, it's just monstrous.

Yeah. I mean, it's the way it was sometimes when people have moral panic about screen time. I guess that was a moral panic of the day about TV. And it was just like, it's ridiculous. On the cover of the NME this week, Alvin Lee of 10 years after. Merry Christmas, everyone. On the cover of Record Mirror, Mark Bolin as Santa. Yeah, that's more like it.

On the cover of Radio Times, the two Ronis. On the cover of TV Times, Barbara Murray in a fur-trimmed red cape with the headline, Who Killed Santa Claus? Fucking hell, TV Times. Traumatize a fucking nation. a toddler, why don't you? The number one single in the UK this week is Ernie, the fastest milkman in the west by Benny Hill,

the number one LP, Electric Warrior by T-Rex. Over in America, the number one single is brand new key by Melanair, and the number one LP, there's a riot going on by Sly and the Family Stone. Fucking yes, I love you, Sly. So, boys, what were we doing? in 1971. I would have turned nine that year in the September.

And it was the year that I developed sentience. What I mean about that? It kind of became conscious of things, the names of people, lists of stuff, or whatever. It became conscious of football in particular, politics to a degree. Again, it was like knowing who people were and conscious of music,

who was in the charts, who was who. But yeah, back in 1971, I could sit down, sit down with a feltip pen, and write you down the names of the Stoke City First 11. I didn't give a toss about Stoke City, but I just had that retentiveness. I mean, these days, I couldn't name you four Liverpool players. I mean, it's, you know, it's pitiful, really.

I was fascinated by cars. You know, I could tell you the difference between a Zepra and a Cortina, which, you know, I mean, I couldn't do it. It's just white and grey ones now. Trains I had an obsession with primarily because I never actually caught a train. They had no reason to it. It was bikes, buses, cars, walking. I even took a plane trip before I got on a train.

No. I didn't get a train until I was 17, a trip to Lourdes of all things. Right. With the school. There were just no reason to it. I once stood on a bridge and watched this flying Scotsman, like, Hurtle underneath it. But yeah, yeah. It made me the age of the train for Jimmy Saville, but not for me.

Well, talking to which, David, in the most recent hit the fucking play button, you actually talked about meeting Jimmy Salon on a train platform. platform. Yeah. Maybe that's what put you off trains. I mean, I didn't even get on a train then. It was just some sort of event going on. And yeah, he walked past me and my family on the platform. My dad gave him a very, very cold shoulder indeed, actually. He said, good morning. And he kind of walked on my dad, every cold, good morning. I think we'll replete with the idea that he hoped it was anything but good. And off he strode. And he was just saying to himself over and over, good morning, good morning, as if he had to kind of remind himself how to be a kind of human being.

It was, ooh, I'm shuddering now at the memory. Taylor, your 1971, not really up to much, was it? Yeah, no, obviously me, being such a young man, while this was on telly, I was chilling in an amniotic sack. An early 70s one as well, mate. No indoor toilets for you.

Yeah, it was rough, but, you know, those were the good times. No, but there were still elements of this world lingering into my adolescence and even young adulthood. This is what's weird, even in my lifetime. Something strange has happened to 1971. Because when you watch this episode now, everything about it, not so much the music,

but everything else about it has the feel of a faint, decaying radio signal from another planet. But it was only a few years ago that this was only yesterday and was discussed as only yesterday and had all the qualities of only yesterday, like familiarity, common shared memory, lots of straight lines to the present. People would talk about it like it had only just happened.

And then suddenly, without us noticing, it's jumped the fence, and it's joined those scratchy, squiggly, black and white silent films of World War I. And Edwardian Tea Parties in Round Hay Park. It's like a spooky portal into sealed, off dimensions of unrecognisable and almost unimaginable experience, but it's only recently gone because I remember the trail of it, the lingering grime and the damp wallpaper and the

old English skin and what people's hair used to look like. And all the physical leftovers, like the locked dark wood wardrobes in musty back bedrooms piled up with discarded nylon blouses and boxed up ball games with crucial pieces missing. And the living Victorians like residual ghosts. So I feel like I remember this world, even though I wasn't in it. And that's the world in which all this crazy shit is happening. That unwashed dinge is what Mark Boland was bopping through. And what Slade were stomping on.

And it's that extreme contrast which makes this period of history so interesting and so difficult to grasp for people who weren't there or almost there. Like on the one hand, it's all about tall brick schools full of violence, like looming over you and dark 16mm film and lollipot men being automatically trusted and portentous warnings not to play near the mental hospital. And, you know, lots of exposed wires and, you know, painted wood and all that terrible received wisdom about people whose lives you couldn't begin to understand and didn't make the effort to. But also, in other ways, free and flamboyant in a way

that we can no longer even imagine. But as flamboyant as the paint job on a green chopper. Do you remember the thrill of answering the telephone by saying your own telephone number out loud? Yeah. I did. I remember, yeah. Barric and Elmit three And then pausing and waiting for someone to speak back to you. And you didn't know who it was going to be. A split second, pregnant with genuine mystery. Never such innocence again. Yeah, in terms of furniture and fixtures and fittings,

I would have grown up with furniture that some of it was from the Edwardian age. And the most up-to-date furniture was from about 1961. I remember we had a very with it orange wardrobe. It was an orange wardrobe. Actually, going back to this thing about black and white, We've watched this episode and it's in colour but practically everybody would have watched it in black and white and I would have watched it in black and white

I would have seen it in colour. Would you? Yeah, we had colour tell you. It had been a significant minority, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, not very many people had colour at this point. No. I mean, Taylor was talking about that sense of scratchiness of like, you know, pre-I don't know,

1920 silent films or whatever. And it's funny watching things on TV in black and white. You felt a little bit at the time that there was something slightly kind of grainy and other about what you were watching on TV, whether it's the kind of weird. sort of satellite intensity of watching foreign football like 1970 World Cup.

