Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - Chart Music #75: August 15th 1974 – Could YOU Be Donny’s Bride?

Episode Date: December 14, 2024

The latest episode of the podcast which asks; The Osmonds – who’s the Sex King?We’re BACK, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, and to commemorate this we’ve only gone and picked out one of the maddest episodes of Top Of The Pops ever. It’s the late Summer of 1974, Robin Nash has just bedded in, and he’s got big plans for our Thursday evening fizzy Pop treat. Sadly, one of them – a massive splurge on David Cassidy’s farewell tour – has been shagged up by a BBC technician’s strike. But this week, the BBC has taken full ownership of the First Family of Utah and have given over a six-day block of early evening real estate to Ken, Ken, Ken, Ken and Donny.Consequently, this episode is a complete twisting of our Pop-Crazed melons. Out goes the studio in Television Centre, and in comes the BBC Television theatre, the natural domain of Crackerjack, That’s Life! and the Basil Brush Show. Out goes the usual melange of sullen youths chatting about lads and shoes and what they bought at Chelsea Girl last Saturday, and in comes 3,000 girls with their pants all of a piss at the sight of an Osmond. Yes, there is a presenter – Noel Edmonds, wearing possibly the most Different Times shirt ever – but he’s only there to stop the endless SCREAMING that might was well not be there. Musicwise, well: Obviously the Osmonds get to plug their next single, but it’s a mixed bag of fag-end Glam, Black American sophistication, future advert jingles, and Brit-rubbish. The Glitter Band  show off their Cyberman bukkake hairdos. Marie Osmond continues her reign as the World’s Oldest 14 Year-Old. Cozy Powell and his band of Egg and Chippers thud away. Pans People airlift a vital supply of Dadisfaction. Steve Harley and his pickup band look at each other in amused disbelief. The dark secret of Sara Leone is revealed. OH MY GOD IT’S THE BAY CITY ROLLERS. Sylvia pops up for a bit of Spanish Schlager – Schangria, if you will. The Osmonds get a massive plug for their next single, and the grown-ups enter the room with this week’s Number One.Sarah Bee and Taylor Parkes join Al Needham for a good scream – at everything – in this episode, veering off on such tangents as Sovereign Citizens, the Osmonds’ Barbershop Raga, Mike Read’s Shakin’ Jackanory, a horrifying tale from the Wank Factory involving a tin of anchovies and the Eastenders Omnibus, Tam Paton’s Star Bar obsession, and the most Plastic item of clothing ever. Swearing a-plenty. BE CALM.Video Playlist| Subscribe | 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 to listen to? Erm... Chart music. Chart music. I'm your host, Al Needham. And I'm your host, Al Needham. And I'm your host,

Al Needham. And I'm your host, Al Needham. And I'm your host, Al Needham. And I'm your host, Al Needham. And I'm your host,

Al Needham. And I'm your host, Al Needham. And I'm your host, Al Needham. And I'm your host, Al Needham. And I'm your host,

Al Needham. And I'm your host, Al Needham. And I'm your host, Al Needham. And I'm your host, Al Needham. The podcast that gets his 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 Sarah B. Ahoy And Taylor Parks. Hello

Colleagues, the pop things, the interesting things, what of them? Oh you know, future's so bright I've got to wear a miner's helmet. I'm attempting to write the award-winning joke for next year's Edinburgh Festival. Oh, yeah. With all the publicity and opportunity that flows from it. So I looked at recent winners and I came up with this gone I'm putting on weight because I keep cooking myself lamb and apricot tagine with flatbread the trouble is it's very more ish do you get it I was worried it assumes too much intelligence on the part of the audience yeah I think I've got to dumb it down

a bit like if I want to be celebrated as a genius. Yeah. I'm thinking of going out there and doing it in person, actually performing my one man show. Unfortunately, that includes the audience. So come along and laugh. It's a laugh a minute. I don't, I don't get it. No, I know the feeling. The trouble is right, is that that's my one of my favorite things to do. And I commend it to all is to when somebody makes a very obvious gag is to say, I don't get it. The thrill of it comes in making yourself vulnerable to being thought an idiot. Although of course being a woman I've never experienced that in my life. Yeah unfortunately for you I'm not the kind of Rube that you

could draw out to the point where I'm going, no, like it's a play on words, right? No, I'm sorry. I've been in this game too long. You're too clever for me. Other than that, I've just been listening to some of my favorite old records. Yeah. John McVicar, Hums the Love Theme from Caddyshack, Jeff Wayne's musical version of Brexit.

Oh you've missed this haven't you, pulp craze youngsters. Sarah, help. Well, never mind what I've been up to, what has Mike Reed been up to? So I discovered that Mike Reed is expanding his Talking Pictures portfolio. Is he now? Not satisfied with merely the heritage chart, voted on as we know by, in over 80 different countries. Is it over 18 now? I don't know, it's quite a few. Has it been going up? I don't know, I mean, well, border shift, you know, boundaries.

It's the virus spread. He now has an all new show, A Good Read with Mike Reed. I don't get it. Because his surname is Reed and it's about books. It's, you have to, basically you have to go back and forth until one of you, one of you concedes defeat in the battle of I don't get it. So it's Mike Reed trying to reinvent himself in the kind of masterpiece theatre or indeed monster piece theatre, although he doesn't make a very good cookie monster. So it's Mike

Reed just reading to the, you think I'm making this up, but he is reading great works of literature. This could be a lovely relaxing old fashioned piece of television, were it not for the fact that it's hosted by Mike Reed. Disjockonori if you will. Don't say I don't get it man, we'll be here all fucking day. So he's reading in the first episode from E.W. Hornung's An Amateur Craxman, a short story collection from 1899 featuring the gentleman thief A.J. Raffles. And it's replete with duplontondras. I mean, if you were going to do a porn version, you wouldn't even have to change the title. So as the title comes up, Mike is reading intently with his fingers

lightly curled against his lower face. And then he places the book down as if he's realized that we are now watching him. Pats it fondly, looks up to meet our eyes and smiles. He's wearing a tux and a cummerbund. No! Yes, indeed. Not to smoke it. You see, I would have gone for a smoking jacket, but you know, also I would have the bow tie is tied as well, which is, yeah, untied. Yeah, you've got to ferry it a bit, haven't you?

So he's sitting in in what is supposed to be a library, perhaps the corner. It's the, it's his favorite corner of his own of his own library. The lighting is supposed to be dim enough to evoke that Edwardian gas lighting and be flattering as a secondary element to the visage of Mike Reade. Hide that flesh chandelier. Exactly. But it's just eerily kind of cheaply dim. It's the dimness not of a beautifully preserved gentleman's turn of the century reading room, but a severely neglected mid-century multi-story car park. He has a top hat which he fondles and then hangs on the bookcase. I'm kind of doing this

backwards. I'm kind of focusing too much on Mike, but he's so compelling. There's a bookcase to his right and he fondles his top hat, hangs it on the bookcase where it proceeds to absorb all of the light and take on this kind of menacing flattened half form as if of a small void or portal. And he keeps seeing it like what the fuck is that? Oh it's his hat. It's very weird. So the bookcase is filled with vintage hardbacks which an intern has obviously just picked up from the charity shop. Or them video boxes you used to get in the 80s with be the final battle along the spine in gold leaf. They do look like real leather. But at the top of the bookcase is an old mantelpiece clock which reads 5.50 throughout

as if Mike Reed's Mike Reading has stopped time. Next to the clock is a single cloudy coupe glass and a bottle of unopened presumably studio temperature champagne, with the label discreetly obscured because Mike Reed does not seek to flaunt his personal wealth nor give Sainsbury's any free advertising. He wouldn't even patronise that woke grocery after what they did to Lawrence Fox. But he was in a hurry to get to the studio, and his Caribbean driver was too laid back to bother turning up, apparently, and the intern had been ushered out of odd bins, having forgotten her ID,

and he would certainly not forget that. And he was just having a nightmare of a day. He's sitting in a kind of park and old Chesterfield amalgam with like leather wings and a reupholstered hard wearing fabric back. A proper sale of the century prize. Yeah, absolutely. Again, someone has had to go and source that in a rush, I think. Yeah, from the back pages of the Sunday paper. Yeah, yes.

Along with the original Breton shirt and some slippers that warm up. And the backdrop is literally a backdrop. It's a canvas painting of some bookshelves and some floorboards, which ends somewhere around Mike Reed's knees. And it casts a shadow onto the studio wall behind it. And that is framed by two red velvet drapes and that's a good read with Mike Reed and it's a site to be seen and it's enriching content of the sort that it's basically like public access television except it's just Mike Reed

yeah but it takes you back to the days when bin men tasted like real bin men, before chips went transgenic. I'd rather watch a program called A Good Reed? Which is Mike Reed standing in front of St Peter who's just tapping the book and going, Icicle works. Well, we've got to make mention of course of our live show at King's Place. Oh yeah. Yeah, remember that Sarah? Yeah, yeah, I was on that.

You were there and everything. Yeah, it was an exceptional day, I'd say. Fucking ended it right on the dot of 90 minutes Satisfying I was just watching it because I was I was sure that we were gonna run over Yeah, and I was sure that it was not gonna be my fault and I was sure that I was gonna have to reign you in With it with a stern hand, but as it turned out it was like, oh my god We're actually gonna hit the thing and I was so excited. I almost forgot what I was saying. And I almost cocked it up myself. So there you go.

Oh, it was such a fucking pleasure to see the pop craze youngsters once again. If you came to it, thank you very much. We massively appreciate it. Hope you enjoyed it. But I'm going to say the highlight of the day was afterwards in the beer garden at the pub next door some poor sod just leant on the corner of one of them big benches and the whole thing fucking collapsed in on itself man it was incredible like the incredible Hulk had leant on it we need to work that into the act every year from here on in I feel. Yeah and can we commemorate it with a t-shirt for those who were there? I wasn't by the

way, I missed this. Oh I got a ringside seat man, it was amazing. Was there a great whoop of you know, ooooh? Of course there was, of course there was. And shock and relief that no one was actually sitting on it at the time because that would have done some proper fucking damage. Oh dear. But yeah, thank you done some proper fucking damage. Oh dear. But yeah, thank you very much if you came. Really sorry we didn't get a livestream sorted out this time but hopefully next time we will.

And yeah, just want to say one more thing. Next year something may be happening in the Midlands and the Popcraze Patreons will know first. Ooh. the Midlands and the Popcraze Patreons will know first. Anyway, it's been fucking ages since we did one of these so there should be loads of pop and interesting things to relate but all of that has been obliterated by a sight I witnessed on a bus in Nottingham a month or so ago, the thought of which still makes the gorge rise to my throat as it surely will to yours. Seriously, if you're driving right now, please pull in for a bit because you may want to

plough into a bus queue when you've heard what I'm about to say. So, I was on the bus in Titane and I noticed this bloke, slightly younger than me, wearing a black Arrington and I thought, you know what, fair play. Anyone at that stage in life who can rock an Arrington without looking like a complete fat bastard is worthy of respect. But then I thought, hang on, what's that on the front of it? And I looked, and it was a motorhead patch.

I know, but I looked again, and I thought, hang on, that's not a patch at all It's been professionally stitched in and he's bought it like that and he's wearing a motorhead Harrington and I had to get off the bus to stop early because I thought I was gonna say something because I was that fucking enraged I'm on the next bus to where I'm going to and I get my phone out and I look online and yeah this is actually a thing that people can buy and even worse than that it's had a massive snaggle tooth logo stitched into the back.

Okay now. Worse than a thousand madness modness badges. So I get to the pub I was going to and I told my mates about it and they were equally outraged and we all agreed that if you had gone to school in 1980 wearing a motorhead Arrington all the moths, grebs and rude boys would have been drawing lots to determine who was gonna kick the fuck out of you first. Let me say that again, a motorhead Arrington. Shit world, fuck off. Yeah, well on the way home did you see someone in a studded denim jacket with a madness patch on the back?

I know, I know. I wanted to buy a Lamberta's leather jacket to see how he liked it. Yeah. It's outrageous man. You should get in touch with Steve Arrington, inventor of the Arrington jacket. Tell him, feel so fake. Yes. The last year has been like bison shit on toast. If the toast was made from your own eyebrows, still attached to your head as they go into the toaster and I mean apart from the fucking obvious There's been loads of stuff going wrong. Just one of those times

So when you're in a dark period and your brain is timed out and gone into standby mode What else is there to do but develop an obsession with watching American police body cam videos on YouTube? Yeah, a few listeners might remember that during lockdown, I got into watching those awful videos of people reacting to things like Americans trying British chocolate bars and stuff, their holiday travelogues of London. For about a month, I couldn't work out

what was compelling me to watch this banal shit all the time until I realized that it was my neuro broken mind responding to the reassurance and hilarity of repeating patterns and the endless Mandelbrot effect of watching all these different people say essentially the same thing in different ways over and over again, right? Like, can't pre-chocolates better than American chocolate.

Okay, in London, always getting excited about going for Nando's like they thought it had four Michelin stars. Right. And in lockdown, especially this was simultaneously reassuring and slightly scary, like a lot of nice things. And then I realized that's the secret of every genre of YouTube bilge and free access internet bullshit entertainment is

the superficial shapes and colors changing around a core of strict familiarity and repetition. So really watching body cam footage of drunk idiots being arrested in Florida is just the same as watching Bulgarian iron mongers react to you tant or alien visitors try Shambhosee hippopotamus you know just on a grander scale with a slightly wilder character um but they're fucking addictive these body cam videos tend to fall into three categories once you knock out the fourth category which is people clearly going through a mental health crisis in a country where there's fuck all provision made for them and I don't watch those. Beyond that, three categories. Firstly is common or garden drunk drivers inexplicably and uncontrollably angry with the cops for cutting short their thrill ride.

Often upper middle class folk flabbergasted that a mere policeman would have the temerity to enforce the consequences of their mind-bogglingly selfish and irresponsible and dangerous actions. Those clips come with the endlessly entertaining routine of someone who's stone-cold sober trying to reason with someone who's blackout drunk, the secret of comedy dialogue being non communication and secondly there's jibbering human wrecking balls on meth usually causing a disturbance a liquor store or a dollar tree in walkie-shaw or just refusing to leave the quickie mark after being trespassed then lastly everyone's favorites the sovereign citizens you know these oh my god

essentially a modern American freemen on the land right, you know your laws do not apply to me your laws are Fraudulent I am a free individual There's a bit without fatal mixture of a very low IQ and the superiority complex which IQ and a superiority complex which is accommodation which gives them a problem with any kind of authority and an inability to understand that authority or why it's there along with zero personal responsibility. So they're drawn to these obvious scams and monetized conspiracy bullshit in certain corners of the internet about how actually American citizens have

the right to travel freely in their private conveyance without let or hindrance, without a driving license or a registration or road tax. Didn't you even know that? The Supreme Court has ruled on this. And if you meet a policeman who does not understand this, they need to be educated on the roadside through a closed driver's side window in the smuggest and most insulting way imaginable until he gets out a baton smashes your window and drags you screaming from your car. That's the good bit. Fucking brilliant. So basically why not send us fifty dollars for a phony ID and fake registration plates that just say freedom on them?

Might as well say stop and arrest me. And then when they get stopped, all these people say the same things every time the exact same phrases, the endless demands to know what they've done wrong after they've been told 15 times but didn't hear because they were talking over the policeman. Always this absolute certainty that the police are somehow not allowed to arrest them and will face a massive lawsuit if they try. Like calmly arresting a belligerent drunk driver is a career-ending misdemeanor for an American cop, a profession lest we forget where you are sometimes literally allowed to get away with murder. Always this conviction that if they just stand there and insist hard enough that their reality is objective reality it shall be so and you watch enough of these videos and you start to understand why half of America thinks Donald Trump is an

Inspirational figure. Yeah, whenever the cops system you're under arrest. They always say no, I'm not There's two people here which one of them is gonna know this and my favorite phrase which they always say is I do not consent to this arrest. Like they haven't considered that if consent was a prerequisite for being arrested, that would be a bit of a loophole in the legal system. That Ted Bundy walk free on a technicality. Then when the cuffs finally go on they start screaming don't touch me. Oh my god, you're touching me You have no right to touch me To which I can only think my god. You should have been around in the days before body cams

Fuck me getting arrested at 4 a.m on a deserted road in Arizona and addressing the arresting officers as bitch and addressing the arresting officers as bitch and you pussy ass faggot and then kicking and spitting on them while they're putting you in the back of the car you have no idea how well this is working out for you now compared to 30 years ago it's just unbelievable but that's the most surprising thing about watching these the rest of the world thinks of American cops as violent trigger happy lunatics Which clearly some are but from watching this it seems the majority are more like supermarket security guards Depth like pleading with people to get out of their car like a weak dad trying to get his kids in the bed

And it has a really worrying effect on you as a viewer because already you were thinking uh, re-corrective to see raw footage of American police in action where you're squarely on the side of the cops. Yes. That's a refreshing change but then after a while it gets to the point where you're practically screaming at the telly just tase him. Fucking tase him. Really brings out the worst in you i know has this spread to britain yet taylor because it's going to i think the manifestation of this in uh in the uk has been somebody paid for um a load of billboards that just said it's illegal to have a legal name yes do you remember these that's a freeman on land thing. That's what that's how it manifested here. As far as I know. Yeah, yeah, just shelling out for baffling billboard. But the idea is that your legal name, as is on your birth certificate, is part of this whole conspiracy whereby that's oppressive to give you a name because as soon as you have a name then you can have all the other things that go along with identity which can be controlled and

blah blah blah. But the thing is they were so baffling that you just look at them and go, what? But in America of course, because they're much better at these things than we are, it was like, look, you know freedom, right? You love freedom. You're a true American. Would you like some ultra freedom? Yeah. And it's like, of course I would. Yeah. What do you, you know, your name isn't actually your name. Okay. Have a good night, mate. Well, it's true. The world would be a lot less confusing if none of us had names. It'd be really good.

What would you go for? Just sort of, I'd go for like a little back of the throat hum, I think. Now, even that oppresses my identity as the living man. Yeah. The thing is, look, I understand sometimes you get these militarised robo-cops rolling up in an Imperial troop transporter holding super bazookas in a street where no one can afford a prescription. So it's hardly surprising that people don't appreciate them, but it does seem that for every white

supremacist murderer in a blue uniform, there's 5,000 of these poor sods standing around like spare pricks in the snow in Portsmouth, Ohio at 3am, trying to scoop up a thrashing spittle-fleck moron who's screaming racial and homophobic and misogynistic abuse at them while insisting that they're tyrants because actually he has every right to drive drunk on 700 Xanax bars if he wants to and if you so much as touch him I will take your badge and all of this in a lot of these well long-faced middle class onlookers stand around in a semi-circle solemnly filming it on their phones sometimes shouting leave him alone you fascist monsters because they're so insulated and privileged they've never had to

live around crime or criminals they don't understand that most criminals are horrible psychopathic fucking cunts. So they just assume that any arrest which doesn't look like a stately waltz must automatically be police brutality. What a shit job. I wonder it attracts so many idiots. I think all we get here is I pay your wages. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. I mean what should happen is the police should have an app on the phone and whenever anyone says I pay your wages they get it out and say okay then sir or madam what's your council tax band and then do a little bit of a calculation and go oh according to this you pay my wages for 12 seconds a year. So I'm gonna do a little dance for you for them 12 seconds,

and then I'm dragging you into the back of this car. Yeah. And also that's- That's show them off. Also it's as if the police don't pay their own wages. They pay taxes too, aren't they, right? Yes. I never thought that chart music would end up as

subtle copaganda. Yeah, I know. Yes. Yeah, blue lives matter pop crazy youngsters don't fucking forget it right. You know open the twitter tomorrow morning it's just gonna say Dave Dee follow G. No seriously I've got to get off these videos it's every year yes fewer good films fewer books attention span shrinking brain not spreading. Something came up on my YouTube recently, police were called because a bloke who was completely pissed

was having a fight with a bloke who was out of his head on meth and I looked at it and I thought, hang on, this is just like World War II. I don't think that anyone who automatically makes that connection is really the intended audience of these clips So I should probably take the hint and He'd Richard Hoggart before it's too late. Although of course it already is far too late cheer up Taylor

Now listen, you want to go back to lovely pictures of abandoned buildings And with everything left as if the people have just stepped out that's that's the good stuff isn't it because stuff you've had too much people yeah fuck people you need more abandoned shit with no people in it just just an empty living room as if I don't see that every day. Never mind. You tried Sarah, you tried. I did, I did, I did. I've been trying for 25 years. Right then, before we do anything else, you know what comes next. We stop, we drop and we bow the knee to the latest batch of pop craze youngsters who have made our g-strings all lumpy of late.

And they are in the $5 section. Rupert Gilbert, Aaron Probin, Ash Preston, Will Sharn, Steve P. Cult member ordinary, Paul H. Paul Nicol John Paul Doyle Aidan Scanlon Hal Walker Stig Thundercock Paul Stillwell Martin Reilly Ian Phil Bayley

and Alistair Lowe Thank you my babies, moi moi moi And in the three dollar section we have Christopher Bryant, Hal Walker, Will, Ben Hager, Emma Morer and 72 Heaven. God you're lovely y'all are fucking hell. And look I know this isn't the full list of the people who've got on the pop craze chara bank this year but Patreon is only letting me see the last few months. So if you have subscribed since we last met and you've not been mentioned yet and you want to be, please noise me up

and I'll praise you like I should. Oh, and a massive tar to Sully for going above and beyond and away of late and Doug Grant you are mint. Thank you. Yeah every day I thank our patreons for saving everyone else from having listened to David doing readouts for Manscaped. Top naming below the waist grooming technology. I know we should have told him that's what we were doing just for a laugh. Or hello, Fresh. If you're incapable of chopping your own vegetables, why not get them posted? Yeah. And you know what comes next because yes, once again, the pop craze Patreon have gone round the back of the record shop and they've fiddled and they've diddled and they've even

twiddled and rigged the latest Sharp Music Top 10. Are you ready for this? Yes! Hit the fucking music! We've said goodbye to the Quincy punks and benefits cheat Paul Diano. May he rest. Meaning it's two up, three down, two non-movers, two re-entries and a brand new entry. Re-entry at number 10, my fucking car.

Hey. Last week's number six drops three places to number nine, Eric Smallshore of Eccles. He's back! Re-entry at number 8 for Jeff Sex! No change at number 7 for Here Comes Jism. The highest new entry this week, straight in at number 6. Right said Don Estell. Into the top 5 and it's no change for Bomadoc.

Down 1 from number 3 to number 4, the bent cunt who aren't fucking real. Into the top 3 and it's a 1 place jump for the provisional Ooarooare. Last week's number 1 drops down to number two, Ghostface Silla, which means... Britain's number one! Up seven places from number eight to the brand new chart music number one, the Birmingham Piss Troll. Oh, what a chance. Fucking hell, not much movement from outside, but lots of movement on the inside.

I think you'll find there. So yeah, right said Donnesto. What are they all about? What's their stitch? Yeah, I don't know, but their pith helmets would be too sexy for them. So don't forget, if you are not down with the pop craze Patrons you need to sort that out right now baby if you can you know what to do keyboard mash mash mash patreon.com slash chart music pledge be rewarded. It's also the only way you can now experience the live show I believe. Yes indeed yes the latest live show is up there now and of course we're still

doing Hit the Fucking Play button where we take one video that was never played on top of the pops and just go at it and any other ramble that we feel like pulling out of our arses. But anyway, this episode Pop Craze Youngsters takes us all the way back to August the 15th 1974 and ooooo it's a bit of a special episode this one isn't it? It's a very special episode. The boat is completely pushed out, the format is fucked about with and we're given a tantalising glimpse of what top of the pops could

have been I feel don't you? Yeah it's like an alternate universe where everything is a bit more weird. Even by 1974 standards. Even by 1974. Yeah because we've recently done 1974 and did one of the Christmas episodes, but those episodes always give a distorted image of a year, I feel, and even though this is far from your average episode at the top of the pops, what we're about to tuck in, I contend, is the real 1974 warts and all, and by warts I mean loads of warts, boobos if you will in some instances. Sarah this is way way way out of your comfort zone being a mere slip of a gal. I'm going to come to you first. The music of 1974, what of it? Okay, what springs to mind is a sort of sloppy

queen sandwich with a generous Barry White filling and a crisp sparks garnish. Do I mean crisp as in lettuce or crisp as in crisps? Both. Sloppy queen. A lot of the songs in the Top 50 have the word rock in them and I don't think that's a coincidence. Like everyone singing the same old song, not all of those rocks are in the context of rock and roll. So it's a spurious argument, but there is something stale and sterile about the current state of things at which I feel this data point hints. You've got Rock Your Baby, Rock the Boat, don't rock the boat baby, Rocket,

It's Only Rock and Roll, Rock and Roll Lady, Banana Rock and Hey Rock and Roll. That's seven out of the top 50, which is at 14% of this week's chart Yes indeed there's also five baby or babes that she's 10% doesn't seem quite so worthy of comment Yeah, rock you baby your baby ain't your baby anymore. This is a story of my love brackets, baby Can't get enough of your love babe and beach baby Also for the sake of completion one lady two girls one She won Annie six use one queen six teens and one banging man and as aforementioned one banana You did say beach baby

I thought you said bitch baby for about a second and I thought that's the worst time I've ever... Oh right, no no. That is actually my drag name. It does kind of suggest going in that a gloriously kind of voluptuously 70s as this chart run down is. It does suggest that a certain amount of regeneration is needed at this point. But also, has there been, though to be mildly serious for a second, has there been a decade that hasn't had a slump in the middle like since the 1940s? You know, the realization that things are not actually going to change in the way that you want and you feel a bit foolish and sad. So that's, we're heading into that territory.

I think people always say that the fifties and sixties had a decent mid. Yeah. But since then, yeah, I think you're right, Sarah. It's just what tends to happen. I would say the 1940s definitely improved in the middle. Just a bit. Yeah. This period is always the gummed up cog at the center of the seven years. You know, it's neither one thing nor the other. It's just a thing of its own, all pale blue and washed out and grey and shabby. And in some ways, this is the early modern period, like beyond the post-war optimism, right? This is now a cynical place without illusions, you know, but also still mired in

the past. If you watch episodes of family fortunes from as late as the early eighties, it's amazing the answers that you get from the surveys because it's all people who were still alive and influencing culture to some extent. But they're from another age. Like, there's that famous moment on Family Fortunes where the question is, name a famous Scotsman. And it's the only time in history where the contestants get timed out because neither of them can think of a famous Scotsman.

But then when the answers finally come up on the screen, it's not like Billy Connolly or Kenny Dalglish or Richard Jobson or a famous Scotsman of the era Jimmy Cranker the answers are things like sir Harry Lauder and And you realize to score big on family fortunes in 1982 You have to think like you were born in the 19th century But yeah, 74 still quite free in terms of lifestyle for better or for worse. You're allowed to smoke anywhere. Yes, even in a barrel of petrol. Yes, nobody minded. Nice glass of Scotch in a low glass, loads of male

jewelry, tinted prescription glasses, slip on shoes, step step outside get into an MGB GT and drive off across the crunching Gravel in a bushy high street that was as good as it got but for the rest of us We were lucky if we could just find a nice quiet pub called the cricketers on a warm Sunday evening You know single brandy and a wine glass Sunday evening, you know, single brandy and a wine glass, fourpence. Then back to the peeling wallpaper. Cook yourself some dinner, 20 Rothmans, fried in lard, just slice a quarter of the block of lard off with a butter knife so it drops directly into the crooked black frying pan. Better days, better days.

Or you could hang onto the the hippie dream the apparently still inevitable future utopia which allowed a middle-class people under 35 was still waiting for and yeah it would be a peaceful world but there would be a lot of stuff on the floor so yeah it's all go unless you're a kid in which case you're doomed to get run over by an orange Allegro under leafless trees on underexposed 16 millimeter film and then fall into a slurry pit of barbed wire and electricity I'll tell you what it's funny as a kid in the early eighties

I'd go past greasy spoon cafes and look at the pictures of the food that they'd put up in the windows Right and they were all from about the mid 70s and by this point they were all sunfaded So you were looking at a gray omelet with olive colored peas and it was really unappetizing And I just thought imagine when this episode was recorded, all those folks would have been new and bright and all that food would have looked like the right colours and I might have been foolish enough to go in there and get fucking Listeria. 1974, the time when food was proper colours. Onward!

Radio 1 News In the news this week, Gerald Ford has had his first week in his new job as President of the United States after Richard Nixon fucked off a week ago. Turkey has had another go at invading Cyprus, taking nearly 40% of the island and dividing Nicosia. In response, the Greek Cypriot terrorist group EOKA-B invade the Turkish Cypriot village and murder all 84 of the men who live there, as well as taking 126 hostages from other villages. 26 hostages from other villagers. The East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front have had a go at assassinating Emperor Hirohito by blowing up a railway bridge he was due to travel over, but their attempt was foiled

after one of them was spotted and they all legged it. But never mind, they managed to get all the explosives back and use them to blow up the Mitsubishi building at the end of the month. They managed to get all the explosives back and use them to blow up the Mississauga building at the end of the month. Spain finally allows female bullfighters after a three-year court battle spearheaded by the 27-year-old Angela Hernandez. Paul Trevillian, the You Are the Ref artist who's made a fortune across the Atlantic as a golf hustler has caused

a riot in Northampton when he rolls through town in his Happy Loray, which contains a mobile disco and dancing teenagers, and starts throwing packets of fags and pound notes at the Oldens. Since returning to the UK, he's billed himself as the world's most eccentric millionaire as Vought elect Darlington supporters pelting with 2,000 tomatoes if they lose to Cambridge United They beat them 6-0 has put out the covers LP bad Vibrations has run the smile on Contest a search for Britain's best smile and has been touring the chicken in a basket circuit of Yorkshire with his own cabaret show featuring gypsy Romany Jones and someone called Kinky Dink.

Oh, Paul Trevillian, where are you now? A kind word would be irrepressible. There's a new film set to open up in London tomorrow that promises to be even fruitier than last tango in Paris, Emmanuel. Initially banned by the government of President Pompidou, it's been released uncut after his death by the new French regime and three quarters of a million Parisians have already seen it in 25 different cinemas across the capital. Just how many of her experiences will actually avoid the British censor scissors remains to be seen, says Ken Elm-Geneux of The Daily

Mirror. Oh, heroin makes love on a transatlantic jet with two strangers, on a squash court with a lesbian opponent, in an opium den with a drug crazy dropout. In between, she still has the energy to indulge in open air do-it-yourself activities, far removed from building bird baths in the back garden. But perhaps the most bizarre incident of all involves a cigarette. What happens next does not bear description. It's been announced that George Harrison and his wife Patti Boyd have split up and while she's in America with her new bloke Enoch Clapton, the quiet one is consoling himself with one of Rod Stewart's old girlfriends

in the West Indies. They would get divorced in 1977. The Windsor Free Festival is looming on the horizon and Windsor and Maidenhead Council have announced plans to stop the Windsor Great Park becoming a hippie ghetto by deploying undercover police in loons and Afghans, spreading quicklime in the park and having barrels of sludge from slough sewerage works on site. Festival organizers say that they expect up to 100,000 of the gentle people in the park over the bank holiday and expect no trouble. And in any case, the hippies can always put their shoes on.

Kevin Keegan and Billy Bremner become the first league players to be sent off at Wembley after they started fainting and falling out at the charity shield between Liverpool and Leeds United. Oh, the unacceptable face of British football there. But the big news this week, the Osmonds are back in the country, but not to conduct a UK tour. They're going to be the sole property of the BBC, putting out a live show on BBC One every night from Monday till Saturday, but not this night pop crazy youngsters because they're going to be taking over top of the pops in a rare live non-studio transition and all

this is the episode we're going to cover a major shake up of the form yeah it really is as a young head there's no doubt you would have been you wouldn't have been happy about this would you a little too young a head to notice at this point. But no, I wouldn't have been. If this was a couple of years later, I'd still have got annoyed about it. It would be like, I don't know, Kajagoogoo taking over top of the post. Yeah, yeah. That would be right.

All that blazing charisma, yeah. Mmm. Yeah, a whole week of programmes for the Ottmans, like they were human Christmas. But they never did that for Edison Lighthouse, did they? No. It's weird as they're one of the very first teen sensations to mean nothing as well. Do you know what I mean? Like no suggestions of rebellion or deliverance or different kind of life or anything kind of interesting that you can latch onto.

They're just these corn-fed country cousins, you know, with their grotesque American teeth, like strip lights under their lips, you know. It's just cornball showbiz, right? Not even good-looking, just attention seekers. It's very odd that they've got a whole week of programs. And we mentioned before, right, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the mainstream Mormon denomination to which the Osmonds belonged,

at this time was still four years away from permitting black people to participate in the organization because they believed black people didn't have fully developed souls. Something which I've said before is musically very evident in the Osmond's output. But their sincere religious belief was that any black person who prays hard enough that they're allowed in heaven will be made white in the afterlife so that they're allowed to sit with God and Jesus and all the little angels. A sincere belief that the church would abandon abruptly in 1978, according to the church

leaders as a result of a personal revelation from God who took his time, although secular cynics would point to the fact that in 1978 the church was threatened with having its tax exempt status revoked if it continued to violate the civil rights of black people who for some reason wanted to join up with this obvious racket and sit unwelcome in a Mormon church. But it's really hard to imagine the BBC in the 1970s giving over this much airtime to representatives of any other organization with similar or equivalent beliefs right and although the Osmonds did not make Mormonism the focus of their every utterance like it doesn't come up on this program for instance but they weren't exactly fucking quiet about it either, were they? It was their tartan gimmick, right?

