Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - Chart Music #78- February 16th 1978: Paint Along With Nancy Spungen

Episode Date: May 7, 2026

The latest episode of the podcast which asks; Emu versus Bernie Clifton’s ostrich – who wins in a fight?This episode is practically a scientific experiment, Pop-Crazed Youngsters; Al’s been wondering what the optimum age is to reap the full benefit of our Thursday Evening Fizzy Pop treat, and wonders if – like what people say about World Cups – it’s the ones nearest to our 10th birthdays. Consequently, because he’s a selfish bastard, this episode is a few months away from his own seventh-life crisis, which rather taints the experiment as it’s in 1978. one of the greatest years for Pop ever; that glorious period where the fallout of Punk is still drifting down, the music biz has no idea what The Kids actually want, and the door has been kicked open for the most glorious mutations to shamble about the charts.Kid Jensen – waiting to find out if he’ll be elected the Pontiff of Radio One next week – is at the controls, after spending a day being locked out of his own dressing room, and he guides us through a classic episode. Tom Robinson – denied the opportunity to lay some Gay on the youth – opts for some Kink-shaming. Kate Bush makes her debut, as she picks through the moors with the crushing weight of the TOTP Orchestra on her back. Darts refrain from diving into ornate fountains and wringing their socks out on the youth. Legs & Co finally get full ramp access. The Sexy Lions of Disco prowl the wasteland of Hollywood. Elkie Brooks and Billy Joel give us a taste of the Berni Inn, before we get one last suck of The Sweet. Howard Devoto puts the shits up the kiddies, Abba roar back, and we get to see the cameras being put away as Little Rabbit Arse has sex with a head on legs.Simon Price and David Stubbs join Al Needham for a glorious romp through the murk of ‘78, veering off on such tangents as who has the nicest bum in Europe, local pornography stashes, Simon Bates’ perm, an extract from Steve Priest’s autobiography, the Bradford Gay Liberation Front, and Keith Moon’s spend-up at a Hammersmith grot shop. DON’T GO CHANGING, POP-CRAZED YOUNGSTERS!     Video Playlist | Facebook | Twitter | Bluesky | The Chart Music Wiki | Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This will certainly have an adult theme and might well contain strong scenes of sex or violence, which could be quite graphic. It may also contain some very explicit language, which will frequently mean sexual swear words. What do you like to? Um, chart music. Chart music. Oh, Craig's youngsters and welcome to the latest episode of chart music, the podcast that gets its hands right down the back of the settee on a random episode at Top the Pops. I'm your host, Al Needham, and standing with me today are Simon Price and David Stubbs.

How do? Boys, the pop things and the interesting things. Tell me of them now! Right, well, since we last convened, I got invited on to your mate Tony Lizzie. Oh, this show, yeah, on Five Live, late one evening. I was basically asked on, and basically in my capacity as like Britain's leading authority on electronic music, probably Europe, actually, when I come to think of it. Why? The peg being that it was Howard Jones's birthday or something.

Oh, man, that's sacred day. They want me to pick out the best British electropop hits of the 1980s. Right. So I said, yeah, how have I think, you know, and I cogitate. long and hard. Wittled it down to a short list of 30. Any OMD? No, yeah, sorry.

A bit of an end joke there for readers of David's book. No bloody Howard Jones either, you know. He's... He can have his cake, but he can't eat it, you know. Poor ho-john. So I did that. So I whittled it down. Then he came back and said,

yes, if you could just, um, whittlet it down just to a top five. Oh, fuck so, five. So fucking hell. I had to then go through a process of murdering my babies. But anyway, I got it down to this five, and I just wondered how you would,

feel about this. So number five, I had situation, Yazoo. Right. Yeah. Number four, memorabilia, soft cell. Very strong. I guess all of this had that sort of kind of linear quality, you know, that anticipates like what happens down the line with acid. I don't know, maybe. Yeah, it's very acid, isn't it? Yeah. Number three, Japan, life in Tokyo. Now, that actually was recorded in 1979, but it was re-released and really became a sort of proper hit in the 1980s.

And because it was also David Sylvian's birthday, I thought I'd better get it in. The 80s. start in 79. I've always said that. Yeah, well, exactly. Yeah. Now, at this point, unfortunately, the Zoom link that they'd sent me cut out. Oh, no. And wouldn't let me back in again. So, I was just as soon as it's left hanging there. I think they probably had the list themselves anyway, but they'd have had to carry on without me. So there are five live listeners still wondering how that top five would have concluded. So, you know, if there's any sort of Venn diagram crossover between listeners to that show and listeners to this podcast, which, given the presence of Al Needham, you would hope there'll be a bit of a crossover. You certainly would. You certainly would. I think you should, you know, let them off their tenterhooks now, David. Anyway, number two, Human League, love action. Oh, yes. Not high enough.

Oof. Yeah, well, yeah. And number one, heaven 17, fascist groove thing. Oh, because it's got it's got to be done. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah. Simon, I've put aside an hour for your update.

It's been a while since you've been on chart music. Welcome back, sir. Oh, thank you. Tell us all the news. Yeah, I mean, I did chart music live, of course, but we don't do pop an interesting in that. do we? No, we don't.

But we all pop and interesting here. We're just there being pop and being interesting. Very much so. Yeah, one thing I've been doing this last few months, last year, really, I've been spending a lot of time in Ireland, promoting Curepedia and doing spellbound DJ sets quite often while I'm over there. The Cure were actually bigger in Ireland than they were in the UK. If you look at chart positions.

Were they now? Yeah, so it's quite a sort of rich seam of book buyers over there for me. When I go there in some ways, it feels like, like being in a more civilised country. Right. Or at least, you know, Ireland being a country that is moving in a more civilised direction, unlike the UK which is actively sliding backwards, just by virtue of still being in the EU. Right. I feel like this when I go to any EU country. I don't know if you get the same David and Al.

Definitely, yeah, whenever I go to Belgium. I just feel like I'm breathing fresher air when I'm there just because of that, you know. But also Ireland, it's also a fucking mad place in so many ways, you know. I love it, but it's insane. I was in this place called Kells for a literary festival. You might have heard of the book of Kells, this sort of lavishly illustrated medieval Bible. So I was there for a literary festival called Hinterland.

And in the space of one night over there, I met a victim of terrorism and a former terrorist. Fucking out. And this sort of thing just happens in Ireland. The former terrorist was actually Welsh and had been part of a failed plot to assassinate Prince Charles at his inauguration as Prince of Wales, Carnarvan Castle in the late 60s.

Oh, right. Then moved to Ireland to help the IRA. And she, it was a she, came along and danced to my DJ set. So, yeah. But the victim, yeah. Nice. Yeah. I mean, actually a really interesting person to talk to.

Yeah. The victim was actually a musician, a guy called Des Lee in his 70s, who was a former member of a group called the Miami Show Band. Oh. No way. Fucking out. Right. Oh, so you know about, okay, right. So hear me out here, right.

He was there promoting his book. My saxophone saved my life. And I met him over an Indian meal, which was bought for us by the organizers. They just sort of sat us down randomly with other people who were there at the festival. So I was sat with him. And when he told me his story, you know, he said, what's your book about? I told him. And I said, oh, what about yours?

So he told me his story. And my jaw hit the fucking floor. I felt this massive imposter syndrome for, my silly little book about the cure, you know? So first of all, the backstory, the culture of Irish show bands in itself, I think is really interesting. They were these massive cabaret groups.

They would typically have seven or eight members. They'd wear matching suits and they'd have dance routines or choreograph moves with their instruments. They'd mostly perform cover versions of international hits of the day because the big international stars rarely actually played in Ireland.

We're talking about the 60s and 70s being the heyday of these show bands. They're a bit like, I guess wedding bands or cruise ship bands, but they became household names in their own right. The membership would often change like the Sugar Babes, so there are no original members, but their name would just carry on.

So this one group, the Miami Show Band, was so big. They were nicknamed the Irish Beatles at the time. They absolutely mobbed everywhere they went. And they would play long sets late at night for people to dance to in ballrooms instead of, you know, DJs in nightclubs. People would go and see these bands and dance to that instead. And these bands, they played a mixed audiences,

as in Protestant and Catholic. in the north, which is hugely important, very ahead of its time. It was a way for people from both communities to mingle safely and let their hair down a bit. So the story is, late one night in 1975, this group, the Miami Show Band, were driving home from a gig in Northern Ireland when they were stopped by a British Army checkpoint, right? Nothing unusual about that. It happened all the time. They were asked to step out of the tour bus while soldiers went inside to do a search. suddenly there's this almighty explosion

the van is ripped to pieces and the musicians are thrown across a ditch into a field the soldiers were actually an Ulster Volunteer Force ambush although some of them were indeed off-duty soldiers such as the nature of things in Northern Ireland and they were trying to plant

a time bomb on the van to detonate when it reached the Republic it was supposed to provoke the Republic into closing the border that was the ultimate aim. And also, I guess, people in certain factions didn't like the idea of audiences from communities getting together and all that sort of stuff.

But the bomb went off early and it killed two of the terrorists instantly. The remaining terrorists chased the musicians across the field and opened fire killing three of them, including the lead singer Fran O'Toole who was being groomed as a kind of breakout solo star. He was being set up

as the next David Cassidy or something like that. Now, Des Lee, the guy I met who was the saxophonist but also the band leader he had to lie completely still in a ditch next to the corpse of one of his bandmates and pretend to be dead until the UVF had fucked off so like i said not many laughs no in this bit so des lee is telling me all this over a curry in kells and i'm i'm absolutely in shock you know this point i and also i'm ashamed that i haven't heard this story before i'm a fucking music journalist with an interest in the seven Why don't I know about the Miami-Shoban massacre? Why don't we? Why isn't it something that all British people know about? All Irish people do, you know, that's for sure. So when I got home, I pitched an article about it to The Guardian and I went deep into a research rabbit hole about the extent of collusion between the British state and loyalist terror groups. Much of it via a particular shady British intelligence officer called Robert Nyrak. In fact, when Ken Livingstone did it,

his maiden speech in the Commons in about 87, I think it was. He used that speech to name and shame Nyrak, who by then had been killed himself by Republicans, prompting Jeremy Paxman to open an interview by asking Livingston, why have you used your maiden speech to darken the name of a dead man? There's a Netflix documentary about it where you can see that clip, and Paxman comes out of it looking like an absolute cunt. Anyway, if you Google Simon Price, Guardian, Miami Show,

band massacre you'll find my article about it and um it's one of the most extraordinary subjects i've ever written about normally when when you tell the story about a band and the word tragedy or the word catastrophe gets bandied about it just means the manager nicked all their money or or someone's falling out with their mate or falling out with their brother this band actually got blown up by terrorists and you know it yeah it puts everything in perspective too yeah too much perspective of too much fucking, you know, finally a laugh, courtesy of spinal tap. But clearly it's a subject that you were aware of by your reaction. Well, yeah, and no, because, yeah, I do remember seeing it on the news,

and it did stick in my head, but only because of the name, you know, the Miami Show Band. Yeah. I was seven at the time when all that happened, and I thought, oh, my God, are they killing Americans now? Is it Casey and the Sunshine Band? But, yeah, you're right, Simon. When you were a kid growing up in the 70s,

and there's no one in your family involved in it, Northern Ireland would just wash over you on the news day after day. Yeah. Wasn't until later when I moved to London and ended up talking to people who lived there, that I realised, fucking out, I actually know 10% of what happened in Northern Ireland at best. Yeah, yeah, that's it. Yeah, you do. I mean, as a kid, you kind of, it's on the news and something bad's happened

and you just sort of tune it out. It becomes like the sounds of Charlie Brown's teacher, like, wow, wow, you know. It really does. As a kid in England, Northern Ireland might as well have been Vietnam, or Angola. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even when a bombing happened here, it was always in places like London or Birmingham,

which also might as well have been Angola. Yeah, I mean, the news is telling you something bad's happened, but you don't really have any kind of context for it in your brain. No. I've been getting obsessed with the whole subject of the troubles recently, you know, partly because I spent some time over there. And I'd be reading the book Killing Thatcher by Rory Carroll, which is about the Brighton bombing,

but also about the whole history of, of, you know, that I guess the Republican movement and Britain's involvement in Ireland and all of that. It's a phenomenal bit of work this book. It's a history book, but it's written like a thriller. It's a genuine page turner, which is rare, I would say, in the history genre. And also, I've been watching Blue Lights, I'll admit, you know, the BBC police drama series. Yeah, set in Belfast.