What's strange watching it in colour, oddly to me, is how it feels like it could have come from yesterday and it's over 50 years ago. We've got to tell you since about 1968 before I was born because my dad decided that oh well we're not going to go on holiday for the next couple of years, so fuck it.

Wasn't the story that he got it because someone told him how amazing Batman looked in colour? Yes. Yes. Yeah, it was, yeah. That was my dad's psychedelic experience watching Batman chining the Joker in colour. I mean, we still had an outdoor bog, and we still had a tint bath,

but we had a colour telly. So, yeah, there's 1971 right there for you, watching colour teller in a tin bath. I mean, it's just as well that, you know, we've watched his episode in black and white because one thing that does strike me seeing this episode in colour is just how incredibly shit people dressed, you know, like all the acts, all the bands or whatever.

It's not just flares and things like that I mean flares aren't really quite a thing actually It's just poor colour coordination It's thrown randomly together You know pinks yellows silvers browns And it's as if they've taken the idea of the liberation to wear matching dark tapered suits You know like the mop tops wore

And just grossly abused it I mean I just felt with the Beatles And they're just dressed awfully Once they felt the freedom to dress as they please And I suppose at this stage You know things like glam haven't quite been Kind of sartorily codified as yet Well, as for me, I'm three years old and I'm living at number seven Plymsell Street in ice and green where we've been for the past two years.

And at this moment in time, I got two families on that street, my own and the Jamaican family at the top of the street. And whenever I got pissed off with my little sister, which was often because she was a fucking baby, I would nip out unattended, go up the cobbled street on this very steep hill and go and sit on the man's knee or learn chess from. one of her lads. I mean, top of the street was massively exciting at this time. As I've mentioned before, there was a pub called the O'General, and they had a statue of him in the top window, and a week before Christmas, they'd dress him up as Santa.

And, you know, as soon as you saw that, you knew Christmas was on. And the best thing that's happened in Nottingham in ages, is that a local brewery found him in a back room a couple of years ago in severe disrepair. I think one of his hands had dropped off. So they restored him and painted him up And he now lives in the beer garden

In a pub across the way from the train station So whenever I leave town I go there for a pint Nip into the beer garden And I kiss him on the forehead And just realign myself With my glorious youth So yeah, if you're ever passing through Nottingham

And you got time Go out the front entrance Just down on the left There's a pub about 200 yards away Called the Vat and Fiddle Go in the back garden and say hello to the O'General for me. At last time I was in Nottingham, we went, didn't we?

We've had a grand old afternoon. Oh, yes! With pop-crazed youngster Justin as well. Yeah, yes. I mean, I can't remember what I got for Christmas, but I did ask my mum, and she just bridled at the thought of me not remembering Christmas presents

from 54 years ago, and said, well, whatever you got, it was fucking good. But I do know that my mum caught a hole in one of the boxes that came with, and I would put it over, my head and pretend that I was on television. I'd do the opening

line of the wooden tops. Do you remember that one? This is the story about the wooden tops. Yeah. There was mummy wooden top and the baby. There was daddy wooden top. Then there were Willie and Jenny the twins. And last of all, the very biggest spotty

dog you ever did see. One day, and then I'd stop because it'd go into the story and I'd do that over and over again. If I wasn't doing that, I'd be there going, this is the party political broadcasting company and doing a really bad impression of the education secretary at the time, which of course was Margaret Thatcher,

which I'm sure my dad would have loved while he was trying to watch Zed cars, and I'm standing next to the telly pretending to be Margaret Thatcher. It sounds like me trying to recreate the music box from the start of Cambwick Green with the top of a pack of J-cloth. I mean, top of the pops isn't in my life just yet. It's on far too late for me. Tony Bones' as ma'am hasn't initiated me just yet. But having said that, this episode's on at tea time.

And today happens to be my dad's 29th birthday. So he's obviously sleeping off a trip to the O'General. So, you know, I don't know. Maybe I did see this. I hope I did. Yeah, I may not have been born, but I do know that these were the greatest days because I've read all about it on Facebook, London nostalgia groups

populated by people in their 70s. And what I've learned about London in this period is that there was no crime. No. No woke. People were too tough to not use slurs or to mind other people using slurs against them. And yes, they may have been gangsters, but they were honest English gangsters. And at least they didn't speak. Well, chaps, I do believe that it's that time of the episode when we retreat to the child music crap room.

We riffle through some boxes And we pull out an issue of the music press from this week Actually chaps, I'll tell a lie Because it's last week's It's the bumper melody maker Christmas issue From December the 18th, 1971 Shall we have a leaf through? I should say so

On the cover, John and Yoko With members of the Harlem Children's Community Choir During the recording of Happy Christmas Open Brackets, War is Over close brackets, which has released this week everywhere but the UK due to a publishing dispute with Northern songs. It'll come out over here in November of 1972. Luckily not a plagiarism dispute, considering it's just got the same tune as the song Stubal, which is an old folk tune from the 18th century, but they were the ones you could rip off.

And I love how you love me. Yeah, that's true. Knowing John Lennon's taste that's probably, probably where he got it from, rather than, you know, Peter Paul and Mary singing the song about a horse. But, yeah, but the folk tunes are the tunes to rip off.