The hilariously unconvincing trust-me-bro tale of a convicted fraudster whose virulent racism became a pillar of the faith. Now to this day, members of every major world religion do get away with saying and believing and sometimes doing terrible things, many of which become triggers for real world violence and oppression. But at least they don't work into a song and dance act. We don't have to watch ISIS and the pop people. David Duke presents the five songs in the great American song book that weren't written by Jews. You know what I mean? You don't turn on the radio and hear sing something simple

with the West Bank settlers. It just doesn't, it's probably a good thing, right? If the Ayatollah Hamenei finished his speech, unhooked the mic from the mic stand, wandered out from behind the lectern and started going you've been a wonderful audience please drive home safely ladies and gentlemen please drive home safely gentlemen and to send you on your way here's a little number called swanney river

i don't think that would be an improvement and i don't think he would get on the one show but here we are looking at Osmonds, they're clean and wholesome and I mean I'm all for free speech right but this needs a community note urgently. Yeah they didn't directly propagate their religion but apparently the the older brothers got let off from doing mission work which which they were supposed to do because the band itself constituted a mission because it drew so much attention, positive attention to it.

So they were ambassadors for it. So basically the Osmond's entire career was the musical equivalent of Bonesburg. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's actually how Mitt Romney got into being a Mormon. He had crazy horses and went, I've got to get him with this. On the cover of Melody Maker this week, yes. On the cover of Record Mirror, The Osmonds. On the cover of Music Star, Rob Davis of Mud. The number one LP in the country is Banned on the Run by Paul McCartney and Wings. Over in America, the number one single is Feel Like Making Love by Roberta Flack and

the number one LP is Back Home Again by John Denver. So me dears, what were we doing in August of 1974? I was minus four years old at the time. Good Lord. I was part of the universe. It's floating in the ether waiting for your moment. We don't get you, you're part of the universe. Yeah, as I will one day return to. God, imagine that. What what my parents doing they hadn't met yet um all right dad had i think my dad was had he moved to london from uh the states yet i'm not sure i think he might still have been in denver at the time right yeah and my mum i think was uh was in london enjoying the fact that she hadn't yet met my dad. Did I tell you how my parents met?

No. My mum was working at a restaurant, she was like a hostess, and my dad ate there and complained about the food. So she should have known right away, but it's probably just as well for me that she didn't. So you know, thanks mum. And I guess thanks dad as well. Taylor? Yeah like Sarah I was in a state to which I will doubtless return in the future being wheeled around the park by a long-suffering woman. Well no I would have returned to that in later life except the provision is no longer made for that so I'll just have to remain motion.

Well being the elder statesman this episode I'm six years old at this time and I know for a fact that I didn't see this episode because it's a school holidays so I've been carted off across the city to stay with me non-arranged grandpas on Arcright Street in the meadows which was fucking mint because I got spoiled rotten so While this episode's going on I know it's not gonna be on the tele But I'm sort of in the back of the living room on a big table replaying the 1974 World Cup on striker With a big stack of comics on one side of me and a bag of fun-sized

Milky ways as big as me head on the other or I'm having an actual centrally heated bath which was like being in the 21st century in 1974 Not like my 21st century, I can tell you that They had a house that was built on top of the trustee saving bank but no bathroom so they had a bath built in the kitchen next to the cooker with a big wooden lid that swung up and down so it could also act as a breakfast bar so I could well, while this is going on, I could

well be sat in it watching me non-o at my feet working on a spitting chip pan which is a bit dangerous but hey it was 1974 fuck it. They still had an outdoor bog though which was terrifying because it had the most massive spiders in it but you know good times. There's nothing like chips from an actual chip pan. Oh you can't whack it man. Yeah my nanny used to make them and I was never worried at all despite being a nervous child who was a you know deadly afraid of things like fire. Oh like Charlie the cat looking at the sausages spitting in the pan all over him. Yeah it was just like a good foot of boiling fat and just out of it came the most beautiful chips and we shall never see that like again. So pop

crazed youngsters round about this time we're a pair to the Chant Music crap room and we pull out an issue of the music press from this very week. And this time I've gone for the NME dated August the 17th, 1974. Chaps, shall we have a lead through? No, why not? On the cover, Roxy Music.

The news section. The biggest gig of the year has been announced. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young have been confirmed for Wembley Stadium in September and they're bringing along Joni Mitchell and the band. It's going to be CSN and Y's only European show, it's the last date of their reunion tour, it's going to last for 10 hours and a British name band is going to be added to the bill next week. Oh, hope it's the Wambles. Tickets will be limited to 72,000 and there should be enough space for everyone to enjoy the concert in comfort," says promoter

Mel Bush. The food and toilet facilities will be the best ever, and CSN and Y will be bringing their own PA, which is amongst the best in the world. The British name band turns out to be Jesse Colling Young, who was American. The PA was Ramel. The band spent at least an hour of their two hour set tuning up, Joni Mitchell was skill and Crosby Stills and Nash and Young were alright, if you like that sort of thing.

Except I do and they weren't. No. The whole of that gig was filmed and it's been knocking around on bootleg for years and it's on YouTube I think. Oh is it now? Their set is fucking horrendous. Is it? You know that thing you get with cocaine,

where people are simultaneously over-energetic and jumpy, but also seem deeply, deeply exhausted. And that's what this gig is like. They end with a jam on the song, Carry On. And I would rather watch Carry On England than live at Wembley Stadium with Graham Nash looking like a wood sprite that spent four years in a gulag. Neil Young never takes his shades off for the whole gig, it's like he's hoping no one will recognise it and I don't blame it. The other big tour news, Roxy Music, who are currently putting the finishing touches to

their fourth LP, Country Life, and have announced a UK tour which will kick off in Cardiff in three weeks time. Do you know the original title for that LP was You Can't Put a Better Bit of Butter on Your Knife? It'll feature an as yet unknown new bassist, which is rumoured to be Willie Weeks, who's been working with Keith Richard and Ronnie Wood on their recent solo gigs, but turns out to be John Weston, previously of Famle and King Crimson. In other Roxy news, Eddie Jobson has been approached by David Bowie to join

his band for the second stage of the Diamond Dogs tour but has politely declined saying I am a member of Roxy Music. He's also knocked back an approach from Steve Harley to join the new version of Cockney Rebel, choosing to stay with Bryan and the lads until 1976 when he links up with Frank Zappa. Meanwhile, BoA, who is currently undergoing line-up-related myther, what with Herbie Flowers, Tony Newman and musical director Michael Kamen walking off the diamond dogs tour, has been spotted in Sigma Studios in Philadelphia, laying down tracks with Norman Harris and members of MFSP for what would become the Young Americans LP.

Yes, I've finally found a replacement for Rick Wakeman. It's Patrick Maras, the Swiss keyboard virtuoso from the prog band Refugee, who was initially at the top of the yes shortlist until Van Gellis made a come and get me plea but when it became impossible to get a work permit for the freaky Greek Maraz got the job leading to Refugee splitting up. Maraz is also on the cover of Melody Maker this week as he's sporting an astonishing bouffant. Ooh that really is something, isn't it?

Fucking hell. The whole effect is like a rear view of a black poodle with a man's face poking out through the ass. Yeah, he's fucking terrifying, isn't he? If Noel Edmonds had strayed from the herd and was found dead on a hillside and his hair continued to grow out, that's what he'd looked like.

And the thrills gossip section reveals that the comeback gig of Mersey Beat legend King Size Taylor at the Speakee's, backed by members of Deep Purple including Richie Blackmore, was cancelled at the last minute because he couldn't find someone to look after his butcher shop in Southport. And the news of Nixon's resignation was broken in the UK by Alan Osmond at a press conference in Hounslow and then confirmed by little Jimmy, who had been told it had happened half an hour previously. They were wrong at the time, but proven right the following morning. Oh, what did them Osmonds know? As usual. Features!

James Johnson nips down to Churtsie to pay a visit upon Denny Lane, who is living there in a converted torpedo boat on the Thames, in order to address the rumours that wings are splitting up, and according to him, it's all bollocks. In the last two months, Wings have been rehearsing and recording in Nashville. During this time there were various arguments slash discussions, the outcome of which had become a more stable band and a more equal position for Lane, writes Johnson. Yeah, notice that Lane didn't say that. But what he did say was, all I can say is Paul and I have had our arguments just like

everyone else, but I couldn't stay in a band with someone I didn't like. They stayed together for another seven years. Pop rock is starting to become a thing and Pete Erskine catches up with the genre's hottest prospects, the Winkies, who have just put in a stint as Brian Eno's backing band on his first solo tour, which ended after six gigs when Eno suffered a collapsed lung in Guildford. When Erskine brings up the speculation that it was all a cod to end the tour earlier, frontman Philip Rambebo puts him right. Sure it was true. He was in the middle of setting a record. He was trying to err number of ladies per day and he was doing very well.

The Winkies would put out one LP in early 1975 and then immediately split. What was Eno doing to fuck his lungs up with the ladies? I don't know but Collapse Lung in Guildford sounds like the title of a track off one of his collaborations with Harold Budd. Barbara Chiron finds herself at a holiday inn in Memphis with Yvonne Ellerman, who has been off playing the Nazarenes knock-off in Jesus Christ Superstar in favour of joining Eric Racist Band. I got very bored with Broadway doing the same thing every night singing to a bunch of penguins. You have to stand in one spot. It's so

strict there's no chance of any freedom. Whenever I tried to sing I don't know how to loveifferently the audience would groan and make noises and probably flap their flippers until they got a fish. I dunno. They wanted to hear exactly what was on the record. Then suddenly I started getting all this mail addressed to Mary Magdalene. I mean even from my mother they actually believed I was Mary of modern times on the concert tour There would be cripples and blind people backstage asking me to touch them. I didn't believe I was Mary for one minute I mean, I still don't know how to love him Yeah, my you I got sick of singing to a bunch of penguins, too

Also, the zookeeper told me he'd call the police if I didn't go away. I would have thought penguins would quite like the Mack lads, but apparently not. Andrew Taylor gets sent to Las Vegas to investigate the newest attraction in town, the Osmonds, who have taken up residency in the Tropicana. After describing the venue as a giant sterilised whorehouse, as if that was a bad thing, he focuses his attention upon the audience. Most of them are in the post-weeny sub-teen bracket, the age where the teeth are still harnessed by yards of steel rigging and body coordination is not all that it might be. Yet these little girls in their A-line print gowns and slash-back silver shoes want

to move around like old ladies of 25. These are the kids from middle-class American homes who never get to be teenagers. Daughters of dentists and insurance brokers from California's delectable suburban basin. But tonight, they're entitled to act like dopey 12-year-olds. There's a fanfare, and a trickily voice says, Ladies and gentlemen, the Tropicana Superstar Theatre welcomes... And out comes a comedian called Kelly Monte.

After being massively impressed that he's not seeing big fat roadies fucking about with wires for three hours as is the style with the gigs that Tyler's used to, he's treated to the same old routines that have been on BBC One all week, albeit with less screaming. After trying, and failing, to get an interview with the band's mam and being told that they're about to move away from bubblegum into a blacker, more Philadelphia sound, he's not entirely convinced. Classy as it might be, there's only a modicum of genuine talent there.

The rest is sweat and mormon fervour. The Osmonds are seven little synchronised Gene Kellys, and all those dribbly girls who have been screeching like wild birds might just as well save it for an authentic bad boy combo. I prefer my whorehouses riddled with cholera. Mick Farron is made to sit at a phone all day, ring up all 15 ITV regional companies and demand to know why none of them are bothering to create new music programs for the heads and the kids.

He starts by hassling Granada, who tells him to have a word with Muriel Young, the head of children's programming. When he asks if they're doing anything for adults, he's told that they did a special on the songs of Lennon and McCartney eight years ago, but neither of them were involved. After pointing out that Ronco and K-Tel are massive advertisers in the UK and there really should be a music show in the evening. He's told, if we put on a show like that in prime time we would have a lot of complaints. To most parents this is just a din. He then has it out with the director of light entertainment at LWT, a certain Michael Grayde, who the enemy think is called Michael

Grayde, and asks why real kids issues aren't being addressed. Grayde immediately responds by saying, let's be serious shall we, people don't want to see this sort of thing. If I put rock and roll on London Weekend there'd be a switch off. The people who buy records are in a tiny minority. How many does a record sell? A million at best. I deal with 24 million viewers on a network show. When Farron trots out the KTEL argument, Grey said there's no relationship between advertising and programs. Just because there are ads for rock records doesn't mean people want to watch it on television.

You might as well ask us to put out shows on dog food. Oh, fucking hell, if there was a load of 70 shows on dog food on YouTube, man, I would watch the shit out of all of them. And you would as well, Taylor, wouldn't you? Be honest. After being fobbed off by ATV and assorted minor networks He finally comes across a glimmer of hope when he talks to the PR manager at HTV After reassuring him that they already do have their own regional music program the great Western musical

Thunderbox hosted by Fred Wedlock and featuring the Wurzels, Isla Sinclair and the Pigsty Hill Light Orchestra. He tells Farron that Michael Gray was talking out his arse and there was more than enough of an audience out there to make a late night music show work, but such a thing would be too expensive to produce for the likes of HTV. They both agree that nothing will change until a fourth channel is created in the UK, leaving Farron to muse ruefully that the big American music show stole everything from Ready Steady Go and Top of the Pops but no one here has the bollocks to create new shows that will benefit the entire music industry.

Oh, so right Mr. HDV. And Julie Webb and Roy Carr have pulled together an article which catalogues the choicest demands from the riders of our pop faves and wonders if this is why ticket prices have suddenly shot up. Shall we leave through that chaps? Yeah. So, the Rolling Stones, Tequila, American and Scotch whisky, cold cuts of meat and freshly squeezed orange juice.

Whoa, no rise and shine for Mick and Keith. I'll have you know. The Facers, two bottles cognac, two bottles Leifraer Milch, one bottle Teaches, one bottle Pims, one bottle Port, 12 bottles Lemonade, 12 bottles Coke, tea, coffee, milk and sandwiches in the day and two limousines available outside the hotel one hour before the start of the gig

Alice Cooper he only asked for can Budweiser a mariachi band and some midgets Cockney rebels rider includes four local lads to help with loading and out Direct access to stage from dressing room promoter to arrange supply of local bcers who'll report directly to Steve Harley's bodyguard and two dozen bottles of coke. Suzy Quatro, a mirror in the dressing room no smaller than 20 by 30 inches. Paul McCartney, someone in the wings with a clean towel throughout the gig. Mott the Hoople, plain clothes bouncers supplied by the promoters to find anyone bootlegging the gig and the right to stop the gig on the spot if any tapes

are found. The New York Dolls. Two quarts of Remy Martin or Courvassier. Six bottles of French Champagne. Two dozen bottles of beer on ice before the gig and another two dozen after, a pitcher of ice water on the stage, fifty pounds of ice cubes, a hundred paper cups, two quarts of orange juice, a dozen bottles of coke and the key to the dressing room which must be locked at all times and kept by the band's personal valet. Wonder why. David Cassadet, a selection of vegetarian food and two bottles of wine. That's the most fucking demanding one of the lot, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. A selection of vegetarian food in 19th century

war. No mate, sauce mix and deal with it. Yeah, there's a bowl of lettuce and a bowl of tomatoes. There you go. Gary Glitter. Five motorbikes with riders. Okay. Is the fucking big one. Yes. Locally grown chemical free organic food. Two gallons of spring water. Two gallons of goat's milk. Wholemeal bread, organic cheese and butter, fresh fruit, brown rice, lemons, hunnair, a gallon of pure apple juice, a gallon of pure orange juice, a selection of nuts, two boggles of 1964 Dom Perignon, limos that are dispatched to the airport, permission from the airport to allow the limos to access the landing strip and pull up right beside the plane so the band can step directly into them, and a hot meal for the road crew at 4.30 on the dot that isn't hamburgers or similar takeaway food. And the moon and a stick for it.

However, yes with Rick Wakeman in the band, all of the above plus a curry, six dozen cans of beer, two bottles of red wine and two bottles of white. I used to get sick to death of hearing about Rick Wakeman demanding a curry but after reading what yes fucking what I just say good on you mate. Yeah it's a good job no one was reporting on our rider for the last chart music live yeah fucking gaviscon and victory v but less than that and the chara settlers tums with all the orange ones taken out single reviews in the chair this week is Steve Marriott, yes that's Steve Marriott who is still clinging onto Humble Pie even though their last LP wasn't even released in the UK and is photographed

in a back garden bothering some ducks and not looking very well at all. Poor sod. The single of the week, or at least the first one mentioned, is Love Me Forever, which is actually the new Osmond single, Love Me For A Reason. Fucking hell, you can't blame the enemy for that though. Polidor have listed Love Me Forever as a song title in their own Osmond's advert in this issue. Pssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss Tall, smooth and treacilair with a good head of teeth, says Marriott. Very professional, which you would expect from the Osmonds, but I just can't forgive them for stealing from the Jackson 5, despite what they say to the contrary.

A drone of Mormons. Oh, I like this record, I like it very much, says Marriott of Kung Fu Man by Ultra Funk, the up tempo shoe shuffling rocker beat boogie that is destined for the number one spot and I haven't even played it yet. You heard that, haven't you, Kung Fu Man? No. It's the one they play over any documentaries about Kung Fu in Britain in the 70s that isn't Kung Fu fighting if they can't get the rights for some reason.

Kat Stevens is back with another Saturday night and Marriott slightly reckons it. One of my favourite Sam Cooke songs was someone going divvy on the Timpani's. I admire him for taking time out to do something he really likes. He's taking a leaf out of Rod Stewart's book and although it doesn't come off like Twist in the Night Away, I like it, although not that much. Nice one Steve, I'm not going to call him cat, he ought to drop all that bullshit. Oh he will Steve, he will, Steve, he will. But it's a coat down for Andy Warhol by Dana Gillespie. She sings better than she looks in her publicity picture. I'm sure she's not into looking like a tart.

She deserves a better song to sing, better publicity and a better deal all round. Someone is going all out to make her a new image, but he don't fit, darling. Marriott doesn't even bother to play Country Girl by Ozark Mountain Daredevils because he's been rinsing the album it came from all summer. I can see why they chose this as a single, but there's much better material on the album. Go out and buy it. There's a meaty thumbs up for Give It Everything You've Got by Carol Grimes, formerly of Canterbury Scene Pioneers Deliverer,

but that's mainly because her producer is now working with Humble Pie. Very pleasing. Her mum should be proud of her. A lovely Sheila, and not at all stuck up. Glad is Night and the Pips have escaped from Motown and have linked up with Curtis Mayfield and their new single On and On is applauded by Marriott. The combination really works. She's got back to that raw feel I love. Curtis is really staring her in the right direction. Oh, good on you Curtis. And talking of which, the impressions I've put out finally got myself together and Marriott

agrees. It's the best thing they've done since Curtis left and could be even better because they are so good. I'm getting the feeling these records have slipped in because someone knows what I like. However, first class have followed up Beach Bay Bear with Bobby Dazzler, a rueful comment upon the current pop scene which is an open letter about an aging rocker jumping on the glam wagon. A nice interesting story with a fine sentiment even even if the record is a little weak. Perhaps a surprise sleeper. That's supposed to be about Alvin Stardust, isn't it?

I don't know, is it? Someone who was a rock and roller who got glammed up and sold his soul. How dare you say that about fucking Alvin? Fuck off! If only he could have hit the heights of first class. Yes, exactly. Is that like how Toxic by Britney Spears is actually about the super vet? Because it was written by Kathy Dennis who used to go out with him.

Oh! Arrow scored a top ten hit with their debut single Touch Too Much in June and they've reunited with Mickey Most and Chinny Chap for the follow up, toughen up. Amariot immediately spots subterfuge. A blatant nick of the stones does not fade away, but a nice nick all the same. A very obvious record, but a good one. Amariot takes time out to sympathise with another blue eyed soul man of the 60s who's finding the going hard in the new age. In his review of Something Bout Ya Baby I Like by Tom Jones.

Still on decker? Hell! This is a good example of a great voice being abused and misused. I know there is more inside this man than what is getting out. I don't like it and I don't like the soft drug image they have given him but I like him. Tom Jones with a soft drug image. What? The Viacra. In the LP review section, well, one and three quarter pages are given over to Ian MacDonald's review of Neil Young's fifth album On The Beach and he believes it's his best yet. It's his equivalent of Lennon's plastic Ono band in terms of being a reaction to and rejection of his earlier work. Personally,

I think Young heard Dylan on tour recently, copped for what the new version of It's Alright Marr was all about and decided he'd been jerking off too long But the more important thing is that though Dylan and young may have taken a parallel path recently young sounds Actively dangerous while Dylan's just singing his own peculiar gospel This is a fairly mighty statement in its own terms and perhaps we shouldn't categorize him What's that like Taylor? It's his best album yeah it's got that sort of mid 70s Watergate malaise feel to it. It's great. Joe Cocker is currently in hiding in California after his disastrous gig at the Roxy in LA but the enemy hope that Bob Woffenden's review

of his fourth LP I Can Stand A Little Rain, will cheer him up. It's been a long, bitter road, and that's why he's been a recluse so much of the time, contemplating both the meaty triumphs and abject failures, writes Wuffenden. And yet, the moments of cocker magic inevitably make up for all that's not quite right, and the new album marks an interesting departure with supper club material that seems at odds with what we've come to expect of him. There's no way that Joe Cocker could ever be classed as easy listening, but the man who grew up on Tetley's Bitter could yet become the phenomenon of the northern cocktail

circuit. That's the one with the You Are So Beautiful on it, which is not mentioned in the fucking review at all. Symante have put out their third LP, Promised Heights, and Roger St-Pierre desperately wants to reckon it and them. Rhythmicler, there are few American bands who can beat this lot. Perhaps some of their material could be stronger and the vocals really fall rather short. But all in all, this is a fine inventive album.

Roger St. Pierre? Yes. Wasn't that Patrick Mower's character in Bergerac? No, that was Eddie St. Pierre. Wasn't it now? Must be his brother, yeah. The first two Tim Harding LPs, Tim Harding 1 and Tim Harding 2, have been dusted off and welded together as a twofer, and Charles Sharmoury implores the youth, particularly the maudling youth, to get involved with them. Generally speaking, he suffers quietly to rather watery accompaniments, but the durability of the songs and the convincing quality of his mournful grunt renders the package worthwhile if more

than somewhat depressing. Almost once every eight months you'll be glad you got this album. Diane Carroll, currently best known for breaking off her engagement with David Frost so she could get married to the owner of a boutique in Vegas last year, has signed up to Motown and put out the LP Diane Carroll, but Chris Salowich fucking hates it. This is not for me, and almost certainly not for you or any of your brothers and sisters. On the other hand, if you're a thrusting mid-30s executive poised to make that leap to the boardroom, then Miss Carol's voice will be just perfect to have on the 8-track in the Jensen. She consistently fails to rise above the cocktail lounge limitations and the LP becomes just another chunk of irritatingly

dissatisfying black music. And Charles Chalmury tells us that he once spent 6 hours on the plane from New York to LA playing Jolene by Dolly Parton on constant repeat and can't think of a single he currently likes more. So he's been frothing at the gash to review the LP of the same name and he opens that review with the words, it's merely magnificent. Sure, it's a sentimental album and it's grade A Nashville sludge but nonetheless she makes it. Was there a better single released in 1974 than Jolene? I don't think there was.

In the gig guide, well, David could have seen Heavy Metal Kids at the Marquis, Stackridge at the Roundhouse, Camel at the Marquis, Dr Feelgood at Dingwalls, the Temperance 7 at the 100 Club or Chris Stanton's Tundra at the Marquis, but probably didn't. Taylor could have seen Hank Marvin at La Dolce Vita, the Heavy Metal Kids at Barbarella's and fuck all else. Neil could have seen the root bets at the Locarno or Callum Bryce at Mr George's. Sarah could have seen Vince Eager at the Monk Breton Social Centre in Barnsley, Limeon Family Cooking at the Fielly Blue Dolphin, Gasworks at the Scarborough Penthouse or Paper Dolls in their week-long residency at Bailey's in Sheffield. Al could have seen the Alan Elston band at Trent Bridge Hotel, Winkies

at the Boat Club, all nipped out to see Paper Lace at their week-long residency at Bailey's in Darbear, or Alvin Stardust or Weakley at Baillies in Leicester. Yes! Fucking Winkies. East Midlands representing. When the East Midlands is in the house, oh my god, danger. And Simon could have seen Jigsaw at Fagans in Wrexham, Sassafras at Llanharren Rugby Club and that was his lot but he would have been very pleased with the sight of Jigsaw

and Ducky Des no doubt. In the letters page this week, well Charles-Charl Murray is at the controls for Gasbag and the main topic of conversation is Bebop Deluxe. I would like very much to thank Bebop Deluxe for being so considerate to their fans at Guildford, Wright's, Keefe of Farnham. I am very grateful to Bill Nelson for letting Gin Mill Club officials know well in advance that the group would not be turning up. Readers who were not at the gig at August 7th may like to know that Mr Nelson could not possibly play because he had too many pimples. He rang us up and told us at 9pm, very considerate, taking into account

that the gig had started at 7.30. Take heed Mr Nelson, Woollies make up is very pretty at the time, but the after effects aren't quite so nice. With reference to your article on Bill Nelson in the August 3rd edition of the NME, may I say, what a load of crap, writes Steven Naylor of Manchester. Nelson has a totally misconceived assessment of his talent, which is very little. His playing consists of nothing but 100 notes a second solos. These solos are long and boring and the band is nothing more than a vehicle for his own egomania. If Bill Nelson thinks he's going to make it, he'd better ponder again. And for my final point, if NME are going to stop patronising Bowie semi-lookalikes, I'm

going to buy Melody Maker. Hey, I met his daughter once, Bill Nelson, and his son actually. Really? Yeah, who, being a massive spoilsport, he decided not to call Alf. The big music paper transfer of the season has been Pete Erskine's move to the enemy from sounds, but the readership aren't impressed thus far, particularly after his coat down of an Emerson, Lake and Palmer gig. What an unreasonable, condescending, vastly stupid, nauseating, excruble, snide, tedious load of utter bullshit! There! Payment back in kind, Erskine! writes

Peter Davies of Hillhead. Hence. Now, let's be a little more constructively critical shall we? First, why on earth can't you participate as an ELP gig, matey? Are you totally paralysed? That's the only reason I can think of. God-er-skin-menture-ways! This horrible review is not only unreasonable, it is also inconsistent. I have on my wall a two page report of yours on ELP in, dare I say it, sounds in which you say you actually found parts that you really enjoyed. Condescending swine! Given a right to reply, Erskine points out that he's always thought ELP would

catch it but felt sorry for them after their relentless coat downs in the British press and wanted to commend them at least for their ability to put on a show in an American enormous dome. Angry letter to music press never complete without huge stack of adjectives and overuse of the word actually and half of the letters page is taken up with a discussion about Ian McDonald's article about preservation act 2 by the Kinks and if it's possible to write a true rock opera but I couldn't be asked to read it let alone transcribe it 40 pages 10p I never knew there arsed to read it, let alone transcribe it. 40 pages, 10p, I never knew

there was so much in it. It does have the whiff of a common room to it, this issue of NME I'm afraid to say. So what else was on telly this day? Well, BBC One begins the day at 10am with repeats of the adventures of Tintin and Dactare because it's a school holidays but then they remember it's the 70s and close this down for an hour and 55 minutes so tough shit kids. After Hen Dyn Noir Clunio, a Welsh programme about an old photographer in Liverpool, there's a new summary followed by the documentary series In the Town which

visits the Welsh market town of Conwy and knocks about with the local fishermen. At quarter to two we're whipped over to Hickstead for two hours and 23 minutes of international show jumping, then it's regional news in your area. Play School opens up at ten past four, then Keith Barron reads part four of The Discovery in Jack and Aura and then we're exposed to the psychedelic brilliance of the banana splits fucking yes. At 20 past five an insurgency movement of youths break into a studio, inform us that television is shit and we should throw off our mental chains and collect bus tickets or something in Why Don't You?

Then it's Hector's House, the news and regional news in your area. The Age of Innocence, the documentary series about all the rubbish that's currently floating about in kids' heads, examines why they're so obsessed with a supernatural. Then Delia Smith shows your man what she can do with a bit of fresh salmon in Family Fair. And they've just finished a repeat of the crosswordly game show Password with Polly James facing off against Bernard Cribbins. BBC2 starts at 6.40am with Open Universitaire and then closes down again for four and three quarters of an hour before picking up the show jumping from BBC1. Then there's another two hours of the Open Universitaire and they've just started the

new summery. ITV comes alive at 5 past 10 with Elephant Boy where said tranquil lad helps a work colleague to break into a palace so he can try to cop off with a girly fancies. After a repeat of Tom Falery in a cartoon the kids are treated to a thrilling hour of the Benson and Hedges Golf Festival in York, followed by regional news in your area. Pig, Top Off and Hartley Hare discuss the financial problems of running a small business staffed by puppets in mid-70s Birmingham in Pipkins and then it's play it against Stu

Pot, the pop show host about the foul breath looking columnist, which features film of the Osmonds in concert, of course, and performances by puppets of Cliff Richard and Gary Glitter. Fucking hell, man. What I wouldn't give to see some of that. After first report, ITV still knew midday news bulletin, which will become news at one in two years time, it's another half an hour of the fucking golf and then someone goes on trial accused of suffocating a wealthy hypochondriac in his own chest freezer in Crown Court.

After General Hospital, Joan Bakewell and Jan Lehmann introduced women only where they review Alexander Schultz and his skin's new memoir Gulag Archipelago. Fucking hell can you imagine Lorraine Kelly doing that? Then there's even more fucking golf. Miss Roslyn invites the kiddies into the romper room then David Cassidy is worried that his sister's new boyfriend is actually an international dual thief in a repeat of the Partridge family. Have you ever seen that program, The Romper Room? Yeah.

It's just a bunch of small children playing. This lady with them, right? She's like their guardian or whatever she is. And it's really off putting because she's really sexy. And it's like, that just doesn't feel right somehow. Isn't that the one that was always in it will be all right on the night when one of the toddlers starts looking up a dress? Almost certainly yeah. After a repeat of I Dream of Gina it's the news then regional news in your area then the aftershock of Miss Diane's engagement resonates throughout the Crossroads Motel. Then at seven o'clock,

seven o'fuckin'clock, Mark you, it's another chance to enjoy Love Thy Neighbour. When Eddie Booth gets massively religious, joins the Salvation Army and his missus and their neighbours conspire to get him back to his old racist self as she's missing out on the sex. And they've just started a repeat of Kung Fu. Oh, what a smorgasbord of television beauty there, Taylor. The golden age of British television. Alright then, Pop Craze youngsters, it is time to go all the way back to August of 1974. Always remember, we may coat down your favourite band or artist, but we never forget, they've

been on Top of the Pops more than we have. Hi, we're the Osmonds. Tonight we're presenting Top of the Pops live from London. Woo! It's half past seven on Thursday, August the 15th, 1974, and Top of the Pops, now under new stewardship under Robin Nash, has just crawled out from under the wreckage of strike action that took it off the air for over two months and is very keen to keep its golden age going for as long as possible. Chaps, we haven't really drilled into the career of Robin Nash yet, have we? Let's remedy that right now. Born in Norwich in 1927, Robert Drain began his entertainment career as the assistant stage manager of the Norwich Theatre Royal.

He spent the Second World War as a member of ENSA, where he worked for a time with David Croft, who co-wrote Dad's Army and attained Half-Aop mum and practically everything else. After the war he relocated to London, adopted the stage name Robin Nash and put himself about in the West End as an actor and director. In 1960 he joined the BBC and directed the Katie Ball adventure series Golden Girl and the Richard Briers and Prunella scale sitcom marriage lines. In the late 60s he became a producer working on the likes of Meet the Wife, Beryl Reed Says Good Evening and Dickson of Doc Green. By 1973 while he was producer of The Basil Brush Show and Cracker Jack he fell into the

orbit of Top of the Pops filling in from time to time as producer, and at the beginning of 1974 he was officially installed as executive producer. As the new Broom he was very keen to exploit the booming teeny-bopper air and planned to put together a special episode to commemorate David Cassidy's farewell tour in the spring, but in May of this year the National Association of Theatrical, Television and Kinney employees demanded that the BBC's scene-shifters, props workers and outside broadcast rigors be given an extra £1.50 in allowances and when the BBC offered a mere 60p a week in return in mid-June there

was an immediate technician walk out, meaning no top of the pops for seven weeks. Luckily the strike ended last week and what's more there's a certain family from Utah who are riding to his rescue because yes, the Osmonds are back in the country after their tumultuous tour of 1973 when the young maidens of the island threw themselves through plate glass windows and turned up outside their hotel with sledgehammers. Apparently a tour was planned but after the death of a girl at a David Cassidy concert in May they got very antsy about it.

But on the other hand their popularity is on the wane in America, particularly after they released the plan, their big advert for Mormonism and they have the same relationship with the UK in 1974 as Norman Wisdom had with Albania. So what to do? Well, in order to make themselves available to their fans over here, they've cut a deal with the BBC who have pushed the boat right out for them. Article in the Daily Mirror of Fortnite ago, shhh, here come the Osmonds. The Osmond brothers are all set to tiptoe back into Britain, quietly, secretly, furtively, and they hope well away from their weenie,

teenie fans. This time, if everything goes to plan, there won't be a single worshipping weenie bopper in sight. The Osmonds are making their return a cloak and dagger affair for security reasons. They fear that their visit could spark mass hysteria. The same kind of hysteria that led to a teenage girl losing her life during a concert tour by David Casadere two months ago. The Osmonds, who will be arriving next month to do a series of live shows for BBC TV, are determined to play it cool. So are the BBC.