It's a bit like an Anglo-Irish version of The Wire. Not quite that good, but it's pretty good, you know. I wonder if this incident be better known if it'd been in the IRA that had, perpetrated it is one thing. Yes, certainly. The other thing, it's like, you know, you talk about like, you know, mixed crowds at these gigs and I was like, because I went to Bill Fass, and I was talking to a Catholic, it's like, how do you know who's Protestant Catholic?

I mean, if it was a kind of racial thing, an apartheid in South Africa and you've got a black and white audience, it's pretty obvious that it's mixed, but, you know, Protestant Catholics, it's just like, how do you say, oh, you just have to ask a few questions, which school did you go to and so like that? Yeah, yeah. And it's just like, I'll have to kind of wink it out that way in order to know whether they had to discriminate against them or whatever. But what I still know, I mean, I went to, it was 2000 when I visited to Belfast, and, of course, you know, the troubles were supposedly long over, drove out to the suburbs.

And in particular areas, the paving stones were either done in the tricolours or, you know, or the union flag. In this D. Marque, you know, which was Catholic, which was Protestant area, it was still a very, very strongly felt thing. And it was probably pretty bottomed down as well. They were very tattie where some of the sort of tenants flying above the houses. Did you tell this bloke sat next year that you fought in the Brits? Rip-Polp Wars, though, Simon. Yeah, right, exactly. You just, you do, you just feel like such a fucking idiot.

You feel so trivial, you know, talking to somebody who's experienced that stuff. But yeah, like that, that book Killing Thatcher, there are names in it. Like, he suddenly mentions Gerard Tewitt. And suddenly, I just had this flashback to, you know, being about 14 or whatever, and that name being on the news because he was an IRA guy who'd escaped from Brixton Prison. And it's just, at the time, you know, it was, again, it was just a wah, wah, a bit of the background, but suddenly it all gets coloured in, now you're

sort of grown up and taking interest in it. And yeah, in the meantime, my comparatively silly little book about the cure, Curepedia, this is my plug that I'm doing it, has come out in paperback.

The updated second edition, which includes the songs of a lost world album and all the sort of stuff since the first edition came out. There's also an Italian translation that's just come out. published by Arcana, yeah, which feels very exciting. And because my previous book about the Manix didn't get translated anywhere.

And there's a Spanish version coming from Sixto Piso earlier next year. So, yeah, chow and ola to my Italian and Spanish readers. There you go. As for me, chaps, well, Easter's been and gone. And, you know, it does my head in how much I like Easter in my old age. You know, because back in the day, Easter was just shaking Christmas, wasn't it? Yeah. You got a bit of chocolate.

and that was it. But nowadays, it's Christmas without all the depressing shit that comes with it. And it comes and goes without much fuss. Your only responsibility is to lob a bit of chocolate or some money at any kids in your life. And most importantly,

it's an indication that winter has finally fucked off. I'm not going to bang on about it as if I was Jacob Rees fucking mod. But no, fair go to you, Easter. Christ is risen. Christ is risen. So it occurred to me, chaps. You know, why doesn't the pop

will make a big deal out of the Easter number one like they do with Christmas. Oh yeah. So I did a bit of digging around and I have compiled the Easter number ones from 1970 to 1995. Would you mind? Go away. Nah, not bothered. No, yeah, go on. Hit the fucking music.

1970. Bridge over troubled water. Simon and Garfunkel. Yeah. Yeah. 1971. Hot love T-Rex. Incredible.

Yeah. 1972. Without You by Nielsen. I like it. 1973. Tie a yellow ribbon by Tony Orlando and Dawn. Fuck saying. February to August.

Ninety-four. Seasons in the Sun by Terry Jets. Oh my God. 1975. Bye-bye baby by the Bay City Rollers. Slight improvement. Yeah. Ninety-six.

Save your kisses for me by the Brotherhood of Man. 1977, knowing me, knowing you by Abba. And we're back on track. 1978, Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush. Ninety-nine, bright eyes by Art Garfunkel. Well, topical, I guess, rabbits and all that. 1980, working my way back to you by the Detroit Spinners. Yep, great song.

1981, making your mind up, Bugs Fizz. Oh, well, it's that Eurovision time a year, isn't it? That's why we would have had a man. Yeah, yeah. 1982, my camera never lies, Bugs Fizz. 1983, let's dance, David Bowie. 1984 Hello

Lionel Richard 185 Easy lover by Philip Bailey and Phil Collins Banger 1986 Living Doll by Cliff Richard and the young ones

1987 La Isla Benita by Madonna 1988 1988 by the Pet Shop Boys 1984. 1989, like a prayer by

Madonna. Oh, again, topical for Easter. Yeah. 1990. Vogue by Madonna. Focke know she's Madonna's the Cliff Richard of Easter. Or the lad baby, but so are

bucks spruce, really. Yeah. 1991, the one and only by Chesney Hawks. Ninety-two. Deeply dip air by right, said Fred.

1999 Young at Heart by the Bluebells 1994 everything changes by Take That And 1995 Back for good

By Take That And those were the Easter Number Ones I'm looking at some merchandising opportunities there Yes Pet Shop Boys obviously Could have brought out

Chocolate Hearts for Heart Yes Lionel Ritchie, a massive fucking sculpture of his head made in chocolate. Yes. Come on. I'd love to lick Lionel Rich's head at Easter. Even now, they would sell. Oh, God, yeah.

He couldn't make enough of them. You wouldn't want to give your kids a bright eyes Easter egg, though, would you? Fucking out. Like a lint bunny, but with his throat slit. Yes, yes. Fucking Combine Harvester or something. And a chocolate fist of pure emotion as well. Oh, yeah.

Anyway, boys, before we plunge the fist into this episode, you know what we need to do. first, we have to jump in all the pop craze youngsters who are doing work for the set by subscribing to us on Patreon. So let me give some thug love to the following brand new pop crazed patrons. In the $5 section we have Jack Pandemian, Stephen Page, Ian, Kenny Sanderson, Joseph Narwas, Alex Pee, Chris, not my good old. Evans C.W. Tim Ward, Chris Dale, Gary Mulcahy, James Langen, Johnny Holloway, Mike South, Lee Swanick, Mr. Dumi Dwyer,

Chris Kyle Jerry Hillman Ben Coleman Richard Gibson George White Jonathan Hewitt Jacqueline Hitchin James Holmes

Tommy Mac Jim Prentice Dan Henley Lucy McKenzie Ian Sullivan Sophie Merre Paul Gill Dylan Todd

Saboa Mark Cowan Guy Coulson Chris Jones Anthony Fairclough and Dave Nichols My God I love all of you

And so say all of us Yeah It's always nice when you hear a name in there That you know So high to Joseph Nars Yeah Not that we give a special shoutouts Just because you throw money at us

We love you all as I'll say And in the three dollar section We have Ed Norman's Steve Clark Ian Williamson Paul Nicol Chris Kyle Michelle Lyons

Wilks Sean and Daniel Tomen Oh you're fucking beautiful too Do you know that You are You're just like two dollars Less beautiful than the other guys

But still you know Still kind of hard And as always If I've missed you out You either joined after We made this recording Or I've mislaid your name So please give me a kick up this ass

kick this ass right here for a man if you will and I'll rectify it. Anyway, let's move on. David, let's discuss your pubic grooming regime, shall we? What the fuck? Do you have a tuppany all off or are you wild and untamed or do you go for a shape? How do you feel about the optical inch? I love... And what aftercare regime do you go through?

Well, we're all going. about. You see, what you just heard there, Pop Craze youngsters, it demeaned you, it demeaned David and it demeaned me. But that is what you'd have to listen to. Every fucking episode, if it wasn't for the Popcray's

Patrons, who've said, yes, chart music, we choose to invest in quality, handcrafted, oak-aged, artisan podcasting, because the world has heard enough horrific things this year without our fucking need of adding to it by

talking to his compatriots about the smoothness or other eyes of their ball bags. As long as Patrions there for us and the Pop Craig's Patrons who fill this G string will never have to do that sort of thing ever again. So give them a round of applause. That was a curveball, literally. Yeah, I was just about to spill the beans. And don't forget, the Pop Craig's Patreon people get every new episode in full with no Adverts days before the general population does, they get all the exclusive bonus content, and they get to rig the chop music top 10 compiled in association with Gallup. Are you ready for it, chaps?

Oh yeah. Hit the fucking music! We've said goodbye to Ghostface Scylla. No. Narada Brian Walden. I'll need him the dancing fool. And the cunt beast of bodmin, which means non-up, four down, two non-movers, three new entries and one re-entry. Down seven places to number 10, David Van Day's Dex's Midnight Runners.

New entry at number nine, the heavy music brigade. Last week's number five, this week's number eight. Provisional O'R UR A. No change at number seven for Bomber Dog. Hang on in there, Bermadog. A former number one drops four places to number six, the Birmingham Pistrol. Last week's number one drops four places to number five. Monster Munch Kempsex party.

Last week's number four, this week's number four, the Benton. Cunts a one fucking real. A re-entry at number three. For here comes a jizzle. Go on. Brilliant. And it's a new entry at number two this week for the paedophile information exchange horns,

which means... Britain's number one. This week's highest new entry, straight in at number one. Rod Hull and... emo Oh, what a shock boys, fucking hell

here comes Jism, they're back, they're back, they're on the right track. They're in a splash. So, boys, the new entries, the heavy music brigade. I was surprised they came in so low. I thought they'd do a lot better than that, but I think it's safe to say they do

exactly what it says on the tin, don't you think? Yeah, metal bands tend to do that, right back to, you know, Metallica, whatever, Ray Ron seal. The paed of them. File information exchange horns. What's their stick? I reckon they're one of those Bristol bands from the early 80s

with lots of trombones and saxophone, you know. And paedophiles. Yeah. And paedophiles. And Rod Hull and Emo, well, kind of self-explanatory, isn't it? Just Rod Hull standing there in Emo with his beak drooping down to Rod Hall's knees. Well, Emu made that single, didn't he, that time?

What? He did, he made a single, and you hear the voice of Eamu, and it's all very sad, and it's all about, you know. Emu hasn't got a voice. No, no, he does for this single, for this one-off. You know, he's given voice. What does he sound like? Very one, very emo, oddly enough.