Dylan used to do it all the time. In fact, it's a shame John couldn't have passed this advice on to a friend who appears later in this episode. It would have saved a lot of bonner. A bunch of rip-off merchants, right? Oh, gotcha. In the news, Frank Zapper,

who's already had to deal with his band's equipment being destroyed, after some stupid wear the flag? Gun! Burn the place to the ground! In Montreau the week before, is spending Christmas in a Harley Street clinic after being pushed off the stage and falling 12 foot into the orchestra pit

at the rainbow a fortnight ago. Suffering a broken rib, crushed larynx, fractured leg, a fucked up neck and a cancelled tour. The assailant, a labourer from Waltham Stowe called Trevor Howell said he did it because his girlfriend said she fancied Zapper. He thought he'd been looking at her throughout the gig, and he felt that the gig wasn't giving him value for money.

How would be jailed for a year? Zapper ended up with permanent back pain in a wheelchair for six months, his voice deepening, and the mothers of invention splitting up. Oh dear. You don't have to feel sorry for him, actually, Zapper, genuinely, because this kind of broke him, really. He had a bit of a shit 70s compared to his 60s. I dare say that all of us chipped in.

Still, mothers of invention split up, so at least some good came out. He did a picture of Trevor Howell from Walthamstow, and he's really tall with long black air, moustache, and a sole patch, and he's wearing a purple-ribbed polo neck, playing a Gibson S.G. really fast. Oh, I don't know what she sees him.

Yeah. The face is new LP, and nods as good as a wink to a bow. blind horse has been banned in America due to the free poster inside the sleeve which distributors have called pornographic and have refused to handle as it's got nudie groupies on it. The British version of the poster, which came out six weeks ago over here, had been censored by Warner Brothers UK, but the Americans didn't bother, slipping out 400,000 copies of it before anyone noticed. They're still on sale in the USA and are being snapped up by people who think they've got

a collector's item. Americans. Have you seen that poster? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's Americans, with their endlessly conflicted approach to tit. They're obsessed with them, but at the same time, they think they're evil. Talking of band records, the new Bob Dylan single, George Jackson, which has been swept off the playlist of many American radio stations will not be banned by the BBC or Radio Luxembourg despite being about a Black Panther leader who was shot dead after trying to escape from San Quentin prison and containing the shit word.

We're not going to ban it, said a BBC spokesman. It will be played on Radio One programmes but we may leave it out of things like Junior Choice. It's really to be brave about something like this. It's odd, considering the things they did ban like Paul McCartley on various occasions. But, you know, it's almost like an empty gesture, really. I mean, Diddy David Hamilton isn't going to play George Jackson by Bob Dylan.

No. And even it'd been an innocuous song about a fictional sharecropper. It wouldn't have got played either, so it's all pretty academic. I mean, right about this time, they're only just started to play My Brother by Terry Scott. Of course. Who looked grandad in the Lou by my brother. banned in the mid-60s when it came out for the L word. Yes.

If you're hoping to spend that record token from Auntie May on the new Rolling Stones' greatest hitch compilation Hot Rocks next month, it had better be big enough to afford an import because Decker have just announced that there are no plans to release it in the UK. But sit tight, it'll come out here in 1990 on a format that you would not understand in 19. The big labels in London are still fighting like rats in a bag over the biggest free agent in pop, Mark Bolan, whose contract with Fly Records expired last month when Jeepster came out and he set up his own label,

the T-Rex Wax Company, to put out his next single Telegram Sam and the LP Electric Warrior. CBS are laying it on particularly thick at the moment, but he eventually goes with EMI, who helps. helped him out with distribution. And Isaac Hayes announced an appearance at the Royal Albert Hall at the end of next month with a 40-piece orchestra, only to be banned from the venue

a week later, after a spokesman said, we are worried about the type of audience he might attract. Oh my God. This bloke, might as well have been on one man and his dog. Jesus Christ. I know.

Yeah, because young black men are never more dangerous than when they've got their best clothes on and their girlfriend with them. Spokesman said, we are concerned about potentially disruptive levels of smoothness and their effect upon the fabric of the building. There's also a danger that any passing children may be affected. Some of them could end up having soul for the rest of their lives. Perhaps Mr Hayes should think about them for a change instead of muttering for eight minutes

before the song starts. The speculation that the fears might stump from a James Brown gig at the venue early in the year which allegedly incited riots. He eventually announces two gigs at the rainbow.

And of course Taylor, he eventually played the Royal Albert Hall in the 90s, didn't it? Yes, and we were both there. What a gig that was. We were both there, but we didn't know each other at the time. Ships in the night. What a fantastic concert that was. I think that was. I think that

That might be the best concert I've ever been to. In the interview section, Roy Hollingworth swings by Teddington to drop in on the number one act in the country this week, Benny Hill. After learning that he got his start as a drummer with a Southampton dance band called Ivy Lily White and her boys, he slaps on an old record of him playing the Paraguine harp and tells Hollingworth that he helped discover Donovan in the mid-60s by doing an impersonation of him, but he's laying off the music piss takes these days because there's no real characters about.

I couldn't impersonate Led Zepp or Ginger Baker because Mr and Mrs Jones of Castleford don't know what they look like from Adam. But he really liked Pink Floyd when the driver from the BBC took him home after a recording for Top of the Pops. Oh man, Benny Hillers Robert Plant though. Fucking hell, that would have been amazing.