They plan to show the brothers six half-hour shows, due to go out on consecutive nights from August 12th in front of an invited audience. In this way, the Osmonds' whereabouts can be kept secret. A BBC executive said last night, we can't afford to take any chances. After the Cassidy visit, we must insist on very tight security. No one at the BBC would ever forgive himself if these shows resulted in the death of another pop fan. I mean, for the Osmonds and the BBC, this is absolute 100% win-win-win-win-win, isn't it?

The BBC's documentary about the Osmonds last UK tour pulled down a very impressive 11 million and a half viewers in January and by doing this they've effectively taken full ownership on one of the biggest bands in the world haven't they? It's a no-brainer really. The Osmonds were going to be good for ratings and confirmed culturally important but on the down slope, you know, just like the Beeb likes it, you know, pop open that wine just after it's best, you know, and importantly, wholesome, guaranteed wholesomeness. Family entertainment. Quite a large family. The first live show aired last Monday, just three days ago at 6.20pm in the nationwide slot. And we've all seen that haven't we?

Yes. Yeah. Fucking hell. The best bit is before it starts because it's one of those files where... And after it ends. And after it ends. It's one of those files where it's like been stolen from the BBC so there's a little bit before what was broadcast and a bit after what was broadcast on the tape. So at the beginning, before it starts, we see the conductor of the orchestra

in a white flat cap and white overall, like the ghost of the Super Mario brother who got tied in a burlap sack and thrown into the Hudson River. So this show is just a transplant of American light entertainment into British television and British television was not going to reject that transplant because we had countless shit here American shows playing here all the time in prime time unlike now. Yeah. Yeah. Including the Andy Williams show, which is where we would have first seen the Osmonds, of course.

Right, exactly. But what you get here is a mismatch between their oily slickness and our rough-arsed crapness, which manages to highlight the worst of both in that Osmond's obvious slimy, over-rehearsed over rehearsed insincerity looks even more absurd in the overlit and unsympathetic gloss-free context of British television production but also on the other hand our sloppy vision mixing and studio direction can't keep up with the visitors energy and professionalism so it's all a bit of a mess so it starts off there's a corny intro and it's got a clip of the four elders as little kids like maybe about seven years old At which the live audience starts screaming hysterically. Yes, the same frustrated lust they use on the fully grown osman

Yes, at which point you realize that not only is this hysteria Fundamentally non-sexual, it doesn't make any sense on its own terms, right? The fact that the Osmonds are not good looking, apart from possibly Donny, not sexy, and they don't seem to have anything to offer in any other sense either. All that they're screaming at really is America. It's just American stuff. It's some kind of way out. If you're stuck in a British new town somewhere, you know, go into a low rise rectangular school at a low rise

rectangular shopping precinct and anything with a big blue sky over it seems like an escape, right? Essentially, there's like a cinema screen comes down and they put out the intro that they used in the last UK tour and probably used it in Las Vegas as well. Oh yeah, this definitely feels like just a transplant of the Las Vegas show. Deconstructing the screaming as we will be doing at length, there is no breaking it down because fundamentally what it is is just a release of tension in the same way that people laugh at stand-up comedy when it's not that funny It's just they're relaxed enough and the stand-up is not too needy Please love me and it's like oh, thank God. I needed the laugh and it's like what did you actually laugh? I wasn't that funny but at base that's what it is They're screaming at everything baby photos cheesy tap dancing crew cuts

And then there's even bigger screaming when a very young Donny Osmond joins them Yeah, there's one bit where they all kind of like March out and then there's this toddler Runs after them and that's Donnie and the camera zooms in and they scream like fuck at that Then we get the grown-up Osmondonds doing a bit of a Beatles jump. And then we get footage of girls hammering on the doors of Heathrow Airport, which is a bit odd because, you know, that's the audience that are watching this.

And they put it in in their Vegas show to say, oh, look how massive we are in England. Well, you know, when you're in England, you're gonna be like, oh yeah, look, it's us. Look, that's me. That's the back of my head. Oh my God. It's like, yeah, we love it's us. Look, that's me. That's the back of my head. Oh my god

We love that people love the Osmonds and we love that the love is recorded and Forever after or even 50 years later people will be going wow look how much they love the Osmonds It's like it builds out and out and out until it's just the screams are for the screams and Then the screams are for the screams and then the screams are for the other screams for the Osmonds and you know and so all of it all of it is so exciting that the excitement is exciting you know it's all levels yeah for the entirety of this this Osmonds show and the top of the pops that we're gonna get to eventually all of the reference points that my brain threw up were horror basically it fades off a bit towards the end I think the first one of these being All of the reference points that my brain threw up were horror, basically.

It fades off a bit towards the end, I think. But the first one of these being Late Night with the Devil, which is a film from quite recently which is set on a 70s. It's meant to be found footage of a lost 70s talk show. And it is not bad. It takes a pretty decent stab at evoking the uniquely disturbing sensibility of the seventies. And it has an opening montage just like this, but that does not come close to how disquieting overall this opening montage is in and of itself.

I would say that the terrifying singing children in the way that they are arranged and the way that they sound is and the way that they sound is actually more unsettling than the screaming. And then they go into their first medley which is we're having a party the girl I love and I can't get next to you yes that one. All of those songs are not out there they're due on their next LP but the girls are still going mental the Osmonds clearly don't have to say hope you like our new direction or any of that bollocks. According to the papers there are

three thousand girls in that audience. Right. Surely not. I've not been to this theatre so I can't make a judgement on it. Ah yes you have. Have I? Now known as Shepherd's Bush Empire. Yes. Ahhhh. You've been to that Sarah? I've been to Shepherd's Bush Empire. Yes. Ah. You've been to that Sarah? I've been to Shepherd's Bush Empire, yeah. Did he still smell a piss fifty years later? Er, yes, absolutely. I don't know who's pissed, but yeah. What, you go and see Shed 7?

Hey! Yeah, it's a shame. It's a beautiful theatre, but not a very good venue. Right. But my bar for venues now is so high that I basically don't go to any of them. But yeah, it's a lovely theatre. You can fit 3,000 people in there. Why is that? Well, I'm talking about the acoustics and the sound and everything. I think 3,000 girls will make more noise than that, surely.

Yeah, but a lot of them are the exact same pitch. So it just sounds like there's a hundred really, really loud girls. Or the screaming so high pitch that only dogs can hear it. No, but you can't. This is the thing. I did watch the entirety of this very special Osmond's episode. That does not mean that I also listened to the entirety of it because the sound of the screaming is a misophonia nightmare. And I had to actually mute it because it was like kebab skewers in my brain. It's not just the screaming, it's the 50 years compression of screaming. You know, like, like somebody has been standing on it for 50 years and then it's just been exhumed. There's something very sinister and uncomfortable about it,

physically uncomfortable. I just couldn't listen to it anymore. So BBC Osmond's week show one is now underway and the Ken's do a little comedy routine based around their Keniness. Yes they do. One of them says, there's nobody out there who knows who I am, which is true. I had no idea who he was and I've been watching nothing but fucking Osmonds for the past three weeks and then another one of the Ken's does a sort of butlins gag about my wife keeps me well organized well fed well dressed and totally broke and not a single member I the audience reacts to it. I know, Mormonized borscht belt wisecracks make no landings here.

It's just not going to work. Did Kelly Monteith slip in that one? This'll slay them in the UK. But the Kens still do their rehearsed Vegas bit of making a face at each other and pausing for laughter even though there isn't any laughter. Like when you watch a silent comedy and they leave gaps. But it goes on. face each other and pausing for laughter, even though there isn't any laughter, like when you watch a silent comedy and they leave gaps. But it goes on. The whole joke is that Donny is the only member of their family that anyone gives a fraction of a shit about.

Nowadays, yeah. The whole routine is a kind of ritual of comicalized jealousy. So Alan Osmond, the one with a slight look of the late Alan Lake about him says I'm Alan the oldest brother and I used to be the spokesman for this band and he glares at Donny but then he cracks into a big smile but because it's part of the routine and it's been rehearsed the smile looks as fake as the glare So it's not actually that reassuring and you come out of this as confused as the audience who sound like they're locked in an Apatois on mushrooms And it starts to feel like the story of Joseph and his brothers. Do you know I mean it's

Donnie go well, you know fellas, I had a dream last night. We were all binding sheaves of wheat. And your sheaves bowed down on my sheave. And this goes on for about 10 minutes before Donnie finally gets to sing a medley of his own. They do a bit of barbie shop raga though, don't they? That's true, yeah. Which gets fucking gales of screams.

But it would, wouldn't it? Yeah, true. But then when Donnie gets the spotlight to himself himself a couple of girls come out of the audience to give him a kiss Right presumably stage managed and it's a little bit awkward because these girls are not small children But they're also not adults And they're not wearing very much and the camera accidentally gets a big close-up of one girl's chest which is not deliberate but because it's 1974 you remember that it could have been. He basically does a medley where he sings to lusting girls telling them not to lust after him

and then he receives his audience and one of them is holding up a cutout and I swear down it has to be a cutout of Fred the flower grader from the Home Pride adverts. Just this little man with a bowler hat and he's like well who else would that be in 1974 unless it was Clockwork Orange of course. Yeah, yeah, no, no, Home Pride is very appropriate in so many ways. Grader grains do make finer flour. But then a minute later singing Puppy puppy love Donnie goes into the audience to touch hands and accept the adulation and he goes straight to the same girl

again even as everyone around her is spilling over the top and sides like grabbing his arms trying to haul him into the vortex like beyond the event horizon of self generating hysteria You'd never see him again. The two things I noticed about that was number one No one tries to grab his ass when he's being dragged into the audience because this is not 1991 and he is not Fred Fairbrass Sarah But also I don't know if this has got anything to do with my far future woke snowflake brain I don't know if this has got anything to do with my far future woke snowflake brain

But there's an Asian girl right on the front row and he goes either side of us. Yes as if she's not there I noticed that too. Well, she got no soul. She according to well true Maybe didn't want to sort of like deal with the devil. You know, I mean, yeah I mean he does a medley does go away little girl sweet and innocent and poppy love I mean go away little girl is basically young girl get out of my mind Yeah, but he was 13 when he sang that how old was this fucking little girl mind you if she's 12 That's a year, which is a fucking world of difference at that stage of life Yeah, he obviously doesn't want to be referred to by his brothers as Donny Fairclough of life. He obviously doesn't want to be referred to by his brothers as Donny Fairclough for the rest of his career.

I was going to say, who is keeping them in control? There are like two very grouchy looking sort of patrician men in the audience. One of these men looks exactly like Mr. Mackay from Porridge. The terrifying warden with the sort of moustache and scowl. He won't tolerate any insubordination. There's not that many of them but I guess it's just their presence. It's just this kind of headmasterly strict presence. And at the end, you know you were saying about how there's a sort of overrun, you get the proper backstage perspective at the start and the end because

the cameras are still running and right at the end one of them I'm assuming Mackay in this very irritable tone while all these girls are screaming and now exhausted as well from all the screaming but still screaming really committed to the screaming just goes be calm be calm yes. But I strongly believe that that is Robin Nash himself. Oh really? Yes. It's like... Conform! The whole history of girls and screaming, when has that ever worked? Come on. That reminds me of, I'm sure I've said this before, but it bears repeating. We had a dinner lady who in the hustle and bustle of the of the the dinner hall would shout frame yourselves

And then when she got really mad when we did not frame ourselves, she would just go frame Frame Frame this is a West Yorkshire dialect thing. Maybe it was just her, maybe it was really localized to Brickhouse, but it meant fix yourselves, sort yourselves out, shut the fuck up. Fix up, look sharp. Indeed.

That's mint. So there we go, frame a bad skit. Oh, we're learning so much about Yorkshire through this podcast, aren't we, Taylor? More than I'd like to know, really. Yeah, more than I'd like to know too, believe me. So Donny fights his way out of the girls and returns to the stage, and then Noel Edmonds walks on, dressed from head to toe in three shades of brown.

The color brown is all around. It really is, and as he begins to talk, Donny leaves the stage, and as he goes, he waves to the crowd and says, see ya. And the ensuing upsurge of screams drowns out part of Noel's link, to which Noel goes, stop it. Absolutely authentic jealous anger masquerading as comic self-deprecation in stark contrast to the Osmonds mock jealous anger with no awareness in Noel's head of how funny this looks to those of us who've been trying to read

the past 10 minutes of television. How ironic that it is the Americans who are showing a grasp of irony and the and the Brits who are not. Yeah but but it is Nolde. He's only British by birth. He's really, he belongs sort of mid-Atlantic, you know. I would say somewhere in the Mariana Trench. I was going to say actually that it is interesting how when they do their whole rather cringey Vegas bit, but they are kind of playing about with being self-deprecating and self-awareness and the concept of their interchangeability. You know this is a postmodern boy band here and I was thinking has any boy band since been allowed to do anything postmodern until take that covered How Deep Is Your Love in 1996 and made a video in which they were all killed? Yeah. I don't know. Please write in.

Oh and then we get the big finale for this evening, which is a rock and roll medley. Oh, yeah. Which is non more 1974. Yeah. Osmondi Mondi, if you will. Rock and roll is here to stay. Jailhouse Rock, Let's Go To The Hop,

Rock Around The Clock, Blueberry Hill, Blue Moon, Lucille, Blue Suede Shoes and Hound Dog. Something for the oldens here and a drum solo for the heads in the middle of it. Yeah, placating Ted Dads nationwide. And I've said more than I actually have to say about the never ending slow motion rock and roll revival of 1971 to 1985. But this is a more than usually dismal take on that familiar thing.

And if you think Donny Osmond in a newly made biker jacket, singing Blueberry Hill while his brothers mug at the camera and stick their arses out, is worthy of any more attention than this, you're welcome to give it. It's like an episode of Happy Days but everyone in it is pot-scented. But then enter little Jimmy Osmond. Yes! Now it's already past his bedtime, some would say already past his grave time, but there he is like full of tartrazine vigor little bastard oh god just strutting up and down the stage in a niagara of screams like this homunculus emitting weird

piggy grunting sounds from the back of his throat that it turns out are meant to be rock singing yes anyway he murders blue suede shoes and hound dog. Oh, he does. He pisses all over them blue suede shoes. Yeah, and you can feel yourself morphing into a Ted dad, thinking, fucking hell, it's less than 20 years since Elvis was cut off at the waist for American television, so we couldn't see his subversive leg movements.

And now we're practically being ordered to watch the full though inconsiderable length of we Jimmy Osmond as he does a chicken dance He's only just learned Less than 20 years has passed and this has already happened, but it's okay. Yeah, it's fine. It's all God's plan It's not however God's plan that you have to miss Coronation Street for this so switch over and it would just be like it never existed right and now 50 more years have passed and Hey, what did I tell you? It's just like the Osmonds never existed. It's brilliant

Yeah, and then yeah at the end, after the credits, you get the post-broadcast bit where yeah, it's the girls are still screaming and you get the intonation of be calm, which I'm thinking of taking that clip and using it as my morning alarm on my phone. I want to hear it every day before the hell begins. And that's episode one, oh we got another five of these. As a piece of light entertainment, this is perfect for the BBC in 1974, particularly as round about this time it's non-stop repeats. But not everyone is impressed, I'm afraid to say. Article in yesterday's Wolverhampton Express and Star by Mike Gordon Smith. Whatever happened to nationwide the lovely Sue Loyler and the acrimonious Michael Barrett?

How much more of the Osmonds must we suffer? Tea time viewing used to be a pleasure, but a week of these cavorting, permanently smirking all American juveniles is a little too much to swallow. Even a fourth repeat of Star Trek would be preferable and far easier to stomach. Calm down mate, it's only a week. Obviously the letters pages of the Express and Star were ablaze with rights to reply. I think that your attack on the Osmonds performances was very selfish, wrote LA Duke, age 13 of Selzden.

I myself would like to thank the BBC for the wonderful showing of the Osmonds. I was disgusted when I read your description of the Osmonds said Christine Lewis, age 12, of Stylebridge. The Osmonds are talented, handsome and very clean when you compare them to other singers and groups, namely BoA, Cockney Rebel, etc. I really do feel sorry for people like you, sir, noted Davina Lloyd, age 15 and a half of Walsall. How dare you mock one of the most talented groups around with such disgusting and unnecessary language. I am sure I am speaking on behalf of many Osmonds fans. Do not worry sir, Nationwide will soon be back for uncivilised people who do not recognise

talent. However, there soon came a front lash to the backlash. Congratulations to Mike Gordon-Smith for speaking your mind on the Osmonds, wrote H Ward of Sedgler. Musically, the programmes were just a noise mingled with screams. These youngsters are being exploited for commercial reasons, the attraction being the Osmonds toothy good looks only. It should have been put on during the children's hour

And as far as I know that argument is still raging on in the Wolverhampton Express and stuff fucking out That was the paper that ran a photo of that well a dad in that Indian restaurant recently I thought it was actual real poor well It's also the paper that published a book that I've got scans of, of readers tribute to Diana Princess of Wales. Oh God yes. Yeah, beautiful poems written by, you know, people from Canock and stuff about how they once met the wonderful Princess Diana. A lot of anger towards Prince Charles and Camilla in some of these.

Really? Yeah, it's a little bit disturbing, you know, about how they should burn at hell's stake and things like that. You see in Walthamstow we're much more civilised than that. We've got a local Chinese restaurant called Peking Chef which has on the front of its leaflets, or at least it did last time I looked, a really bad picture of Princess Di visiting Peking Chef in Walthamstow. They're really proud of it.

The Princess of Pork Balls. We are immediately assailed by a barrage of screams and the sight of six pimps in white sports coats with a sort of matching coloured hats, pocket handkerchiefs and massive sacks and accompanied by a young woman. Hi, we're the Osmonds, say the Osmonds. Tonight we'll be presenting Top of the Pops live from London. Woo, says Donny Osmond. And we're thrown into a very special intro sequence. Fucking hell, we start off with a green eye

and then we're immediately thrown into the top 30 rundown as was the style for most of the 70s but this time they've used extremely quick video clips whenever possible which was a new conceit introduced by Nash which is standard practice in 1974 and I've got to say that would have thrilled me at the time because it would have reminded me of Wibbly Wobblies do you remember them? No. You know them little cards that you used to get in packets of bubble gum that had a two frame animation that you tilted them from side to side and they moved? Wibbly Wobblies mate. Massively popular in the playground. The non-fungible tokens of their day.

But worth more. This really sets the tone for the first extremely non neurodivergent friendly minutes of this show It's too fast. I think for the human brain to register. Yes I actually wanted to be able to take in the really lovely individual artworks. Yes for all the numbers Yeah, but you don't get that do you know, they're really beautiful hand-drawn numbers But you can't really take them in and they put me in mind obviously of Sesame Street. Also, here's my first horror reference in my head for this episode is an early American public information film from the 60s called One Got Fat.

Right. Are you aware of this? It's horrifying. Uh, basically I found it because somebody cut it to everything you do as a balloon by boards of Canada. And I get to mention boards of Canada, possibly the least chart music act ever. And that's going in the playlist now. I'm so happy. I actually, I stunned Dan recently, Dan from the, uhacophony Sessions podcast in the pub. Oh, hey up, Dan.

Hey up. Because he said, what is your favourite band? And I said, Boards of Canter. And he said, what? Well, I mean, technically, okay, I should clarify, A, that he was also stunned by the fact I was drinking Guinness Zero. So perhaps he's quite easily stunned. But I should also, I should clarify by saying my favorite band is is suede Yeah, of course But when I get of my own free will into the padded space-age surround sound enabled suicide pod What I'm gonna request is boards of Canada. Anyway, one got fat is Yeah, it's it's basically it's a bicycle

safety film and it illustrates this by putting a bunch of kids in monkey masks and putting monkey tails on them, sending them off on bikes into hazardous situations. So anyway, it reminded me of that. And I went, okay, I see where this episode is going to take my brain. Yeah. Dark places, very dark places. They're obviously using clips from previous episodes or promo videos, stuff they've got

in the can. But this is disturbing the natural order of things. And as a six year old, it would have absolutely fucked with my head. And what makes it even worse is when they're running to a patch of still images and you get used to that again, you think, oh, everything's all right again. And then mud pop up and start jumping about and you're like ah you feel like them people in France seeing the train coming towards them the pictures is fucking terrifying. It is the best city runners. So we get Sylvia with her hand on her side of a face looking like she's about to take off a Pierrot Sylvia mask. Charles Asnavour appears to be wearing a jungle playmat that's been fashioned into a jacket,

looking absolutely bemused at what they've done to the chart rundown. There's a photo of Gary Pocket whose young girl is back in the charts at number 22, but he looks massively 1974 with a bit of a Stooges hairdo. We get a very slight scream from the girls for a video clip of David Cassadet. But a massive scream for Donnie and Marie. A meaty thumbs up from Paul McCartney, who's obviously delighted that his new band

are finally massive and he doesn't have to deal with that Beakle shit anymore. And finishes off with a nice colossal eye roll massive and he doesn't have to deal with that Beakle shit anymore and finishes off with a nice colossal eye roll from Ron Mayall who speaks for all of us I believe. That's so often. Now if you've been avoiding the daily blast of Osmond that has denied the country its rightful dose of Richard Stilgo and beer drinking snails this week you may have already detected that there's something slightly different about this episode and you'd be right. For the first time in

five years the show is being broadcast away from Television Centre and comes at us live from the BBC Television Theatre at Shepherd's Bush Green. Built in 1903 for the Australian impresario Oswood Stoll, the Shepherd's Bush Empire opened with a performance by the Fred Carnot troupe which at the time featured a young Charlie Chaplin and became one of the main staging posts of Music Hall in West London. In 1953 with Music Hall firmly on the wane, the premises were bought up by the BBC for £120,000 and was used throughout the 50s and 60s for a barrage of light entertainment shows such as Variety Parade with Max Bygraves, What's My Line,

The Billy Cotton Band Show, This Is Your Life and Silla to name but a few. At this point in time it's being used for The Generation Game, The Basil Brush Show, Cracker Jack, A Song For Europe and, from time to time, The Old Grey Whistle Test. But this week it's Castle Osmond, occupied by specially invited members of the Osmonds and Donny Osmond fan clubs and besieged by thousands of girls unable to get in. According to an article on the building in tvstudiohistory.co.uk, quote, those who were

there talk about it in hushed tones like the survivors of a terrible accident or natural disaster. Ooooooo. Obviously, this changes everything, doesn't it, in this episode and I contend that it's a glimpse into a world that could have easily happened. A world where Top of the Pops follows the pattern of shows like Oh Boy and Thank You Lucky Stars rather than the studio-based like oh boy and thank you lucky stars rather than the studio based six five special and ready steady go so panel what difference having

it in a theatre does it make? Yeah it sounds worse. It's more echoey. But you do get that bit of extra atmosphere. Yes. It's like you know anytime you get that shot on a BBC program from behind the presenter or performer looking out at steep tiers of seats with stalls in a circle, it is generally the BBC TV theatre. And here it's filled with these like overheated weenie boppers and their chaperones,

never quite threatening to spill over the rails and downwards in a polyester waterfall but nearly but those are the best bits of the episode whenever you get a good shot of this writhing mass of child material up in the circle clearly having a good but not a great time they're're a total mess, but it's less depressing than Cracker Jack's rows of identically dressed Cub Scouts fake laughing whenever the sign saying laugh is held up by the floor manager. But the thing is, if Top of the Pops had always come from the BBC television theatre,

it wouldn't always have been as controlled as this. Because this audience seem restrained by the underlying straightness of this event. And I think it's very different from what you'd have got a couple of years earlier if this had been like T-Rex for instance, right? They move around and they've got some visible agency but they're not going really crazy, right?

Cause it's the fucking Osmonds and the really odd thing is that most of these people will still be alive today probably only in their early 60s yeah still capable of sex and cycling which seems wrong somehow right because the essential bleakness and the air of great tragedy that's all over 1974 is choking here you can almost smell it like the the undeodorized armpits and mothball shirts and embassy mild and somehow that makes it feel like they should all be long gone like veterans of the First World War you know yeah you mean? Yeah.

You see I didn't even recognise it as the Shepherds Bush Empire it just looked very odd it looked like it could have been anywhere and because there's a kind of barrier at the front the sort of amphitheatre seats put me in mind of those kind of immersive cinema things you would get in the 80s at a theme park or whatever where you'd sit in your seats when they would sort of move around and the whole of the ceiling would be the screen and the block of seats would rotate like a very gentle ride. It just reminded me of that. I mean this is hallowed ground to people of my generation. You know I was watching this and just thinking oh wonder where Cyril Fletcher's chair would have been or where Basil Brush sits. I say it kind of helps

the band because they've been plonked into their natural environment and to them it's just like a gig despite the fact that no one in the audience is there for them but I feel the duo and solo acts that we're going to see they've got a bit of a tougher time because they don't get the chance for lingering looks down the barrel of the camera and in many instances they have to perform their adulterated material to children who neither understand or care what they're trying to put over but it has to be said that every act bar one has got a difficult away fixture tonight rather like man United at Galatasaray. There's a couple of acts that we see tonight that are just, you know,

they might as well be playing a care home. Whole lot of love by the top of the Pops Orchestra fades and the camera dollies in on a huge curtain of red and silver strips which rises to reveal the opening act, the Glitter Band and Just For You. We last chanced upon the courtiers of Bad King Gary in Chant Music No 69 when they did some very Red Army like gestures towards the leader during a performance of Always Yours in December of this year, but have also countenanced them in their own right in Chant Music No 9 when they took their debut single Angel Face all the way up to No four in April of this year. This is the follow-up, the second cut from their forthcoming debut LP,

Hey! Which will be coming out at the end of the month. It entered the charts at number 42 of Fortnite ago and then soared 20 places to number 22. And this week, helped by an appearance on top of the pops, it's jumped seven places to number 15. And here they are again in the BBC theatre, launching a necessary rearguard action against the Utahn invasion.

And yeah, this is well out of character for Top of the Pops in the 70s, having the same band on two weeks running when they're not number one. But then again, I'm guessing that due to the nature of this episode, they need warm bodies in the vicinity and the glitter band were in reception and oh, what a welcome sight they are because I believe this is the 1974 that we all want. Yeah. I'll say it again. Hey, most of the rest of this episode, even when it's not terrible, does illustrate the curdling of hard transistor radio pop and the gelding of popular art for commercial or marketing purposes, which is the big change from the early

seventies to the mid seventies, as we've seen before. And what's so great about this is that it resists that. And so, yes, being two years out of date as it is, it seems more futuristic than anything else on the program because it's clinging to that old recipe of heavy percussion plus pile driver bubble gum riffs, plus Neanderthal chanting plus severely unpleasant looking men of a certain age dressed up like Martian toffees. Camp but not camp and still this is a proper

multi story car park of a record right it's like it's like brutalist county council offices towering over a market town. And that hard minimalist approach is old hat by 1974. Most of the records on here, which seem to follow on from glam rock, are toned down really alarmingly. And weirdly, even the supposedly serious rock bands on this episode are also pushing hollowed out forms of glam rock.

And everything else there is slush and schlager, apart from the filly stuff, which only gets in because it's liquid enough to slide under the door. But what you hear here, musically rather than culturally, is punk bubbling up, or rather the basic building blocks of punk, like the amino acids sloshing around in a rock pool, waiting for the lightning to strike.

Because what is this, if not a slowed down Ramones in better clothes, right? It's not a forward looking record, but the point is it holds to the basic 50s derived primitivism of glam, but with the sparkle replaced by ennui and vague menace and that's really what punk was musically because it was teenagers who had grown up on stuff like Bolan got to 18 or 19 got bored and formed bands in a

now decidedly non glittery environment and without those last rays of 60s optimism that were in T-Rex and so you got stuff that was like this, like basic, hypnotic and sort of dead-eyed with that heavy analog feel and I love it in almost all circumstances. And don't they look fucking mint? Yes. They are actually dressed as a quality street, I recognise them all from the big pink tin that we used to get at Christmas. As satin goes, that seems quite high quality. Also I thought it's really great that the Teletubbies got on a Zempik and managed to

transition to an adult career, which obviously many child stars struggle to do. Or if only they'd have named themselves after quality street toughies. Lead singer Green Triangle said today... Well yeah, Purple Guy seemed to be having the most fun. That's because he is the praline with the hole nut in the middle, so you know of course, course he is. The stagecraft is pretty good, although they are acting out the song just for you very literally. I mean they would win so often at charades or pictionary. It would just suck all the fun out of it.

I'm not sure what line-up this is of the Glitter Band, by the way. Do you know how many people have been in the Glitter Band over the years? God no. 18. Wow. Fuck! Somewhat ironic when you think about it. There are bands who've had more members, but that's quite a lot. It would make a good one of those t-shirts, you know, those band t-shirts. It would have to be extra long and you'd still have to go on to the back for Anne Trevor Horn.

Has anyone done a full t-shirt like that? That's the point actually. That would be funny. They're performing in front of two giant cutouts of Knickerbocker glory. It's under a wavy grey and cream backdrop in all their glam finery. I mean, colour coded all in ones. They're flared up to fuck and they've got those Cyberman Bacarkey hairdos all flexed up with glitter atop massive platform boots. They look fucking skilled.

Yeah. I mean, I've already mentioned in Charm Music's Passing that a year earlier I couldn't understand why my mum and dad and all their mates were doing jobs driving lorries and calling bingo when they could have been pop stars but by this point I'd worked out thanks to Top of the Pops there could only be 30 different clusters of pop stars at any one time but I know for a fact that I would have looked at this and other episodes and thought, hang on, why isn't my dad wearing a spangly jumpsuit

to work? Why did none of my teachers come to school looking like Gary Glitter? And more importantly, why am I being made to wear fucking shorts and tank tops and not stuff like this? I'd have loved to go to school dressed up as a glitter bad man. It's not too late. They would have picked your sequins off, come on, and pinged them at you. Yeah. Yeah, it wouldn't have been

safe. I know that there wasn't any health and safety in the seventies. Also, there wasn't any epilepsy either as evinced by the extremely overproduced. They're flicking that switch on their big style. What are they doing? I had to look away. I had to look away. This whole project has been quite an eye and ear and brain strain for me. You just get the strobing editing and complete with strobe lighting within that editing and this cultish repetition of the Top of the Pops logo in different colors. Yeah and then at a certain point you've got to pour on your silver shamrock mask of Dave Lee Travis. Well I say God bless the glitter band they're clean they've all been checked out it's just

an unfortunate association but they were really great and this is an authentically strange record as well in an understated way it's not psychedelic it's not musically adventurous but when you stop because of what you're actually seeing and hearing here this bizarre tarmac sound and these these glimmering freaks from the planet Uranus. It's strange. It's not nothing, you know. It's really alarming. I realize that he is declaring himself to be one of those deadbeat boyfriends in rock that we have noted before. Oh yes. He's got no money, got no place to live, but whatever I have to you I'll give kind of thing. Yeah. like yeah. Everything he does he does it for you. Well this would have been romantic at the time. Yes. Obviously it's extremely

catchy and as you said Taylor it is like a little mudskipper that is trying to sprout legs and climb onto the dirty shores of punk. But it is to me more evidence that you know we need something new at this point because it's like rock and roll needs to move on but it's just kind of covering itself in glitter and kind of complacency and smugness and dining out on its first course of past glories. The first generation to experience rock and roll are now having kids and those kids are gonna need something other than the music their parents were into. And I realize that's daunting for the culture, but there's

a feeling of like, come on, you've got to get going. Yeah, but them Ted dads would have fucking hated this. Yeah. Look at them big puffs. Ben Cunt's not fucking real. They are however flammable. Yes, very much so. I mean, at the time I would have been delighted by the tune and the clobber but Disappointed that the lead is not in attendance I mean he's still very much an ongoing concern after all his last single got to number one in June And he'll return at the end of the year with oh, yes, you're beautiful But the former glitter men clearly branching out on their own

Even though Jerry Shepherd the lead singer with the fucking skill star-shaped guitar he's not the strutting peacock of the walk usually associated with glam bands. I mean do you think this band would be going around and having this much success without the glitter association? It's hard to say in 1974. It is quite strong branding. Yes. Which worked before people realized what it was you know before it was codified Although I'm sure along with a lot of bands with very specific names, I'm sure they regretted it at a certain point. I'm pretty certain they did. Yeah. No, I just meant purely from a costuming perspective. Right. You know, they will have been like, Oh Christ, do we, you know, I just want to wear a flat shoe, like my hamstrings are fucked. What if I have to walk downhill?

I heard an interview with Jerry Sheppard of the Glitter Band recently. He said that Gad, as we have to call him nowadays, he was well dischuffed about the success of the Glitter Band to the point that Sheppard was claiming that the announcement of his first retirement was actually a big flounce out because the Glitter Band were doing so well. So yeah, there you go. Good. As part of my research I listened to Hey! the other day and got to say they're a singles band because not only is the album completely wadded out with rock and roll covers like C. Crews and Seal with a fucking kiss for God's sake. I went through it and I only counted 21 Hayes which is very disappointing. Yeah, still the best cover of the...