You know, there's no one that's a friend quite like you. It's out there. It's got to be out there on YouTube. You're sure you're not thinking of Orville? It's a fever. No, no, no. I don't think so. David, think about what you're saying, mate.

Emu never said a single word ever. So, you know, this idea that he landed a recording contract, like he was fucking Lena Zavarone. No, mate. Not having it. That's what he does. I'm sorry about getting angry about this, but it goes against all the laws of the emuverse,

and to suggest otherwise, you're just fucking with our childhoods, David. I don't want to cast a Spurgeons, but maybe you're not emu expert. That's all I'm saying. Who'd win a fight, do you reckon? Who win a fight out of Orville and Emu? Oh, Emu all day, man, no question.

No, but the thing is, you know, he's a bit, obviously he's a fucking berserker, is Emu. But Orville's got heft on his side. You know, he's stocking. Orville's a Mardi baby, though. I suppose he is, but, you know, he's got a massive pin he could stab with. I know. Here's a fair fight.

Emu versus Bernie Clifton's ostrich. Oh, yeah, I mean, you take him out. It's a question of who's the hardest-looking bastard out of the men with the hands up the ass. It all depends on who wants it more. Yeah, by proxy, yeah. Poxy. So, this episode, Pop-craze youngsters, takes us all the way back. February the 16th,

1978. Oh, a vintage year for pop. And it's an opportunity to test out of theory I've been ruminating on for a wild chapter. You know that one where people say that everyone's favourite World Cup is the one nearest to your 10th birthday? Well, I'm starting to think

that 10 might just be the optimum age for getting the maximum enjoyment out of top of the pulse. Because think about it, by the age of 10, you've probably been watching it for a few years, but you're still getting that illicit thrill of watching something that's not a kids program.

Yet you feel you understand everything. More importantly, you're old enough to like pop music, but not yet old enough to pick sides. That shit starts to happen when you start secondary school, doesn't it? Absolutely right, yeah. So everything you're going to hear on top of the pops, you're going to give it a fair go, isn't it? I mean, by the end of 1978,

I'm going to finally become a consumer of pop singles. And in a few years, I will be watching Top of the Pops and dismissing at least 60% of what's on on site. But at this moment, when I'm nudging double digits, everything is up for grabs on top of the pops, don't you think? I'm going to start the bidding at 10 as the perfect age to enjoy an episode of Top of the Pops. Your thoughts, panel.

Yeah, well, I'm more or less the same age as you, Al. And this would absolutely have been the time I was becoming pop crazed. you know. Yes. And as you say, I was non-aligned. It was that, that beautiful time of innocence before I picked aside, you know. Yeah. There was a two-year period maybe when I was just buying and listening to brilliant music from any genre. Before, you know, Tuto and we talked about this before, came and got me and claimed me for scar. So I was listening to things like Abba, the BGs, E.O, Blondie, the Boomtown Rats, Bonie M, Saturday Night Fever, soundtrack. Later, later, this year of 78 would be the Greece soundtrack. There was a K-Tel album my granddad had called Midnight Hustle, so whatever was on that. I was suddenly becoming pop crazed and just opening myself up

to all of it without yet any idea of what's cool or what isn't or having to pick a team. So yeah, absolutely. David, what's the best stage to watch Top of the Pops for you? I think anywhere between 10 and 12, actually, certainly in my case. And actually,

it does fit because, well, actually, my favourite World Cup was the 1970 World Cup. I was a bit precocious when I was only seven. Oh, you remember. I hate you for remembering that. Yeah, it was in black and white. Did you see the moon landings and all that shit? Oh yeah. God, yeah. They trundled in the big telly into the assembly hall. Yeah, saw the moon landings, yeah.

The 1970 World Cup was the first one to be where you could see the matches live via satellite because in 66 it was obviously in the UK. 62, the technology wasn't there, so 70. And everything I watched some little black and white telly at the Golden Sand Shalais Park in Winssey. But even though we were watching it in black and white,

everything had a kind of glow about it. It felt colourful somehow. And of course, you had that commentary that felt like, you know, it was being phoned in. Yeah. And it gave that sense of distance that you don't get anymore. I mean, everywhere, it might as well be in Bolton now. So it does rebut your theory a little bit.

But then again, I should say, of course, this was the 1970 World Cup. Yeah. Which is probably the greatest World Cup of all time. And I really did like the 1974 World Cup. And that probably been my second favourite. So, yeah. I did love the 78 World Cup. You know, I really did.

I bought the theme tune, which is, you know, the Andrew Lloyd Webber when the BBC one. Yeah, and yeah, just all the ticker tape. And again, it was still that kind of crackly image and the sort of phoned in commentary, Mario Kempes and all that kind of stuff. And of course, now as an adult, I know how horrifically corrupt that World Cup was and all the kind of fascism that lay in the background. But at the time, it just, it was fantastic. Not like these days. No, no. Yeah, exactly. It's all beautiful now. Very transparent, isn't it? Lovely Qatar, lovely USA. Of course, by 1978 World Cup, I was in my kind of good... Well, of course, it's just 22 men kicking a ball around, didn't it? Oh, yeah. Oh, no. I was suddenly getting all superior about football. So I didn't watch a lot of it, though I did manage to catch the Archie Gemmel goal.

How long did that last? Because I spent about 10 years off football for similar reasons. How long did you last before you sort of returned to the fold? I think I kind of grew up, because 1979, I was cheering like a goon when Alan Sunderland scored the winner against 919. It's like running around the back garden screaming at neighbours and stuff What are you doing in the garden? Yeah, Sunland did it in 79

Villa did it in 81 What is it? Yeah, that's a pub quiz question But it really helps, doesn't it Simon, when you become 10 in 1978 when virtually all musical life is on display in the charts And this episode of Top of the Pops

that we're going to eventually get into Features practically everything What was on offer in that fable year Bar Reggae. Yeah. It's a good episode this one, isn't it? Astonishing, I've got to say, yeah. We're in for a treat.

So let's not fanny about, onward! In the news, Ian Smith announces that Rhodesia will allow black people to vote by 1980. They go on to use that vote to knob off Ian Smith and become Zimbabwe. The Conservative Party have suddenly racked up an 11-point lead. in the opinion polls after being slightly behind Labour last month three weeks after Margaret Thatcher started banging on about immigration

alien culture, blah blah well, talking of racist cunts the government has banned Bill Wilkinson, the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan from entering the country after he announced he was coming in undercover to set up a branch in Coventry.

In the wake of the disdainting. discovery of the eighth victim of the Yorkshire Ripper, West Yorkshire police have urged the wives and girlfriends of impotent men to get in touch. They passed on a dossier to three independent psychiatrists, who all concluded that the Ripper can only achieve climax while committing murder, and invites women to dial a free phone line and record their partner's sex problems. The Daily Mirror have found a new punk band to be upset, by the pretty paedophiles who have put out an EP called Rape,

which according to its distributor's lightning records, has already sold its complete stock to independent record shops around the UK. However, the mirror doesn't reckon it. It will prove to be a big disappointment to the child porn people. It is loud, raucous, and the lyrics are barely audible. Oh, paedophiles, man. When will you get the records that cater to your needs? Wasn't that someone who went on to be famous under a different name?

I have to look into that. Well, after doing my research, I could confirm that the mirror fucked it up because the band were called Rape. The EP is called Pretty Peter Files. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And they later changed their name to the cuddly toys. Right. So there we go.

Fagely remember that, yeah. ITN have announced what they claimed to be their first female newscaster, Anna Ford, who has been poached from the beach. BBC, where she worked on Man Alive and Tomorrow's World. She'll be starting on the news at one, but is rapidly promoted to news at 10. And no, she isn't the first. That was Barbara Mandel, who did the midday news in 1955. Of course.

It's been announced that Mull of Kintyre by Wings, currently tumbling down the charts at number 12, and therefore not on this episode. So don't panic Pop Crazy youngsters. just become the biggest selling single of all time in the UK. You're surping she loves you by the Beatles and is expected to sell its two millionth copair sometime next week. Muhammad Ali has sensationally lost the World Heavyweight Championship to Leon Spinks on points in Las Vegas. Spinks, 12 years younger than Ali, had only fought seven professional bouts beforehand, and would lose the title back to our lease seven months later.

I was gutted. Gordon McQueen has become the first half a million player in British football. After Man United gave Leeds United the requisite 1,000 monkeys for the Scottish defender, even though he said in Shoot magazine a fortnight ago that he would never leave Ellen wrote. Liar, Quisling. Liverpool are through to the League Cup semi-finals after. dispatching Arsenal. No.

But all missed rolling in from the Trent last night means that a second leg of the other semi between Forest and Leeds has been put back to next week. And we fucking batter them. Yes. And we beat Liverpool. Yes!

You wouldn't get that happening now, would you? Forest battering Liverpool. No. But the big news this week, Rod Stewart, wears women's knickers. Dee Harrington, who was

Rod's girlfriend for the first off of the 70s has told all to the Sunday mirror, including the moment they met. Quote, at the party, Rod was wearing a white suit and looked like an advert for Omo. One girl

after another kept throwing herself at him. Then I became aware that he was staring at me. We went to bed that night, but he fell asleep. When we got dressed, Rod put on my white knickers.

It was a symbol of our closeness, he said. Although I later found that he wore women's knickers all the time. He likes the softness against his skin. Oh, Rod, you dirty bastard. I miss Omo. On the cover of Melody Maker this week, David Bowie. He's given an exclusive interview, and the maker has devoted eight pages to it.

On the cover of sounds, gay advert. On the cover of Record Mirror, Reckless Eric. The number one LP in the country at the moment is the album by Abba. Over in America, the number one single is staying alive by the Bee Gees. And the number one LP is the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. So, boys, what were you doing in February of 1978? Can I just say some in? Going back to what you've just mentioned, Ali versus Spinks, right?

Heavyweight Championship of the World. I noticed that when I was going through the TV schedules for this day. It was on BBC One. I mean, world title bouts were broadcast free to air, you know? I have an idea that it was broadcast the day after. The day after. But even so, you've got to see it. Everyone had an opinion as well.

Kids from bad homes were allowed to stay up late and watch it, you know. And Spinks was considered the baddie, wasn't he, just because he wasn't Ali, you know. He was 11 years younger, so, I mean, he won, and it was a shock result, I guess. But he used to get this kind of favouritism of... I mean, I think David's spoken before about the way in which some of Ali's opponents were almost sort of bestialised by the press. George Foreman was treated as being subhuman in some way, just because I guess he wasn't as kind of media-friendly and as sort of articulate and witty as Ali. And sadly, bestialised by Ali as well. I mean, poor old Joe Frazier, the gorilla in Manira and all that.

Yeah, all of that, absolutely. It's strange, really, Ali was a lot more respectful to his white opponents. When he did this kind of demeaning thing, it was always to his black opponents, which is very odd, really. Leon Spinks, apparently, this was his eighth professional fight, which is the shortest rise in history through the ranks, you know, to be the world champion.