But if you're all Mr Jones and Castleford, they don't really give a shit about these kind of nuances. You know, just bung a wig on and go on to camera, and that's rock music covered. Slap my bold head till the juice runs down my leg. The rock and roll revival is picking up steam, and Lorraine Alterman is at Madison Square Gardens

to see one of the great survivors, Bo Diddley. He tells us that he's 42, he's still got his hair, he doesn't do drugs, he's upset with four bears like Jimmy Hendricks for not looking after themselves, and he demands payback for influencing every guitarist that came after him. I opened the door for a lot of people, and they just ran through and left me holding the knob.

That's quoted with that. Especially at the age of 42 or older. Chris Charlesworth pins down the most elusive artist of 1971, Gilbert O'Sullivan, and asks him why he's never played a live show, bar the recent BBC in concert performance and he's told that it's no hurry for him or his manager and he's happy doing TV all over Europe.

What I don't want to do is get three musicians behind me and perform like a group. I think my lack of live appearances has built up a bit of a mystique about there which isn't a bad thing. We learned that an appearance at a record shop in Amsterdam caused a riot after fans block the street and he's not bothered about America.

Riots in Amsterdam over Gilbert O'Sullivan, my lord. He's sort of gingery, isn't he? And he's not bothered about America, which is just as well, because... Ray Coleman sits down with Elton John before he fucks off to France to record Honky Chateau for a rumination on the state of play of pop in late 1971. Where are the new Beatles and Stones? Who are going to come along and shake?

us all out of our complacence air. Where are they? It's all become so static, so solemn. I don't want another arches to come up, but things are just terrible as they stand. I can see Lennon still a teenage idol at Forte. I wish the scene would change and people would get young idols. It's crazy. Rod Stewart's in his mid-twenties. Dylan and Lennon are 30s. Presley's an old man and even I am 24. Reggae's the only answer. And Paul Nicholas heeded the call. He's dead right though. All the really big British stars

that came through in the early 70s, including him, were all 60s left over. Very much not teenagers when they hit it big. El and John, Rod Stewart, Mark Bowling, David Bowie, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Gary Glitter.

They'd all been hanging around six. And he's also right that reggae is the only answer. So a lot of questions, including What is the name of the musical style which originated in Jamaica in the 1960s, with roots in Scar and Rocksteady, characterized by a distinctive emphasis on the offbeat? Practitioners include Paul Nicola's UB40, Ace of Bass, the Police,

Judge Dredge. And the daddy of them all, the daddy of them all, Jonathan King, unless we forget Johnny Reddy. Jonathan King. A great pioneer. And Linda McCrack. I'd like to see anyone find a better answer to that question. Roy Hollingworth is raving about a new LP by a very earthy, very driving, very funky band that he's been laying on his friends of late.

Dog of Two Head by the Masters of Headsdown No Nonsense Group Masturbation, Status Quo, who haven't been heard of since 1968. We learned that their organist Ron Lund, line split from the group by walking off a train and stoke on Trent and never being seen again. They fell off the scene so badly that they didn't get one booking in 1969, but they stuck it out, got the chance to play a track on whistle test the other week, and are back! We're taking our music seriously, says Francis Rossi. We may loon on stage, but that's because the music is working and the buzz is there.

we'll wait until people come round to us. Fucking hell moaning about not being played on telly or radio even then. And Roy Hollingworth gets the plumb gig of the issue, spending a day at the Queen's Hotel in Penzance with Lindisfarne, who have spent the entire year gigging round the country, and it's fucking killed them. While Saikal lifts up his jumper to display the shingles that have crisscrossed his torso, So, Ray Jackson, who played mandolin on Maggie May, tries to explain the year they've had.

Imagine having a hairy night and having to travel 200 miles the next day and having to be capable of spewing out of a truck window at 70 miles an hour. Go on, chaps, think about that. We're spewing. We did a lot of spewing in the 70s, isn't it? You don't get spewing these days, do you? No. Bloody Gen Zee. Meanwhile, Alan Hull photographed eating a salmon.

with a bottle of brune at his feet in what must be the most unglamorous photo in a music paper ever tells us Southerners can't build chips, can't make fish and chips and can't write songs. London can spawn good players' mind, but Southerners spend too much time being proper groups. They spend too much time being it being the good boys, the boys who matter. there's too much of that crap around. Still, they reveal they've been invited to America to support the band, and there's two tables of sandwiches and crates of Newcastle Brown

provided gratis by the Brewers to get through before it's off to Luton. Oh man, Southerners can't do anything. They're fucking useless. That photo of him, yeah, sat there with, like, his hair drooping down, and it's got like a tash with a triangular sandwich with a big bite out of it.

And yeah, a bottle of beer. That photo could only look more like that photo if he was sitting on a toilet. Yes. Shortly before becoming ensnared in that protracted legal dispute to demonstrate their sole ownership of some fog. River. Walking into court with little sealed jam jars full of fog.

Dimo label maker stick. on I'm saying, Alan Hull. That you see? That you see? Single reviews. Roy Hollingworth is in the chair this week, and although Melody Maker doesn't appear to do singles of the week, just yet, he's started with Morningers Broken by Cat Stevens.

Can you remember Morning Assembly, with the girls' P.T. mistress playing piano to dots, and the geography master shouting eight keys flat, Well, I feel very sure that you and I used to sing this tune. A good song. Perfect single material. I'm going to say it's too pretty, but I'll leave this building whistling it. In a few days, I'll dig it.

And next month, I'll hate it. Cat is no fool. And this will win. Fucking oh, you did, didn't it? We used to sing this at fucking Assembly. Fucking Eden saw play. What the fuck does that even mean? I still don't know.