But apart from the fact that there isn't an effeminate one in the Glitter Band, this is how you want your top of the pulse to start and as far as glitter band singles go, more of this please. I mean I don't know, I found it pretty joyless myself. Maybe it's just me, maybe it is I who is pretty joyless, but I don't know, it doesn't go. No, come on Sarah, we know you're waiting for the odds to come back. It doesn't really go anywhere, but nor does it go round and round in a pleasurable way. You know what actually I think the main difference between this record and a lot of glam rock is this seems to be more aimed at boys than girls, as born out here on this panel because they're not pretty, they're not trying to look pretty and the record is very hard and direct there's no thrills to it it's just like a sort of a gun metal color record very

sort of male identified which is extremely unusual with glam rock yeah it's the kind of thing you'd hear over the tannoy at Mollinoo before they put the liquidator on again yeah in its way it's a record that you wouldn't expect women to like any more than you'd expect them to like brain salad surgery you know what I mean? This is the first of two very very footbally records to my lady ear in this episode. I always bugged me I gotta say it does bug me when people are gender entertainment or art they expect women not to be able to see anything in Goodfellas. I understand, I see where you're coming from. And yeah, maybe that's why, maybe that's why,

maybe I just don't have the right chromosomes. I mean, they are making the shapes of, you know, they are, you know, making chromosomic shapes on the stage, but maybe not the ones that I have. I'm not saying what people should like. I'm just saying what people tend to like. I know, it is tender. I know, I know. Just thought I'd seize the opportunity to make you feel uncomfortable.

Ha ha! I've never felt more comfortable in my life. Well, that's your male privilege, Talkin' Tail. Buh! I love it. Ha ha ha! It's all I've got. The Glitter Band, they're the first wave that have been sent out into this sea of girly

indifference and they do, you know, make a game attempt to get the kids clapping when they should do, but to little of though because the audience are not here for this and, you know, the usual rush of candour plaws at the end is replaced by the sound of a few kids cheering like they used to do when the scores were read out on We Are The Champions. So yeah, I think a mood's already been set hasn't it? So the following week, just for you, Hayd! Five places to number 10, its highest position. Three weeks later, Hayd!

Thudded into the old P-chart at number 18 and would eventually get to number 13 and the follow-up single, Let's Get Together Again would round off their year with a number 8 placing in November. They went on to outdo their mentor in 1975 when Goodbye My Love went all the way to number two in February held off the summit of Mount Pop By January by pilot followed by the tears I cried number eight in April and love in the Sun number 15 in September But when glam finally died they only had one more hit in them people like you people like me which got to number five in March of 1976.

And sadly, the star guitar was dropped at the Bournemouth Centre in 1985, breaking its head and was never seen again. Oh Yes, the unquestionable sound of this week's number 15 that comes from the glitter band and just for you. Excuse me, no Got a problem there Jimmy cuz everyone who appears on the program has to have a hit record well they have it's number 14 this week 14 Donnie and As the chairs die down, we crossfade to tonight's co-host Noel Edmonds, who is by now the undisputed Don Gorgon of Radio 1, having held down the throne of the breakfast show for the past 14 months and been a part of the top of the pop's talent pool since July of 1972. A pool which currently contains Tony Blackburn, Paul Burnett, Dave Lee Travis and Jingle Nons OBE.

This is his 27th appearance on Top of the Pops and oh, it's a very busy month for the man that David Stubbs and his dad thought was God. As well as holding down the breakfast show, he's been officially opening the WKB bathroom kitchen bedroom and heating discount center in strewed He's going to be the special guest of the northern group of motoring writers annual test day We'll be demonstrating the new Ford Cortina He's on his way around the coast next week for the Radio 1 Roadshow, where he'll be taking in Westcliff On Sea, Clacton, Great Yarmouth, Hunstanton and Skegness.

But this week he's landed the biggest plum of the lot, co-presenting the Osmond shows, which involves nipping out during costume changes to calm the girls down and interview the band, their mom and dad and their new wives and that makes sense to me because you know being the breakfast show host he's the one going to be listened to by the youth along with David Hamilton who's doing the late afternoon slot but I can't help chaps but think that there's a jingling fist being shaken and a pubie beard being rent asunder and even a gormless smile being down to because this really shows us who the golden boy of radio one really is in 1974.

God honestly he is just one of the I try to keep an open mind and stuff but he's just one of the top worst ego creeps that Top of the Pops brought us over the years. Yeah you haven't had a chance to have a go with Noel Evans yet have you Sarah? Come on tuck in girl, I'll out your coat. He's not as obviously repellent and oily as some of them but you can really see that much as this is a plum job it may also be a poison chalice because as you said, at the actual Osmond's show, you could see that he was regretting his life choices in real time. Why am I not on the other side of the scream barrier? Yeah, yeah. And I mean, he has to do a little intro here with little Jimmy.

The sheer indignity of little Jimmy having to pretend that he knows or cares who Noel Edmonds is, much less treat him like a showbiz equal, right? I just wanted Little Jimmy to take that hat off and frisbee it through the air so that it flies all the way up into the auditorium, curls back like a boomerang and slices Noel's head clean off with razor sharp rib but instead we get a long exposure of Jimmy's milk teeth and milk gums milk everything and then a very very quick cut to the audience which is slightly disturbing because this time you see that the composition of the audience is not quite what you'd expect there There's some strange looking girls in homemade Osmond's merch but beyond

that there's a couple of geezers with not muscles in their faces and necks wearing large reflective sunglasses indoors. Oh God yeah. They were probably just estate dads but who looked like the British secret police would have looked had the Wilson plot come to fruition. What are they doing there? They're not members of the Osmonds or Donny Osmond fan club. Our wager. How many posters of the Osmonds have you got on your garage dad? Tell me now. There's also a number of older looking, smartly dressed young women who seem a bit old to be a bit worldly to be little Jimmy devotees. Yeah.

But here they are shuddering with excitement. I mean they're definitely not anybody's mum at this point and they don't look like big sisters brought along as guardians so it's a bit of a mystery and then in the murky distance it's mostly lads who you would think maybe are here because they just applied for top of the pops and this was the one they got tickets for FML. Poor songs. Except that the overload of Osmond's fans in the crowd suggests this was not ticketed like normal shows so what those lads are doing there is something they will just have to explain to their mates in the playground tomorrow morning. Yeah good luck with that. So Noel is just there to explain to their mates in the playground tomorrow morning. Yeah, good luck with that.

So Noel is just there to be elbowed aside by little Jimmy Osmond. He's got even less time to do his comedy routines now. Yeah, but also it really shows again the sort of chasm between the British and American styles in this way, because like it's a bit of acting, right? Jimmy is scheduled to turn up and interrupt Noel and Noel has been prepped and is prepared for that to happen, but he still can't act, you know, and Jimmy Osmond is fully engaged in the role of interrupting Noel Edmonds and Noel Edmonds, he actually looks a bit

startled in spite of himself and then you can just see the kind of simmering rage. Yes Little Jimmy we should say the hat is a very shiny very very large red fedora I think when he first bursts in like this He looks like the artful Dodger if he was little orphan Annie Or the kid from the Poseidon adventure He is like every American kid in every thing in this very, very heightened, absurd way. I mean, he could actually have been one of the uncanny boy gangsters in Bugsy Malone, which is probably being filmed about now. It came out in 1976.

Although, I mean, you can tell that he would have insisted on singing in his own weird voice when everyone else got Overdubbed with adult singing and and he and he just he just really pulled focus with all his mugging Hey, hey, look who it is. It's Jimmy the Grin say Jimmy if I punch your lights out Will you still be able to see your way home by your teeth? We must also at this point speak of what Noel is wearing. Oh God. Yes.

Which I didn't notice at first and then I went, is that? Oh, oh, blimey. Yes. Yeah. What is it? Come on. Well, the print is quite small. It's a repeat print of some of the little golly characters, much popularised by a certain jam company. Two gollywogs on his shirt, ladies and gentlemen. Jimmy Crowe still gleaming. I'm surprised the BBC allowed this given that it's, you know, sneaky advertising for a...

Well yes! Yeah, I mean it's multiple repeated gollywogs, a male and a female. Yeah, embracing. Yes. In a chaste fashion. Which is nice. Well, I mean, you know, people did not think of it as a bad thing at the time. So, you know, repellent and individual is no lad with these. I can't really pin this one on him. So this shirt, this fucking shirt, I

ended up looking up and looking into, I believe that that shirt was made by Brutus. Oh, really? Which was an East London company company which was set up in the late 60s by a couple of teenagers. Right. They were mostly known for those tight check shirts that were much beloved and much worn by all the mods and all the skins. But they also did a few of this kind of dagger collar printed shirt. I put my racist shirt on. I put my racist shirt on. Jeans on David Dundas. That was a brutish jeans jingle wasn't it? Yeah. So I found not this shirt but one almost exactly like the one Noel Evans is wearing.

The difference is it's the same colour and it has a very similar print but in place of the two Gollys embracing it has a single one playing guitar and I reckon that either Noel himself or Wardrobe went to get that one and it was sold out or what have you because I'm sure he would have preferred that one because it's more top of the pops isn't it? Or maybe not. There was a weird perception filter on Gollys at the time wasn't it? Because as a kid you saw them at night when you went to bed and you saw them in the morning on the jam jar. And truth is most of us white kids never even made the connection, which was camouflage by familiarity. And when we finally realized what they're actually meant to be we all went fucking out. But

that mostly happened at some point in the 80s rather than in 1974. Do you know when Robertson's actually dropped them as a logo and a mascot? Have a guess. I think it's the 90s isn't it? 2001. Oh my god yeah I thought it was the late 90s Jesus Christ yeah it's I mean at this point we're still still living in the era where there's a total lack of any sense that you have to check Or scan anything you say or do in case it's unintentionally grotesquely inappropriate And it's that freedom that our elderly generation is still mourning because the memory of that blissful Disregard is more real and precious to them than the feelings of any minority group they don't personally know.

But yeah, I guess in 1974, the collective voices of everyone who wasn't white and oblivious were not yet loud enough to say, actually, as well as objecting to people saying we should all be sent home, we also, to a lesser extent, object to Noel Edmonds' shirt. It was like that, that had to wait in a queue, you know, for another day. Yes. As did another issue we will get a taste of later, but hey, no spoilers. I ended up getting into the history of the gollywog as well. There

was a children's book by Florence Kate Upton, who, don't know what race she was, but you know, by Florence Kate Upton who don't know what race she was but you know you can you can make a guess in 1895 which featured a rag doll and she apparently made up that name it's a weird portmanteau so golly is a minced oath from as a blasphemy workaround to avoid using God as an exclamation right you know like crikey or blimey or gee whiz and that was made into a portmanteau with polywog which is a tadpole And that had been deployed as a maritime insult, referring to people who have not crossed the equator. That's where all the way from the late 19th century to Noel Edmonds shirt. Once you start looking into this stuff, obviously it's really unpleasant.

There's a few holdouts. I was surprised actually not to find more of these because there are obviously people who still collect these things and they do it in a spirit of high-dudging and outrage. I mean it was only earlier this year that that pub in Essex was raided by the police and it's bare stop for displaying Noel Edmonds in his gollywog shirt behind the bar. Oh the arguments on Facebook over that. Yeah, it's an unpleasant shirt, but we are all victims of chronology. And without one sound like one of the people from the future looking back at very right on people today and say, I don't know how you can listen to anything that black said he drank cow's milk, which will happen. He doesn't know what he's doing. Right. And there are worse things that you can criticize my whole Edmonds for. When we met up earlier this summer, Al did hand me a copy

of this slim hardback volume called The Multicolored Noel Edmonds. The cash-in annual from 1978, really just a vessel for many, many soft focus colour photographs of Noel with his legs crossed in fawn-coloured flares in a leather armchair next to a decanter of scotch and Noel in rally drivers gear standing next to a high powered motor car and Noel doing that, this is madness kind of face while surrounded by perfectly ordinary people and mundane objects. And most terrifyingly, some pictures of Noel in younger days without a beard, which does at least help you understand

why the fuck he grew it. Yeah, it's wrong, isn't it? Yeah, he looks so much worse without it. And obviously, the text is notable for that tone common to all cash-in autobiographies of this type, when Noel, or Noel's voice, is incapable of telling us anything, however unimpressive without sounding

like a deranged egomaniac now this book appears to have been ghostwritten by someone called michael cable a one-time daily mail showbiz correspondent and also ghostwriter of the autobiographies of Daley Thompson and the explorer Colonel John Blashford Snell whose Wikipedia picture makes him look like he's daring you to mispronounce his name and just in case you were thinking of doing that yes he does have a private army billeted in the annex so I don't know the extent to which we can blame Noel for the self aggrandizing tone. But on the first page of this book, our hero tells us that he almost studied human relations at Surrey University and says, I was proud of the fact that I was one of 28 people to be accepted for the course out of 3,500 applicants.

Then he does a humble brag about how many O levels he got. And then at the bottom of what is still the first page, he lets in more light than he realises on the murky workings of his brain, if I may quote briefly. What I like most about the idea of being a disc jockey was that it seemed like the perfect escape from a life of mediocrity now aside from that being amusingly ironic in itself think about what he's actually saying that he's not escaped from a life of boredom or stultifying convention or creative frustration no escape from a life of boredom or stultifying convention or creative frustration no

escape from a life of mediocrity you know like yours mediocre fuck and he goes on it offered the possibility of fame and glamour without apparently the need for formal qualifications the word qualifications there a clear euphemism for the word talent There you've got an admission of his only motivations for being a disc jockey, right and that alone You could almost stomach because they're also the initial motivations of most rock stars But the difference is those people also like and create something, music, as opposed to zero. Yeah. But the most telling line to me, Noel says, what was more, it was one branch of showbiz

where you didn't have to get up on stage in front of people. This was very important to me. I'm not an extrovert. In fact, I'm basically very shy. Right now. Gene Wilder once said, whenever you meet a shy person, that's just a mask for their aggression. I'm not sure if that works as an axiom, but I think there's some truth in it here. When the self proclaimed shy person also freely admits that their life choices are entirely focused on achieving fame and glamour without having to actually earn either of them and

without any byproduct of any worth or value to the rest of the human race. It is so weird. Noah Ledman's is so familiar to us now. We almost don't notice how insane the whole phenomenon is like religion you know what I mean or the royal family it's just there yeah you don't think about it it's incredibly strange and how I loathe his baffling ease and carefree air as an older man this is something I've been thinking about sometimes I think the only people who don't start to look completely mad as they get older are the completely mad

started to notice lately after a lifetime of piled up stress and trauma and regret I'm beginning to get that old man look and I don't mean going gray or the weird eyebrow issues or Developing the gammon skin tone. I'm talking about that face, right? That fixed facial expression that emanates from the soul that you see on most men over 50. It's like the look that says, what the fuck just happened? And you just walk around with it all the time. Just shell-shocked horrified expression that just hardens and deepens as you get older and the only old men you don't see it on are the internally peaceful and self-assured most of whom are psychopaths and you don't see it on noel edmund however harrowing

his struggles with loyd's bank he's fine he just sat there all beatific with just the sound of helicopter blades Warring in his damaged brain that horrible lucky bastard Yeah, he's he's always been somewhat of an iconoclast You know what he's up to these days is Pissing off the Kiwis. Yes. He's decamped to a tiny island, one of New Zealand's little islands. He's got a wine estate with a restaurant on it now and a pub called The Bugger Inn. But yeah, he's set about annoying all of his neighbours. He refused to allow a cycle trail across his land,

even though they pointed out to him that it would be good for his business. The latest accusation is that he's been sacking his staff with no notice. It doesn't sound like they're Noel Edmonds I know. No. It is very funny that as The Guardian pointed out, somewhat waspishly, he is famously a proponent of the benefits of positive energy, in quotes, to fight cancer, soothe plants and comfort pets, and has published a book called

Positively Happy Cosmic Ways to Change Your Life, has claimed that he is visited by two orbs the size of melons that he believes are his dead parents and he says he is busy making a difference in this place which I'm not going to attempt to pronounce out of respect. Meanwhile, Al Linda Crisp, a contractor to the local council, visited River Haven with a colleague to discuss the possibility of Edmonds allowing a cycle trail backed by the council and central government to pass through his land rather than alongside a highway. Crisp said she told Edmonds the cycle trail would bring thousands of cyclists

to his business every year but Edms objected. He started saying how dangerous it was, there had been no consultation with the community, everyone was up in arms. He accused us of wasting rate payer money when businesses in Matu'eka are going under. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. He stood up and pointed at us both, you two need your heads cut off and your brains replaced. Fuckin' hell. All hell's gonna break loose, right? It's the right there that really makes me... And while you still have this attitude, you are not welcome here. Don't even think about having a coffee, having a slice. You are our enemies.

Viewers of Noel's HQ will remember this tone very well. Is he a sovereign citizen now as well? Oh man. In his helicopter. I'm not flying it, I'm travelling. Apparently Edmunds was given a right to reply and he said, My quote for publication borrowed from hundreds of visitors to River Haven last weekend. Utter bollocks. Have a great day. Not the only retired millionaire to be regularly visited by two orbs the size of melons, but usually their dead parents will be the last thing they're thinking of at the time. Edmund, in his It's Not At All Racist, It's Just A Happy Memory From Childhood shirt,

outreduces the glitter band before being interrupted by Utah's smallest pimp, Jimmy Osmond, who wants to stick on two of his friends. Edmund patiently explains the regulations of the show, which were set down by Johnny Stewart ten years ago, but the little homunculus shuts him down by pointing out that it's none other than Donny and Marie Osmond, with I'm leaving it all up to you. Formed in George Osmond's bollocks in Ogden, Utah between 1957 and 1959, Donny and Marie Osmond have already had solo success in the UK, the former scoring three number one hits in the UK with Puppy Love in 1972 and the 12th of Never and Young Love in 1973 and the latter getting to number 2 in December of 1973, held off number 1 by I Love You Love

Me Love. By God! Earlier this year, Donny was drafted in to record this tune as his next single, but disaster after disaster struck. Firstly, his brain started sending messages to his testicles to produce more hormones. The Osmond testes started to swell and dark, coarse, curly hair started to form around them. Even worse, his voice broke and he couldn't hit the high notes that this song, a cover of the 1957 Do Wop single recorded by Don Harris and Dewey Terry, which was taken to number one in America by Dale and Grace in 1963, required. Luckily, Little Jimmy wasn't in the studio, but Marie was, and she filled in on harmony

and lo, Donnie and Marie became a thing. It entered the charts of Fortnite a go at number 33, jumped 12 places to number 21, and this week it's jumped another 7 places to number 14, and here they are on the stage. But chaps, before we go any further, we need to point out that the BB so-called C has once again lied to the sheep-like people of Britain. This episode and the other Osmond shows, they're supposed to be live, right? Well, wrong actually. Front page headline Daily Mirror two days ago Banned! While the rest of the family put on a TV show. Little Jimmy Osmond settles down in front of a TV set to sing along with himself. The weenie boppers idol became the stay-at-home

Osmond last night while the rest of his famous family had all the fun. 11 year old Jimmy should have appeared live on BBC television with his five brothers but a BBC spokesman explained children aged 12 and under are not allowed to appear live after 4.30pm so Jimmy's contribution was recorded. The BBC are screening a live half hour show each night this week and they will have to record Jimmy separately each afternoon. So the number of fans invited to the concerts have been doubled from 3,000 to 6,000. The extra 3,000 fans weren't that difficult to come by, said the BBC. And that,

Pop Craze youngsters, is why you never saw Lena Zavaroni on Question Time. Yeah, that's mad, isn't it? What we're seeing now is not live. It's been pre-recorded in the afternoon and they've got 3,000 more fans in for this one performance. Oh my god, television deploying fakery to create a certain picture that couldn't have existed in real time. They're actually telling me that when you get fly on the wall footage of someone in an office having a phone conversation, they're not really talking to somebody on the other end of the phone. Yeah, and it's not really a fly either. I heard also that sometimes when people are being interviewed and,

and the interviewer is nodding, listening to them, they're not even nodding at that. It's something completely different. Oh no, I'm not listening to this. But anyway, little Jimmy. How old is little Jimmy at this point? Well, according to the Daily Mirror, Jimmy Osmond goes all the way up to 11. That little data point has made me feel strangely sad and I don't really know why. Well when we've discussed Jimmy Osmond before, Taylor and David were just horrible to him man. When we did Long Haired

Love from Liverpool, he was kind of like left, kicked to death and dumped into a fireplace. Me and David were horrible to him in that segment, which you introduced with the words this cunt. True. Very true. I know. But I'm going to turn that around now because seeing Jimmy Osmond absolutely desecrating the sacred artifacts of rock and roll reminded me that I fucking love seeing kids pretending to be pop stars not in a mini pops way you

Understand but when they just bellow it out and throw themselves about and just basically expose the Stupidity of rock. Yeah. Yeah, I believe that performance is on a par with the young lad in the Kelly family Yes, have you ever seen him performing a song called I Ain't Gonna PP My Bed Tonight? Yes. It's fucking great isn't it? Video playlist. That's all I'm gonna say about Jimmy Osmond. Good on you lad. It does wring your head out a little bit to see him go. I think he does exemplify that eeriness of child stars. Yes. Like innocence being commodified in real time and just going straight into the golden goose oven of it. Like you can't, this is the point, it's a paradox as soon as you commodify and codify innocence, you have destroyed it, you know. And he seems to be kind of busting

through that quite happily for the time being, but I guess there's a certain tension about it where it's like what's gonna happen? If you were that age and your older brothers and sisters were in abandon and said oh come on do you want to go on and have a go? You fucking yeah! Give me that Mike, give me that fucking Elvis costume I'll show you how it's done. Yeah. Anyway it's Donnie and Marie in matching jackets and enormous fucking am tabs on a big plinth Which makes them look well limited edition from the Franklin Mint, doesn't it? I definitely have that on the top of my telly if it wasn't a flat screen. Yeah singing

I'm leaving it all up to you, which is a cover But I was very disappointed that it's not a cover of the John Cale song of almost the same name Which is absolutely crying out for a Donnie and Marie cover disappointed that it's not a cover of the John Cale song of almost the same name, which is absolutely crying out for a Donnie and Marie cover. If you don't know it, listener, go and play it and imagine how brilliant that would be, crooning it into each other's faces. I would pay to hear that, even more than I would pay to not hear this. Apparently it also sounds like Canyons of Your Mind by the Bonzo Dog Doodoo Band, but I cannot speak to that myself.

It does actually, yeah. But very strangely, the single of the, let me get into this, the single of this appears to have brackets around the word all in I'm leaving it all up to you. The one word which doesn't appear in the John Cale title. And even more strangely, the Donnie and Marie album, which includes this song, is also called

I'm Leaving It All Up To You, but it's just written normally. Whereas the single is I'm leaving, apostrophe, it, open brackets, all, close brackets, up to you you which is not neat but I kind of like it because it shows that in those days even if you were the most commercial and cautious artist imaginable there was still nobody there step in and say no that titles too cumbersome too confusing cut it down and also because it's always a sick thrill to see a title

featuring words in parentheses in the middle of the title right we all know songs with words in parentheses at the end of the title or even at the start of the title I'm talking about brackets in the middle of the title and after wasting an hour googling I could only come up with two other songs which had parentheses in the middle of the song title. Oh, lay them on us. Stevie Ray Vaughan had a song called The Things brackets, That close brackets, I used to do, which is so monumentally pointless. It reads like a suggestion from one of those AI grammar programs that tells you to cut out unnecessary words. And the other is by One True Voice,

the strangely named winners of IEV's 2002 series, Pop Stars, The Rivals, who put out a single called Shakespeare's, brackets, way with words Can that have been a joke? It's an open question a band who exists as a marketing exercise Created by committee putting out a single with a title so confusing you couldn't walk into a record shop and ask for it Right don't get co-written by Rick astley as well that song who had explicitly stated that he was never going to let us down

Fucking liar. Yeah, anyway, I listened to that record too Uh, but I can't comment on it because it had no distinguishing features Now panel as people of the future We know that this week is pretty much the last horror of of the Osmonds over here for many reasons. I mean, Donny's just turned 16 and has been allowed to date, but hasn't dated any British girls like he promised in all their magazines. The Cairns are starting to get married off, the pieces on the board of Pop are moving about and someone in a potato shed in Scotland has started to brew a bootleg Osmonds, but I contend here's

another additional factor. Donny is now cavorting with a girl, even if it's his own sister. So as I always do, I check the Wikipedia page for the Osmonds and I read the whole thing Our secret research site Sarah, shush. I read the whole thing at least once And I feel like there's such an enigma that it's nice to have it just kind of laid out for you straight, you know So I'll just this is what it says The Osmonds were a family singing group out of Utah 11 brothers and one quarter sister Meryl Wayne Donnie Jimmy Johnny Howell Bery Don't Wayne, Earl, Timmy, Rorschach,

Ramel, Manon, Negan, Manimal, Rothko, Colonel, Captain, Marlon, Harlan, Hartnell, Hamill, Hubbell and Grumpy Cat. Together, they had a range of 29 octaves, were 608 years old and made a total of $11 billion in record sales, although nobody knows if that's in today's money or what. They were a successful synthesis of the Waltons, the Strokes and Hanna Barbera's Scooby's All Star Laugh Olympics and created an influential sound that evoked grammar's famous Thanksgiving ambrosia salad, even for those outside of American culture who don't know what that is. They continue to tour to

this day in various combinations under different names, including those Osmonds, some Osmonds, Hey Hey It's the Osmonds, them Osmonds, the Walking Osmonds, the Book of Carol, and Jay and Nathan. The youngest brother Jimmy enjoys modest success as sound-clowned rapper Little Jim, having had an epiphany after accidentally drinking a whole quart of extra-strong strawberry cough syrup. That's literally the whole Wikipedia page for the Osmonds, which really gives you... There is an actual section on their actual Wikipedia page called 21st Century Obscurity which is a decimal phrase but probably a blessing.

It has to be restated chaps. At this point in time, Marie Osmond is still 14 years old. What the fuck. And has been described in Melody Maker this month as the nicest slice of jailbait seen in years. Oh dear God. Different times. But oh man, she must be working a very glamorous paper round at the moment. The thing is, this is a creepy disgrace because if you asked me to guess how old she was here, I wouldn't have said 14, but I also wouldn't have said 16 or 18 or 20 or 25

I would have said an Elfin 32 There's something really wrong about that like it's not as disturbing as a 14 year old girl being ultra sexualized But the sight of a 14 year old girl being ultra adult eyes Yes, a bit A bit strange too. Yeah. Cause she's not done up as a granny or Mrs. Mop. She's done up as a kind of sophisticated glamorous 30 year old woman. You might meet her to party on a yacht or in a high powered public relations firm in the city. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. Which is weirder than a sort of dodgy thing

like Vanessa Paradis doing Jola Taxi, which is a great record, but a dubious presentation. Because at least that looks like a child. Because this is like being introduced to a grown-up lady, like a professional woman. And so you can't help but say, oh, and how do you do? And then someone says, yeah, that's my daughter, she's 14. Yeah.

Well, it's partly because she's got that very assured professionalism, which you don't expect in a 14 year old, you expect a 14 year old to be more like little Jimmy, you know, still capering about really, and just to get just looking a bit more sullen about it. Yeah, I suppose. But yeah, it's also I mean, people did used to age differently in it. It does kind of remind you of that. It's a very extreme example of, you know, like, I mean, you get that now. It's kind of come full circle where you'll get young women layering on the makeup

in the way that they do and looking like an older woman trying to look younger. Yeah. And you know, it's like, what are you doing? But yeah, it's one of the many unsettling things about this episode and about the Osmonds. Yeah. It's suspicious too, cause why would you dress a child up like that in the first place?

Like in that white suit, like Mick Jagger in 1969, or Nico in the exploding plastic inevitable. Yeah. And no wonder she ended up making creepy human dolls. Who she reminds me of is Priscilla Presley. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who looked like that at that age,

when she was 14 as well. Yeah, I suppose. I think Priscilla's the template for this, but fucking hell, she gets massive respect from me for being able to keep a straight face while thousands of girls, her own fucking age, are absolutely pissing their knickers in front of her over a gormless older brother. Yeah. I mean she's been cleverly slotted into the country mold and she's turned this song towards the audience that lapped up

paper roses. Every time he grandpa took me into the pubs that he went to round about this time you you know, both this and paper roses were in constant rotation on the jukebox. So, whenever I hear either of those songs, I immediately start thinking of rows of optics and thick crystal ash trays and all those brilliant adulterated things a child isn't supposed to see unless they're on holiday and in the children's room of a pub. So yeah this gets a bit of a pass from me but only a little bit. Yeah it's a

country-inflected doo-wop which is in itself quite interesting but the whole performance is not especially interesting because it's so neat and forgettable I guess. Well it just goes round and round in a circle doesn't it? Yeah. It's like your first Hornby set. Just here's a circle and just watch the thing go round and round and round and that's it. And just sway to and fro in a soothing rhythmic way but it is like it's very slight isn't it? It's very slight. It's a song without any sidings or little models of men digging up by the tracks. No, also it doesn't have an interlude or anything in the middle which is what you want in a karaoke song but you know. Yes. And also it's funny how they have to cram the words into the lines like like packets

of drugs into the secret compartment of a suitcase. And also, like, obviously, it's weird. It's a brother and sister singing to each other about a relationship that they're in. But you have to assume, for the sake of argument and sanity, that it's two separate relationships going wrong in the same way simultaneously. And they're just they're sympathizing. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe if you can get it in your head that they're arguing about who's gonna have the top bunk bed Maybe you can work around that but yeah, it's an odd choice of a song. Isn't it for a brother and sister? I feel like with the Osmonds everything about them is odd and so it's normal that it's odd the Ottomans if you will Quite so I'm not sure that I shall actually Points I'll leave it all up to you Sarah The odd ones if you will quite so I'm not sure that I shall actually Decide what you're gonna do according to Wikipedia though that is one of the names that they go by these days to

That's their death metal incarnation And nobody knows who they are the odd ones how how enigmatic I want to say the very shiny Morsatin of course and the very very blindingly white suit that we have already had a glimpse of and now we're seeing on Marie as well and she looks great in it. She's got a giant kind of fake corsage like a clown flower to correspond to Donny's massive, abundant pocket square. And this really, the sight of them gave me,

and the sound of the screams throughout, really reminded me of the prom scene in Carrie. That's exactly what Tommy Ross wears on his fateful final night. And if you go back and watch that, and the screams just as she's kind of heading out into the night, the whole school is on fire and you just see her heading out into the night and the doors banging behind her.

And yeah, that's what the screams are. And I went, oh, that's where I've heard this before. It's a vengeful inferno happening all over again. Considering the theatre stuff with members of the Osmond fan club and the Donny Osmond fan club, they're remarkably restrained throughout this performance, don't you think? I mean, there's only one big scream throughout the whole performance near the end. And we're going to work out why in a bit. Do you think it's because Marie's there casting a stern gaze over what you're screaming over my brother for?

Or do you think that they've been told beforehand by Robin Nash, you know, don't let yourself down, don't let your family down, don't let your school down. Be calm! Anything else to say? I wanted to say more about the song, but you can't because it makes itself almost undetectable. It's like steam. It's like it's there, but it's somehow not quite there. And then it's not there at all.

And it might as well never have existed Almost like the song Shakespeare's brackets way with words by one true voice. Have you ever heard that? No, I mean neither I mean really looking at this you've got to say that Marie Osmond is the coolest one out of the whole family Oh, yeah Yeah, I mean she just ghosts in every now and then and just you know, I know what's going on I'm a I'm a proper woman of the 70s. Yeah, she was the original Sandy in Greece wasn't she? She was gonna be cast as Sandy in the movie version of Greece But she didn't want to dress up like a slag at the end for want of a better word

Yeah, and smoke a fag. She's too busy doing da da sound poetry and I don't mind Marie Osmond I've got to say. So the following week I'm living it all up to you sword! Nine places to number five and two weeks later it got to number two held off the summit of Mount Pop by a single we're going to hear later. Emboldened by its success, they put out the follow-up, Morning Side of the Mountain, which got to number five in January of 1975, and they'd have two more hits with Make the World Go Away and Deep Purple, by which time they were drafted in as co-hosts for a week on ABC's daytime

talk show, The Mike Douglas Show, which so impressed the station that they were offered a Friday evening variety show which ran for three series called Donnie and Marie, with the rest of the Osmonds relegated to the Web Twins and Chris Andrews role. That's my first TV memory, by the way, the Donnie and Chris Andrews. That's my first TV memory by the way the Donnie and Marie show. Really? Yeah I've got a really clear memory of seeing it on TV in the first house I ever lived in and saying to my mum you know what is this why is it you know what's going on why is it weird and she said they're American. Now do you want my love?

Or are we through? Donnie and Lee with I Am Leaving It All Up To You. This week's number 14. You know, being a drummer, it's always nice to see another drummer having success. Up 19 places this week, number 29, Cruisy Power and Na Na Na. Come on! We're suddenly confronted by Jay Osmond, the drummer of the band and the reason for the scream near the end of Donny and Marie. He was taking his mark for this link. As he acknowledges his younger siblings, and I don't know about you chaps but I felt this, one question hangs and hangs thick in the air even after all these years.