But he had a terrible doubtful, didn't he? He became a wrestler for a short while. And then he ended up as a janitor at McDonald's and at the YMCA. And he was slur in his speech as a result of, boxing induced brain shrinkage. It's all pretty sad. But yeah, I remember that. Just seeing that name Leon Spinks, it's like, oh my God, I'm back there in that year. It was, it's so specific to that, you know, that week in 1978, isn't it? So what were you doing, Simon? So, 978, yeah, I am 10 years old, the big 1-0, 10, 1-0. I guess when you hit double figures, you've got to take time out to look around and ask yourself some pretty serious questions. Am I satisfied? Where am I going? What do I, what do I? want. Yeah, if you know, you know. Yeah, so, your seventh life crisis. Me and my mum, we had not long moved to Porth Carey Road in Barry, having left the house in Park Crescent where I've told the story, the maggots fell on my head. Oh. Yeah, so left that house of horror behind. This might

sound weird, right, but if Porth Carey Road, it felt like a cooler street. It wasn't posher by any means. But a bunch of my friends from school lived there, including Andrew the Metler, who I've talked about a lot, who live next store. My mate Sue, who sadly died last year, and I was one of the paul... I was one of the pallbearers carrying her amazingly cool leopard print coffin. When I moved to Port Cary Road, me and Sue and Andrew and a few others would all play football on a little concrete pitch in a nearby park called Chickenwood. The centre circle was created by bonfires that had been built by the local gang, the Bellites. Oh, the Bellites, yeah.

Yeah, the Bellites, yeah. We formed a five-a-side team called Lightning FC, because we all had the same cheap black trainers with a yellow lightning flash on the side, which we got from a, or our mum's or whatever, got from a shoe shop on Holton Road. I would kill for a pair of those now. I just remember them looking really cool. And we formed a gang called the YOC, which stood for Young Osprey Crusaders, right? Sue had joined the young ornithologists club

and she had these badges with YOC on it with a picture of a bird of prey. So in 1978, me and Sue were in three spring, which was the name of our class at Romley Junior School, which was right at the top of Barry. Barry's basically one massive hill from the sea upwards, right? And all the classes were named after the seasons. We were also broken up into houses for competing in sport

and poetry and that kind of stuff, all of which are named after Welsh saints, Barak, Cadduk, Ichted and Dovern. I was in Barak, which was the best. Nobody wanted to be in Dovern. That was for losers. Our classroom was in what was known as a terrapin. It was a sort of porter cabin outside the main

red brick Victorian school building. And I was starting to get an inkling of the brutality that might lie ahead. The first year of the comprehensive school was in a building next door and the kids from that would sometimes get paraded past us at the top of a steep grassy bank. Terrifying, aren't they?

I once saw Mr. Pierce, the head of that school, pick a kid up by his ear for stepping out of line, picked him off the ground by his ear and threw him down the bank by his fucking ear. I remember years later, when I was grown up, my granddad introducing me to Mr. Pierce, who turned out was a mate of my granddad's from the golf club, and my granddad had no idea of, you know, brutality that I'd witnessed.

I could not shake that cunt's hand. I couldn't do it. I think my granddad thought I was being rude, but I could not do that. But being 10 in 1978, mostly, I remember it as a fun time. I mean, okay, time of Chinese burns and stink bombs,

a sort of low-level nastiness. But one of our teachers, Mr. Thomas, right, he was a Second World War veteran. I don't know if you had any of these at your school. He'd served in the Far East. I don't think he had any formal teaching qualifications, but they apparently gave loads of teaching jobs to army veterans coming back from the war, right? And he was very easily distracted.

If he was giving us a boring lesson, all you had to do was to say, sir, tell us about the war, right? And he'd go off on it. He'd start recounting these lurid, horrific tales of Japanese prisoner of war camps, which would make the girls cry. I don't want to gender it, but the fact is those who cried were girls, it's just a fact. Or he'd pick up a piece of chalk and he'd draw this incredible. incredibly detailed picture of a warship on the blackboard from memory.

Wow. And we just sit there and think, oh, it's better than learning maths or whatever, you know. Yeah. Another thing that used to happen in those terrapins in three spring was that two kids would have to stay behind every day and put the chairs up on the desks so the cleaners could get around afterwards, you know. So one day it was me on chair duty and a new girl who I'm going to call Jenny because that was her name.

We were in the middle of putting the chairs up. And Jenny turned to me and blurted out, Simon, I adore you. Now, the word adore seemed weird for a 10-year-old, like it was learned from a story or a film or something. But I was dumbstruck by being told this and absolutely terrified. So I said nothing and I literally ran away. I ran home. It was never spoken of again.

Until now. Yeah, yeah. That set the course for my teenage years. Now I look back. Running away. It just occurs to me, you know, you're talking about that teacher as at Mr. Pierce, that back in the late 70s, there was so much more violence than there is today in certain places,

like in the street, among friends, in homes, in schools. At gigs, gigs were really, really shockingly violent. Yeah, I'm not saying that violence has been eliminated from society, I think it's been displaced, but there was violence back then in places and among people where today there is virtually no violence or much, much less violence. Yeah, absolutely. You know when this girl said I adored, did she say it in a well,

Saxon. I guess so. It's had a bit like Gladys Pugh in... Oh my God. And you were Geoffrey Fairbrother. Oh my God. That is exactly the dynamic. Yes. Yes. Oh. Bless. David. I ran about this time. I was literally about days away from being born again, as it were. You know, I was born in 1962, but I was born again in 1978. So there were two or three kind of epiphanies, really. One, I think, was a sort of slow-burning one. It was a slight... I was in the fourth form at a grammar school. David of the fourth form. That's right.

It was part of a rite of passage among boys my age, especially at grammar schools, that albums by people like Led Zeppelin and Genesis were circulated and this was your kind of initiation into kind of more mature, more revolved, proper music. And I must say, I did kind of buy into that. Were you ahead?

Not quite, no. Well, they're like fragments of doobies in the gateful sea. Yeah, no, no. I couldn't quite get deep down because simultaneously, about this time, I went to Schofields in Leeds, which is a department store, which actually is no longer open. And thankfully, my mum used to work at the job centre in Cross Gates near Leeds.

She told me that they'd once rung and said that they didn't want any black applicants for jobs there. Oh, my God. So fuck off Schofields anyway. I didn't realize this at the time, because my mum kept it under her hat. But I bought this paperback book by a guy called James Haskin, I think it was, about Stevie Wonder, who was out always light. And then he just became a real hero of mine. And again, I was initiated into this idea of like discernment. The other thing was I started reading Melody Maker, the music press.

And it was full of very strong opinions about good and bad music. And so, yes, I finally realised that there was excellent music made by Stevie Wonder, made by Genesis. And then there was mindless commercial pat for the kind of gullible matters, of which I wasn't one. Certainly not. And this was reinforced. I read Ray Coleman, who castigated. the Brotherhood of Man. Oh.

And he said that they wrote banal little ditties for unthinking people. And I was just punching a year. Yes, right. That man don't care who he hurts. Exactly. Yeah. So that's where my head was at at the time. But I was actually just, actually, I was about days away from buying this Stevie Wonderbook.

And days away from actually getting my first edition of Melody Maker. And I felt vindicated and transformed. And it kind of set me on the road, really. Yeah. I know for a fact that I did not. see this episode of Top of the Pops, which would have broken my art, because it was half term, so as

my non-or and grandpas as usual, and they didn't yet have a portable upstairs and they certainly weren't Top of the Pops people, but I do remember being allowed to stop up and watch the Ali Spinks fight, and my grandpa who didn't like Ali Tutting all the way through it, saying it was

rigged and a fix, and all you wait, a few months time, he'll fight him again and he win, and lo and behold, he did at one. So, yeah, My grandpa was right on that. So I can guarantee, while this is on, I'm hunched over a Sabutio pitch in front of the telly in the living room

with some other shit on, trying not to think of the pop thrills I was missing out on. So yeah, this was practically a new episode to me, this one. Yeah. So chaps, shall we do what we always do round about this time and nip back into the chart music crap room, rip open a few cardboard boxes,

and extract an issue of the music press from this very week. Yep, yes, please. So this time I've gone for the NME, February the 18th, 1978. On the cover, Bob Marley, looking on sideways with a very impressive tam, making him look like a stamp. In the news, as is the style of the music press in the 70s, the news section is almost exclusively dedicated to tour announcements. So prepare for Elvis Costello, Ian Jure.

and the blockheads, Blue Oyster Coults, Billy Joel, Chris Christopherson and Rita Coolidge, and Manfred Mann's Earth Band to take rock and roll chaos to the streets. Capical Radio have received a spate of phone calls from people claiming to be from the National Front, demanding that they stop reggae, with the latest one threatening to stab DJs on the station. Fuck. Only one call has made the airwaves so far. when someone rang up Michael Aspel Swap Shop and demanded he stopped playing, quote, Woggy music.

One DJ, Dave Cash, informed his listeners that he'd have one such call 10 minutes before he went on the year, but said he refused to be intimidated and immediately played Wycott We Live Together by Timmy Thomas. When contacted by the NME, an NF spokesman denied they had anything to do with it and then got all shirt air and said, you're a moron before slamming the phone down. But as the article points out, when National Front Leader Martin Webster was interviewed by black music last year, he said that reggae was for degenerates and monkeys.

The Tom Robinson band had been pilloried by the tabloids for causing a riot at the W.H. Smith's in Charing Cross Station. According to the news of the world, Robinson interrupted his band's performance as a demo on behalf of gay news in Trafalgar Square to slag off the stationary Emporium for banning the magazine after they printed a poem about a Roman centurion bombing Jesus, which led to a group of protesters going over there afterwards to have a bit of a shout and throw some newspapers around.

Elton John and Rod Stewart have filmed up plans for a movie, starring themselves, playing themselves. The film, under the working title Jetlag, will feature music and a strong comedy element. And they've already scoped out a location in Rio de Janeiro and intend to commence shooting at the end of the year. Obviously, that doesn't happen. And I must say, thank fuck.

Over in the gossip page teasers, we learn that Sid Vicious and his paramour Nancy Spungian are up before the beak for being caught in possession of speed, with Sid's lawyer claiming that the quantity in question was the smallest anyone in the UK has been charged over. In other ex-pistols news, rumours abound that Malcolm McLaren is making plans to jet off to Rio to scout a replacement frontman, Ronnie Biggs, while Johnny Rotten is still in Jamaica and has been seen nipping in and out of studios with assorted musicians. The enemy speculates a reggae solo LP

But he's actually scouting on behalf of Richard Branson To sign up acts for Virgin's frontline label A John Leiden reggae album, David Would you have partaken? Oh, absolutely. There was also rumour around this time That he's going to be the new lead singer for Cannes. Right.

Yeah, there was just this little interim period You know, before public him in she gets up and running You know, fill in that little void, yeah. And in the wake of the separation of Eich and Tina Turner, We learned that their former Marital Home featured a guitar-shaped dining table and a telly made of imitation ivory that shaped like a whale, which led to a visitor exclaiming, You mean you spent $70,000 at Woolworths?

In the interview section, well, Phil McNeil nips up to Edinburgh to follow a bandies heard loads about, and is determined to dislike because they sound too good to be true. XTC. We learned that Andy Partridge took up the guitar in the late 60s when the kids at school pointed out he was the dead spit of Peter Talk, which led to him ordering his mam in the kitchen when the monkeys came on

so he could try to play along with them. Barry Andrews invited all three of his aunties to their gig at the Croydon Greyhound and isn't allowed to forget about it by the other members, and they've been banned from performing their new single Statue of Libertair on three different kids' TV shows for the lyric, I sailed beneath her skirt. McNeil comes away absolutely beguiled, informing the readership that they simply must assemble

at the Lyceum next week to see them share the bill with wire. Charles Shaw Murray hies himself to a hotel in Bayswater to reason with Bob Marley, who is currently in London to get away from being assassinated in his own country, and put together his next O.P. Kaya. After bagging a cassette tape featuring four new tracks earlier that morning, he learns that Molly has dipped into his back catalogue and re-recorded some of his late 60s stuff.