The northern soul boom is in full effect and Hollingworth welcomes the re-release of Baby Do the Philly Dog by the Olympics with open arms. There were so many fine soul records kicking around in 1965. They were to use that word, ever! They all had an awful lot of raunch and poke about them, and they were made to be played loud and endlessly. Were they that good? Yes, they were. And I'm going to play this again right now. It's a fucking tune that song.

But it's a coat down for Have You Seen Her by the Chai Lights. What? It's what one might call unemotional over-dramatics. For a start, it relies on the sadly spoken lyric, like a black version of deck of cards. Sickly crooning, domestic dog production, no bones, and a gummy bite. mate, no, no, no.

Yeah, black people ripping off the idea of talkovers on records. There's loads of new reggae about, but Hollingworth doesn't reckon any of it. Girl called Clover by young Al Capone is dreadful. Mahalia Saunders' cover of Peace of My Heart is a great number thoroughly ruined with flaccid production,

and Licking Stick by Desmond Decker is trash. Licking stick. Alan Randall, the officially designated George Formby impersonator of the nation, has put out where does Father Christmas hang his stocking. Possibly he hangs it in a place that I'm not allowed to mention in Melody Maker for a fear of offending Summerview, writes Hollingworth. That's the joke. Yes.

Fucking keep up Hollingworth. Jesus, keep up with Alan Randall. I know it's tricky. He did a review the next year. This dingling that Chuck Berry keeps seeing a... Must be my dirty mind, but I can't help him as he's thinking about. It's John Thomas. Someone should have warned him before he recorded it.

Saved him a lot of trouble. Bellinoc, the band formed from the psychedelic ashes of Skip Biffiter, has released She Belongs to Me, and Hollingworth Diggs it, man. Like most of Dylan's songs, it's as lasting as a fine building. There's an unmistakable, spontaneous approach to it. It gets frenzied, anguished and pushing, and it's excellent. Give it airplay. Our song, the debut single by Stray, is warmly welcomed by Hollingworth, as he deems them one of the better varieties of live bands around. What I like about it is that it's a song and not just a lengthy jam, a clean, valid four minutes of tune.

And Stray, of course, would go on to be managed in the mid-17. by Charlie Cray. Have you seen that clip of him? Yeah, on BBC Archive. Yes, the great BBC Archive. It shows him walking down Valence Road in Bessnal Green, which is the street where the craze grew up, which is right near where I live.

And it's meant to illustrate the bleakness of the East End. But I'll tell you, it looks a lot worse now. Yeah. Now that you need to be a multi-millionaire to buy a house there, it looks like a fucking pig stime. No artisan bakers then, though. No, it's not like that. Ron and Reg would never have allowed that to happen.

They would have had a word. They would have sent the boys round to slash the dough in a nice wheat sheaf pan. I'll give you a crispy ear, you slag. And as it's Watney Party 7 season, Hollingworth reviews the maxi single, The Rock and Roll All-Stars play Party Rock, with five cover versions of oldies and a cover. of Get It On for good measure.

Sounds as though it is recorded at St Pancras during a busy evening. These lads aren't bad players but if you've got the originals you'll wonder why the hell we need poorer versions. Get It On sounds like a Woolworth's cover version. Have you heard their version of Get It On chaps? Yeah.

I've got a theory about the lead singer Yeah. Shaking Stevens. Comrade Shaky himself doing Get It On. It really could be. Yeah. But it's so generic. It's hard to tell.

Hit the fucking play button. Well, you look like a call. You got a hook. Kemp down to Star Hey, yo. Like a car, oh yeah. That sounds like shaky to me. It does. My shaking antennae aren't exactly quivering.

You could be right. Yeah. I mean, a lot of people sound like that, don't they really? But fucking old chaps, imagine if glamour had been started by Shaking Stevens. Oh, do you remember that time when Shaking Stevens appeared on top of the pops? with strips of denim stuck to his face.

Those cover version albums are always fascinating. Yeah. Always. Like, you know, on the Pickwick Records top of the pop's albums, the lead vocals on all the Roxy Music tracks, and only the Roxy Music tracks, were performed by a Brian Ferry obsessive from St. Albans called Bert.

Every time Roxy Music had a hit, he was just waiting by the phone, cracking his knuckles. Spraying his throat from one of those little bottles with a tube coming out with a squeezy bulb on the end. But no, I'm always a sucker for those sound-like records. My favourite sound-like tracks that I've heard recently are from the Super Hits series. Right. Which is performed by a group calling themselves Kings Road. Oh!

Which really do sound like they recorded in a church all on a Walkman. It's unbelievable. Yeah, they do covers of a couple of Steely Dan tracks of all things, are amazing. They do do it again, the highlight of which is their attempt of the electric sitar solo. Oh, which sounds like it's

being pissed into the snow while running away from a crocodile. And they also do reeling in the years, which, let's just say that Donald Fagan and Walter Becker might possibly have requested a second take. And maybe a

slight adjustment to the microphone placement. Consider it harmonies on the chorus seem to be coming from the opposite end of the Scout Hut. I don't think any audiophile ever tested their new hi-fi system with a copy of super hits volume 10. That's all I can say. I'm still looking, by the way, for the Kings Road Beatles tribute album, which I've never heard. But apparently it includes a version of Mother by John Lennon, which I would dearly love to endure if anyone can help.