Jay, why is he so kissable? Because once again I have to return to the greatest piece of literature ever written about the arts, the 1974 Music Star Annual, where they set their finest journalistic minds on that very subject and here's what they came up with if you'll allow me. His wild personality, which is unpredictable. You'll never know what he'll do next. The way he calls you up early in the morning to wish you a beautiful day. The way he likes you for being you rather

than someone you're not. His interest in religion and the Book of Mormon, which is admirable for someone his age. We were all saying that about Muhammad Atta 20 or so years ago weren't we? The way he invites you to dinner at his house for his mom's delicious home-cooked meals. His readiness to smile in tough situations without ever letting things get him down. The way he respects your family and your beliefs and never tries to change them around. The fact that he always abides by your parents' requests and never brings you home too late from a date. The way he opens doors for you at all times and always shows courtesy and manners. The way he tries to write to all his fans to show them how much he cares.

His sneaky way of disguising his voice on the phone to see how long it takes before you recognise him. The way he does funny imitations of TV commercials and constantly keeps you laughing. It's frffy Man. His accommodating ways and gentleness which always shows you he cares. I just want to stick my tongue down his throat right now after reading that. His party trick, the trouser elephant. Jay tells us that as a drummer he feels especially gratified when one of his fellow protagonist of the sticks becomes successful in his own right and when it starts to early he slightly stumbles over his introduction of Na Na Na by Cozy Powell.

Born in Sirencester in 1947, Colin Flukes had his first experience with music when his auntie gave him a ukulele as a child and he responded by breaking the neck off it, ripping the strings off and playing what was left as a drum with some knitting needles. After playing the drums in the school orchestra at the age of 12, he joined his first band in 1962, The Corals, who were based in the village of Laturn and was part of their successful attempt to break the world record of playing non-stop without playing the same song twice. It was at this time that he took on the name Cozy Pal, an amalgam of his favourite jazz drummer Cozy Cole and his adopted mother's maiden name. After leaving school he spent six months working in an office to save up for a premier drum

kit and as soon as he got one he left to become a member of the semi-pro band The Sorcerers who took up a residency in Hamburg. In 1968 the band relocated to Birmingham, changed their name to Youngblood and put themselves about on the Brumbeat scene and a year later when Ace Kefford walked out of the move, they became the kens of his new band, the Ace Kefford Stand, and began work on an LP. But when Kefford had a breakdown and walked out halfway through the sessions, the band split up, leaving Powell to pursue a session career. However, one of the musos drafted in on the Ace Kefford sessions was Jeff Beck, who was

looking for a new band after the dissolution of the original Jeff Beck group are very much like the cuts of Pals jib. So he drafted him in and he stayed there for a couple of years. In 1972 he went back to the session work mainly with rack records for tracks by Suzy Quattro, Julie Felix, Donovan and Hot Chocolate. But in late 1973 he put out the single Dance With The Devil, a colossal nick of third stone from the Son By The Jimi Hendrix Experience with Suzy Quattro on bass, which went all the way to number three in February of this year and the solo career was on.

This is the follow up to The Man in Black, which got to number 18 in June and features his latest band, Cozy Pal's Hammer. It entered the chart last week at number 48 and this week it soared 19 places to number 29. Panel, this is a bad week to be ahead. What with the Osmonds on telly every night and now be spoiling top of the pops. But one can imagine Lank Greasyhead snapping up from the angry letters being composed a melody maker at the site of Cozy Pals and the sound of real music but we discover very quickly that

A. Cozy's got pads on his drum heads that are as thick as the one Donald Trump has to wear nowadays. B. The words Cozy Pals hammer written on both bass drums, C a band of absolute egg and chippers with Trevor Francis on guitar and D a bloody glam song. Yeah it is a glam song. I mean it's the sound of it it's just more concrete covered heavy rock but sealed into a smaller box than was customary. It's like this song is pure bubble gum it's obviously written to be a hit, but it would be so much better if they'd just gone all out

and put a nice squelchy synth on it, you know, or frankly, a more limited drummer, because you compare this to the Glitter Band track and they're structurally quite similar, but the members of Cozy Pals Hammer and fans of Cozy Pals Hammer, fans of Cozy Pals Hammer if any would probably say the difference is that this is real music or it's a bubblegum song being played as real music whereas the glitter band that's just toy town rock

you know which is kind of true but that's not the point the point is that this sort of song just sounds better when you play it that way Rather than this way right this is like if Led Zeppelin did son of my father or Chickery tip yeah, he's the confused Because it's kind of crunching heavy rock he needs a bit of space to flap around you know and tear off solos and Lurch into massive crescendos because that's what it does. That's what it's about. It can't do anything with a song like this,

which is football terrorist garage punk. It's like Sham 69 being played by men who are both ludicrously overqualified and ill-suited to the task. So really, this is far more guilty of being you know cynical contrived pop-pap churned out to sell records and make money man you know this is this is more that than any honest basic British stompers that just

wants to be the best basic British stompers it can be definitely it's still very kind of orally and visually overwhelming this production. There's more strobing and it's like, oh god, I'm so exhausted at this point. I just want to lie down under a pile of weighted blankets. But no, I feel like this has more energy than the Glitter Band and it's got a bit more point on its pencil. They're still trying to lead some clapping but there's clapping with extra stomping in snakeskin Chelsea boots, which is very impressive.

Yes. As I suggested earlier, this is the second of the, the very, very footbally records. You can just imagine small boys singing this in the playground as they go about their disgusting small boy antics with mud and kicking, you know. And it really, yeah, it is all about the drums. That's kind of the point, you know, but I have to say, I don't feel it as a song

of rebellion. If I'm on it, it doesn't come through to me in that way. But like just for you, it does serve, I think as a ladle full of primordial punk soup suggests maybe a direction of travel. It's a song where the singer tells us that he doesn't want to degree or work in a factory because, hey, this is 1974 and he still had choices, but neither does he want to be a big puffy singer or any of the musical jobs in a band, opting instead for hitting a drum kit with a hammer or something. Yeah. Well, it's, I mean, Cozy is a bit of a weird bloke wasn't he? He's like he's one of

those people who wasn't a fixed star he was just sort of around he always seemed to be breaking world records or record breakers or or joining a reformed Lord Rockingham's 11 for a tour of Cambodia or something. Whenever Swap Show had their end of year supergroup it was always Cozy Powell on drums I seem to recall. Yeah he was he was on the speed dial of BBC same way as uh BA Robertson yeah it was really odd but he was always there always constantly playing music but just not really giving you anything although I'm sure he appreciated Zepo Osmond coming on at the start and equating himself with Cozy Powell because they're both drummers. I bet you loved that. Do you think he tried to sidle up to Cozy afterwards and talk to him about hi-hats and stuff like that. But musicians are

weird like this right in terms of their solidarity, drummers especially. It's like they're the goalkeepers of rock you know I mean. They meet someone else who plays the same instrument and it's like bumping into someone from your hometown on holiday to know yes hell or a kid from your school that you don't really know or get on with and then suddenly you're in a doctor's waiting room with them after school or you're in the same judo class on a Saturday morning and suddenly you get on because you're two souls from the same place in exile yeah but I would have listened in to this Osmond Powell conversation because I don't really know how drummers talk to each other when there's no one else around right like I was in Moscow

yeah I was thinking the other day like like you know, professional mediums and psychics are often friends with other people who also do that job. But how do they talk to each other when it's just the two of them in a room together? Do they feel that they could be honest with each other and let their guard down? Or do they have to keep pretending it's all real, even though

both of them will know that they're both lying oh what a tangled web we weave oh no it's kfabe though you've got to you've got to maintain kfabe I don't know where it ends I don't know where the borderline is I mean there's probably a good reason for kissable Jay bigging up Cozy at the beginning because Cozy's got a rep for starting on folk backstage at Top of the Pops. From an interview with Bernie Marsden who is the Trevor Francis look-alike in this performance in Classic Rock magazine in 1999 we were at Top of the Pops when someone brought it to Cozy's attention that another of the

bands had made a derogatory comment in Melody Maker. It was either the Rubettes or Show Waddy Wadda about how Cozy was only a session drummer who couldn't play a note. Powell never said a word, just picked up the paper, found their dressing room, asked for the drummer and chinned him. But afterwards it was all sorted and he asked the bloke if he wanted a beer. So there you go. I checked this out and Cozy Pal never appeared on Top of the Pops with Show Waddy Waddy. So it has to be John Richardson of the Roubettes who were number one the previous time Cozy appeared on Top of the Pops.

And John Richardson, by the way, is the drummer on Top of the Pops and John Richardson by the way is the drummer on Kung Fu Man by Ultra Funk so and I wouldn't have fancied Cozy Pals chances with Romeo Challenger. Romeo would have fucking battered him. At least would have gone past the first round. Definitely but all's been forgiven because Cozy's actually going to be representing Top of the Pops in a special event in a few weeks time. Article in the Seven Oaks Chronicle dated August the 31st, disc jockeys go on circuit. Brands Hatch have organized another day of racing by top disc jockeys and pop stars on September the 8th. This time two teams will be competing against each other with Cozy Pal leading a team of stars and have a guess who's leading the team

of disc jockeys? Nole Edmonds. Nole Edmonds leading the team of disc jockeys in a ten lap race around the full circuit. The top of the Pops team includes members of the Glitter Band, the Hollies and the Wombles, as well as Bill Cotton, head of BBC Light Entertainment. The racing disc jockeys include Dave Lee Travis, John Peel, Roscoe and Paul Burnett. So there we go, more work heaps on Nolg's plate. We can talk about this record. Yes.

I mean, this is the big curve pad of fat around the side of the pork chop that is second tier mid 1970s British rock. You know what I mean? It's not so much the who, more the why. Like you wouldn't say that this was a bad record. I mean, I wouldn't anyway, but beyond the obvious financial motive, there's a fundamental

pointlessness to this, right? It's like a hard rock nursery. It's quasi power, isn't it? Yeah. My bloke described this as plot Stuart. There's a sort of hamster on the wheel feel to this, right? Yeah. It's like watching an Olympic thousand meter runner just running up and down the stairs in his own house. You know what I mean? It's like this is a natural musician who has to keep playing for his own sake and you just wish he had something worthwhile to play. But the trouble with Kozi is he was one of those spare parts he was in a million bands over the years. Really really good musician without a coherent creative voice or a settled group of other musicians he could stick with. But

he just kept playing and playing like with a rotating cast of other old lags. It's like, oh, I'll be in Richard Blackmore's Rainbow for a few years. Oh, Michael Schenker group. Or Richard Breyer's Rainbow. Yeah, might as well be, yes. I'll replace Carl Palmer in ELP for a few years so they don't have to change the name of the band, right? It's no surprise that he was mates with Jeff Beck, the ultimate example of that, like, so talented, but drifting so much he never got anything down. You just want to say, you two, get a bass player

who can write a tune and fucking get on with it. But no, he's got to assemble some group called Cozy Pals Fortified Serial with with Roger Glover and someone out of Coliseum for a club tour of Austria. You know, who gives a fuck? Yeah. And this band, I mean, it's nice to have a sharp visual contrast with the fucking Osmonds, but my God, what a bunch of hatchet faced STD dispensers. I'm not a fan of this singer who looks like a cross between B.A. Gunterson and David Hess in The Last House on the left. His singing is okay in a sort of sub-Bond Scott kind of way but I can't bear his stage movements which are just stomping from one foot to

the other like a toddler that needs a piss while pumping one fist over his head like Trump when he got shot in the ear. An injury for which he might have been even more grateful had he been watching this episode of Top of the Pops at the time. Yeah, he reminds me very much of violent Mork in Nazareth. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He reminds me of that cump from Nazareth. Don't mean Jesus. I mean, you know. But on guitar there, Bernie Marsden, who was a local hero when I used to live in the sticks, for a few years as a teenager, I lived in North Bucks, which is the yokel bit. Buckinghamshire is a long vertical county.

The chilly of South England. It is, yeah. And the county town of Aylesbury is right in the middle and everywhere south of Aylesbury is posho millionaire London dormitory towns right like millionaires row and everywhere above Aylesbury is all used to be. build low middle-class housing in the States. It was a weird jumble of rich and poor and middling, right? But some of the little villages were very expensive and exclusive. And in one of those could be found Bernie Marston, born in Buckingham, best known for later being

in White Snake, but he's on this record and he's in this clip looking as ever like Elizabeth the First at a Deep Purple gig, moon-faced but amiable. And if you lived in that area in the late 80s and early 90s and you played music in any capacity, he was sort of around, not necessarily physically there, but people in music shops and rehearsal rooms would refer to him like the god of the mountain,

you know, oh, Bernie Marsden came by last week, you know, he was the closest thing to a rock star in the area. So I think just having him around was like when you live somewhere obscure and your town gets mentioned on TV. Yeah, it's like fame compared to what you said. I never met him. I never got past the velvet rope But it used to fascinate me how small a pond has to be before you can be considered a big fish And then I grew up to write for Melody Maker But at least while Bernie was in White Snake He co-wrote loads of the songs which became American hits. So he could afford his enormous house in Tingewick or wherever it was he lived. So shrewder than cozy who was the drummer in white snake for a couple of years and then fucked off. And you can't do that restless, rootless, moving on, traveling man kind of thing. When you're a drummer, it's not good for you.

It's not good for the bands that you wander through. Just join a group, be the best drummer for that group. Get to know the bass player, get a musical understanding. So whatever you play sounds good, even if it's crap. Otherwise, what's the point of being a technically good musician? You might as well play football terrorist garage punk like this for the rest of your life. You know, just being an odd job man is shit.

Just concentrate. Just hold it down. Concentrate. As for the performance, it's fair to say that they've absolutely spunked all over the jumpers, haven't they? Because like the Glitter Band, they've elected to mime the single, but unlike Gary's gang, this lot are supposed to be serious musicians and as I've said, you know it's mime from the very first second because we see Cozy's drums absolutely festooned with pads. And here's the problem with the setting of this episode because when a band's in the usual top of the pop studio, you accept that they're going to mime,

and it just washes over you. And the acts are also performing directly at you, the viewer, so there's loads of tight shots and eye contact, and you accept the premise and you go with it. But here, on the stage of a theater, with different camera angles, this singer doesn't know who the fuck he's supposed to be performing to, and they just look massively fake right from the off.

I mean, we are going to see other bands and acts on this episode handle the situation properly, but not here and not now. Also, however disappointing this song is, it's even more disappointing that it doesn't end properly. Yeah. Like, it fades out. I hate a live fade out. Why end your song? Songs needs ends. I mean, especially a song like this, which is again, very slight, but at least has some kind of width of gumption about it. Some sort of proto punk energy. It needs everyone on stage to stop with a stomp at the same

time on the last gnar. How hard can it be? This is one of the treats of going to see a band live or listening to a live album. You get endings. You get to hear how they've decided to bring this piece of music to a close and it's really interesting and satisfying. Yeah, whenever the mime fades out on top of the pops it always looks to me like the band are in someone's bedroom rocking out in front of the mirror and then man barges in with an armful of freshly laundered pants asking if you and your mate want some cobs. And you can just see some of the band members just bowing their heads in shame and you know one or two of them will put their hands in the air and try and style it out but you just

get this feeling of embarrassment that we've been found out. And that feeling's only being amplified by the setting of the BBC theatre, I'm afraid. Bad skits. Yeah, I've got an ending for you, Cosy. How about this? Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. How about that?

It feels quite natural to me. End it properly, like a high-speed car crash. Oh, Taylor. Surely it's more effort to fade it out than not. I mean I know it's just Top of the Pops and they have a tight schedule and stuff but songs just. Yeah there's no such thing as just Top of the Pops, it's Top of the fucking Pops mate. I'm sorry I should show more respect after all this time. Yes. But the point is that songs just petering out with a band just kind of gradually ceasing to move around and the music fading and you can see that happening and it's just depressing, like it's too reminiscent of real life and the way that things tend

to go. Not with a bang, not with anything, just with the camera turning away from you and the show kind of pottering on without you. It's too much like death. I don't want death in my top of the box. I don't want strobe editing. I don't want Osmonds. I don't want Cozy Powell. I want some chips hot from the chip pan on a plate with some HP on the rug by the electric fire and a more common wise clip show under the searing yet comforting eye of the big

light. That's what I want, not this. So the following week Na Na Na jumped another nine places to number 20 and continued a slow pull upward, eventually spending two weeks at number 10 in September. However, he knocked the band and the session work on the head in late 1974 and after an attempt to form a power trio with ex-members of Humble Pie fell through, he announced his intention to quit the music biz and have a dream on a silver dream machine and become a motorbike racer. But in late 1975, he was tempted by Richie Blackmore to join his new

band, Rainbow, and he stayed with them for the rest of the decade. After he got pissed off with Rainbow's pop direction, he left the band in 1980 and spent the 80s linking up with Graham Bonnet, the Michael Schenker group, Whitesnake, Emerson Lake and Pau, Gary Moore and Black Sabbath. Fuck it all, why didn't he join Manslaughter? They needed a drummer. And in 1986 he appeared on Record Breakers playing 400 different drums in a minute. He spent the early 90s in Brian May's post Queen band before drumming for Ingui Malmsteen, John N. Twissell and Peter Green but he died in 1998 on the M4 outside of Bristol at the age of 50. Alright! Alright! That's Kouki, Pao and Na Na Na. You know, I really enjoyed rehearsal this afternoon, man. It was fantastic. It was just me and five beautiful girls. And here they

are, PEN's people dancing this week's number three sound, the Stylistics, and you make me feel brand new. All right! All right! says Neil Kinnock in an arena at Sheffield 18 years from now. Actually it's Donny Osmond who out-reduces Cozy Pal as we cut to the balcony to witness a sea of girls carrying on while a floor manager in a pink and grey shirt tries to calm them down. Yeah he's like one of those idiots doing the Poznan. Do you know what I mean? He's got his back to the stage. Look at all that the total non-response to football references at live shows should really have made me understand

By now our audience are bad at games and do not get Yeah, but he's trying to stop them hurling themselves across the gulf between themselves and an Osmond when when you look at them clearly what they're actually thinking is just oh I know Donnie would like it if I made some drop scones and put them in a Tupperware box and several thing is he probably would have done when yeah and so would I. Donny then tells him that he really enjoyed the rehearsal this afternoon because he got to knock about with five beautiful girls. They're very keen to get Donny to say that he likes girls. Yeah but it's a bit disturbing because he says

you know I really enjoyed rehearsal this afternoon man it was fantastic it was just me and five beautiful girls and it was just me and four beautiful girls then three no but seriously why was it just him and pan's people where was everybody else how was this allowed to happen yeah where's robin nash when this is going on i want to yeah i bet they felt very safe in there with a religious fanatic. Disgrace. After the squealing dies down, he introduces those girls, for they are pants people, and they'll be dancing to You Make Me Feel Brand New by The Stylistics. We last covered Black Chairman Mao and his soft lad

mates in Chart Music number 41 41 when they took 16 bars to number 7 for two weeks in September of 1976. But this, their sixth hit in the UK has ratcheted them up into the big league. It's the follow up to Rocking Roll Baby, which got to number 6 in February and it's the first cut from their new LP Let's Put It All Together, which came out in May. It entered the chart five weeks ago at number 44 and began a deliciously slow upward pull, and this week it's nudged up one place from number four to number three. Due to the nature of this week's show, film footage is a definite no-no, so the responsibility

of emoting to it falls once more upon the shoulders of the people of Pan, which means that finally we get a chunky slab of dad-isfaction. Oh, that's very much needed, isn't it, at this time? Poor dad, eating his tea on his lap having to listen to non-stop screaming from the telly and possibly from his daughters not fair to dads man. That's lovely ladies. Well we'll get to the routine and the song and everything later but there's one question I really need to ask first Sarah go on and everything later, but there's one question I really need to ask first.

Sarah? Go on. Could you be Donnie's bride? That's the question that's currently being prepared by Music Star, the magazine that never dodges the issues of the day for their 1975 annual. Next to a full-page doctored photo of Donnie in a morning suit and a bride with a face cut out, making it look as if Donnie's just married a monster out of monk hair, quote, imagine it, the church bells ringing, your mum and dad on one side of the aisle

and the Osmonds on the other. Donnie standing by your side at the altar and the priest asking you if you will take Donald Clark Osmond to be your lawfully wedded husband. Could it be you, ever? Is it possible, Sarah? Try our quiz and find out. Donnie set the questions himself when we last spoke to him on the phone. Did he? Music's not one fucking lie to anyone Taylor, how dare you? Okay Sarah, are you ready? Do you like large families?

I kind of like to keep myself to myself. Yes or no? You know, no. Do you think your husband should be allowed a certain amount of freedom or should you spend all your time together? A. He should be free B. He should share his life with his wife. Hmm. You see that's kind of a complicated issue isn't it but let's go A.

In this case does that mean having other wives as well or have they stopped all that by now? Yeah that's fine you know. Do you expect him to help around the house? I mean I've got I've got my way of doing things really probably just get in the way so let's say no. Would you be jealous if you married into a very close family? No or a little? This is getting bad the format of this quiz is it's all over the shop isn't it? Well it's a complicated man is done it

I feel like I'm being manipulated. Also, I've forgotten the question Would you be jealous if you married into a very close family? No, no good. No, I'm good. Do you like traveling or would you rather stay at home? Hmm? Well, you know since I know this is you know, I have to transport myself back to 1974 when indoor air was still disgusting but in a different way. But knowing what I know now about the state of indoor air, no, I'm going to stay at home where I can control my environment. Would you expect Donny to place you above all his fans?

Of course. Does money mean a lot to you? Yes. Do you prefer the country to the city? Yes. Do you love Donny? Yes or most of the time? I did not sign up for this. Okay, I'm going to put that down as most of the time then. Most of the time. And finally, would you be prepared to take on the Mormon faith? What in court? I'll lie and say yes, for the sake of argument.

It's just words, isn't it? Right. now you can tot up your answers if you got more than seven a answers then Donnie thinks you just might be the girl for him I'm afraid to say Sarah you only got four out of ten a so sorry dog no Donnie for. Why wasn't one of those questions, do you mind inevitably sometimes clashing teeth when you kiss? Oh. So that means, Sarah, that where it says underneath this question here, if you dig out a photograph of yourself,

you can stick it into the space we've left for you and you can marry Donnie right now. Sorry, Sarah, I can't allow it. Sadlet, the original owner of the annual, only got six, eh? So no Osman wedding for her either. So, song or dance? Daddy or chips? Oh, we got back on the stylistics now.

Back on the podcast. Because you might think at first this is going to be a very tough gig for Pans people, you know, on a big bare stage In front of a load of underage Nicco wetters, but I'm guessing the vast majority of that audience would fucking love to be in pants people I don't watching this performance with the same rap tour as Ten year old lads watching Kevin Keegan being interviewed with all blood running down his arm after that bike accident in Superstar interviewed with all blood running down his arm after that bike accident in Superstars. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But it just looks like the best job in the world. Yeah. You get to dance and you get to knock about with pop stars. Yeah, it's not a bad gig. You know, you have to deal with David Lee Travis and his horrible ilk, but you know. They can keep themselves on a big stage though. They don't have to sort of talk and they don't have to do links so they don't have to suffer the kind of creepy arm around the shoulder.

Well we've seen that a few times though haven't we? Yeah, not half. The thing is, it's hard to really talk about pans people there because it's almost like you hardly see them. They're just these ladies swirling in long frocks to this woozy sweetness, right? Like you could just close your eyes and be somewhere else in some other better year. Because when this record is playing, it's hard to kind of do anything

that gets anybody's attention, just because of the sort of, the opiate-like qualities of this track. I was listening to it thinking, imagine how plush the carpets in the studio must have been when they recorded this. Just amazing. It was another one of those records that you'd still hear a lot when I was a kid like a couple years later they were still playing it on the radio you'd hear it in the sunshine like phasing in and out on the breeze as you lay on the grass

with your eyes closed you know by the open-air swimming pool in Hiley Leslie whittled down a hole about half a mile away but you didn't know that so it's just early psychedelic experiences you know a young age like floating around in that sort of hypnagogic state between waking and dozing just out in the open air, looking into the clouds and letting your brain do whatever it was doing, which is why when I got around to finding out about hallucinogens, it interested me,

because it all sounded so familiar from being a kid and zoning out in the summer, lying on a towel with the grass at ear level and me listening in you know and so I went down that tube and eventually realized that as well as being quite dangerous LSD wasn't actually a very constructive or useful drug because it only generates unmanageable versions of the same experiences you used to create in your own brain. So what I'm saying here really is people who take LSD are pathetic. Why can't they just eat a bit of ordinary paper and use their imagination?

But yeah, music that I heard in that kind of woozy state, or that I now associate with that kind of state, is already associated in my head with the ethereal and when as in this case the actual record sounds maximally ethereal it becomes quite hard to discuss it in words the same way it's hard to measure a bubble with a ruler you know even by trying you might destroy it and end up with nothing left to measure or discuss but yes this record is really is like what you thought the inside of clouds might be like before you got on an airplane and flew into them and

realized that all they are is wet. I mean, you may not have noticed the pants people tale about, I fucking, Jesus Christ, after all the juvenile yet it's just like oh my god real women on the teller and I don't know how the audience are reacting to this because we don't see it but fucking I went cherry Gillespie start a plane with her era and looking personally at me man I fucking started screaming and if I had time I would have got me knickers off and throwing them at the teller for mate yeah they are Yeah, they are a sort of vision in this kind of flowy peach

satin and chiffon and their amazing silver platforms. It is one of their more abstract performances. They're not really trying to. It's an atmospheric thing. It's a flant about, isn't it? Yeah, so they're just kind of gently writhing about. But because this song was used

in adverts for laundry products in the 80s, of course that's unfortunately what comes up. Biotech's stain remover apparently. You make me feel so clean deep down, it's true. I thought, oh, wouldn't it have been fun if Pan's people had all clambered out of a giant front loading washing machine all covered in suds and then just kind of rolled around in them for a few minutes. That would have been great also because they could each have been dressed as an item of laundry. Like Babs Lord could have been a sock, you know, and Dee Dee Wilde a giant pair of Y-Fronts and maybe Cherry Gillespie could be a giant bra

I mean to me this is the performance that really exposes the limitations of recording top of the pops in a theater because pence people they used to performing in a compact space and You know they have their bits and bobs in the scenery around them But the quick change nature of this episode means that they don't get any scenery bar a few flats and some silver and white strip codes and the overall effect is they're performing in a bingo hall i mean the only dancers that are going to be able to fill a stage this big are dougie squires second generation because there's 20 of the fuckers all the sort of tumbling

act that you used to see on the good old days. And I don't know about you, but I don't think Pan's people launching each other off Seasaw's is going to capture the mood of this song, do you? Yeah, and there's not a lot they can do anyway, just because of the tempo of this record, which might politely be described as dreamy. Basically it's really really slow and it's designed for slow dancing it's not designed for this kind of dancing. But if it was just a couple of bpm faster it wouldn't have that unearthly drift and woos which is the thing that's so great about it. It just moves. It doesn't walk or run or drive or fly. It just moves like a loved up glacier. It just hangs there. Yeah, there's no attack anywhere in this. There's not even much of a pulse, but it sweeps you along the whole time. There's a sense of motion. It's just slow motion. It's the same kind of unreal movement as those old vocal records.

Like, you know, I only have eyes for you by the flamingos. It's definitely an update of that sort of thing. This strange sense of urgency and progression without velocity. Everything just sublimating. And, you know, in 1974, that's about as close to heaven as you're gonna get without mandrakes. I'm kind of ambivalent about this tune really because What?! Really? Okay it sounds bad here because this 50 year old recording of it playing through the speakers in the theatre you can't hear all of the washing strings

underneath it's just like falsetto and sitar. It's weirdly kind of under-simulating after the kind of over-stimulating stuff that has come before it. So it's just in the context of this. It's not the best way to hear this song. I know exactly what you mean, but it doesn't bother me because that heavy sort of mushed compression makes it sound more like it did coming through a transistor radio at a high swimming pool in 1978. That's the thing.

It goes into your brain in a very, very particular way, clearly. By the way, LSD only really stirs up stuff that's already there, but it's just a side book. really you know stirs up stuff that's already there but it's just a side note. Also I've said this before I'm sure but it blows my mind that people just take mushrooms when they're 15 because there's nothing else to do where they live and it's like you're not ready you're not ready wait until your brain is about done in your sort of mid-20s at least you know. In other words Sarah just say no! I'm doing the. I'm doing the hand move. It's about finding that window between being too young to handle it and being that age

where just molten terror is pouring through your mind every second of every day. That doesn't go well with it either. Anyway, you may have noticed that there's no Louise Clarke anymore because she left three months ago to start a family. But her replacement is none other than Suman Henick, the golden thread which links Pants People, Ruby Flipper, Legs and Co and Flick Colby's Zoo together because she did make one appearance as a zoo wanker in December of 1981. So fucking hell, there ought to be a statue of her somewhere.

In the corner of the BBC theatre. No. And you have to say that whatever they're doing on this drafty stage in front of weenie boppers is a fucksite better than their current side hustle because like the DJs, Pans people are coining it in on the side but article in the Coventry Evening Telegraph this October Pants People will star again Pants People the television dancing group will be among the stars at a Coventry charity evening for the second year running with comedian Bernard Manning the star of the comedians and Will Tappers and Shunters,

they will take part in an all-star gala evening at the Hotel Leifric, with proceeds going to the Coventry Pediatric Assessment Centre. The gala evening, for men only, is being organised by the Coventry Three Spires Roundtable, who last year invited pants people to star in a similar event. And a pair of panties given by one of the girls raised £54 when they were auctioned for charity. Mr Ken Squires, the Coventry businessman who bought the panties, has already ordered his ticket for this year's goller evening, but he says he will not be bidding for any

underwear this year. It's taken almost a year for my wife and I to be on speaking terms again. I'll be bidding for more conventional goods this year. Ken Squires, you dirty bastard. You know that's £497.43 in today's money. It was for the kids though. See what Ken Squires of Coventry needs to do now is to buy Bernard Manning's shitted up pants as a gift for his wife. That sort everything out. They will no longer be on speak in terms of his wife ever puts them in the wash. Yeah. But they're stiff as a board Ken. Is this the

optimum time to impart my dirty knickers story? Oh God. I'll take that as a yes. So I'm working at television X in the mid 90s and one day they booked in a very well-known page 3 model of the 80s, who I'm not going to name as she's still kind of in the public eye, and she was there to do some IDs and links for the station. And she was fucking skill. Anyway, we get chit-chatting between takes and I ask her what she's up to nowadays and she says, oh, you know I do a bit this and that but tell you where the real money is at the minute mate

Dirty knickers and I'm like, oh really? He says yeah, I'm selling mine 40 quid ago fucking scores of them a week They're just flying out the door. So I say, you know, how how what's the creative process? So I say, you know, how how what's the creative process? You know, is it artisan and she looks at me as if I've gone out and she says no, of course it fucking isn't What she did was she'd order in boxes of seconds from Marks and Spencer's and every Sunday afternoon She put one on a coffee table put on the East Enders omnibus Get a tin of anchovies put on the EastEnders omnibus, get a tin of anchovies, dab them round the gusset and stick them in an envelope. You sound strangely disappointed, Taylor.

Like they're mode women on Antiques Roadshow when they find out their knickknacks aren't worth shit. It sounds very on the nose for want of a better word. So I asked her and I said, haven't you been caught out yet? And she just grabbed my arm and looked me dead in the eye and said do you honestly think that the men who buy these things know what a real woman smells like and I was like so there you go so in that case why not pick something that didn't smell like anchovies I don't know mate. Is it just for her own amusement?

Fucking hell, that's so depressing. Not for her though, she made a fucking fortune out of it. Yeah, yeah, well so would I if I could. Well what could you use Taylor as a man? This is the problem, I use Stilton. I mean AI will help you here, you can just create an avatar, you know, and sell to a whole new generation of men who've never been with women. Anything else to say? Please.

Hearing this song in this way, it is a bit like riding a tandem with your true love through a field of daisies, but the seat is so unforgiving that the discomfort is occupying around 70% of your conscious awareness, just hovering around the line at which bliss becomes scientifically non achievable. And at this point in the episode, you know, there's going to be screams at some point, usually near the end, and you're just bracing yourself for it, aren't you? It also just made me want to listen to Didn't I Blow Your Mind by the Daltonics, which I think is superior, but I don't know enough to say these things but I like it more. It's another sort of very stately record. It's got loads of space

in it but it's got this real weight of strings and horn and those delicate little xylophone twinkles. That's what you want in your Philadelphia soul. You want that kind of everything sounding like sad Christmas in that kind of Motown way. Christmas at the orphanage. And also then what I put on the playlist after this was After the Love Has Gone by Earth, Wind and Fire. My mate Rod Reem Arsden who's a musician and writer did a brilliant breakdown of precisely how and why that record is amazing and I'm trying to find it to put in the playlist. Actually Christmas at the Orphanage is quite

cheerful isn't it because Roy Race always turns up with the rest of Melchester Rovers and there's usually like this big Christmas present shaped thing with a button on it right in the middle of the hall. And Roy always volleys the ball and hits the button just so and everything opens up and there's loads of toys for everyone. So I don't know, Christmas in a care home and you've just had your dinner and you look out the window and a burger van with get Brexit done written across the side is just pulled up and you know what the entertainment's going to be this afternoon.