And when he asks why, he's told, what really happen is that we have all these songs and rehearse them, so we record them so we can get them off our heads and think about new songs. Some of them really mean a lot to me, but they never really get justice in production, so if you don't do them over, they lost. When he's asked about how he manages such a prodigious workload when he's caning it all the time,

he advises the youth that they shouldn't try to emulate him. You should smoke just a little bit when you feel like a drawer. It shouldn't get to where you smoke until you drop on the ground. That's not right. When they get to the subject of politics, Murray tells Marley that Norman Mailer believes that war should be settled with the leaders of disputing countries going into single-person combat, which leads to a discussion about a title bout between Jimmy Carter and Idi Armin that Murray sadly fails to relate. The interview ends with Murray giving Marley a stiff records promotional pen with a genuine shredded $2,000 bill inside it,

and Marley offering Murray a bang on his spliff. and gets him to play his guitar while they have a bit of a sing-song after they're suitably came. And that is why you want to be a music journalist in the first place, isn't it? What a fucking pub, brag, that was playing. Have you ever had a sing-along with the pop star chaps? Seal once sang to me. It was a song inspired by the time when that whale went astray and, like, fetched up in the Thames. Oh, yeah.

And he just found it all fearfully poignant, and he wrote a song about it. But he couldn't, he felt he couldn't quite, I'll teach him. I'll just sing it to you. And he just belted out this chorus. You just want to cry out loud. Cry out loud. I see a little red needle on my same recorder kind of batting against the side of the thing. And it was just like, you know, the plasters falling from the ceiling. But so, yes, I've been sung at. And, yeah, it was just, okay, well, well, no, yeah. Take your point. Ice tea wrapped into my face wood. Oh, yeah. I went over to L.A. and went up to his amazing house. house up in the Hollywood Hills, which had a shad pile carpet that was deeper than the grass on

my lawn until about three weeks ago. And he had a little home studio. He took me down there, sat me down on the sort of sofa and press his play on some track. And he just, it's just me and him there. And he's just like rapping right into my face. And I just did know what to do. It's bad enough when you sat there. Like, you know, quite often if you're a journalist, you get taken to an album playback and you sat in the record company office and you have to sort of awkwardly, like, nod your head and tap your foot while the artist and or their PR looks expectantly at you. But he's fucking delivering this rap directly into my face from his new album, which is a bit of a weird one.

Another time Lady Gaga started playing a load of tracks that had never been released before and singing them at me and various other journalists backstage at the O2. But the one I really remember more than any other is the Human League. The first time I went to interview the Human League, it was in a hotel in Kensington. and obviously it was the 90s by this point they were about to have their comeback would tell me when and all of that but I'd grown up absolutely worshipping the human league I walk into the hotel lobby Phil Oakey sees me

and before even saying hello he goes you sure make me feel like loving you and I'm like what and he goes you sure make me feel like loving you And I just look really puzzled And he said, who is that? I've heard that on the radio. And I'm like, oh, right, right, yeah, yeah.

And it really freaked me out. What's it serious? By? Strike. Oh, who's it by? No, it's you sure do by Strike, isn't it? Yeah. Oh, right.

But I don't know if it's sample from something else. I know the song very well. I can't remember who is. Serious by Donna Allen. Yes. Oh, right, there we go. That'll be where they got it from. Yeah, yeah.

Just going back to that Charles Charmurray interview, I actually read that piece two or three months ago as part of the researcher of the thing that I'm doing. And there is actually a little blinker who misses it, but in the middle way he makes some small talk to Charles Sean Murray with Mali. He asked him how his foot is, because he's just had an operation on his big toe to remove assists. And he just says, Marley just says, yeah, I play some football,

I get into a hurting. Then make a big thing about it. And then she says, brackets, giggles. It's really sad. It's just one thing about this year, which no one knows what's coming. Because all the sort of this time is Africa must be free by 1983, and they didn't know that Bob Marley's going to be gone by 1981.

Yeah. Yes, it's another bright. New, young, Zeste, Pepe, Zappa, clean, boring, Bay City Rollery, standard issue, power pute group, screams the headline of Steve Clark's interview with Chris Turner, frontman of the South End band Tonight, whose debut single drummer man is currently marching along at number 15 in the hit parade. After he moans that they can't get a gig in their hometown, with the local Polly knocking them back for being too commercial, and the local paper refusing to write about them,

guitarist Philip Chambon points out that drummer man was a reaction to what Clark calls the Ramalama Dol Q Brigade's obsession with making social comment. When asked if they're either of the two new genres at the music press are currently putting about, Thames Beat or Power Pop, they immediately shut down the Thames Beat label because beat music is too superficial.

And while they played at the power pop package at the Nashville last week, they wish they hadn't, even though the name kind of suits them. It's got the power of the new wave. As labels go, it's pretty apt for us. Fucking drummer man was a big tune at Westlade Junior School, let me tell you that. Steve Walsh finds himself in the Entertainment's Hall of Bristol University to witness the pop group playing a benefit for Friends of the Earth and is reminded of Antonin Arto's concept of theatre

that the performance of a play should be like a visit to the dentist, an experience that doesn't kill you, but you will experience feelings of discomfort and anxiety. After the kids have been suitably rocked and rolled all night long, he has to sit down with them and discovers a band who style themselves as individualists who wish to inspire people to provide some form of reorientation,

to be catalytic in a reaction that releases the child in man, and create something which is good and evil at the same time. If 1978 means making a choice between banal fun time excesses of power pop, and something as genuinely aspiring as the pop group that I know what camp I'll align myself with, concludes Walsh. After all, why bother about fun when you can doubt, without moving to the beatniks of tomorrow. Well, you're on your own there, mate.

Yeah, she kind of is, although, you know, the pop route were the future. Nick Kent gets a preview of a film that'll be opening next week at the Odeon on Bloomsbury Square, Derek Jarman's Jubilee. He notes that while American cinema companies are fighting for distribution rights, and early reviews have been glowing, including one from Variety, which claims it's the best British film of the past 10 years, he sees Jubilee, which is set six years into the future and depicts London as an anarchy-ridden hellscape

where a gang of spunky ladies kill Wayne County and castrate a policeman as an airing of the worst and most predictable excesses of punk. There's something potentially dangerous at work here when one considers that this is to be punk's great statement. It's first and possibly only, big film and that its frankly sensationalist bent

will more than likely move the straight media to condemn the film and provided with a notoriety that will attract a sizable audience only too willing to use Jubilee's grim visions as a perfect argument against punk and then God knows what'll happen

I mean six years after this we got Howard Jones and Nick Kirshore I don't that was mentioned Brian Case reminisces about how mint it was to be part of the original wave of Ted. Andy Gill walks us through the mythology of the residents and Bob Woffenden

checks in on Don McLean. But the enemy don't bother to send a photographer because he's wearing the same double denim rigout he had on when he did a photo shoot for them in 1974. Oh, Americans do catch up.

Single reviews. In the chair this week is Bob Edmunds, who has not won. Not two, but three singles of the week. First up, I love the sound of Breaking Glass by Nick Lowe. Basher may not have helped poor Graham Parker's last shot at Stardom with his bombastic production, but there is no lack of finesse when it comes to his own product. This sounds remarkably like the song to transfer his cult reputation into ready cash.

Having spent many months being gobed on in all parts of these islands, the human spittoons deserve some kind of reward for their sacrifice. And as with Bashar, this could be the one to do it. But at what expense? Asked Edmunds of the Clash and their latest offering, Clash City Rockers. Sure, they've retained their punkish mannerisms, but there appears to be harmonies in amongst the braying that owe not a little to the Beatles.

But it's no good speaking to the common man if the common man isn't putting his hand in his wallet. Watch out for this act on top of the pops. They're going to be bigger than darts. Tony Beatlemania hasn't bitten the dust yet, clearly. Depending on your point of view, it's either a big sell-out or an exquisite hybrid. From here, it sounds like a classic love song.

Says Edmunds of, is this love by Bob Marley and the Whalers. His least ethnic, least political, least mystical songs since Stir It Up. If Marley were Dylan, this would be a cut from Nashville Skyline and a good omen for the forthcoming album. A pity, though, that Marley looks and dances like Max Wall when he's on top of the pops. But it's a coat down for That's Too Bad,

the debut single by Tubeway Army. Feeble Johnny Rotten imitator gabbles indistinctly over the day-tripper riff should have never got past the ticket collector. Oh dear. And that's surely the last we'll hear of them. Yeah. Almost ten years after the humble bums,

Jerry Rafferty still does the tastiest McCartney pastiche around. But despite its class, this cuts unlikely to the... score, says Edmunds of Baker Street. Never make predictions. It's chiefly notable for a batch of deluxe sax solos that replace the Hawks. Fucking out. Yeah, called by Bob Holness.

Fuck's sake. Kiss are still failing to make any kind of dent in the UK, and their latest single, Rocket Ride, isn't going to change that, with lyrics that suggest the rocketing question might just, be a man's willy. Frankly, this rocket sounds like it's exploded before he got off the launch pad.

A common problem amongst sexist pigs. The musical fan of the day, Power Pop, is in full effect on the singles page, but Edmonds does not reckon it in the slightest. Imagine Ted Nugent playing

Mersey Beat and you get the gist, he says of Too Old Too Soon by Pezband. I like sport by the Stukas is the sound of a beat group roughly in the style of Freddy and the Dreamers and the exile are clash disciples who appear to be boasting that they're the real people

in their single called the real people but this takes some believing. You got that right. Punk is still spraying its musk upon the record shops of the island but Edmunds gives it all the shortest of shrift Know your product by the Saints is good advice, but not followed here. Striker, the first and only single by the Northern Irish band Midnight Cruiser,

fails to make it clear if they're singing about football or industry, but he has a soft spot for I'm a flasher by the Dougie Briggs band. Their follow-up say last year's punk rocking granite fucking out. Sadly chaps, unlike Melody Maker, they skip over the real big punk release of the week. The double A side, Daddy is my pusher, daddy is my pimp, and we're so glad Elvis is dead by the Amsterdam band Tits. I remember that.

Do you remember Tits, David? I do, yeah. Yeah, we're so glad Elvis is dead. We're so glad Elvis is dead. He's such a dick! I'm going straight on discogs. Most of those lyrics are a bit indiscard. because A, their Dutch and B is punk,

but I have a feeling that they have a little bit of a go at Danny Mirror at the end for Lick and Pickery. Yeah, did they ever meet Danny Mirror? Was there a fight? Yeah. And finally, there's a cover of uptown top ranking by Flash, who performs the song in a Wurzel style and fashion, with the lyrics alluding to sexual harassment on the streets

because, hey, it's 1978. This send-up puts the J-E-Stylop. author in ranking, says Edmunds. Fucking up, have you heard that? Oh, don't. Yeah. LP reviews. Top billing this week goes to the most prolific band in music history,

various artists, and the LP live stiffs, a memento of last year's gig at the Lyceum by Nick Lowe, Dave Edmunds, Reckless Eric, Larry Wallace, Elvis Costello in the Attractions, and Ian Juryan the Blockhead. Neil Spencer, who was there that night, promises to treasure it forever, pointing out that the properly good stuff is on side too, which belongs to Jury and Costello,

and is a brilliant reminder of their tall, long battle for supremacy. Jury stole the show on the night, but Costello steals the album, with an almost arrogant affirmation that the man is one of the most compelling live performers we have. The other live LP of the week, waiting for Columbus by Little Feet, is not reckoned in the slightest by poor Rambale. When Feet hit their stride, there isn't an entity that comes anywhere near close to the high-tensile cakewalk strut and dirty rock and roll they kick up. But one of the saddest sights at the rainbow last year was Richie Haywood falling asleep over his drum kit. But not half as sad as Lyle George.

listlessly delivering as little as he could get away with, all of which is captured in unfortunate confirmation and full de-chimessence here. If the Berlin Walling holidays in the sun really is the gap between the stage and the fans, as Rotten declared at the Uxbridge Pistols gig last year, then Sham 69 are currently closer than any other band to crossing it, says Adrian Frills of the debut LP from the Christian

need'em of punk and his mates. Tell us the truth. Although he started fretting when he learned that one side was live, thrills feels the gamble has paid off. This is audience participation captured like nothing since the live at the Roxy LP.