My grandparents blighted my 70s Christmases with the top of the pop songs, which is obviously considered to be tremendous bargains. Yes. You were the envy of everyone on your estate, weren't you? That's right. Or my neighborhood, yeah, yeah. Yeah. If I were to say to you, chaps,

that one of those top of the pop's albums actually got to number one in the album chart this year, 1971. Would you believe me? Yes. Well, I'd be lying out my ass because two of the fuckers did. Wow. Yeah? I didn't think they were allowed.

I thought he's like. the reason that, you know, that wrestling never gets reported in the sports pages, they were just considered not legitimate. No, they had to change the rules. Yeah, they changed the rules in 1972. Songs that were being sold below a certain price weren't allowed into the LP charts.

So there we go. Yeah. Yeah, there was this fear that otherwise the charts would be dominated by cheap Ocashin albums and it would make everyone look ridiculous. They only got round this in the 80s when they started to get albums like, you know, now that's what I call music.

and, you know, Raiders of the pop charts, where you've got the actual recordings on it. In the LP review section, well, the pick of the bunch this week is music. Carol King's follow-up to tapestre and Richard Williams really wants to like it. She now spends much of her time writing lyrics which refer to her own situation

rather than speaking to her audience as a whole. That's okay, but just occasionally I can't help feeling that something is being lost. That's pretty subjective stuff though and it's still one hell of a good record. Santa's left something special in Chris Charles was stocking this week. Brain Capers, the fourth album by Mot the Hoopal. It's back to rock for Hoopal after their comparatively liked last album with the group obviously attempted to cash in on their live success by issuing a set of tracks virtually recorded live in the studio.

If their younger fans can afford the two quid, then this could be the turning point. Three Dog Nights are one of the best American bands of their type, begins Jeff Brown in his review of their new LP, Harmony. This latest effort, which has made the US top ten albums chart, lacks two things, pretense and decent cover notes. Not all of the tracks work. In fact, the one that least appeals is the one that's been released as a

a single over here. Old fashion love song. But don't be misled. There are plenty of tracks on this album infinitely superior to it. It's a strange thing to say. Lacks pretense. It's a very unorthodox

70s opinion. No, they mean it man. I find it very hard to believe that these tracks are infinitely superior and I only got GCSE maths. Imagine what Gail Cantor would have made of that claim.

Sarcastically worded letter in the issue dated January the 8th, I'll be bound. But it's a coat down for Soul to Soul, the soundtrack of the film of the Concert of Garner's Independence Day celebration last March, featuring Wilson Pickett, Ike and Tina Turner, Santana and the staple singers, to name but a few. Any thoughts that this might be soul's answer to Woodstock are quickly dispelled by the title track, an undistinguished song, performed in undistinguishing fashion by Icon Tina, sniffs Alan Lewis.

He likes Roberta Flack singing freedom song Acapella in the dungeon of a former slave fortress in Cape Coast, but is it impressed by Wilson Pickett? This may have been a great event. If it was, the album doesn't do it justice, writes Lewis. What did he fucking want Wilson Pickett to do? Be actually chained down in a slave ship and being whipped while he's singing in the midnight hour?

Roy Hollingworth is massively confused by Barbara Jones Streisand, the new LP by Barbara Streisand, before he even gets it on the turntable. Any album with a cover like this, I thought, can't be bad. I mean, I really fancy the woman for the first time. But if you had to plan a stereotypical Streisand 71 album, it would come out like this. If you've already got tapestry, this is simply excess baggage.

Old-fashioned songs, old-fashioned arrangements, and suitable singing is what she's about, and she should leave rock and roll to those who understand and feel it. That might sound fascist, but it's true. Yeah, don't be a fascist. Suggests rock and roll is better played by people who understand it. That's what Hitler thought. Yes. Just play it safe by rating albums by female artists based on whether or not you

fancy them on the cover, lacking even feeble 90s self-aware irony. The Doors might be without Jim Morrison, who snuffed it five months ago, but they're still lashed to their contract with Elektra. So here comes other voices, the follow-up to L.A. woman. Did someone say Terry Reid was joining the doors? Asked Michael Watts. Well, he should. They need him. This album is so unmemorable for the eye of difficulty in remembering the time. The songs are colourless and there's nothing to get excited about. Just stifle a yawn. Take your copy of the doors or strange days from the shelf that make believe this record never happened.

Was Terry Reed going to join the doors? Probably not. No. Imagine if they got Terry McCann. Father, I want to thump you. Mother! Hold on here comes to season. Play this after Sunday lunch while the red wine is still warming the body,

before the chicken has been digested, and while relaxing with a lady in the aftermath of something deeply satisfying. Begins Chris Charlesworth in his review of Barclay James Harvest and other short stories, the third LP from the cream of the old and prog scene. There are flashbacks into early memories, and yearnings for early routes. A pub around the corner. A good wife.

Dinner on the table. The whole mood suggests how Yorkshire Barclays long for home, where they can escape the trendy pop world and return to steak pie and chips, a pint of tetlis or Barnsley Bitter, concludes Charlesworth, whose review's going to be ruined with the creation of Greater Manchester three years from now.

I mean, for King Elman. Who has ever wanted to have a shag after a big Sunday dinner while the chicken's still being digested? Oh, that's your dirty mind. That's your dirty mind. Relaxing. All you want is a kib and to be woken up just in time for Bullseye. Sorry, that might be just me, but I think I'm right there. Interesting though, how he's addressing both straight men and lesbians. It's quite progressive for the time.