There you go. So the following week you make me feel brand new nipped up another place to number two kept off the top by this week's number one. The follow-up, let's put it all together, spent two weeks at number nine in November and they went on to boss the mid-70s with eight hit singles, seven of which made the top ten and one, I can't give you anything, getting to number one for three weeks in 1975. Diminishing returns set in after Disco started putting itself about, but they're still going today as a three-piece with one original member,

Ariane Love, the one who looks like a murderer. And as we've mentioned, the song gained a new lease of life in 1983 when it was used in an advert for biotechs. The only specialist soaker and pre-washer with the power to loosen everyday dirt. Even stains like blood, sweat, gravy and egg. Gently, with no bleach. An anchovy. God bless me with you You make me feel brand new That was especially for Donnie and Paz people in the stylistics version of You Make Me Feel Brand New. A beautiful tune. In fact we do it in our act. You know, Britney seems very good at

producing groups who write their own material, and right now we have a fine example of that. That's right, Steve Harley and the reformed Cockney rebel with Mr. Soft. After more screaming, we're introduced to Alan Osment, the oldest one who is now all of 25, who makes a schoolboy error of clapping his hands while holding the mic. Did you notice there was a lot less screaming when he took his mark? Maybe that's because he's the latest Osman to have taken himself off the market as he got married and he's going to be celebrating his one month anniversary tomorrow. Do you know who he's going out with before this did my head in? No. Karen Karen carpenter? Oh what? Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say actually when Donnie and Marie were on it really makes you appreciate the carpenters

He then has the absolute fucking brass neck to say that was pans people with the Stylistics version of you make me feel brand new a beautiful tune in fact we do it in our act yeah is there a fucking song allen yeah we do it in our act yeah and i painted a fence once just like rembrandt it's like me saying that was christina aguilera's version of dirty i do it every sunday night at karaoke with all the moves and everything. Ridiculous. He then tells us that Britain is dead good at producing bands who can write their own material, unlike the fucking Osmonds most of the time, as he introduces Mr. Soft by Cockney Rebel. Wait, wait, wait, wait. This is weird because he says, you know, Britain seems very good

at producing groups who write their own material. it's a really strange thing to say because 1974 is really the first time in ten years that that's not just been the norm right yeah for the past decade even groups as poppy as the monkeys you know it was like no you've got to write it yourself you got to play it yourself even the band thought that but now this is 1974 this is the first time in a decade that that's easing and the kids don't care who write the songs. To mention T-Rex yet again, it was always important to T-Rex's appeal that Mark Boland's music was the product of Mark Boland's brain.

That was part of the spell. But it's faded and whatever links the Osmonds or Rollers fans to the Osmonds or Rollers has got nothing to do with any of that. So he's talking shit. Formed in London in 1972 by John Crocker, formerly of the folk rock band Trees, and Stephen Nice, a former journalist for the East London Advertiser who changed his name to Steve Holler, who used to busk with Crocker in the late 60s, Cockney Rebel played their first gig at the Roundhouse supporting the Jeff Beck group and were signed to EMI after a mere five gigs. Their debut single, Sebastian, was put out in August of 1973, and although it failed to chart over here, it got to number two in the Netherlands and number one in Belgium.

Even though they'd firmed up the tracklist for their second LP, The Psychomodo, EMI was leaning hard on them for a single that would get them into the charts. Fishing through the unused demos for the debut LP, he pulled out a song called Judy Teen, which was recorded in late 1973, but held back when the label decided to re-release Sebastian. It was eventually put out in March and got into the top 40 on the same week that their next single, Psycho Modo, was released, leading EMI to pull it in the UK until Judy Teen dropped out of the charts. But it didn't, spending a month there and eventually getting to number 5 in mid-June. By the time the LP was put out again, Cockney Rebel were undergoing a 42-date UK tour and having to deal with a brand new audience who didn't give a toss about their new material and went berserk when Judy Teen was played and by the end of

it all members of the band Bar 2, Harley and the drummer Stuart Elliott walked out to become session musicians. While Harley was casting around for a new band, E put this out the second cut of sorts from the psycho modo And he'd sent to the charts last week at number 39 This week it sawed 16 places to number 23 and here he is with a pick-up band of session musos Laying it down on the teeny boppers. Oh and here we go chaps, one of our bands who have no doubt prostituted themselves by deigning to appear on this charade of a show but you gotta say they seem to be enjoying the absurdity of it all, don't you think?

It's always hard to tell because he's a strangely graceless man, Steve Harley. Or was. Always seemed quite bitter and sour about things. Which is a bit odd considering how well rewarded he was for a relatively modest talent. If he was around today he'd have to have a day job as well. He should have been more grateful. I mean to be fair Taylor, most people with any degree of talent have to have a day job now, don't they? I mean, I think, controversially, I think Steve Harley was quite an interesting guy with a bit more than a modest talent. He looks very comfortable on stage. He is goofing off, clearly, but not in the needy, awkward way that you often see with British musicians.

I feel like this is where the episode actually gets going. There's something interesting going on with the song. It knows it could be annoying, so it just tamps everything down. It keeps its elbows tucked in and doesn't go full whackadoo. It does go bonk and ting and whoop, but it very deliberately stops short of going boyoyoyoyoyong and wllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll Tonally very weird everyone getting ready for prom scene where they're trying on tuxedos and the music's like I can imagine this playing in that tuxedo shop and in that scene And I don't know about this, but I think they might well be the first band to play live. Yeah, cuz there's no violins There's no Star Trek death ray sound effects. There's no Mike Sam singers Yeah, there's no Nick of the March of the Gladiators in the keyboard solos, but you know we do get Harley pretending to chuff a spliff when

he sings we'll all be taking off tonight. Oh so naughty! He's also chewing gum isn't he for extra insouciance, which apparently Steve Wright thought was very rude. Yeah, and I think he's enjoying the opportunity to perform in front of a load of bemused kids. You know, when the next Osmond takes his mark and the screams go up again, he's not angry, he's not Edmonds in it. He's just like, fucking hell, what are we doing? Yeah, I don't know. He looks like he's taking it well, but perhaps he's taking it a little bit too well. Perhaps that laughter is a little bit exaggerated. That's just how it looks to me, like he wants to suggest to you that he doesn't care that he's being upstaged. I don't know.

It could be either. It could be either. You know, it occurs to me, we spend so much time on this podcast speculating and reaching and stretching as to what is going on in the heads of pop stars and presenters and making enormous assumptions. Oh he's an asshole look at his asshole face. Yeah sometimes it's just fun speculation but sometimes they give themselves away. Yeah I don't know I think he looks like he doesn't mind he's had plenty of people screaming for him you, sort of quite recently.

I never noticed before, he is a pretty bloke, isn't he? He's got an absurd amount of glitters filling his eye sockets and his face is very mobile and expressive, which looks great on telly, you know. He's obviously such an influence on Adamant as well, like the whole performance is very Pirate King, isn't it? Yeah, Cockney Rebel, they're clearly floating about in the vicinity of Bowie and Roxy round about this time, but their last hit has changed everything and all of a sudden they're becoming a bit of a terrorist favourite and I think that's Dante Harle because he can pounce about with the best of them, but he also looks a bit fucking taster

and someone you won't want to fuck about with you know you could easily see him as one of budgie's mates or a Sweeney villain who's actually Reagan's informer and also light pants people that Cockney Rebel are probably enjoying the break from the usual live audience because as we've mentioned they've just finished that massive UK tour and it was crammed with incident the NME interviewed the then members of the band who were clearly rackled by their newfound popularity halfway through it. Quote, the only trouble with a hit single is that they only come for that said drummer Stuart Elliott will play a whole set from the Psychomodo and the Human Menagerie and they don't really appreciate it. But as soon as we play Judy teen they go bloody mad.

The trouble with this tour has been the cock up because of the single. It went into the charts a week before we started the tour and it's going up and up and up. It's what? Number five this week and if it gets any higher by the end of the tour there's going to be a riot. Said violinist Jean Paul Crocker. We've had riots literally riots every night last week that's why Tony's here he said pointing to the security guard. We did a gig in York and there were bockle fights and we had a rough time of it in Newcastle but when I came off at York I was in tears because we'd never seen that before.

I mean when we talk about fan hysteria of the early 70s, you know, we always talk about 12 year old girls launching themselves over balconies to get a Donny Osmond, but it was also happening at proper gigs, you know, people were going to Roxy gigs all togged out like gal shows and 40s movies stars, there's riots in queues for faces gigs, people are beating the shit out of each other at who gigs and I've read an account of Ziggy Stardust farewell gig in Stardust where people are wanking in time to the music. By 1974 there are no passive audiences anymore. I feel really bad now because I just don't like Steve Arley and Cockney Rebel.

Okay, that's alright. You're going nuts for him. I can't I just can't do it. Obviously his best song is the one that just this once I'll obediently refer to as make me smile brackets come up and see me. But I can't really enjoy that because like despite how nice the music sounds because he sings it in an impression of Bob Dylan like yes only disguised by the fact that he's not doing the American accent but the cadence and the weird inflections are all exactly the same it's a little bit embarrassing because however deliberate that is it

automatically renders the whole thing second-rate and I don't know why people don't get that because we're stupid and we don't know anything. No I mean people, I mean robot sheep. No I mean people who sing songs in other people's voices it's like well what do you think it's gonna be as good? No of course not. He's having a go at the Barra Knights now Sarah fucking hell. And here it's like he's doing Ray Davis front-lin Roxy music or how that might be imagined in the mind of someone with less talent than either. He's doing these sort of Kinks mannerisms in the vocal and he's got that bass line going

boom, boom, boom, boom like on Kinks records. And the image, that glazed makeup look with the long hair at the back and grimacing and posing and screwing up his eyes. It's just a straight rip of early Brian Ferry but without the charisma, right? It's terrible. The only Ferry this cunt's on a par with is the one in Triangle. I don't know. I'm not convinced. That's the best way to put it. I don't hate it. I'm just not convinced. Although he still looks better than that guitarist who's wearing a banana-colored shirt. He's got a banana-colored shirt, pale blue dungarees and a massive brown flat cap.

Rod, Jane and Odette, if you will. My tolerance for this sort of antique, the way in which it's very mannered and arched, rises in direct correlation to the confidence and panache with which it's delivered. I mean, up to a certain point, obviously, up to a ludicrous point. On paper, this song is unbearable to me, but I find the reality of it really enjoyable. It's all bubbling with nous and wit and craftiness. It's a bit of a peacock display of songwriting chops, isn't it? There's a bit of all sorts in there. It's a bit of blues, a bit of ragtime, a bit music hall, a bit T- it there's a bit of all sorts in there it's a bit of blues a bit of rag time a bit music hall a bit t-rex but ian durie and it occurred to me you could easily transpose this

to a cabaret setting yes that very bendy note put me in mind of trust in me i could imagine marilyn monroe doing it you know mr soft turn around and force the world to watch the things you're going through. To be honest, I can't really imagine Marilyn Monroe calling anyone Mr. Soft. You're right, Sarah. It's been described in the NME as Brechtian. And yeah, I immediately thought of Joel Grey and Cabaret doing this. See, I appreciate simple, straight-up, basic songwriting of the sort that goes, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, you, you, you, you, you, of course.

But I also appreciate faffy, fiddly, wickety, fuckery, needlessly flourishy songwriting like this. I think out of everything so far, stylistics aside, it's the only song that has survived. And that's not just because it was in an advert, it's because Steve Harley knew what he was doing and was driven to create work that would outlive him. And sometimes when you are prepared to piss people off, the results will vindicate you, I think. He was evidently an uncompromising artist, I think, and he really puts that across. He really broadcasts it. His whole persona here is just yeah, haha, I am a fucking nightmare.

None of you will be able to stand working with me for very long. And when you leave, I will write a brilliant, joyous song about what a penis you are and it will be on the radio until the end of time. Yeah, I mean, you've already alluded to it, Sarah. And yeah, I have to admit, I never heard this song until 1987 for obvious reasons. Always assumed until stupidly recently that it was a jingle and nothing more. And I thought the bloke was trying to be Bob Dylan. And then I thought, oh, hang on. No, he's trying to be Steve Harley.

Anything else to say about this? All I can say is when that Osmond comes on at the end and upstages him and all the girls start screaming because they were bored watching Cockney Rebel and now there's an Osman to scream at. It's not Donny Osman that upstages him, it's not even handsome Ken Osman. Turns out to be fat Albert Osman who looks like my fucking uncle, he looked like Benny from Crossroads. These kids are out of their minds because for the first time they're not seeing him standing next to other Osmonds. They've seen him juxtaposed with Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel and they'd never noticed

he was so handsome and exciting by comparison. They practically hurled themselves at him. You look up at the balcony, it's like Tipping Point rendered in Crimpling. That just makes me lose confidence in a singer, that's all. Do you know how many people were in Cockney Rebel? Go on. 25. Wow.

That's a floor length t-shirt, you'd have to pay extra for that. That's how much of a fucker Steve Harley was, that's how many people he got through. But I must say, this iteration of Cockney Rebel on this performance, they all look like they're enjoying themselves and functioning really well as a band for now. One original member of Cockney Rebel

died in a horribly tragic way. The original bassist, Paul Jefferies, died in the Lockerbie bombing in 1988. He was on the plane on his honeymoon. Oh, for fuck's sake. With his new wife, yeah. Because we always go on about all the four tops escape Lockerbie and Johnny Rotten escape Lockerbie but that poor sod didn't that's terrible. Yeah. So the following week Mr Soft jumped 11 places to number 12 and Harley was invited back into the top of the pop studio for the second week on the bounce, this time with a new band which, according

to legend, featured an 18 year old keyboard player called... B.A. Conterson. I can't find any video evidence of this, but yeah, shit. No but you've just put a finger on what it is I don't like. That just seems totally plausible. Yeah it is I don't like. Ah, there you go. That just seems totally plausible. Yeah, now I understand it better. Oh, yeah, well, he goes on right on the back of the t-shirt,

right in the ass crack. Yeah. He spent the rest of the year tinkering with the lineup of Cockney Rebel, and in the meantime, released his first solo single, Big Big Deal, in November, which failed to chart. But in the meantime, he'd written an extremely pointed coat down of his old bandmates called Make Me Smile, Open Brackets, Come Up and See Me, Close Brackets, which was put out

under the names Steve Hawley and Cockney Rebel, and it spent two weeks at number one in February of 1975. And yes, in 1987, Harley was approached to rewrite and sing Mr. Soft as a jingle for an advert for Treeball Soft. Do you remember that, Sarah, being a young and- Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's a brilliant advert. I went and looked it up and it's still, it's amazing. Part of the reason that it's so memorable is like how nightmarish it is, everything in white and everything's just, just off and wrong. Yes.

It's amazing. They got away with it. I'm sure Mr. Soft featured in a few, you know, teenagers hallucinations and having something. Well, funny. You should say that Sarah, because round about that time, one of my mates in college at the time came in one morning all bruised up and you know I said what what happened to you this weekend mate? He said oh he

done a load of acid and him and his mates were convinced that they'd seen Mr. Soft in a tree. Yeah. Which encouraged them to run into each other to test if they had become Mr. Soft with predictable results. So yeah, there we go. Yeah. Mr. Soft himself looks to me like he played the Psycho Moto backwards, heard a subliminal message and acted accordingly and then sued Steve Harley and whoever happened to be in Cockney Rebel at the time.

If you know, you know, and I am sorry. the time. If you know, you know, and I am sorry. So Steve Harley declined to do the advert and the guy, the guy who did his voice really goes for it in a slightly unflatching way. Mr. Sun. Do you know who's actually singing that? No. Philip Pote, who was in Who Dares Winds and the Heebie Jeebies, later did a load of stuff for spitting image probably best known today for being Tony Angelino of the quiet fame in only fools and horses Yeah, cuz Harley turned it down because he was about to land the lead role in the West End production of Phantom of the Opera But he gave his permission for them to rewrite the song and get someone else to sing it But then Andrew Lloyd Webber gave the role to Michael Crawford instead.

And he got back into it and said, oh, I'll do it now. But it was too late. Philip Pope had got it in the can. Or as it may be in the squishy anthropomorphic post box. Yeah, it is a truly legendary advert. I think maybe the modern equivalent might be a washing detergent ad from a few years ago, which in terms of great impressions of singers, the most amazing Tony Hadley impression. Bold! Oh, way as bold! It is amazing. And of course it was followed by a much shitter version of the same concept because that's how everything is under late capitalism. But you know. I love people pretending to be pop stars. Obviously Brian Ferry is the key one. I like Fuka beats for you.

But all of those have to bow to the best version of someone pretending to be a singer in an advert grace jones in the fucking h samuel adverts mate oh i don't know it sleeves go to end of length for h samuel here makes way for h samuel make way for h samuel I don't know it. Oh mate. I think I soon shall. On the back of the advert, which ran rampant throughout the playgrounds of Britain, the single was re-released in March of 1988 but failed to chart. Alright, Steve Hardy, Cockney Ripple and their number 23 sound, Mr. Sock. Now here's a group that has a really nice name.

They're called Sweet Dreams and this week they're number 19. And here's a song that's going to nice name. They're called Sweet Dreams, and this week they're number 19. And here's a song that's gonna take them right up to the top 10. Up 10 places, Honey Honey! ["Honey Honey"] The next Osmond to appear, who outreduces Cockney Rebel with minimal pissing about, is yes, Meryl Osmond. Meryl was seen over here as possibly the kenniest of all the Osmonds and now he's got married and is putting on a tiny bit of chub. That situation is only going to get worse I fear. So I feel we need to get to know the lad better and with that in

mind allow me to direct you to another penetrating interview, this time in the official Osman magazine entitled Meryl my hates and loves unlike Donna who as we all know loves rainbows sunshine the moon and you but hates war not meeting you and seeing a bird with a broken wing Meryl's a lot more down-to-earth and prosaic, I believe so. I hate to break my guitar strings when I'm performing on stage, but it often happens. I hate flowers with too strong a smell, but most flowers are sweetly fragrant and I like them. I hate spiders. I recently was bitten on my left index finger by a black widow spider, but nothing happened to me.

I hate trying on clothes, although I like to look really groovy. Mother and my sister Marie help all of us to select clothes, as we simply don't have the patience to shop. I hate blind dates, although some admittedly turn out well. Maybe I'll meet you that way. I'd sure like that. I thought you were going to say, I hate blind people. I was going to say, I've come a bit out of nowhere. Jesus. I know it's the seventies, but fucking hell. I know it's all hate, hate, hate, but you know, let's not assume that he is the tailor pokes of the osman shut up for example

i love fishing so much in fact that i even clean most of the fish my brothers and i catch i love girls i love painting portraits on velvet backgrounds oh i'd like to kiss her i love corn on the cob. Yum. I love the heavy look in clothing. Lots of hardware and metal on my jeans and things. And

finally I love strawberries. So there we go. I think we've got the measure of the man now don't you think? I'm with him on the strawberries the big takeaway from that for me is the fact that the Osmond's wardrobe is Currently being picked out by a 49 year old Mormon, man Can you imagine saying to your mom? Oh, yeah, you know when you're out doing the shopping Can you get some new gear for that? I'm really into the every look. Can you imagine what shit should come back with? fucking motorhead Arrington. Merrill tells us that he also loves the name of the next act, presumably because it reminds him of a fantasy he had about catching a pipe made out of strawberry while he was wearing a pair of trousers with a blackened deck of workmate glued to the arse. It's Sweet Dreams with Honey Honey. Formed in Stockholm in 1972,

ABBA are fucking ABBA. This is their second single and the follow up to Waterloo which got to number one over here in the wake of their triumph at the Eurovision Song Contest in May. As a matter of fact it had already been put out on the continent last April, getting to number 2 in West Germany and spending 4 months in their top 5, as well as going top 5 in Austria, Spain and Switzerland and being the last single they ever recorded in Swedish. But when their UK label, Epic, was offered it, they didn't reckon it in the slightest, opting for a remix of Ring Ring, which only got to number 32 over here last month. However, Bradley's Records, a new label founded by ATV Music which had the goodies and ooh

Stephanie DeSikes on their roster, swooped in to snap up the rights and linked up Tony Jackson who was born in Barbados in 1944 and relocated to London in the mid-60s to join a soul bank on the Scartalites who had nothing to do with the guns of Navarone hitmakers with an unknown chanteuse called Sierra Leone. It entered the charts four weeks ago at number 46, jumped ten places to number 36, stayed at number 36 a week later, but then jumped another seven places to number 29. And an appearance on top of the pops only last week has kicked them up ten places to number 19. And here they are on stage giving us a tantalising glimpse of a black

ABBA. Blabber if you will. And let's talk about ABBA first because as people of the far future we know that ABBA are going to completely ram their fist up the back end of the 70s but at this point in time they're a band who've cashed in their obligatory second less successful hit. And we're not expecting to hear from them ever again in the UK, are we? You know, maybe the two lads could chisel out a career writing songs like this while the girls have solo careers and go on Pippi Poppi or whatever sweeteners music show. And then they could all reunite as a a Schlager band in the 90s and pop

up on all those Eurovision documentaries. Yeah at this point you just think that if this records are hit it's just going to be a bit of beer money a bit of bit of sir strumming money for for the members of ABBA. Yeah one beer knowing the price of Swedish lard. Yeah and let's face it by ABBA standards this isn't really a very good song. It's one of those early ones, written entirely as a commercial project. I think it might even have been one of the ones they wrote for Eurovision and rejected, I'm not sure. Right.

And the main problem with it is it's about sex, but the lyrics have the awkwardness of people from a Scandinavian culture, which is very blasé about sex and treats it as just another healthy natural human activity trying to be raunchy. And this is why rock raunch is an Anglo-American thing because these are suppressive frightened cultures when it comes to sex. So naturally people are excited by the feeling of wrongness and being naughty, you know, and there isn't really a Swedish naughty.

There's just good, clean fun. So a lot of later album songs have got that adult worldliness, like acknowledging the existence of sex without becoming overheated, which works quite well for them. But when they, or Steg Anderson, the the manager who I think wrote the words to this, when they do try to write that sort of saucy, thrusting lyric,

it's never quite right because culturally it's just not there for them. There's a matter of factness to it, which seems quite odd to British people at this time, because, or at least British kids, because hot sex, such as was being doled out by the honey in this song, was not a matter of fact subject to us. It was like a tsunami of lava crashing through the front wall of your consciousness. I think what it is, from my interactions with Scandinavians and my understanding of Scandinavians I think it's that in a sexual context. They're still themselves at every level It's just themselves having sexy fun Whereas British people almost have an alter ego that they just use for sex right some other

Spirit which possesses them and tears away the reserve. It's like you have to which possesses them and tears away the reserve. It's like you have to regenerate just in order to not be Mr. Britain in bed, right, which nobody would need. So people's sexual persona is often totally different to their daytime social persona, and it gives them more license to get dirty or deviant, right, and that's not so necessary

if you're from Oslo or Ross Kilder, you know, but that's the downside of living in a sane country. Yeah, it's not a sexy song, is it really? It's kind of, it's a bit, it's a bit nothingy. Saucy and cheeky, isn't it? As opposed to sexy. This hits my brain like holiday music, because it doesn't really go anywhere or do very much and it makes you feel like you're slightly pissed on a really sickly cocktail.

Sort of surrounded by lots of sunburnt people in their mid-60s kind of careening around bumping into little tables. All right, maybe that's just me. Taylor, you went to see that ABBA thing, didn't you recently? Yeah, Voyage. I didn't know you had your hen do. Why didn't you invite me, you bastard? This is it.

I wouldn't have paid for it. But someone I know had tickets and took me. And incredibly enough, it was really good. A lot better than I expected. I mean, it was effectively a puppet show. And clearly there was zero spontaneity by necessity. But when you're starting from there and you think well okay now how can we make this work they did do all of that right tech is state

of the art the lighting and the manipulation of space is brilliant they do it to artificially break the line between the flat moving pictures and the 3d auditorium and create a sort of false visual continuity between the stage and the space. And there is a band playing live, albeit a strict click track obviously, but that does make it different from just sitting there watching a movie play out. And best of all, from my perspective, they do give space to that sparkly pink cowboy hat hen night aspect of ABBA quite rightly yeah but unlike certain other post split ABBA

ventures they don't just mash everything down to that for commercial reasons they do give proportionate space to their darker and more emotional side like I knew I was safe after literally 30 seconds because mild spoilers ahead. They open the set with the visitors, a song about the Soviet secret police breaking down the door of a political dissident. The verse of which is just made up of gray synthesizer slabs, a song which probably 50% of the audience had never heard. And let's be fair to them, that is an astonishing artistic decision,

which set me off on the right foot. But revivalist stuff like this always goes one of two ways, right? It's about money and decay, like the Sex Pistols reunion or something, or it's a giant celebration of love. Maybe not the coolest but forgivable cultural indulgence like going to see the monkeys when they reformed, you know

And this is squarely in that second category except because it's ABBA and they have standards It has some genuine worth as entertainment and as music and because it's ABBA and they're smart It's ended up making them more money than any geriatric reunion tour ever could because instead of the usual approach when bands reform which is hey this is all about us here we are catch us while you can before we remember why we all hated each other in the first place and don't be late you'll never be in a room with us again here the message is this is all about you. And we've created a space where you can all get together

and experience these songs. We don't even need to be there because you don't know or care anything about us as humans. So here we are, Free Dancing Area is there, here's the seats, Prosecco is on sale at the bar, come any day you like, Holograms don't get tired, if it's your wedding anniversary in November, cool, see you like, holograms don't get tired, if it's your wedding anniversary in November, cool, see you then, except we won't because we're sat in Stockholm counting

our krona and being ancient. And it works because everything is suspended in perfect balance. There's a reason Sweden produces some of the greatest engineers on the planet. There's something about that matter of fact, logical thinking that's embedded in their culture that makes people very good at understanding what should go where and why. Even if that is the same matter of fact, logical thinking that leads so many Swedish people

to casually conclude that life is not worth living, even in one of the richest and freest countries on earth. Basically, what I'm saying is the cultural germ that gave us Bergman's Cries and Whispers also gave us holograms of people twirling in blue spandex to Waterloo in a purpose-built hut in Newham. It's really good. It's good. The other great thing, you know using the backing band on keyboards little boots. You remember little Yeah, I think she's still in the band. She certainly was last year I don't know if there's some turnover there, but yeah little boots playing those songs every day stuck on repeat

I always thought she seemed really nice. So I'm glad she's not unemployed or thought she seemed really nice so I'm glad she's not unemployed or or serving caramel lattes to people who've never heard of little boots but DJ every Friday night with records that sound like little boots but not as good I mean I wouldn't wish my fate on anyone but yeah fair play to her. And that's our Baratheway so let's move on to sweet dreams eh because they're on for the second week running which goes to show that top of the pops was not above Fucking with the format even in the early 70s, and it's a practice that wouldn't last very long Which is good because that don't sit right with me, but on the other hand I do believe that this may well be the first appearance of the top of the Pops Orchestra in this episode.

And at this point in their career, it seems that they can keep themselves out of the bar long enough to deliver a competent performance and handle the particular sinuous demands of black music. Well, when I first heard this record, I thought, okay, so is this going to be, because I didn't know this song, I'd never heard this song before. So I thought, is this going to be a Jamaican record, or is it going to be I didn't know this song I'd never heard this song before so I thought this is going to Be a Jamaican record or is it going to be a record made in Britain by Caribbean musicians? Or is it and then before I got any further I could already hear that yeah, it's the third one

it's a British studio project with the cabaret singers So ideally suited to the legendary blue beat chops of the top of the Pops Orchestra Yeah, Ray and knobby in full effect. Yeah when two party sevens clash Yeah, the record of this was probably played by their mates, you know, I mean so like they can handle it Yeah, although the record of this is much better. It's quite gross and Quite enjoyable because it's everything's maximized and overlaid like an advert. Do you know what I mean? It feels like whoever played on and produced this record had only done adverts before, but that's sort of the best thing about it. Tooting horns, you've got

a chintzy synth on it, everything massively compressed and quite fast as well. So it doesn't get boring. You know, it's all right on the same record label as the goodies which is about right yeah but this version here much slower it drags and yeah boys in the bbc band cranking out that kingston groove like they're driving a morris traveler over a plowed field in february as they say it is what it is. My god it is what it is. The thing about this is that there's a slight tension in because she sings the first verse and then he comes in like after a minute or so and so you're looking at him in his chosen outfit which is black satin pyjamas and he looks great. Oh she looks great too she's got a red dress with some applique strawberries

and her hair is great and she's got great presence and a really good voice and you're waiting for him to sing. And it's like, is his voice going to live up to his outfit? Like, is he going to bring, is it going to match the energy? You know, can his voice cash the check that his outfit is trying to write? And I don't, I don't know if it can actually. He's got a medallion on and everything but it just you know and he's got a perfectly perfectly pleasant serviceable voice but it's you know what I mean? He's got a little bit of disappointment. It's not his fault that's just his voice but if you are going to you know bring that energy to a thing I think you know you want to bring it all the way. I mean this seems to be their natural domain you

know on a stage but instead of young married tucking into the scam pair, it's your standard crackerjack audience minus the Boy Scouts. And the looks the two of them shoot each other indicate to us that we're not going to get the full Sweet Dreams experience tonight. I mean Tony Jackson in particular can't help but laugh at the situation. There's one bit after Sarah Lyon has described him as a love machine. He slinks behind her, possibly to get on his mark, and she does this really awkward double take and he shoots her a look and then turns away and laughs. And then later on Tony forgets to mime and he does a massive eye roll. It's quite the performance.

They're also clearly miming to something they recorded earlier because there's a couple of occasions where she has to mind to herself singing slightly flat But she's a pro, you know, she gets to it anything else to say yeah So did you notice anything unusual about Sarah Lyon? Well born in Birmingham in 1947, Polly Brown got involved in the Brumbeat scene in the mid-60s as part of a three-girl group and in 1969 she joined Piketty Witch and their third single, a cover of the Foundation's LP track That Same Old Feeling, tore up the chart, getting to number five for two weeks in March of 1970.

After two more chart hits that year, Diminishing Return Setting and Brown, who had been in the news that year as the fake fiancé of Jimmy Savile, left the band in late 1972 to pursue a solo career. And after an LP with Pi that failed to do anything she signed with Bradley's where she was teamed up with the songwriter Ron Roker who had written the theme tunes to Rupert the Bear and Inigo Pippkin. Together with Jerry Schorre who had written Do You Wanna Dance for Barry Blue they wrote Up in a Puff of Smoke,

which she recorded last month. But in the same session, she was offered a go at Honey Honey as a duet. As Honey Honey and Up in a Puff of Smoke were coming out at the same time on different labels, it was deemed essential that Brown, who is very white, change her appearance, so she changed her name to Sarah Lyonne,

think about it man, and blacked up for public appearances to match Jackson. Because this is 1974 and the idea of a pretty blonde girl singing with a black man would have sent the Eddie Boos of the world into a foaming rage. Sarah, that's a white woman blacking up. Did she not know that? I didn't notice. I watched it. I promised you I watched it. I noticed a dress. I noticed a hair. I noticed Noel's fucking shirt. You know, even though it was tiny, I realized I could see what it was. I squinted at it. My computer's quite old. The contrast on it is a bit hinky, you know? Sarah, you're young. You're not to know this thing too. But to me it was it was something I knew about and I thought Taylor knew about It as well. No, I didn't know

I I didn't think she was a black woman because their actual features are as Caucasian as it gets I thought maybe she's not mixed race up perhaps Arab or South Asian or something didn't really think about it it was only when I read this is actually the blonde woman out of Piketty which and she suddenly become black. It's not quite as funny as it was a month ago is it? No, God no. But it was only then that I noticed that anything was up which probably says something about something. Yeah because I'd send you a message teller saying oh do you think Sarah knows about this should we tell her in advance and he said what? which probably says something about something. Yeah, because I'd send you a message, Taylor, saying, oh, do you think Sarah knows about this?

Should we tell her in advance? And you said, what? Oh, OK, so you two discussed this ahead of time just to make me look as fucking stupid as possible. Fucking arseholes. No, it just... See, you pricks. No, it just came up in conversation. But in the context of 1974, when one of the absolute top rated

shows on television featured a bunch of white dudes in minstrel blackface, it's kind of almost not that shocking to see a woman in actors blackface which was common and terrible but at least not an intentionally insulting parody of billions of people's racial identity. And she seems to be on good terms with an actual black man who is at least tolerating this spectacle without visible dismay. So it's really gruesome,

but there were prestige BBC drama productions which went further than this at the time. You know what I mean? You ever wonder why you never see the Beatles film help on telly anymore? Yeah. I don't think anybody would have thought twice. Because as we know, in 1974,

if a man and woman do anything together, especially sing, it means they're having sex with each other, doesn't it? Yeah. Even when it's Hilda Baker and Arthur Mollard. There's no amount of saying it was a different time that we'll ever like cut through anymore because I have had to row back in my head about getting upset about stuff that happened 50 or 40 or 30 years ago.