It's all there, including inevitably, the pathetic all-boys-together gang mentality, so prevalent in some sections of the sham audience. sham 69 are derivative In fact most of the songs are not particularly memorable

But sham deliver with an intensity and conviction Which sets them apart from the new wave flotsam They really do communicate Never mind the suits Ties and plastic ultra-bright smiles Here's the passion and anger of a kid With one hell of a chip on his shoulder Fucking hell

Sham really was going to be the next big thing after the pistols, weren't they? Oh, totally, yeah. They were everywhere that year. They even did the thing with Steve Hillage on stage, you know, to show that, like, punks and divies could be united, yeah. So they did a kind of co-presentant on stage, yeah.

Chimmy Percy also went down to the South Coast and did a kind of half-and-a-half scarf type thing with a Southampton scarf. What? tied to a Portsmouth scarf. No. Set off a massive riot. So kids are united, you know.

Oh, Matt, so he started the fucking half-and-half scarf. Well, yeah. Scum, crates. Oh, shame on him. But, of course, when he did the thing with Hillage, you know, the kids are United, you know, obviously there they are. And then some big fat old punk comes on stage and says,

anyone people just don't like that, they can fuck off. But it's a coat down for squeeze by squeeze. The trouble with this debut is that it's so nondescript. The songs don't bounce out of the grooves. They seem to crawl reluctantly off the turntable, says Kim Day. this. Squeeze a good musicians and probably wonderful

human beings. I thought I'd enjoy this album and was as disappointed with it as they will be with this review. Good album, that, produced by John Cale. Yeah. It's good stuff. Yeah, yeah. Eric Burden is back with his first

solo LP, Survivor. But Tony Stewart wonders if it would have been better to put him out of his misery. In many respects, Survivor, is a story of this journey's experiences. Erratic, worthwhile, worthless, dull, but sometimes exciting. It is not the albumeric burden is capable of making.

Hopefully, that's the next one. This is, frankly, a pretty miserable failure on almost every level, says Nick Kent of what more could you want from live by the tubes. Laying my cards on the table, I should state that their gig I witnessed last November at the Hammersmith-Odion was arguably the most overrated and most boring rock show of the year. I preferred to put the gig's shortcomings down to it being an off-night, and yet here I am three months later, and it sounds exactly like the same miserably routine show that I saw.

Steve Clark has lumped together excitable boy by Warren Zeven, and all this and heaven too by Andrew Gold, as they're both Californian, they're both on asylum, and they both work with Linda Ronstadt. But while he dumps Zeven's effort as almost entirely excellent, he thinks Gold's effort is his least inspired to date, although he does like Never Let Us Slip Away.

Even though a long past Christmas, the compilation LPs are still piling in. Olivia Newton-John draws a line under her pre-Greece career with greatest hits, but Bob Edmunds hates it, stating, her voice is so lacking in emotion, she makes Lou Reed sound hysterical. Meanwhile, the Grateful Dead have picked the worst time possible to put out what a long, strange trip it's been in the UK, a journey which has ended with Nick Kent putting the boot in.

Really, this is absolutely unpalatable garbage. It's perplexing to wonder just exactly who this album is aimed at. Deadheads will have most, if not all, of the tracks already, and we'll note the crass inferiority of this effort. An innocence be warned, this is dross. And while Patrick Humphreys points out that he loves the Muppet Show, it's done for Sundays what Doctor Who does for Saturdays, He's not taken by the LP, The Muppet Show, too.

Did Stephen Stills ever figure that the touching teen anthem, for what it's worth, would end up being sung by ping-pong balls on sticks? Hmm. Gig guide, well, David could have seen Marty Wilde supported by Matchbox at the Royalty Ballroom, penetration at the Hope and Anchor, The Greedy Bastards, Phil Liner and guests, including Jones and Cook at the music machine, Adam in the Ants at the Nashville Landscape at Mariah

Gray College in Isleworth Chick Correa and Herbie Hancock at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane Rush at Hammersmith Odian Japan at Camden Break Knock or Ian Jury and the blockheads at Dingwalls but probably didn't

Taylor could have nipped out to the Birmingham Odian to see Bebop Deluxe the adverts of Barbarallas the armpit jug band at the Bogore Sham 69 at Barbarella's, XTC at Aston University and Brent Ford

and the Nylons and the Barrel organ. Neil could have witnessed the adverts at the Laconne, Ruby and the Rationales at the Hand and Heart, and fuck all else. Sarah could have seen White Snake at the Scarborough Penthouse, deaf school at Hall College, Gino Washington at Leeds University,

John Otway and while Willie Barrett at Hall University Slaughter and the dogs are Ollie's in Scarborough or Gilbert O'Sullivan at the Sheffield City Hall. Al could have seen the slugs at the Sandpiper, Gaffer at the Imperial Hotel, slaughter and the dogs at Tiffany's, Roy Harper at Nottingham, Unair, or gone to Lester to witness the power of Gallagher and Lyle

at the De Montford Hall, or the Supremes at Bailey's in Derby for three nights. And Simon could have seen the pop group at the Cardiff College of Education or gone to Tito's in Rill for a three-night stand by Alvin Stardust. Do you know how far Rill is from Cardiff? Have you got any ideas? It's all Wales, isn't it? Come on, for my sake.

He could also have seen Sham 69 at the top rank. Eddie and the Hot Rod's radio stars and Squeeze at Cockley. Cardiff, Universitar, or son of the bitch, a Tonopandi naval club. Letters page. Power Pop continues to dominate, with Gas Bag being retitled Beatbag, and being edited by Les Miserables, formerly leader of the original sniveling shits, now leader of the fab shits. And the bulk of the letters, as always, are massive winches about previous articles or things they didn't like, written by people who don't know their fucking born.

About six months ago, Nick Kent numbered the kind of inverse racism that allows black reggae singers to get away with a sort of idiotic utopianism that is ridiculed in white hippie singers. It seems to me that something similar is in operation for the Tom Robinson band, says Stan of Dublin. Because Tom is a member of an undeniably oppressed minority, he can get away with a kind of embarrassing polemic that Dylan was smart enough to drop in 64. If Wrighton's sister had been written by Joe Strummer, it would have been condemned out of hand as patronising and trite, which it is. Even Tom's gay songs aren't written from personal experience.

Since he left reform school, he's been in the music biz, where homosexuality is, if anything, an advantage. So he's never had to lie to his workmates or put queens down. If he wants to know what homosexual oppression is, he should come to Ireland, where the laws that the 1967 Act replaced are still in force in both parts of the island. When the government tried to bring in laws in the north in line with England,

the exorable Ian Paisley launched a campaign to save Ulster from Sodomy. I remember that. Maybe that would wipe the same. smile from Tom's face and drain the cliches from it. Why does he go to fucking Saudi Arabia and I've done with it? It's about time people realise that Tom Robinson is a very average songwriter. The only reason he's so big is because critics are afraid that any bad press will be construed as queer bashing.

I think actually practically every critic pointed out what he said in that letter, including people like Nick Kent. I'm just writing to say that I think skins are the biggest wankers. out, says a Clash Sham 69 fan of London. On the 28th of Jan, I went to the LSE to see Sham, and when I arrived at Holborn Tube Station, the skins were hassling all the old ladies and unsuspecting beings into corners and phone boxes. When everyone got in, everyone was fairly well behaved. Then downstairs about 400 people broke in and came charging up the stairs, throwing bottles, and cutting into people's flesh with kitchen knives,

so eventually I left without seeing the band. I'd just like to say it's a shame because sham are a good band, but I won't go to see them again because I refuse to go through another charade with the skins. I've also heard a bunch of them saying that if any of the clash came to see Sham, they'd give them a rough time

because they thought the clash should have supported Sham, not the other way round. I know you won't print this, letter because you never do unless they mention the boring beautiful Debbie Ari at least twice but it really pisses me off when you can't see a band because you're not a punk slash skin slash ted slash raster Gerald of Manchester thinks everything is crap apart from the buzzcocks raggy Lewis of the stuccas apologises to all fans who couldn't get into their gig of portsmouth polly because it wasn't announced that it was nus own layer j fay fayn't

of Beresentemments wants to know what Power Pop is and what MOR means and girl with green eyes wants to go to work with Bob Geldof in a limousine 60 pages 18p I never knew there was so much in it

oh and there was in this one wasn't there yeah I mean you fucked your voice there Al I'll reading that out no no so while you were reading that NME I actually took the time to flick through the issue of Record Mirror from the same week. And the thing we Record Mirror is,

I always used to perceive it as a bit of a sort of poor relation of the bigger papers like Enemy, Melty Maker and so on. But you look at it now, I was just looking down the contributors, the staff list, and there's some pretty impressive luminaries. So first of all, editor, Barry Kane went on to found Flexi Pop, the fantastic Flexi Pop magazine. But the writers, the contributors, you've got Philip Hall, who was going to be a PR.

Guru in his future, launched the Man Xtremeat Stream Features. Yeah, exactly. For all or nothing, yeah. James Hamilton, the disco columnist, whose columns in Record Mirror are very highly regarded these days. Jeff Travis, who was probably in the act of forming rough trade records and putting out the first stiff little fingers album around that time. Robbie Vincent, you know, Radio 1 DJ, playing jazz funk and all that kind of stuff.

Robin Katz, I believe, went on to smash hits. And they jumped out with me also was artist slash sub-editor. John Fruin. Now presumably Oh yes. Presumably the same Johnny Fruin of B.A. Cunterson and record hyping fame slash shame. It's got to be, isn't it? Yeah.

It's weird. A lot of those people seem a bit closer to the record business in lots of ways and varying ways than the writers say at NME. Yeah, I think maybe Record Mirror was sort of somewhere between Music Week and the sort of in keys. I'll come on to Music Week in a second. But there's this gossip column in Record Mirror called Juicy. Okay. Yes. We've really learned

something about Rod Stewart, of course, and his underwear habits. But his Rolls-Royce caught fire that week. That's a real kind of humble brag. What a terrible week you had, Rod. You've been exposed for wearing ladies' underwear and your Rolls-Royce caught fire. Will Smallest Violin. The Adverts also had a car crash that week, but probably in a less expensive vehicle. Johnny Rotten isn't the only one who's been over to Jamaica this week.