Islands by Kim Crimson isn't the master album Robert Fripp? has been threatening to produce for years, but it can't be far off, according to Michael Watts. Jeff Brown thinks you should hang around the record shop and listen to live in concert by the James gang before you part with any cash. Alan Lewis is delighted to see the Pied Piper by Bob and Marcia comes in a gatefold sleeve,

but it's very soft lad reggae. And an unknown writer laments the fact that Elvis sings the wonderful world of Christmas is a long way from all shook up. but he does like the cover image of Elvis as a snowman. Gig guide. David could have seen Al Green at the Q Club in Paddington, Mott the Hoopool supported by Gallagher and Lyle at the Roundhouse, Steele-I-SPAN at the London College of Printing,

Cole Douglas and the Gonzales band at the Q Club, status quo at the red line in Leytonstone, or Nazareth at the Boat's House in Q, but probably didn't. The rest of us are absolutely. because there's no gig guide this week and all the adverts are for London venues. Shame on us. In the letters page, the main topic of conversation this week is the aftershock of the spat between John Lennon and Paul McCartner, where Maca gave an interview a month ago for the maker

and said he just wanted the four Beatles to sit down and sign a piece of paper to officially split the band, and he thought that John's coat down on how do you sleep was. Sillair with the headline Why Lennon is uncool Which led to Lennon writing Two massively bitchy open letters to the paper accusing McCartney of being a naive liar

who started the diswar in the first place on RAM. John Lennon is a genius states Neil Mooney of Greenock As for his attitude to McCartney, I don't blame him. McCartney's one of those Who? Me? I don't

want to hurt anyone. Guys. He makes me sick with his good guy attitude. Give me Lenin's morals and music anytime. Keep going, John. I'm with you. He's practically holding his coat there, isn't it? All you need is love. That's a laugh coming from John Lennon,

counters Elizabeth Houton and Owen Williams of Stockport. Practice what you preach, John. Why can't you and Paul stop acting like a pair of catty schoolgirls? Oh, Melody Maker, spare a thought for the uninformed masses. I could have gone on believing forever that Paul was the beautiful, innocent crooner of yesterday, and John the rakeish daredevil of a hard day's night, writes Laura Beggs of Weymouth. In one fell swoop, you have shattered all my illusions. They are as human as everyone else.

And the final word on the matter for this week goes to Barbara D. Hallett of Broms Grove. I am fed up to the back teeth with articles on John Lennon and Paul McCartney. I was just thinking, you hold on Barbara. I'm sure in 50 years' time there will no longer be a suffocating glut of those articles. Some of them, the only work I can get, so you shut up. Taylor, where do you have stood as a young head of this fraccar between Lennon and McCartner? Who's side of you are, mate? I mean, as a young head, like, you can't help but be on John Lennon's side because he seems like, you know, like edgy and Paul McCartney's just done, Mary had a little lamb and all this sort of stuff.

But as an older gentleman who knows a lot more about the circumstances, like he's just want to knock their heads together. Yeah, David. As a kid, Paul McCartney, he's a teenager John Lennon, there's a bit more grown up, Paul McCartney, and then as an old man, I agree with Taylor. A couple of months ago, I was watching a hard day's night around my mate's house, and he's probably the,

greatest man I know. And halfway through it, he just turned around to me and just said, if you had to fuck one of the Beatles, which one would he be? And I instantly said, Paul, as if I've been thinking about it all my life. Which is fucking menthol.

As a kid, Paul McCartney, as a teenager, job man. If I personally had to fuck one of the Beatles, Paul McCartney because he's still alive. Well, yeah, that helps. But it's because he looks like a girl. Because I'm a straight man. Paul McCartney is the one who looks the most like a woman.

So it's not really a proper answer to the question. Oh, have you seen that photo on Facebook of Paul McCartney as a woman? Yeah. Fucking hell. He'd get it. I'd like to make him go, woo! Although if I was a woman, he would be my last choice. Come on, you'd get a better slamming off Ringo.

Let's face it. You just would, right? With that out of the way, it's back to the traditional. standby topic of letters pages in music magazines, the rubbishness of Radio One. The deficiencies of radio coverage of rock in England are to me, too obvious, writes P.L. Watson of Sherringham Golf Club, Norfolk. The sounds of the 70s programmes are feeble.

They so often degenerate into John, Bob and Alan's Little Garden Party, where rock replaces chamber music. Where is the evil that Mike Harding used to pick up so well gone? Mike Harding? Yes. That Mike Harding, the Rochdale Cowboy, yeah. Isn't it time we stopped slagging Pete Townsend, T-Rex, Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, and point out guns at the record companies?

Asked George Davis of Cricklewood. Following another increase, it now costs nearly £2.50 for a single LP. I ran that through the inflation calculation. later chaps, you know how much that is? In today's rubbish money? £2.80? Possibly even more. £31.90.

Yeah, that is. I think the last time the Richard took the piss with CDs was 90s, wasn't it, when they were about 1799 or something like that. Before the internet, of course. And Richard Butterworth of Harrow has a special message of goodwill.

Quote from the M.M. interview with Terry Knight, manager of Grand Funk, When Mark Don and Mel stand on that stage, Mark says, this is my guitar. People say I can't play this. Well, screw them. I'm here, and you can be two.

Right on, Terrer. Sure I can be there. And you know how? One, by playing the most predictable, empty, formula-ized crap ever to be mistaken for music. And two, by having behind me one of the biggest record companies in the world, couple with a publicist who, with his clever stream of verbal diarrhea, can brainwash a gullible public into believing I'm playing music of now. Come off it, Terrer. Either you're the most naive human being ever connected to the Muzac business, or you just want to make a fast couple of hundred thousands. I think the latter is the case.