And it's like the tide of awareness, it sort of lifts all boats, you know, just to mix a metaphor there. We've tried to grasp this in the earlier in this episode about the shirt, much as I would like to take any opportunity to have a pop at Noel Admans. Like he didn't know any better than people didn't know any better. And it doesn't matter how old they were and whatever it's the awareness was not there in the culture. And we are to a certain extent waiting all the time for something for the awareness to hit us. And that's going to happen again in the future to us and we'll go,

oh fucking hell, I didn't realize that before. And we'll go, oh, I'm no, I'm ashamed. But no one else knew either or no one else figured it because that's just how this stuff works. It's fucking weird. But this is a one of the many examples. Well, America has just given us a massive one actually, of just humans not quite being up to the level of our brains. Like we really think that we are more civilized and more intelligent and more whatever else we are. So we're constantly

shocked and appalled by ourselves. Like, oh, how could you do that? What do you do there? It's like, no, that's how we are. It's because there's kind of the potential is all the way over there And we always we can't reach it. Yeah, this is the tragedy According to legend the previous week Polly Brown turned up at the top of the pop studio in full on minstrel slap And Robin Nash went absolutely mental. So she had to tone it down to a lighter brown Hmm. I mean, yeah, she turned it down such that I didn't really pick up on it. So... A fortnight after this performance, the dark truth, for want of a far better word,

was revealed. Article in the Daily Mirror. She's black, she's beautiful, but pop star Sarah Lyonne is not quite what she seems. Sarah, who is pictured with Tony Jackson, her partner in the hit singing duo Sweet Dreams, is none other than blonde Polly Brown, in disguise. Millions of viewers watched Sarah perform on the BBC's Top of the Pops last week. Thousands of fans have bought the Sweet Dreams single Honey Honey, which has leapt into the

charts. Thousands of fans have bought the sweet dream single Honey Honey which has leapt into the charts, but not until today has Sarah's real identity been revealed. Polly, the Birmingham singer who used to be lead vocalist in Piketty Witch, met Tony in a recording studio and decided to go into partnership. But Polly already had a successful solo career with her single Up in a Puff of Smoke in the Charts and plenty of cabaret dates. The only way out was to disguise herself. So 27-year-old Polly decided on a little white lie and Miss Brown turned black. Even though her secret has been discovered, Polly plans to continue in her new role.

A change of colour gives me more musical freedom, she says. Polly plans to tour the cabaret circuit as Sarah of Sweet Dreams, as well as carrying on with her solo career. It's what's known as getting the best of both worlds. Fucking hell. I mean, okay, by all means disguise yourself, but put a mask on. Yeah. Yeah, it worked for David Sowell.

Yeah, and MFD. And you don't have to worry about aging. Yes. You see, women have never done this, but like, you know, a lot of men have done it, but it's not the thing that women have done, but it's like, yeah, you can just be ageless. Just put a Frankenstein head on

and just lumber around the stage with your arms out in front of you. Have you heard up in a puff of smoke? Yeah. It's mint isn't it? Yeah it's alright. Imagine the Supremes as a glam band. There's actually a promo video of it and she's got this proper 80s Barbara Windsor bubble perv. It's a remarkable song though and she should have formed a singing group with some equally black women called Angola, Sudan and Madagascar. And Ethiopia. But that's not even the end of the subterfuge. It was later revealed that Tony Jackson was not the singer on the single.

It was none other than Ron Roca who is white. So we got blackface and white throat. I was going to say, right, if you listen to it without seeing them, you wouldn't necessarily be able to identify who was black and who was white. And I didn't know how right I was. Only that it was not Jamaican in origin, this music. I mean, in a defense, he was only doing what quite a lot of things at the time might as well have done yeah i bet she had a few sharp words to say and know all about his shirt so the following week honey honey jumped six places to number 13 and a week later spent a two

week stint at number 10 the follow-up the of everything, featured Brown gradually lightening up her complexion but keeping the brown wig failed to chart. Meanwhile, up in a puff of smoke, spent an agonising four weeks hovering around the door of the top 40, eventually making it to number 43 at the end of September, although it got to number 16 in the American chart. Yeah, she wouldn't fucking black up in America would she? Inadvisable in 1976 Brown appeared twice on that year's song for Europe once as a solo act and once as a part of sweet dreams But both were crushed under the billowy am tabs of the Brotherhood of Man and the duo split up soon afterwards a

Few months later. She became the first person to record Dance, Little Lady Dance, but when her label decided it wasn't a strong enough song, it remained in the vault and was eventually snaffled by Tina Charles, who took it to number six in September, and she never troubled the charts again, spending the rest of her career being confused by the media for Sheila Rossall, the lead singer of New Picardy Witch, who was never out of the news in the avantez for suffering from total allergy syndrome, or, as the papers used to put it, being allergic to the 20th century. And in 1983, the name Sweet Dreams was recycled as a UK's entry in

the Eurovision Song Contest featuring Bobby McVeigh of the Fizz and Cary Grant of Fame Academy performing I'm Never Giving Up which was written by Ron Roker. She also sang on Every Time You Go Away by Paul Young, Wishing Well by Terence Trent-Darvey. And now they have to go in the playlist. Then in the 1980s when Levi's did those adverts with Nick Caiman taking his jeans off in the laundrette and I heard it through the grapevine playing, not the actual version of I heard it through the grapevine because they weren't allowed to use it. Let's do a re-recording with everything sounding as much as possible like the original the singer

impersonating Marvin Gaye on those adverts Tony Jackson the very same not only that he also did the cover of Wonderful World for the original Levi's 501 advert so yeah fucking hell We've gone from two white singers pretending to be black to a black singer pretending to be gay. ["Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy"] ["Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy"]

["Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy"] ["Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy"] ["Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy"] ["Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy"] ["Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy"] ["Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy"] ["Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy"] ["Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy"]

["Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy"] ["Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy"] ["Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy"] ["Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy"] ["Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy"] ["Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy"] ["Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy"] ["Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy"] ["Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy"] I love you so much, I love you so much Hello, my love That's right! You know, that's Sweet Dreams and Honey Honey! As you can tell, we're working live

I love you too! As you can tell, we're working live every day this week at the BBC Studios at Shepherd's Bush And it's really amazing, it's amazing the effect that live television has not only upon the audience but you know upon the artists as well that's true like for example the next few Bay City Rollers have broken with their holiday to be with us yes and two of them flew back from Jamaica yesterday and two arrived only this morning and here they are with The screams go into overdrive as we're confronted with Mereryl, Donner and Alan Osmond. And finally we get a long lingering sweep of the balcony and a sorter girls going off on one

with an old bloke in a blazer half-heartedly raising a hand in an attempt to quell the lust. Sarah, is that your Mr. Mackay lookalike? Yes, actually looking at him again He looks like a cross between McKay and mr. Barrowclough. He's like an evil mr. Barrowclough seen in the best surviving ace of one story Peacock pie Taylor

Do you think that bloke could well be that poor commissioner who was set upon by Tommy Vance? In the BBC car park a couple of years previously after he parked in a space reserved for FA compundits and was left according to news reports in a collapsed state. Yeah I don't think so I don't think they would let him inside the building. The thing is you can't tell how old he is either because obviously people age differently then partly because they were on a steady diet of lead fumes and also because they didn't realise that you don't have to be middle-aged if you don't want

to be. But he could be anything between 40 and 80. And I believe, panel, that now is the time to discuss the most important and interesting component of the Osmonds. They're fans. It goes without saying that this week's Radio Times is joined in on the Osmond splurge and yes, Donny is on the cover, but only on a rosette worn by the 15 year old Karen Stubbs of Acne under the headline, She's Donny's Fan. Inside that magazine, next to a massive photo of Karen in her bedroom which is absolutely Osmond'sed up to Ross with her mum and dad, is the following article. Karen Stubbs, who is just 15, screamed and screamed at her last Osmond's concert. Her mother,

sitting beside her, said pack it in or you'll burst something in your throat and you'll have to go to Hospital the last time Karen counted she had 2362 pictures of her beloved Osmonds in her home in Hackney And there's a huge life-size poster of Donnie looking sadly down at her from the ceiling. I'm all in favour of the Osmonds says Karen's mother Mrs Rita Stubbs. She used to be really painfully shy. The teachers said they were worried about her because it was all building up inside her. She never talked to any of the other kids but since the Osmonds she's got them to talk about, see?

And she's got ever such a lot of friends. I'd rather give her a pound for a record than 50p to go down to the pub with. She's picked the right group. I wouldn't have been behind her if it was some of the things you see on television. Karen's parents had hoped to take her to Utah for a special holiday this year. Well, Dad's a cowboy fan. He always watches the Westerns. Of course, on Thursdays, he has to come up here to watch the black and white. Karen's got the colour on downstairs for top of the pops. Fucking hell, put your foot down, Dad. Jesus, I'd have to go to fucking Tony Bones' ass. This girl gets the run of the color telly, man.

Not fair. They've had to postpone going to Utah, probably until next year, because their other daughter is getting married this year. I don't mind really, said Karen. I understand that comes first. No you don't,'t Karen your older sister is a selfish cow and you're gonna hold it against her for the rest of your life

Karen said she's not a bit interested in boyfriends she doesn't even pretend that her favorite Osmond Donny is her boyfriend I haven't got a brother really so I pretend that Donny is my brother. My perfect brother. So let's talk about the fact that what are they screaming at? It's hard to say, isn't it? It's complicated. It must be.

Well, it's something that is a matter of serious study. All the psychologists and anthropologists who've got into this still can't completely pinpoint it because it's been a neglected area along with every other aspect of women's lives. But you know, it seems really simple, which is, you know, why it's been so what's so easily to dismiss. But yeah, there's more stuff going on. And smarter people than us have not figured it out yet. So, you know, it's obviously partly an expression of joy and excitement. Um, but also it's a collective, it's a contagious experience. So I read this article called, uh, why fangirls scream in the Atlantic by Caitlin Tiffany, who's also written a book about why is J so kissable?

There is a story in there about a girl who went to see Justin Bieber in his pump, if he had a pump, and was not into Justin Bieber until they went, oh god, and she went along with her little sister or something, and found herself screaming because of the heady atmosphere or because she didn't know why, and you know, nobody can tell her. That article also opens with the story of a girl who slightly collapsed her own lungs from screaming. So it's a dangerous activity. And having sex with Brian Eno. Yeah.

Isn't most of it just the life is shit and people are unfulfilled? This is the same reason why young lads fight all the time. It's just literally just something to do. I mean, it's yeah, we are not here for a long time and why would you not run headlong into these peak experiences if you can, you know? Yeah reminds me the comedian Norm McDonald said that at one stage he had a bit of a gambling problem and he spoke to a therapist about it and he said yeah I go out I gamble I do this I do that and the therapist came back the next week and said it seems to me that you're doing this gambling to blot out everything else in your life so that you don't have to think about it and he said but isn't that why everyone does everything and the therapist was stumped.

At the kind of brain chemistry level, you are talking about dopamine and serotonin, aren't you? Which are basically the things that make life worth living. So, you know, although, you know, there is going to be some cortisol in the mix with this sort of situation, I think. When you look at the shots of the girls

that are dotted throughout this incredibly, endlessly weird episode, they don't look entirely happy. There's an element of stress. There's an element of sort of melancholy in the faces. It's really, I was having to look away. It's a little bit difficult to look at. Because they know that they can't have them. Yeah.

And this is as close as it's going to get. Yeah it's you know it's upsetting like this is why they are studying the screaming of humans in a pleasurable context as opposed to you know with most animals it means oh shit I'm about to get eaten. Everyone needs an excuse to go mental. Yeah. You go fucking mental otherwise and if you're a girl of that age and you you being told by your peers and the media and your own hormones that you're allowed to go mental over some lads on a stage won't you're gonna be all in on it aren't you I mean to my mind there is no difference between these girls here and them blokes in fan zones for England games who have bought two pints for the Express purpose of chucking them both up in the air when England score for the cameras.

There goes 15 quid. Here's your moment. When this happens, you can do that. Yeah. Mckay Barrowclough, you can see the irritation in him kind of wading through, stop it now, just stop it. These girls are sort of being allowed to express this animalistic behaviour to a point, but they're being very much reigned in with an attitude of being allowed to express this animalistic behaviour to a point, but they're being very much reigned in with an attitude of, you get to do this now and then you have to calm down and shut up for the rest of your life.

Yeah, and that's another thing, Sarah. It's pretty much established now that things like this, going to see boy bands, is one of the few outlets that girls have to just be a load of girls together and get rowdy. Yeah given that there's not that many spots on semi scripted reality television and you have to put a lot of working to get into them anyway like a lot of hours in the gym. Yeah. Also it's people screaming for something that they don't have. And like 10 years previously, if you were screaming at the Beatles,

that vision ahead of you was like a vision of how life could be and maybe would be. And I think that's kind of gone now. And it's just literally people screaming at a disappearing vision of deliverance and happiness that's just kind of fading as it heads for the horizon. It's just purely like people have this idea, oh, they're American, they're rich, it's nice, you know, it's just about dreams of deliverance and dissatisfaction. Because they're not fucking

screaming at like Jay Osmond's gorgeousness. Really are they, let's face it. I mean when I used to be a male stripper I used to get fucking absolutely screamed at like fuck and even then you know I kind of knew hang on they're not doing that because I'm so fucking gorgeous and they all want to shag me it's just they've been allowed to. Yeah that's another thing altogether isn't it That's a sort of predatory kind of this year I've never been to a male strip show maybe I should but... You've never been to you either have you Sarah? I should get on that. I think it's partly the upending of the power dynamic. Yeah definitely. I mean most of my experience of this is from watching the full Monty you know the bit at the beginning where

the men are hiding backstage and going Jesus Jesus Christ, look at them all out there. Yeah, being on the receiving end of that must be quite a lot. Meryl, Donny and Alan tell us that the nature of this live episode is so irrepressible that two members of the next act have broken off their holiday in Jamaica just to be here tonight. I can't believe they missed their chance there for the three of them to do a quickfire gag. Yes. Surely two of them flew back from Jamaica this morning of their own accord. No, the West Indies.

Kelly Monteith let them down there didn't they. Disgrace. All they could have said Jamaica, no their manager did. I don't get it. Stop that. It's the Bay City Rollers and Summer Love Sensation. We've covered the tot and terrors of Tams Tatty Shed many a time and oft on Chart Music and this single, their sixth is the follow up to Shanga Lang which got to number two in May, held off the summit of Chart Nevis by Sugar Baby Love by the Rubettes.

It'll be the third cut from their debut LP, Rolling, which will come out in October and has been written, as is the style at this point in their career, i.e. the successful bit by Phil Coulter and Bill Martin. It's also been recorded as is also the style by session musicians with Les McEwan slapping his vocals over the top. It entered the chart three weeks ago at number 40 then soared 23 places to number 17 and this week it's nipped up one place from number 5 to number 4 and here they are performing to their natural audience even though that audience is not there for them and it shows doesn't it? Yeah, they see them rolling, they hate them.

These poor bastards though, Even on the upswing. They're still not quite understanding that in a couple of years time, they're going to be like hawk twa girl in 2026, except at least the self advertisement for which she will be half remembered might do some small measure of good in the future. Unlike being an ex-roller in the late 70s, or it's all worse, still being in the rollers in the late 70s or early 80s. It's a very short hop from summer love sensation on top of the pops to staggering around

a pebble dash housing estate under a gunmetal gray Glaswegian sky, swigging a half and half vodka and tango from an empty cottage cheese tub. You don't even have to change the haircut. Just roll on, roll off. But at the moment, fucking hell, we're watching the page of history turning before our eyes, aren't we? Here we're gonna, it's like Paul von Hindenburg saying, now here's someone who's got a lot to say about where the world's heading, so let's sit back and listen to the sound of Adolf Hitler. It's just like...

Yeah, the thing is, if you were to show the youth of today, the Osmonds and the Basity Rollers in this episode, and you told them that one band was gonna drive the other one right into the sea, would they know which one was which? You know, the slick, obvious boy band or the traditional band who look like they've done a trolley dash through Oxfam. It's real kind of alternate timeline stuff isn't it? Except we're in this one, the one that doesn't make any sense. Yes, but yeah Derek the drummer and Woody the gormless looking one, who was actually the most competent muso in the band, they were the lucky lads who got to spend time in Jamaica with their highly protective manager and according to Les McEwan something's definitely

happened out there which didn't involve having to tell the locals that they actually liked cricket. At the same time Alan the old one and Eric the lush one are staying at a health farm and Les has been in the south of France with his parents but when the call from Top of the Pops came Tam cancelled everything and dragged them all to Shepherd's, partly because they're not showing any film clips due to the nature of this episode, but mainly because he was as desperate to meet the Osmonds' parents as Brian Epstein was to meet Colonel Tom Parker in 1964. I mean, let's remember that Tam was never above leeching off the success of other acts

because earlier this year when Remember was about to come out, which was the make or break single for the Rollers, he managed to get hold of the mailing list of the UK David Cassidy fan club and he sent out 10,000 postcards of the Rollers himself and that essentially got the single into the charts. But anyway, what has been said between these three managerial titans has clearly rubbed off on the rollers because from here on in, they'll be playing up this straight edge image with no smoking, always being seen at press conferences drinking milk and keeping well away from the lasses as they consider their fans to be their mass

collective girlfriends. But having said that, Tam was always keen to keep them away from the women. He used to tell them that all women were smelly fish and they were much better off knocking around with the men who always seemed to circle the band and Tam. So yeah, my nicker selling work colleague was completely right. Uh, it's not a great record, is it? No, it's not. It's not a great record is it? No it's not it's fucking Langer Shang isn't it? Yeah it's one of their best and it's not a great record. No. I quite like the almost Burundi drum sound. Yes.

Foreshadowing a musical movement that would follow in an insanely small number of years in the grand scheme of things considering they look like two different eras of Earth's development yes and I also like that on the bass drum skin it says bass city rollers and there's a picture of a square yes which is surely not a joke and yet so obviously self insulting it's quite hard to fathom. As far as the sound goes it is Boggs standard 1974 drums that go and the guitars that eventually go I mean essentially the Basie T rollers are shaved wambles aren't they? Shaved malnourished wambles. Yeah this is

another song in this episode that is very basic but not in a good way. It's very safe and very inoffensive and it's sort of got a whiff of glam but it's very very watered down. It's like if glam were a family-sized block of mild cheddar this would be a Dairy Lee triangle. It's like still retaining its form within the protective silver foil, but clearly having come off worse from an altercation with an apple in the lunchbox of pop. No, no, I don't know what the apple denotes here. Shut up. This is so inoffensive that it offends me. It's just such a joyless contrivance. and also it's another faux Christmas song with the chimes But also with the slady slide into the chorus that doesn't go anywhere. Yeah, it's like so here it isn't

Because at the time they were saying that the introduction of the bells was a you know a Great innovation that no one had done before and I immediately put the hand to the chin and went Oh, yeah, Roy Ward. Hmm. Yeah, and yes run son fun, but no guns because we're not America Yeah, no, they're not gonna be shooting a partridge. No or any of the fans in the forehead just yet Yeah, I don't get the appeal at all and I have tried. Oh Sarah you were going to explain everything to me. You're a girl though, they're lush aren't they? Who is the bassist? Eric I believe. That's Eric yes okay so he is clearly the most best-lookingist but also like the worst at lip-syncing. I was really enjoying how bad it is like he's in

church and, mumbling along with a hymn that he doesn't know. Like John Redwood doing the Welsh national anthem. Believe me, I have tried to transform myself into the brain of a puberty ravaged girl of the 70s, who's probably forced to wear half a pillow in her already uncomfortable polyester pants when she's on her period, and obliged to sit in a special high chair at the back of class so that everyone knows Oh what? They're all going to laugh at you! They're all going to laugh at you!

Anyway I can't get Carrie out of my head, can't help it. Anyway I have done my best Hey Sarah, Carrie doesn't live here anymore. That's what you want to say to your brain. Anyway I remain bemused Well luckily for you Sarah you've got some men here. We'll sort it out for you. Oh, come on then. Yeah, please do. Are they being seen as the bad boys?

You know, the Rolling Stones to the Osmonds Beatles, the East 17 to the Osmonds Take That. Yeah, I mean, I think that does seem like them sort of approach it. Man talking, Sarah. Because while Jay Osmond's offering to take you home to sample mom's home cooking, you know, all you're going to get off Les McEwen is a bite of his battered sausage before he tries to finger you behind the chip shop. I would think that by contrast that is the appeal.

They are, they're such a fucking shambles. They're not very sexy shambles. They just kind of look like they don't know what they're doing really. And also that they have had to try to wash their own clothes and have put everything on, you know, boil. It's like cricket whites spitefully shrunk in a hot wash by, you know, the long-suffering girlfriend of someone who plays cricket. Do you know how long the cricket season is? It just goes on and on and on. It's like, you know, it's like April to October it's insane. Anyway, one word Sarah, biotechs. Okay here's another theory right, we've spoken before about the transatlantic appeal of the Ottomans and how they appear to the

girls of 1974 like GIs must have appeared to their aunties during the war but to my mind at this time as a six-year-old lad, Scotland was as much of a foreign country as America. You know, all I knew about the place was through the comics I read. So as far as I knew, all Scottish people were either massively hairy blokes in vests and kilts throwing capers at each other's heads, or they'd be sitting there in a tin bucket. Yeah. The Scottification of the 1970s has truly begun this summer You know, obviously we have the World Cup a few weeks ago and Rod Stewart has just put out the LP Smiler with a cover that is taught and up to fuck with a big traditional broach with Rod's face on it

So yeah, the shock of the new spelt N-O-O if you will. I don't know how Scottish people feel about the Bay City Rollers these days they don't seem like they're really flying the flag in any meaningful way do they? No it's not the first thing you hear from Scottish people when you're introduced to them. I'm sure that you get pretty short shrift if you brought them up the same length of shrift that you get from me living as I do in East 17. Yes. As for the performance, well, it's a summer love shit show, isn't it? Because instead of being given the opportunity to take command of the stage in a naked display

of the power of rock, the band have been plonked onto two platforms, a small black one for the drummer and a long thin white one for the band and Les McEwen is just tottering about in a horrible dirty cream pair of absolute blocker boots which causes him to nearly go over the edge a couple of times. Fucking hell. Blocker boots, blocker boots, block block blocker boots blocker boots block block blocker boots they're in fashion today yeah not so much glam as glum yes and it's just it's so painful the the role of songs what they always remind me of is the songs by fictional groups in 70s films about the pop business. Where they're supposed to be the biggest band in the world, but the records sound like outtakes from Bang on a Drum,

the Play School album. Even when you watch a film that's quite good, like Stardust, that's always the weak link, right? Those supposedly Beatles tier international rock sensation are singing these feeble written to order songs that some hired Johnny out to bang out in a month. And so the most important aspect of the scenario is unconvincing.

It's the same as whenever you see paintings in TV shows, right, like if the plot involves an old master or a valuable work of art. And of course the prop has to be painted by some BBC staffer in an afternoon. So when you actually see it, like, you know, the fall of Madonna with the big boobies or whatever it is, you always think, yeah, this masterpiece, like, it's like, so nobody would ever even put a frame around unless it was to hang up in a cafe with a sign saying local artist 15 pound you know but because it's not possible to create anything realistically good in the circumstances right

in fact what that is it's the it's the flipped mirror image of how an old television drama and stuff you see like local church hall amateur dramatics plays and pantomimes and they're always decked out in professional standard theatrical costumes and set dressed with authentic furniture and fittings because that's all that the TV program makers have access to and at that time it was far easier for them to get hold of that stuff than the kind of patch together homemade crap that you would actually have got And at that time it was far easier for them to get hold of that stuff than the kind of patched together homemade crap that you would actually have got at the Coronation Street

production of an Inspector Calls or whatever, you know what I mean? That's what the rollers always sound like. And then you realise why. It's because it's the same class of songwriter writing their songs as writing the songs for the band Kipper. Yeah, so I was waiting for Kipper to turn up and there they are. Yeah, bad accident in Pete Walker's Before Midnight lead singer played by Ducky Desk. Explain Kipper to the pop craze youngsters who don't know.

This is a band that Robin Asquith is drumming for, hidden confessions of a pop performer. Sounds sort of like early Oasis, you know what I mean? Yes. And then when the rollers are not doing those songs, they're doing covers of old songs which have been hand-picked to still work when stripped to their bare minimum level of musical interest because that's all that was going to be left once the rollers had rolled over them. All musically controlled by people who would nowadays be making that tinkly non-descript music that's available free with a subscription to use on your YouTube videos of that holiday in London.

Do you know what I mean? Or your dog running around in the park. It's just, yeah, that's what's there now. This is what was there then people screamed at it I know unbeknownst to us at the time culture and martin are already getting ready to fuck off because they've had enough of the band having the absolute nerve to want to write and perform their own songs and even play on them fucking hell some people they, but you watch this you just think I can't imagine the BBC giving this lot six nights of television. Can you? That's a moot point really because ITV are gonna swoop right in and take ownership of the rollers very soon I know that 1975 was the actual big bang year for the Rollers but you look at this

even in its shambolicness and you just think fucking out this is as good as it's gonna get for you isn't it you know they've just come off a UK tour where they went from the likes of Samantha's Disco in Sheffield and Bath Rugby Club at the beginning to playing a free gig in a parking holo that attracted 20,000 kids. They're going to be playing the rainbow pretty soon. But more importantly, here we see them being allowed to roam about in their natural domain without being ripped to fuck by the audience. I mean, there is the odd yelp, but none of the hysteria we're going to see over the next

year of the Osmonds fan club said, don't cheer at these. This audience is not there for them, I guess. It's just not the same crew. And you are going to have loyalty. This is the thing about fandoms as well. It is more diverse. Now people will have a portfolio, whereas I think it was always more culty and you would have lifetime allegiance to one group.

I don't know. I don't know. But there is a scream as with every other act. There's a scream that goes up at such a wrong place that you know it isn't anything they're doing. So, you know. Yeah. How must they have felt about that? Because they've already had the screams and they probably expect the screams. I bet it wears thin really quickly though being screamed at. I'm sure it does. I'm sure it does. But here it does but here they're being told are you still not the daddies it makes perfect sense that someone who would scream at the Osmonds would not want to scream at the

base of your owners and vice versa because they are two very different propositions but I think the main thing is if you haven't been convinced that these are sexy lads you're not gonna come to that conclusion by yourself are you might need a little bit of a push in that direction. I mean the Totten gimmick's not there either is it Taylor? Not really, not yet. Yeah there's the odd swatch of Totten here and there but that gimmick hasn't happened yet. They actually nicked that off a band called Bilbo Baggins which was another Edinburgh group that Tampagne was managing and yeah, those platforms are going to be knobbed off very soon and they're all going to wear those Adidas

baseball boots that I used to wear in the late 80s when I was trying to be run DMC and then I found out that I was actually wearing Bay City Rollers trainers and yes, I know the shame. Looking back on this now, I think the main takeaway from the whole episode is that the Osmonds won, didn't they, in the end? At the time of us recording this, all of them are still alive. The only tragedies that really befell them was the inevitable falling out of popularity that virtually every group has to go through and the medical issues that everyone in their 70s has to deal with. you know, they got into debt, but they paid it off. They carried on with careers. They accepted they were never going to be anywhere near as massive as they were. And they were probably fucking

glad of it. I would love to sit down and chat with an Osmond, especially Donny, because, you know, they stared right into the teeth of pop hysteria, but we're probably the only ones who did it with a clear mind, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if you look at the rollers, you know, well 40% of the people on that stage now are gone. Those who were left did not prosper at all and none of them seemed to have enjoyed any

of it. No. Maybe it ought to be put into the contracts of all new bands that they have to join a really strict religion. And you can say what you like about Tampatin, the beast of Preston Pans, let's remember, as Les McEwan called him in a statement after his death. But once again, I went back to that fucking brilliant book called When the Screaming Stops by Simon Spence. And I learned that in Tampatin's final years, he used to go to the local cash and carrier

and he'd buy star bars by the box, 36 in each, and he'd commence his evening of whatever he got up to by chunking the entire contents up with a massive knife, and he would just deck the fucking lot before going about his nocturnal business, which to my mind is winning at life in some sense, because I fucking love star bars Yeah, you can't been all bad then anything else to say we get another miserable slumpy fade out Reminding us all of the grotesque artifice of television and the fleeting nature of pleasure youth in existence itself Yeah, fuck that but after, we cut back to the audience

and there were one or two girls there with their hands over their mouths, not knowing what to think about things. It's like they've seen the future and it's the Bay City Rollers. Do you know how many people have been in the Bay City Rollers? Ooh, God knows.

23. Oh, fucking hell. If you added up all of the people who've been in all of the bands in this episode, you would be able to fill the BBC theatre. Oh! Fucking hell. If you added up all of the people who've been in all of the bands in this episode, you would be able to fill the BBC theatre. So the following week Summer Love Sensation nudged up one more place to number three, but would get no higher.

However, the LP Rowling would smash into the LP chart at number one and would battle with Smiler by Rod Stewart over the next couple of months, spending five non-consecutive weeks at the top. Their next single, All Of Me Loves All Of You, had to make do with three weeks at number four at the end of the year, but with the Osmonds on their way they had a devastating with Bye Bye Bay Bear and give a little love getting to number one. Hi, I'm What's His Name? And they were the Bay City Rollers with their number four chart sound, Summer Love Sensation. And now for our Swedish viewers, Jatlik, välkommen, fantastiska Sylvia.

And that was a real Swedish welcome to a really nice Swedish lady called Sylvia. And she's in at 28 this week with her new single, Y Viva España. And here she is is Sylvia! We're finally introduced to Wayne Osmond who was very much the quiet one of the band. According to Tiger Beat, he was the moody one who didn't care much for touring as it gave him less time to meet girls. He was looking forward to getting his pilot licence and he wanted to live on a ranch. Tiger Beat was pretty full on compared to Music Star and the British Mags. One cover I'd found had the headline, Rape the Osmonds, Who's the Sex King?

Which one is this one again? Wayne. Okay. There's so many of them. It's just, it's a bit like, have you seen Too Many Cooks? The classic Adult Swim short that goes on forever and ever. It's going in the playlist now. Anyone who hasn't seen too many cook speak, you will be changed by it.

Yeah, I don't know. This is so Osmond number five, you know. A little bit of Roscoe in my life, a little bit of Hector on the side. No, I like him because he introduced himself by saying, "'Hi, I'm what's his name?' Which did endear me too I must admit that was his bit wasn't it oh yeah so you know bless him as to whether he's the

king of sex or not I could not speak to that oh including little Jimmy of course we are he ruled out no it's 1974 yeah true fortunately I track down the nation's foremost expert on Wayne Osmond, Angela Buskin of Holloway, whose thesis, entitled To Wayne, was published in the Music Star Letters page this month and reads as follows. There he stands with the rest, But to me he is the best. Dark brown hair and eyes to match. The girl that gets him, what a catch.

A little shy to me he seems. In a world of his own with all his dreams. His eyes are gleaming, kind and bright. Isn't he a lovely sight? Sadly for Angela, Wayne will be getting married to a former Miss Utah in three months time so be getting married to a former Miss Utah in three months time so, soz Angela, you're gonna have to pick out your favourite roller dog. Wayne goes through his Hi I'm What's His Name bit once more before peeling off a bit of immaculate Swedish to these ears in any case as he introduces Eviva España by Sylvia. We cover this single and this actual performance in chart music number 69, the 1974 end of year special. Long story short, a Belgian bricklayer teams up with

a local actor, writes song about Spain in 1971, gets picked up by artists all over Europe and South America with their lyrics amended multiple times, eventually gets bought up by a Swedish jazz label who realises that no one has done an English version yet and offers it to Sylvia Vrethammer with the original sentiment, Spain is warm and dead nice, change to, they're all massive slags in Spain, get over there and dip your bread in mate. It entered the chart last week at number 46 and this week it soared 18 places to number 28, which means that Sylvia has hijacked that Costa Brava plane, instructed the pilot to turn round and head for Gatwick, Palfour, and here she is in the BBC theatre. Olé! Sarah, me and Taylor, we've rolled deep on this before, so the floor is yours, madam.

Well, okay, so, where to start? I love her, I love her, but I hate this song. Okay, it's my favourite hymn to the least efficient livestock slaughter method, but it sticks right in my head like a bandolier row into the neck muscle of a doomed bull. By the way do you know a Spanish style bullfighting do you know how many members there are? Seven! It's not just the matador he's got six other guys two on horseback one in the stupid hat taking all the credit getting all the fanny so no t-shirt for them but she has got okay let us say the

good points she's got she's brilliant she's got, okay let's say the good points, she's got, she's brilliant, she's got these huge hazel eyes and this incredible perfect 70s flick fringe, like a perfect wave just crissing over her forehead and she actually emerges from behind it. She gives a head a little toss that I'm trying to do now but failing and looks straight down the camera it's like oh I don't care what she's gonna sing and then soon after that I regret this but she carries it so well it's such a great performance and she even gets the girls clapping along you know she actually kind of gets their attention which is a first for this episode yeah it's really funny by the way that one of the girls I don't know if you noticed this she's got an

Oldsmans scarf and she looks at it as if to check what it says before waving it enthusiastically and if that was deliberate that would be such a great bit of shade. Hmm who is this? Who is this we're looking at? Is it the Osmonds? I think not. Why didn't anybody have the nouse to do a half and half Osmonds and basically roll a scarf and flog it outside. Oh, maybe they did. Because people weren't cunts back then like they are now. That's why. The thing with this is, so it's like a show tune. I kind of would like to hear her take a run at Hey Big Spender. The hair toss at the start makes me think she could pull it

off. But it's a song about Spain sung by aede, and yet it is one of the most English songs I know. It's like fucking Greensleeves or some shit. But because it's just become encrusted with decades worth of sea salt and vomit from Spanish vendors, you know, from English people specifically on Spanish vendors. And it sounds like a drinking song now. That's the only way that you can hear it. And as I've mentioned before Sarah it was pretty much

that right from the off. I remember that year our holiday in Chapel St. Leonard's and the maid Marion Club every night this song got sung twice and everybody's kind of like clapping meaty hands over their scampi and chips. Being stuck in a seaside resort in England singing about how they're going to Spain. Yeah, yeah. Bitter irony. It's another one of those aspirational things about how life could be, isn't it? Maybe that's why it's got their attention now, you know, it's because it's hit that neuron of like, oh yeah, here is an unfulfillable fantasy, you know, except this one is just about going to Benidorm, you know, and with, yeah, with lines like,

when they first arrived, the girls are pink and pasty, but oh so tasty as soon as they go brown. Not you as well, Sylvia! Her presence is amazing, I wish we'd seen more of her. She looks like a newsreader of the time who is about to give you a nice light item about the new holiday destination where you get to pick out your own steak while it's still breathing. And even some working class people can afford afford to fly there and then put on her more sombre face to tell us that this song will mark the point at which the fight against climate change was lost before it began. I did think that maybe Covid and Brexit together would shift things with regards to Spain but they haven't and Barcelona's really pissed off now

and doesn't want any of us to go there. No. I wonder if Sylvia was looking pointedly at Sweet Dreams when she sang that line. I doubt it. I think she was still trying to manage the hat, which is so like they could have got her a better hat. It looks like it's a dressing up box hat. Like a school dressing up box hat. And you know, when you go in that, I don't know if you had like a dressing up box hat. Yes, like a school dressing up box Yeah, and you know when you go in that I don't know if you had like a dressing up box at school And you know, okay We're allowed to have a dive in it and it was you'd always be disappointed Yeah, because it was a whole shit and it was all like grubby and and kind of full of holes and yes depressing

Yeah, I mean we mentioned before didn't we tailor the state of her heart but fucking I don't think we did injustice it's like she's been got out by some stookers in the Spanish Civil War watching her now Sylvia she seems like an inverted Nico do you know what I mean like sort of towering big-faced Nordic lady but approaching from entirely the opposite direction. Someone should dub this clip with Janitor of Lunacy or dub an old clip of Nico with this song. In fact she should have done a version of this really on the harmonium. We're all off to sunny speed. The blue orchids in the background on the castanets. Smuggling all the smack through customs inside a stuffed donkey.