Paul and Linda McCartney have gone to Jamaica to get away from the cold, which, you know, that tells you the truth about the mull of bloody Kintyre, doesn't it? Yes. And it's, of course, it's a shame he didn't send Linda on her own. You know, imagine a whole month going by. He's there on the mull doing a crawl round all the pubs in Campbelltown, announcing to everyone who listen, I say, I say, I say, my wife's gone to the West Indies. And everyone just replies, oh, that'll be a nice break for her. Record Mirror has also done a bit on the Sid Vicious Nancy Spungent court case. They describe Nancy as his delightfully amusing bell.

And they note that Sid remained silent during the hearing, while the outrageous Nancy continually made rude gestures at court officials. I think she's a bad influence on him. Oh, you think, yeah. There's a weird tone to some of this coverage. I'm just going to read this verbatim now. It's very much of its time. so the columnist whoever does juicy

says domestic strife for my old friend Tony Secunda manager of steel ice span and motorhead a judge ordered Tony out of his luxurious London home and warned him that he would go to jail if he continued to pester his ex-wife Patricia Tony is now not allowed

within a hundred yards of the 17-room mansion yeah poor guy yeah he sounds like he's been really hard done by there doesn't he does doesn't he yeah he's not allowed within 100 feet all around her hat. So I did also look at Music Week. There's a story on the front page of Music Week with the dateline Glasgow, and it says,

A regional breakout is happening here with a World Cup song, Ali's Tartan Army by comedian Andy Cameron, which the Glasgow-based club with a label claims has already sold over 150,000 copies. Now, the thing is, Al, right, I know that we have to be positive towards Scotland qualifying for World Cups,

particularly after that astonishing victory over Denmark, those goals by Scott McTominy and Kenny McLean. World Cups aren't proper World Cups unless Scotland's involved, I'm afraid. Well, you say that, Al, but I'm sorry, I can't get over their 1978 predecessors. I know you're going to say I should leave it, but I have a message for the 1978 Scotland team, and it's very similar to something that was voiced by a Welsh actor, actually.

As far as I'm concerned, the first thing, you can do is to chuck all your record sales and all your World Cup appearances and all your pots and all your pans into the biggest fucking dustbin you can find because you never did any of it fairly. You've done it all by bloody cheating. Yeah. Yeah. A Welshman never forgets Joe Jordan handball at Anfield then kissed his fucking hand. Yeah. Oh, fucking Joe. The Maradonnaer of the Highlands. Fucking right. There's a story in Music Week that record retailers in Belgium are losing 17.5% of their stock to thieves. 17.5.

Fucking hell. And that 20% of record sales in Belgium are going on bootlegs. What the hell, Belgium? Who knew that it was such a hotbed of musical crime? Another thing that jumped out of me, because Music Week obviously has loads of different charts in there. First of all, the new wave chart has the word fuck uncensored, which is Wayne County and the electric chairs.

If you don't want to fuck me, fuck off. But that. chart, the new wave chart, also inadvertently highlights a problem with the system of chart return shops and the main chart. Because in that chart, the new wave chart, you've got Blondie to Knee, electric chairs fuck off, Buzzcocks, what do I get? Ramones Blitzkrieg Bop, China Street, never heard of, you're a ruin, mirrors cure for cancer. All of them are above magazine, right? Magazine, though, somehow are at number 43. In the proper charts, was shot by both sides. And of the list I just read out, only

one track, Buzzcocks, are above them at number 42. How the fuck does that work? So it just highlights the flaws in the whole system of the charts. It's funny with the F word, like you say, getting printed there, because the music press at that time was wildly inconsistent. Sometimes you get a fuck and they have cunt printed out

in full. And at other times, in the same picture, you know, the word, piss is asterisked, you know, even arse. It depends how half asleep the sub-editors were, I guess. So what else was on telly today? Well, BBC 1 pulls up the shutters at 20 to 7,

with a triforce of open university street knowledge, and then closes down for an hour and 46 minutes. Then it's a cavalcade of schools and colleges programmes until 20 past the noon, a 15-minute close down, then they're back with On the Move, the Midday News, Pebble Mill at 1, Trumpton, you and me, and another close down. this time for 21 minutes.

After more schools and colleges, Anne Ladbury shows you how to make a coat for your kids that they'll absolutely hate because the collars are flared in the show Children's Wardrobe. And after yet another close down, it's regional news in your area, play school, Winsome Witch, Jack and Oare,

Scooby-Doo and John Craven's Newsrout. After Blue Peter undergoes the ritual endured by every child, in the Midlands a visit to the Open Air Museum of Iron Bridge. Fucking out, can I stop you there? That is both why I loved and hated Blue Peter. That kind of shit. I liked how it's kind of educational. But fucking hell, open air museum and Iron Bridge,

I'm going to be looking across with envy at the ITV Magpie listeners. Not that it was on that thing. But you know what I mean? Yeah. Oh my God. Have you ever been to Iron Bridge, Simon? No, no. I managed to avoid that.

I trust you, every kid in the Midlands is dragged to Iron Bridge at some point. I think it was this year for me. And it was just like, oh, there's a bridge and it's made out of iron. Great, just like all the other fucking bridges in my town. Paddington has a go at DIY, hopefully not the masturbatory version. Then it's the evening news, regional news in your... Oh, marmalade round the crotch. Then it's the evening news, regional news in your area,

nationwide and what else tomorrow's world. Yeah, you just mentioned John Craven, on John Craven's news round. Apparently, originally in the frame for that slot was Jonathan Dimbleby. Really? Yeah, there's a parallel of universe in which it's thinking of Jonathan Dimbleby's news round. You've now just put this really bleak image in my mind out. You see all these memes of Paddington Bear walking dead people off towards heaven, I guess. And it's always him from behind.

I'm now thinking that he's not holding their hand. He's actually reaching over and giving him a hand job, you know, a poor job. BBC 2 commences at 11 with Play School and then shuts down for five hours and 55 minutes before they come back with a four-handed open university sound clash entitled Technology for Teachers Beginning Reading The First Year of Life dash clash

An Unemployment Then it's the news on two headlines And they're five minutes into your move The follow-up to On the Move featuring Brian Redhead, St James' Mrs. In Bless This House, Captain Peacock, and Compo. What a fucking line-up.

ITV opens up at 10 past 9 for schools' programmes, and then Graham Garden takes us to Charlie's climbing tree for a story. Pig! The poor kind yim-yam miserableists starts acting the cunt and wanting to play cowboys all the time in Pipkins, and then Fred Harris presents Make It, count, which is a bit like on the move, but with numbers. After the news at one, it's regional news in your area, followed by Crown Court, Afternoon, Shades of Green, the drama series, which dramatises the short stories of Graham Green, then the comedy drama Beryl's Lot about a

milkman's wife from Battersea who takes a philosophy course at night school. After house party, it's Little House on the Prairie. Happy Day. the news at 545, regional news in your area, crossroads, and their 10 minutes into Emmerdale Farm. Oh, golden age of television right there, don't you think? Crown Court, more than almost anything else, possibly racing from Haydock or paint along with Nancy, Crown Court is the thing that just makes me think of being ill off school. Yes. Oh, God, it's so depressing.

Yeah. Imagine paint along with Nancy Spunner. Yes. All right then, Pop Crazy Youngsters, it is time to strap in and go all the way back to February of 1978. Always remember, we make Coatown your favorite band or artist, but we never forget. They've been on top of the pops more than we have. Tom Robinson bands, Sweet and Abba, just three of the names we have lined up for you, in another star-studded edition of Top of the Pops! February the 16th, 1978,

and Top of the Pops, now into its 726th episode, is cruising through the choppy waters of the late 70s, holding its own in a ratings chart absolutely dominated by ITV. There has been a warning sign on the horizon, however, a pay claim by studio engineers at Television Centre in January, resulted in 162 engineers, refusing to work between midnight and eight in the morning, which resulted in a mini strike that took sports night nationwide and the January 12th episode of Top of the Pops off the air, denying the pop crazed youngsters a rear screening of the video of Mull of Kintyre.

But in an age where the old Grey Whistle Test plods on in its flares and petunuch, centred clogs, the demise of so it goes, and the only musical offering for now on ITV being getting together with Roy North, it's still the only game in town, and Robin Nash, the producer who looks like Jeffrey Four Miles even poshah dad, knows it. A week from now, he's going to give an interview to the stage to talk about being the supreme overlord of pop television, and after pointing out that he doesn't pick the artist the singles buying public do and having a bit of a brag that he got

Boney M in to perform Belfast before he was even in the charts while Radio 1 were getting the knickers in a twist about it, he takes the opportunity to tell ITV to get its ass in gear and give him some competition. Quote,

I used to be asked to look at certain artists on a program on a commercial station. I found that because the press, presentation was exciting with the visual side all bubbles and feathers and smoke, I often had not heard the artist I was supposed to be watching, because my eyes were so busy being entertained that nothing went into my ears at all. My brain was incapable of coping with both at once.

That's obviously supersonic, isn't it? I'm inclined to push my directors towards simpler presentation, because taking in sight and sound simultaneously is difficult. That is one of the reasons I like to pick on records that have already been heard. People then taking the visuals more easily. Well, I don't know about that. I can see and listen at the same time. How about you?

Not that hard. I can listen here and smell at the same time. Oh, but you're the anti-Tommi, aren't you, David? So, yeah, there we go. Just like the music scene in 1978. Top of the Pops is going back to basics, or just being mingy with the budget in the full knowledge that youth will happily watch the pop stars of the day, performing in a skip with all dirty nappies and broken fridges. Very basic top of the pops in 1978, but who gives a fuck?

I mean, you know, they refer to the dark recesses at the studio at one point. Yes. Yeah, that was, you know. You need that darkness to bring in the light, though, David. You need to dance. It's always darkest before Tony Orlando and Dawn remember. Your host this evening is Kid Jensen, who's currently working as Radio 1 Saturday, lad,

doing the 10 to noon slot as the meat in an Ed Stewart-Paul Gambaccini sandwich. But he's also been the host of the pop trivia show Quiz Kid 78 on Sunday just before the top 20 run down. Not only that, but he's been flitting all over the radio one schedule as the utility man. When Tony Blackburn had a breakdown over the collapse of his marriage, or to use modern-day parlance through a wiety in late 1977, kids stepped in to cover his daily afternoon slot, and only last month he stepped in to cover Travis's post-school slot,

while Mr Cuntflake was on holiday. And not only that, but he's been cutting a sway through the discothex of the land, making appearances at the likes of Ditton Community Centre's Valentine's Disco, the Trubador at Port Talbot, the Mayfair Suite in Sunderland, yogis disco in Farnham,

and Mops Disco Bistro in Leamington Spa. Not only as the spokesperson of the Tea Council, but also as the overseer of the Britain's top young disc chocky competition. And if he appears to be a bit nervous or distracted tonight, there's very good reason, boys, because in the wake of the recent abdication of Noel Edmonds from the throne of Radio 1, there's a vacancy for the breakfast show slot.

The interviews have been conducted, the announcement is due next week, and Kid is on a short list of four chaps. Would you care to take a guess at the other three contenders? I bet there's an Andy Peebles in there, isn't there? No, you'd be wrong. Well, given that he eventually got the job, Mike Reed? No.

Okay. Well, obviously, Dave Lee Travis, Paul Burnett, and Mr. Wu Hay himself, Peter Powell. Ah. Yeah, I think I'd be more than happy to wake up with Kid Jensen every morning, don't you? Yeah. I mean, he's all right, isn't he? He's a safe pair of hands. Yes. He's nice and zippy and puncher and bright and optimistic, but not too much.