64 pages, 7p, I never. knew there was so much in it. So what else was on telly this day? Well, BBC One commences at 9am with Watch with Mother, presumably Dad's having a lie in, followed by Golden Silence, a clip show of ancient slapstick, presented by Michael Bentie.

Oh, that was great, was that? Then it's the 1964 comedy A Hard Day's Night, the Wilfred Bramble film about an Irish pensioner who takes his grandsons in consequential pop group down to London for the weekend. Way too early to be on. I can't believe they put on Hard Day's Night at that time, 9.40am. That was, you know, the Beatles film was on. I remember when Help was on in about 1974.

It was just like, it was a massive event. Yeah, this is outrageous. This should have been a tea time film on fucking boxing day, not something to shut the kids up at, while you're sleeping off the Christmas speedball. Yeah. It's disgusting, pissing this away before. the winter suns come up. It's the best thing on telly all day.

Yeah. Wraged. Well, you know the BBC won and the Bicles on Boxing Day? I think they've got the fingers burned, didn't they? In 1967. Yeah, yeah. By the way, if you had to fuck one of the Beatles, which one would it be? It's worth thinking about, isn't it? Fucking up, we've invented the new pantomime horse here, haven't we? Bring back pantomime horse. There's your parlour game for this year, Polkraise youngsters. If you had to fuck one of the Wurzels, which one was.

would he be? I would say whichever one of them had most recently washed in a barrel. Three men attempt to climb an outer Hebridean hunk of rock called the nose in the documentary Rock Island climb. Then Robert

Robinson, the owner of the most impressive comb over in Istre hosts Asht the Famler. I actually spent a lot of time studying his comb over of late. It's astonishing. Why don't the comb over? moment's come back. Yeah.

Second best home over of the 70s after Donnie MacLeod. Oh really? Yeah. Above Bobby Chaltern and even Ralph Coates. Yeah. And those are pretty straightforward, weren't they? There wasn't really a tonsorial creation like Robert and Donnie. At noon, it's two and a

half hours of holiday grandstand with football preview. The second off of Leeds versus Wakefield with Eddie Wearing, racing from Kempton and motor racing from Brands H. Holland, Belgium and Italy, face off against Blackpool at the Avimor Centre for It's a Christmas knockout. And then the Virginian investigates some sinister goings on in the town next door. It's a Christmas knockout. Sadly, title does not refer to somebody's dad catching up with Stuart Hall.

Another of those 70s British weirdos ruining it for all the other weirdos by actually turning out to be all the things. that people suspected weirdos of being. It's a real show. Although it's a funny thing when you look back at it. All the 70s weirdos who still seem charming now, like Tom Baker, were difficult but passable human beings. And the ones who were actually scumbags are the ones who seemed like cunts even at the time and seem even more like cunts when you see the old footage today.

And the only exception being. Rod Hull, who I have no reason to suspect of anything untoward, other than using a puppet bird as a fig leaf of violence and occasional groping. I was watching a documentary about Rodol recently, and it's really terrible how miserable he seems towards the end of his life. Yeah. Because he lost all his money by being stupid enough to blow it all on this absurd mansion in Rochester, where he lived, like the size of bum.

Buckingham Palace. So he tied himself into these mortgage payments as though clumping your beaked hand over Michael Parkinson's mouth and pushing him off his swivel chair. It was an endlessly renewable source of income that would just go on forever. I think he's subconsciously wanting to fall off that roof. Yeah, I don't blame him. You see these later interviews with him. He's all droopy-faced and completely broken. And God forgive me, I'm sat there giggling because all I can think of is the phrase Rod Hull and Emo. BBC 2 finally bothers to do something at 11 a.m. with Play School and then shuts down for five hours and ten minutes.

Fucking hell. They've just started surrender to Everest, the documentary about the 1971 International Everest Expedition, which started with 24 climbers from 12 different countries, and ended with seven of them giving up, 11 being hospitalized. and one Indian major getting killed. Wait, wait, wait.

Is that what they called the expedition? Surrender to Everett? Fuck, you know, I would never have signed up for that. No. Gentlemen, our plan is to scale the north phase of Mount Dignitas. I'll be there. Purpose of this expedition is to see if we can find any trace of last year's expedition. Yeah, no way, no way.

ITV opens a shop at five past nine with origami, then Rupert the Beard gets stalked. by a bad Chinese imp. After Atamant and the Superman cartoon, a massive plant attaches itself to a rocket ship in Lost in Space,

then it's till I end my song, a documentary where a camera crew goes up the Thames and films people pissing about on boats and working by the river. After nearly two fucking hours of boring horse racing from Weatherby and Wincanton,

it's hey! Cinderella, a Canadian TV retelling of the fairy story with a groovy edge featuring Belinda Montgomery, Robin Ward and Cermit the Frog. And they're an hour and 20 minutes into the courage of Lasset, the 1948 film featuring Powell and a 14-year-old Elizabeth Taylor. Surely they didn't name a brand of dog food after the actor who played Lasset. Could have been worse. They could have named a brand of dog food after they actually played. champion the wonderhub.

Well chaps, I do believe that a groaning table has been laid for this episode at Top of the Pops. And rest assured, Pop craze youngsters, in the next episode, we shall commence the tucking into of it. It's a good episode, isn't it? It is. So, thank you very much, David Stubbs. You're welcome. God bless you, Taylor Parks. Yeah, cheers.

My name's Al Needham. And when the going gets tough. the tough stay pop crazed. Chart music.