They're on a cardboard tube containing a rolled up bullfight poster saying your name here. I mean they probably did actually do that when they played Spain, but just would have given it an extra kick to it if they'd done a version of this. But yes, you're right, Sarah. She does manage to get the kids involved in a bit of audience participation, which is a first for this episode for anyone, not on Osmond.

But then we cut back to the audience, and in the middle of the stalls, we see three blokes, two of whom are wearing German sex tourist sunglasses, and that set in and them sunglasses makes it look like a branch meeting of the paedophile information exchange hiding in the plainest of sight. They're not members of the Osmond fan club. One of them appears to be with his very young daughter, so they're probably high ups at

the BBC, and one of them appears to have brought his wife, but the one in the middle, he looks well day of the jackal, doesn't he? There's some plot to assassinate Jimmy Osmond in his only found out that he's not there So the following week of Viva España sawed another 13 places to number 15 and took another three weeks to scale the charty Pyrenees Getting to number four in mid September and would stay in the top 75 for seven months eventually bowing out in March of 1975. A month later she put out the follow-up Hasta La Vista which got to number 38 in May of that year which was a proper diminishing returns but it did do better than Viva El Fulham by Tony Reese and the Cottagers which

was recorded to commemorate the 1975 FA Cup final squad which only got to number 46. Spain, please! Spain, please! also an exercise in patience, because it's been released for about eight months now, but anyway she's finally made it. Oh, I've thoroughly enjoyed my week working with the Osmonds. I've managed to get to know the whole family. I hope you've enjoyed the little talks, the little interviews we've been doing. I've also learned another thing. I didn't know such charming young ladies could make such an amazing amount of noise. I've also learned a bit of karate, a bit of the old chop chop, and I must say my wardrobe is that little bit much smaller for losing a suit.

Tomorrow night on the Osmond's programmes we'll be talking to Alan and also to Meryl, and hopefully we'll be getting their wives in as well. On Saturday I hope to be speaking to Mr and Mrs Osmond and I'll be having a chat with Marie, just for the fellas, especially Marie. Don't forget, on Top of the Pops tonight we've got a brand new number one but right now on top of the pops exclusive you can now see it you can now hear for the first time the new Osmars Tingle! Finally, Edmunds reappears in his Brexit shirt, looking every inch of the spare cock at a wedding that he's been throughout the evening to do some half-arsed leching of Sylvia as he tells us that song's been out for ages. He then lies about how much he's enjoyed being ignored by thousands of girls over the past week, shills the remaining episodes and introduces the world premiere of Love Me

For A Reason by The Osmonds. This, their 10th single release in the UK, is the follow-up to I Can't Stop which only got to number 12 in May of this year. It's a cover of the Johnny Bristol song which appeared on his 1974 LP Hang On In There, Baby and put out as a single in its own right, but it failed to chart. This version is going to be the title track from their next LP which is due out in November and isn't even going to be out as a single for another fortnight, but seeing as they're all in the building, you know it's going to be plugged. Really Noel should have introduced this as the Osmonds version.

Yes he should. Yeah, just to correct the record, you know. Yeah. Before we move on to the song Edmonds, fucking hell, we've seen very little of him tonight and that's been quite a good thing, hasn't it? He must be really upset that he's had even less time to do his comedy routines, eh, Taylor? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Also, he says, my wardrobe is that little bit much smaller for losing the suit. I don't know what he means. I doubt he didn't lose the shirt. Yeah, I can help you there, Taylor, because two nights ago, Edmunds was interviewing Jay and

Wayne, and the subject of their immense karate skills came up and they did a demonstration on him which resulted in a gimmicked suit jacket being ripped off his back and we went on to learn that Edmunds has the hairless chest of a six year old. The worst bit is when he's talking about what's going to be on these upcoming Osmond shows that he says just for the fellas I'll be talking to Marie yes yes she's 14 I mean I know you can't tell that by looking but no you're supposed to know these things in 1974 who else is there to communicate this information but he can't be bothered too busy working out contracts to advertise fish paste, getting

planning permission for a self-themed portrait gallery in the home counties. Yeah, if she doesn't want to be treated like that, she shouldn't dress like that in a trouser suit. And I see running for president. Oh my God, I wonder what's going on on the timeline where Marie Osmond is president. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I should be careful what I wish for, I suppose. But anyway, this song and this performance,

I mean, the screaming just goes through the fucking roof at this point. And if those girls are being told not to go mental over the Bay City rollers, you get the feeling that they may have been told to go absolutely f**king berserk at this because this is one of the reasons that the Osmonds are here now because I do feel that they feel that this single needs to be a number one. Donny's had one, Jimmy's had one, it's time for the band to get theirs don't you think? There's something really horrible about watching this it's like when they're actually you know, they've stopped messing around They've stopped doing their skits and their rock and roll medleys and it's like now this is what we really do Yeah, this is us. Yeah, and I said earlier the best thing about the Osmonds looking back is that everything now?

Is just as it would be if the Osmonds had never existed and that's true in one sense, right? But in another Even if they themselves mean nothing this by which I mean of a Finger wavy all-round of this this is what has now been revived culturally That's the thing. Yes, there's a level at which the present day is crawling back to being like this, right? Obviously this song was exhumed many years ago as a kind of advance guard, but I think the compulsion to revive it came from the exact same location in the human brain as every other impulse that's now leading us back into the darkness in this new century, right? With all the rights and freedoms that we fucking died for being rolled back.

When did you die for them freedoms, Taylor? I didn't tell you about it. I'm too close to about these things. And the new fascism putting its arm around the shoulders of the people it chooses and them seeing nothing wrong with it. Just everything simplified and brutally flattened and sentimentality or over-emotionalism winning out over actual feelings. And that makes it hard to watch. It's not even a terrible song. I mean, it's really not. It's probably their second best single in it after Crazy Horses. But it's just Love Me For A Reason by the fucking Osmonds. Just crouched in the hollows of time waiting for Boyzone to exhumate.

I didn't have a good time with this. Oh Taylor. Oh man. I mean, it's alright. It's okay, you know, we're gonna, we'll get through, we'll get through it, we'll get through it. It's alright, hold it down, it's alright. I quite like this song. I found that, you see I found that I like this song and I like this performance. It's really after all the kerfuffle that has gone before. It's very soothing, it is very shallow and I'm okay with that. I'm okay with it. It's American professionalism doing its thing

on top of the pops in the way that it does and I am a sucker for it. It's inoffensive in a way that I don't find offensive and it is like watching a team of champion figure skaters, literally and figuratively, and the way that they are absolutely drilled is strangely reassuring to me. Like, it just looks like order has been restored, you know. It starts with them all lined up in a flying wedge with Merrill at the front because he always handled the soft lad songs, so they're forming a big letter V and it would have been fucking minted for the role pulled guinea pigs out of their inside pockets detached their jaws and swallowed them but never mind instead we get a lot of

flick Colby in with them bending and folding on cue yeah then they do this routine where the point outward and then and I've tried to find an alternate explanation but I can only say what I see they mind pulling their pants up not Mormon pants just a standard pair of drawers and yeah that's your lot really thank God they weren't all sitting down because if they'd have stood up for a key change Shepherd's Bush would have been reduced to rubble. So while the Osmonds aren't doing all that much, we get a lot of long lingering sweeps of the audience. Who are reacting as if Jesus has materialized on stage with all their dead pets come back to life? I mean, some of them are screaming their heads off, but others look absolutely poll-axed.

And it's as if the BBC is saying, look, we know that you don't understand why we've given up a week of airtime to some American lads when you could be watching nationwide, but just look what they're doing to the maidens of the Isle. Look at them! Yeah, but it is like it's the other way around. It's like the impulse is there and people in bands and their managers just need to kind of be prepared to summon it. You know, it's like they only exist because that impulse exists to go fucking mental at the sight and sound of some guys.

Do you know what I mean? That's like a current that exists in the universe and they just have to sort of plumb into it. And so in a lot of ways it doesn't matter who they are or what they do. It's just that they have to be aware of that and they have to be prepared to get it right in the face. So, the song is another cover version and an extremely recent cover version but presumably one most of their fans wouldn't know. And we've already mentioned the speculation that the Osmonds were looking to move into

a more stylistic phase of their career, but that means they're going to have to grapple with the mores of modern black music, which is currently being recorded by men who've been round the track and are far more mature than they. Like so many of Donny's songs, it appears to be an older man addressing a younger woman, but unlike those songs, the tone here tone here is look I'm massively in love with you but you're pissing me about and it's time for a commitment but in the hands of the Osmonds particular in this time and place it sounds as if

they're saying yeah girls you keep screaming at us and you've got our names on your scovs but we saw how you reacted to them Scottish boys. So do you love us really? Are you going to be waiting for us when we come back next year? It's all a bit mad, isn't it? Even after everything, are you now surprised how this being weird? Come on. No, you've got a point. You just got to roll with it, man. It is just deep weird. But this weirdness is going to be the absolute

benchmark for a whole new generation of acts who have only just come into the world. I mean, Robbie Williams was born in February of this year. Brian Harvey is a week old today and Ronan Keaton isn't going to be born for another three years. I mean, we all know who covered this song in the early 90s and in 1993 the BBC documentary the making of a boy band about the formation of the group upside down Begins with their audition process which involved a load of ambitious twinks queuing up to sing this very song Because by the early 90s this had become a touchstone for an entire genre of music. We're seeing boy bands crawl from the prime modeloos here, aren't we? And attempting to stand up for the key change. And unlike so many other acts tonight whose mimed songs just fade out and they

end up standing there looking like bellends, the Osmonds have pre-recorded and re-recorded this song so it has a definitive ending. So the overall effect at the end is just this vagus-sized kick up the emotional arsehole. And they're standing there at the end receiving their triumph and you just think fucking hell this song is nailed on for number one and they're gonna be around for fucking ever who will rid us of these turbulent Osmonds and in fairness they're energetic movers for a bunch of chubby lads yes right like the Beach Boys you know I mean all that high fructose corn syrup good for a short term energy boost at least.

Yeah. It's so all-encompassing. There's like a whole world in here, a whole universe of kitchen cupboards stuffed with mayonnaise, smartly dressed people, fake smiling, magical Mormon underwear, the deeply held belief that black people have no souls. Although that would explain the mystery of why people so rarely claim to see black ghosts. Because it's true, isn't it? The demographics of the spirit world are like a market town in the Fen, a pot-holing society, Blackburn Rovers squad 1994-95 season. And there must be a reason for that but I guess it's just one of the great mysteries of the spectral realm, like how come ghosts wear ghost clothes?

And do they have more than one outfit? And if so, where do they keep them? And also, if they can supposedly walk through walls, how come they are supported by the floor? And also, if they're not made of earthly substance, how come they're affected by gravity? Shouldn't they be just floating off as the earth rotates and orbits the sun at high speed? Shouldn't they be just floating off as the earth rotates and orbits the sun at high speed? Shouldn't the space around our planet be littered with drifting ghosts like Major Tom? A lot of questions there for the Osmonds to answer, I think, in their Buster Gonad shoes. Yeah, but thank God Derek Acora didn't do a chalky white accent

there. Taylor is the mayonnaise in jars or like is it just literally in the cupboard? Yeah good point well made. It's just spilling through the doors like the like the blood coming out of the lift in the shiny. Yeah yeah yeah. Or like insulation foam. Just out the side everywhere everywhere, going a little bit yellow. So, a month later, Love Me For A Reason entered the chart at number 19, and a week later it soared all the way to the summit of Mount Pop, pushing aside this week's number one and staying there for three weeks. It would become the 12th biggest selling single of 1974, one below Devil Gate Drive by Suzy Quattro,

and one above Jealous Mind by Alvin Stardust. The follow-up, we'll discuss later. But in 1976, a cover by the Fabulous Five Incorporated, Johnny Nash's backing band, was a big hit in Jamaica and in our reggae chart and in 1995 it was smothered by Irish stand-up for the key change Clod's Boy Zone as their debut UK single and got to number two in the first week of that year. Have you heard that reggae version Taylor? Yeah. It's gorgeous, isn't it?

It's better than this. Yes. Then again, it's hard to think of anything where the reggae version is worse apart from Hello, mother. Hello, father. Here I am in Cancun And there are no reasons, there are it first, you heard it first, right here on top of the Pops. The Ozzmans with a sensational brand new single, Love Me For A Reason, and that is going to be a ginormous hit. Thank you, man. I hope so. Woo! Well, maybe this, bro. You know, Donnie mentioned earlier about all the artists that are flying in from all over to be on the show tonight. And right now, I wish you'd all help us to give a great big top of the pops welcome to a group that has come all the way from Philadelphia, USA. That's right, all the way from Philadelphia. They hold the number one slot with When Will I See You Again, the Fantastic Three Degrees! Thank you. Ooh, ha

Ha, ooh, ooh, rashes, no more, yes Edmunds tells us that Love Me For A Reason, to paraphrase Robert de Valle Network, is gonna be a big, fat, big tittered hit. But he's drowned out by more screams as he's joined by Donny and Alan. The three of them make dick-sized gestures for a bit to show off the anticipated largeness. Then Alan takes over to tell us that another group have ridden the Laker Express all the way from Philadelphia to be here and they're this week's number one and through the spangly bingo curtains come the three degrees with When Will I See You Again. We've covered the three degrees, Laurie Cunningham, Brendan Batson and Sarah Regis,

a time or two on chart music but this is their finest hour in the UK charts. It was offered to them by Kenny Gamble over a year ago, but when he played them the song on piano they outright rejected it, with Sheila Ferguson going mental at him for having the nerve to try and dump it off on them, vowing to never sing it and telling him it was ridiculously insulting of him to offer them such a simple song that took no talent whatsoever to sing. Although she obviously later relented. I think she did say even a nationwide presenter could sing this song. Terrible. It's been floating around as a track from the LP The Three Degrees, their debut on Philadelphia International for nearly a year now, but the unexpected success of their last single, Year

of Decision, which was their first UK hit 11 years into their career getting to number 13 in May, has encouraged the label to rush it out. It entered the chart five weeks ago at number 33 and with no help whatsoever from Top of the Pops or Pans People, but with radio and club airplay suddenly becoming massively important in the wake of the technician strike, it soared 16 places to number 17 and picked its way through the upper reaches of the chart. Last week when Top of the Pops finally returned, Pan's people emoted to it in spangly black bits of cloth and the rush of repressed daddy's faction has put it over the top this week, standing down, rock your baby, and here they are

on the stage of the BBC theatre to receive their triumph. Yeah, but first of all, we have to talk about teeny tiny Noel being out-presented. I mean, never mind that the Osmonds are slicker and more convincing talking to camera than Britain's premier professional broadcaster. Look how puny he is. Yeah. It's fucking awful. He's standing there with the Osmonds and they look like the monster munch monsters next to him. Right?

This isn't Ted Nugent's band or something. No. This is the fucking Osmonds. And I mean, I've seen pictures of Noel in the seventies working out, like actually working out in the well-equipped home gym in his mansion which I know he had because I've seen pictures of it in the multicolored Noel Edmonds and yet Donny Osmond could crush him like a bug it would have been really funny if he'd walked on and as soon

as he started talking one of the big lad Osmond's just turned around and said, oi shut your cock washer and waved a fist at him that was as big as his head and he just had to shut up. I would watch that. Edmund's clowned out by Osmond's. There's a certain alien versus predator energy to that But I would watch it little Jimmy tearing Noles ass out of the frame. Oh You wouldn't miss it. Would you know to be fair to him? Yeah, he is the same height as Donnie Although I'm not sure what shoes they're each wearing But yeah, that's not his fault But he does start shortling in the manner of Steve Harley at how Trevor Osmond is just

taking over his job and just rendering him completely obsolete in an instant. But you can't tell. Yes, to me, he doesn't actually look happy. Maybe he's being a good sport, but possibly there's just rage there. It's just like, cause he kind of like, right, he does a little kind of scamper away like, well, I'm clearly not needed and I can't tell if he is mad as hell or not. And we can picture his shoes, right? His shoes are gonna look like a kid's slide in a park. Proper Mr. Men shoes. Yeah. But anyway, this performance, I

believe they're singing live, don't you? yeah, I mean they can withstand the top of the Pops Orchestra Yes, that big long-eared dog on the drums again. Yes Would not have impressed Jay Osmond, but yeah They get the usual BBC engineers gift of little feedback shrieks on the mic to throw off live vocalists little feedback shrieks on the mic to throw off live vocalists. But I suspect the Three Degrees have navigated murkier technical waters than this over the years in some of the places they must have appeared. So they just keep smiling in those dresses that make them look like they're on the Galactic Council.

It all works out fine. That bit of feedback tells you that it's live so it's kind of helped them. And you've got to say Taylor, this version of the Top of the Pops Orchestra, they're keeping up with them. It's not uptown top ranking they've got to do. It's something a bit lush and a bit swooner. This iteration of the Top of the Pops Orchestra, they can kind of piss that out of their arse and the girls can sit there and scream all their life because this lot are in

their true comfort zone, aren't they? A big old theatre with a full band at their back in the slinkiest, rubbery gold halter neck dresses with massive chunks bitten off at the side. And they're selling the fuck out of this single, aren't they? And this episode has just got severely adulterated because that was the way Black American music was rolling by 1974. Yeah, this is like being transported into another galaxy altogether. It's amazing. They look and sound so perfect. Yes. And all of it is so smooth and just kind of kind of

slips down like an oyster and it lasts about 90 seconds it's ridiculous it's so short it's just like oh really oh because I was just there going precious moment hey show some respect this is the slide indoors Queen of England yes so after the 90 seconds of perfection marred only slightly by the moment of feedback which is like the dropped stitch in the Persian rug, you know. It's got this amazing dramatic swirling ending like a sort of tornado of strings and sequins and they kind of go, oh it's swirly, well it's great, it really put my head in the place.

I couldn't get into that place with pans people and you make me feel brand new and I got there in the end they do a bit of twirling around like anthea redfern in the generation game and then they drop this perfect Kurtz set it's immaculate it's as if they've thought oh we're gonna be playing a theater in London we've got to be proper ladies yeah you could call the three degrees the Supremes of the 70s but there's no point because we've already got one. What they actually are are the Supremes of the 60s but a bit more worldly wise and not about to take any shit from some bloke. You know,

their last single that broke them in the UK, they told the listeners to stop mourngin' about exes or being a custard gannet and live in the here and now and this one is essentially Jimmy Mack for older people isn't it you know lauded with the new sophisticated sound of smooth rich creamy Philadelphia yeah yeah Supremes of the 60s with the beatiness replaced by a kind of pleasant wooziness and the strange thing about this kind of music and the stylistics in a more intense way is that although it's associated with the mid-70s,

it doesn't feel like it's of the mid-70s, right? It feels like a giant crane or tractor beam that hovers over people's record players and lifts them out of the mid 70s for three minutes at a time. I mean, a couple of years later, you take a record like this, speed it up a bit, add the four on the floor beat and you'd make it a disco record, which would then feel like it belonged in the late 70s. Whereas this seems more like it's drifting in no time. And I don't know how much of that is just me making connections in my own brain

based on what song I've seen dubbed over what news footage on the rock and roll years. But there seems to be something indefinable in the feel and spirit of records like this, which does not fit in with the cultural mood or the feel of what other musicians and writers and filmmakers and so on were doing. There's that heavenly ooze and a kind of sweet unworldliness to the Philly ballads. You know, they got the melancholy that you often hear in music from this time, but it's not a jaded and cynical melancholy. It's a sort of limpid, sad puppy melancholy with all the little musical flourishes. And this sense that, although you're sad

and you may remain sad, there is no suggestion that all hope is lost. They don't have bleak mid-70s malaise, which you do hear in the sound of, you know, even in the sound of pampered dudes having the time of their lives like the Eagles, you know what I mean? That's coming from the times. This is coming from somewhere else outside time. Yeah, it's like ambient soul because this is such a simple song and this is almost like a nothing song, you know, but the sound

is the point and they really ride that cloud so gracefully that it totally works, you know. Also melancholy is, you know, someone defined it as like the happiness of being sat, which I think this completely is. It is the sort of gazing out of the window and diving all the way down into it. And you know that there's some sausagey fingers being wiggled about at the TV screen in a It is the sort of gazing out of the window and diving all the way down into it. And you know that there's some sausagey fingers being wiggled about at the TV screen in a back bedroom in Buckingham Palace right about now eh? Prince Philip won't go upstairs to watch his cowboy films, the selfish cunts.

So When Will I See You Again spent two weeks at number one, their only chart-topping UK single, giving way eventually to Love Me For A Reason. It would finish the year as the fourth biggest-selling single of 1974, one above Rocky Baby by George McCray, one below Billy Don't Be A Hero by Paper Lace. Yes. The follow-up, Get Your Your Love Back only got to number 34 in November but they firmly bedded themselves into the charts throughout the rest of the 70s, particularly during the disco era, notching up four more top ten hits. Come on, come on, when will I see you again? Well, thank you for being with us. That's all the time we have for the Top of the Pops tonight.

We hope that you all enjoyed it as much as we have. Fantastic. Be with us, the Osmonds that is, again, tomorrow night at 625 at BBC One. We'll see you then. Until then, take care and God bless. Good night! We cut back to the five non-female, non-homunculus Osmonds who show their enjoyment of the three degrees before Alan takes over again to thank us for watching, in his words, the top of the pops and tells us to come back tomorrow for more barbershop raga and screaming and pant pissing before the top of the pops orchestra launches into

We're Having a Party by The Osmonds. We've covered this single in Chart Music number 51, Guys and Dolls Get Ready to Bomb Iraq, but that's in March of 1975 and for now this is lined up as a lead-off track from the next Osmonds LP and their next single After Love Me for a Reason. It's currently being deployed as a sign-off music for their BBC shows, performed as an instrumental by the Top of the Pops Orchestra. We're having a Watney's Party 7 as a chaser, if you will. And here is everyone involved in tonight's production waving us goodbye and having a

frug and all of a sudden this episode has changed into Sunday night at the Palladium hasn't it? Fucking hell. Yeah it looks like the shittiest Sergeant Pepper cover ever. All these other idiots standing around behind the Osmars. Cockney Rebel, noticeably a lot less enthusiastic than everyone else here. Like the Rolling Stones refusing to get on the caravan and wave except much, much shitter. Yes. It's the downside of the Osmond's slickness and professionalism, isn't it?

It's just so natural for them to be shilling product and plugging further appearances on the BBC. Everyone we've seen on this stage tonight, Bob Jimmair who's currently getting stuck into the toughies in the hotel minibar, and Marie for some reason, is back on stage clustered in their own space at first bidding us farewell and having a lovely dance. And chaps, like the centre spread team photo in Shoot, let's go back L-R shall we? Okay. So we start with the Glitter Band, half of whom have actually changed into all black spangly cat suits, their naughty nightwear as the sun would have it.

Then in the middle at the back is Pan's People, still in their flouncy rig out, demurely clasping the hems of their gowns and swaying them about in time. Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr underneath the glitter band we get cockney rebel who are just chatting to each other with bemused disgust apart from their bassist who has brought his instrument with him and is twanging away and nobody's told him then next to them we get edmund who is clapping away on his own and being generally completely ignored by everyone else. Cozy pal who's doing a ballroom dance with one of his band while the others look like they're waiting for the last bus home. Drunk. Front left, sweet dreams who are dancing together with Sarah Lyon turning her back on the three degrees presumably out of fear of them noticing something a bit wrong about her. Yeah, it's getting a bit hot under the studio lights and she's going a bit Rudy Giuliani Sylvia Clapping with Sarah because you know

She's Swedish they're tolerant before she starts dancing with Alan Osmond and the Osmonds themselves front and center Doing their chicken dance before breaking off to engage the three degrees in a spot of come on I lean in which was nice. That was nice. A lovely tableau don't you think chaps? If you went on holiday to pop land in August of 1974, this image here would be on the front of the souvenir shortbread tin that you brought home with you. Yeah. I mean I look at this and I just think,

fucking hell, why didn't they do this every episode? Every episode. That's exactly what I thought. Instead of wasting our time with zoo wankers and studio lights, man. And from here on in, every time I watch an episode of Top of the Pops, I'm going to look at the end credits and go, oh, man, here's what you could have won. I mean, for example, I've taken an episode from 1978 at random and this is everyone who was in the studio

at the time, okay, so Peter Powell, Smoker, Darts, Legs and Co, Plastic Bertrand, Guy Marks, that loving you has made me bananas hit maker, Brotherhood of Man, The Stranglers, Elky Brooks, All Her Looks, X-Ray Specs and Boney M. Fuck it. Can you imagine The Stranglers waving next to the Brotherhood of Man? Yeah. And Guy Marx dancing with Polly Starrion.

How fucking brilliant would that have been? Oh, I'm sad now that we can't have this. And imagine the early 80s. Duran Duran happens to stand next to Frankie Goats Wollywood after they've put out an advert saying their music makes Duran Duran want to lick the shit off their boots. That would have been an interesting on stage conversation don't you think? Especially if they acted it out. Pete Burns just sweeping in, just laying waste to the whole, in some absurd outfit with wings.

I mean that all sounds better than what we see here, which is basically the curdling of the basic life-giving brutality of popular art happening in real time just off Shepherd's Bush green. But that's what happens when you give the people what they want and none of what they've never thought of. Oh Taylor, hey I forgot to say, you know how many members were in the three degrees? Don't say three! Sixteen! Fucking hell!

So we're having a party which was eventually released in February of 1975 but only got to number 28 in the same week that the Bay City Rollers got to number 1 with Bye Bye Baby. The follow up, the proud one, righted the ship somewhat when it got to number 5 in June of that year, but they finished 1975 with I'm Still Gonna Need Ya Only Getting to Number 32, and after I Can't Leave a Dream did even worse getting to number 37 in November, they never troubled the charts again bar the odd re-release of One Bad Apple and Crazy Horses. So the Osmonds spent another two nights on BBC One, culminating on Saturday evening when they knocked the wonderful world of Disney off the schedule, finishing their show by inviting the orchestra, the floor managers, the engineers, the catering staff, the wardrobe

department, the production team, their own security staff who were dressed up like city gents, the theatre management and staff, the St John's ambulance team, the police force and in the words of Alan Osmond, our good friend Noel Edmund. They do their last song in complete darkness so if you were just turning over to BBC One a bit early to see the John Wayne film that was on after you'd be greeted by the sight of the lights coming up at the end to reveal the Osmonds being completely surrounded by about 20 coppers and you just think fucking hell what have the Osmonds done? Yeah it's always the ones you least expect.

And that Pop Craze Youngsters closes the book on this episode of Top of the Pops. What's on telly afterwards? Well, BBC One kicks on with the undersea world of Jacques Cousteau, where the sub-aquatic Frenchman swings by the Galapagos Islands to follow some iguanas about as they sort their tea out and drops in on a German friend who has trained some of them to eat bits of fruit out of his hand. I thought you said The Undeceived World of Jacques Cousteau. That would be lovely, wouldn't it? After the news it's the 1968 film The Night They Raided Minsky's, the roaring 20s film

starring Jason Robards, Britt Eklund and Norman Wisdom then it's midweek with Julian Pettyfer, the late night news, the weather and they close down at five to midnight. BBC2 has just finished the debate show Argument chaired by Michael Dean then John Julius Norrish trolls around the Aegean coast in the gates of Asia, his series about Turkey, in order to go on about the influence of Greek civilization on that nation. After part four of the adaptation of H.G. Wells' lover Mr. Lewisham, it's the ten minutes short, The World of Robin Layman, about a model plane that develops a life of its own and then oh

It's Lulu with special guests Adrian Poster Paul Greenwood and Jimmy wacko Edwards Yes, and his witness examines the murals created by two artists in the new forest village of wood green Then it's news extra and they close down at 5 to 11. 5 to 11, fucking hell. Yeah, it's bedtime. ITV finally gets round to the first episode of The Inheritors, the mini-series based on the Wilfred Greta Rex novel starring Peter Egan, Philip Maddock and Bill Maynard. Then it's this week, the news at 10, the director Raoul Walsh is profiled by Brian

Truman in cinema and they round off the night with Angling Today, the highlights of the golf, What the Papers Say and they close down at a quarter past midnight. So me dears, what are we talking about in the playground tomorrow? Oh God, what to pick really, everything is so much. Vivir España, because it contained the sort of promise of a better life which the imaginary school aged me of 1974 would probably have yearned for. Mr Soft, because I can imagine that the playground would have rung to the sound of bom bom bom bom bom bom bom bom. Yeah, just, you know, the teachers would have had to come and tell you to shut up.

You can just tell. Fucking hell, Sarah, you are going to get so ostracised in the playground tomorrow. You know what it's going to be like? Oh my God, Sarah. Oh God, did you see them? Did you see them? Oh, rollers, Osmond, who? Who are you going to pick? Who are you going to pick? Pick now, pick now! Oh, you see,? Did you see them? Oh, rollers, Osmond, who? Who are you going to pick? Who

are you going to pick? Pick now, pick now! Oh, you see I was a crap, I was a crap teenager, you see, it just didn't, I was not on it at all. No mate. Taylor? I would probably be saying, seriously girls, what have the Osmonds got that we chubby cheek little twats with our freshly grown too big for our mouths adult teeth haven't. Yeah little Taylor Osmond. Is it just the backing of an obviously made up god as revealed to a convicted fraudster? Fucking hell the darkness runs very very deep doesn't it Taylor?

It's in nothing yet. What are we buying on saturday The Glitter Band. Yes. Plus those few performers tonight who might conceivably have been upset by Noel's shirt. Mr Soft, it's a bot. And what does this episode tell us about August of 1974? The Osmonds were shit. Yeah, it's a bit of a Mormon soak. Intention is towards pleasure, but there's just no movement. And that, Pop Craze Youngsters, brings us to the end of this episode of Chart Music.

Use your promotional flange Chart-Music.co.uk, Facebook.com slash chart music podcast reach out to us on Twitter at chart music TOTP but because Elon Musk is a massive cunt also reach out to us on blue sky at chart music TOTP dot B sky dot social you're a little bit country, Sarah B. Hey. You're a little bit rock and roll, Taylor Parks. Well, yeah. My name's Al Needham. Frim! LAUGHTER BAND PLAYS

Sharp music. You know, first of all, before we leave, we'd like to say how fantastic and how wonderful you've all been to us. We really appreciate it and you know, this week is going to be one that we're always going to remember. I think that the thing that has really impressed us so is the enthusiasm of all our fans out there. Haven't they been great? You know, you keep us happy and we hope that we can continue in the future to keep you all happy. We have a theory and that is that it's enthusiasm that keeps this world going.

And Great Britain sure has plenty of that, don't they? That's right. We have a great faith about the future. And we'd like to express this and these feelings the best way that we know how, and that is with a song that we've written. I'm gonna be my bed tonight I'm gonna be my bed tonight I'm gonna be my bed tonight

I'm gonna be my bed tonight Ain't gonna be my bed tonight Ain't gonna be my bed tonight Ain't gonna be the man that I am Ain't gonna be the man that I am Ain't gonna be the man that I am Ain't gonna be the man that I am Osmond's have had another engagement and they have had to leave the theater. Otherwise they couldn't make it They apologize and they asked me to say thank you very much and

Good night, but they had to go we had to get them away on time They have a very tight schedule So I'm afraid it's good night tonight. They'll be back here tomorrow, Friday and Saturday. My baby I ain't gonna be I ain't gonna be I ain't gonna be I ain't gonna be I ain't gonna be I ain't gonna be

I ain't gonna be My baby My baby My baby Yes, that's what we do Yes, that's what moves! Hey, don't ask about community guys at the house. Hi, I'm Leslie and I'm Derek and I'm Woody and I'm Eric We're the Bay City Roars Give me two book or I know chocolate

Macintosh and KitKat