Yeah, that's right. I think Peter Powell in the morning would be well too full on. Yeah. As for Paul Burnett, no, mate. Never, never, ever. No chance. I've got to say, it's not kids' best performances at Top of the Pops presented this week, but infinitely preferable to who they could have had on.

I mean, he does offer something. I mean, first of all, you know, there he is. his cowboy shirt and his centre-parted blonde buffon. He's like the kind of Robert Redford of UK radio and TV, like a sort of cut-price version, you know. And I do wonder, I'm projecting a little bit here, but was he a bit of eye candy for the mum's? You know, was he providing a bit of...

I'm sure he was. Yeah, a bit of mummisfaction, I would have thought. You know, he's a good-looking guy. And you sort of breathe a sigh of relief when it's someone like a kid, don't you? Because he might not set the screen alight with his charisma, but you know he won't do anything that makes your rectum turn inside out with embarrassment. And he's not going to make you feel like you're witnessing a crime scene involving historic sex offences,

which is a low bar, like a Daxon steeplechase. But it's the bar we've got. Yeah, he's a gentleman and they are pretty thin on the ground, aren't they? Yeah, 70s and DJ. As you say something, he's not going to set the screener light, but also he's not going to set large chunks of the BBC Archive a light up. either in a Brazier.

And he's in a talent pool which currently consists of Noel Edmunds, Dave Lee Travis, Tony Blackburn, Ed Stewart Still, Peter Powell and Jingle Nons OBE.

I mean, Tony Blackburn, fine. Peter Powell, slightly annoying, but, you know, basically fine. The rest of them, fuck off.

We get a cold open of kids in a white cowboy shirt with blue trim, stamping a little foot and clutching the mic in front of a wavy display of light bulbs. He immediately spoils three of the acts on tonight's Bill of Fair and then throws us into the top 30 rundown to the sound of Which Way Is Up by Stargard. Formed in Los Angeles in 1975, Stargarde were a female trio consisting of

Rochelle Runnels, Deborah Anderson and Janice Williams. They all had solo careers of their own. but were welded together by Norman Whitfield, who wrote too many fish in the sea, needle in a haystack, and I heard it through the grapevine, and was pretty much the producer and songwriter for the temptations until 1973.

In 1975, he left Motown to start his own label, Whitfield Records, and Stargard were one of his first signings. A year later, Whitfield Records scored big with his other early signings, writing Rose Royce and their soundtrack to Car Wash. So when Universal Pictures approached Whitfield with an author to do the theme song for Richard Pryor's next film, a remake of the 1972 Italian Comedare,

The Seduction of Mimi, which came out in America in November of 1977, he banged out a tune and gave it to Star Guard. This week, it's enjoying its second week at number one on the Billboard R&B charts, and at its peak of number 20. in the American chart. It entered our charts three weeks ago at number 50,

then soared 23 places to number 27, then dropped two places to number 29. But this week it's jumped up 10 places to number 19, so here it is, slapped over the chart rundown. And because it's 1978 chaps, we've got to get into them chart rundown pictures, haven't we? Well, say what you see, boys. The Kate Bush photo, it's cropped.

Now, that same photo uncropped, features in an advert in Music Week, with the words, the face you'll be seeing everywhere. And it's fair to say nobody's looking at the face. No. So there is that. And I can see why the BBC made that call. This is the colour version of that publicity shot of it. But yeah, tastefully cropped to make it less nipple.

Yeah. But there's a weird quality to these. pictures. Like any decent human being, I am sickened by AI, not just ideologically sickened and worried about the environment and job losses and all that, but just on a really primal level physically sickened.

The images it creates genuinely turn my stomach. They make me feel a bit wrong, right? That whole kind of eerie, uncanny valley thing you get with AI. Strangely, I felt a bit like that watching this chart rundown, even though it's a long time before AI was a thing.

All the photos have this weird quality to them. Everyone looks a bit AI. I guess it's airbrushing, but something's been going on there. AIR brush. Yeah, exactly. I started wondering as well, once I thought, something's a bit off. I started wondering if some of the acts are made up, because

there are acts here I've never heard of. I've never heard of tonight, for example, at number 15. Yeah, the drummer man. Yeah, well, it turns out they're this new wave band from South End on Sea, who are indeed having their one and only hit drummer man. I love that song. I have to hear it.

Oh, man. Well, I had a look at their Top the Pops appearance from a few weeks earlier and discovered that they're basically Doctor Feel OK. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The singer wants to be Roger Daltry, but falls similarly short. He's finger adultery. So those are my observations. I have to think about that one. Anything jump out of you, David? Yeah, I mean, I was just thinking about that Kate Bush thing. And there is a photo in an enemy at the time where it's a white T-shirt and the sort of the nipples are. are erect as it were, and she's really looking seriously under sufferance. But then you see Charlie XX in the video for 365.

I just don't know if it's a coincidence or if it was an actual pot reference on her part, but she's wearing the same white t-shirt with the same erect lip-ills. Obviously, I've been doing it with a lot more kind of assertiveness and empowerment, etc., etc. Whereas in Kate Bush's case, she's really, really sort of looks deeply reluctant about the whole thing. Well, Charlie X-CX is actively trampling all over Kate Bush's legacy as we speak. But, yeah, I mean, that's another weird coincidence, yeah. Well, what I saw was Tom Robinson back, that photo looks like the chemistry teacher

who's kept three of his pupils back for detention. There's a photo of a photo of three, who all looked massively fucked off about it. A very early appearance of that photo of the Bee Gees, which isn't all scratched up yet. Right. Yellow Dog, the one more night hit makers, where their guitarist in a homemade t-shirt,

consisting of a yellow dog. Sweet with a very quiffy Mick Tucker and Andy Scott sporting a rexom FC rosette. Fucking another celebrity getting on the Welsh football bandwagon, I know it is. Scott Fitzgerald and Yvonne Keele with the caption obscuring half of Yvon Keeley's face and Rod Stewart looking like a prostitute in the Sweener.

Paul McCartney looking about 12. Yes. There's some serious A-L-L-R. Pritching going. on there. Anyway chaps, which way is up? The new Richard Pryor film which came out in America four months ago. Supposed to be coming out

in March over here but I'm not sure it ever did. I've scout the newspaper archives for the adverts. Can't find it anyway. Anyone's seen it? No, no, I haven't. And I think you're right. I don't think you did come out. I think I saw it on satellite about 30 years ago. Yeah. He placed

three parts in it. An orange picker, his own dad and a Randy preacher. The orange picker gets forced out of his own town, ends up copping off of the sexy union activist in Los Angeles, while his Mrs ends up having an affair with the preacher. So he comes home and starts giving the preacher's wife one. And yeah, that's it. Not one of his best films, but, you know, it's been made by the people who gave us car wash.

So you know the soundtrack's going to be minned. Yeah. And here's the title track. And it's all right, isn't it? Well, it is all right. But I've got to say, I love disco. okay um i've i've never knowingly heard this in my life do you know what me neither it's mud isn't it yeah so it's the theme for this richard prior vehicle which you know which weighs up um which i haven't

watched i didn't watch it for the purposes of this podcast i've got to admit don't have time for that i'm a busy stay-at-home dad um but i did watch the trailer yeah congratulations simon i don't think we've made mention on that yeah well she too now so you know you took your time um so um yeah yeah um i i did watch the trailer and i did a bit of reading around them film. So you've summarised it pretty well. Wikipedia says, when he falls into a union action by mistake, Leroy Jones is forced out of town. The only option given to Leroy was a one-way bus ticket to Los Angeles where more jobs are available. While he's away, Leroy becomes smitten with Venetta, a beautiful labour activist. When he returns home, he has to juggle his wife, his new

romance with Veneta and his new job. Meanwhile, the Reverend Lennox Thomas takes advantage of Leroy's absence to cavort with annie may leading leroy to take revenge with the reverend's wife so fucking i mean basically a pretty standard slamming doors farce by the sound of it i guess one thing that does make it quite progressive for its time is that it has a mainly black cast but that's because it has a mainly richard prior cast um he plays the lead he plays the lead he plays the lead he plays the lead's father and also plays the reverend it wasn't well received um tv guide gave gave it a one star out of five. I also found this review from Denny's M. Holt of Associated Press.

Richard Pryor's profane brand of humour used to be funny, but in his newest film, Which Way Is Up, he stooped to downright degradation. At least in Pryor's previous films, he managed to maintain a certain amount of ethnic dignity. However, in which way is up, not only does Pryor exhibit a reckless disregard, for his own self-respect, but so do many of the other actors. Now, I'm not sure how I feel about a white critic lecturing black actors on how to maintain their ethnic dignity.

I don't have conclusive evidence that Denise M. Holt of Associated Press is white because the only photos that come up on a Google image search of her name are stills from which weighs up. But let's just say that she probably is. The trouble perhaps was this. Richard Pryor coming off the back of Phil. like Car Wash, Silver Street. So he probably thought he could do anything at this point.

Yeah. Not that the low quality of this film has much bearing on the music, because even bad films had good soundtracks at this point. And it's put together by Mark Davis and Paul Reiser. And yeah, the theme tune composed by Norman Whitfield. So just to have a quick breakdown of that pedigree, Paul Reiser was a trombonist with a funk brothers. So basically any great Motown single you've heard with a brass section.

Paul Reiser was on it. He's on what becomes the broken-hearted by Jimmy Ruffin, which is obviously one of the greatest records ever made. Mark Davis was a teenage piano genius who started off working for the chess label and recording with people like Minnie Ripperton, Curtis Mayfield. Then he was headhunted by Barry Gordy and signed to Motown. Firstly, as an understudy to Norman Whitfield

and went on to produce records by Motown and non-Motown acts, including Marvin Gay, Diana Ross, Earth, Wind and Fire. Temptation, Smoky Robinson, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, the Jackson 5, and Sly and the Family Stone, and he's had over 30 platinum and gold albums. So, you know, he's not to be sniffed at. It's not bad. No. And Norman Whitfield is Norman fucking Whitfield. Whitfield. Yes. Yeah. So this team, Norman Whitfield, Mark Davis, Paul Reiser,

have achieved incredible things. The previous year, for example, they created another of the greatest records ever made, which I'm not going to mention by name, because we might be talking about. it in a few minutes time. But I can't make any bold hyperbolic claims for this track. Stargard, okay, they obviously a vocal trio of no great consequence

to the facts speak for themselves. They've been hired to do a job here, it feels like to me. I watched a clip of them performing this song on Soul Train and they're all in gold sci-fi gear like a poundland label. And they barely matter

to the record itself. There are some great vocoder do-doos on the BVs. But apart from that, They're incidental and so is it. It's the very definition of incidental music. It's so minimal and basic. It almost makes it avant-garde.

I don't think there's even a chord change. I didn't notice a chord change all the way through. It's just a bad baseline. That's bad with 5A's meaning good, you know. It doesn't really go anywhere. But that's fine for a theme song. It doesn't need to go anywhere, which also makes it perfect as the backing track

to the top 30 rundown photos. Does its job. There are so many films about this time involving American labour activists. You know, labour activism was as big as disco at this time, definitely. Sexy labour activists as well, David. Yeah, yeah. Well, Sylvester Stallone was one of them as well. But, yeah, like Simon, I don't remember actually having heard this before.

You know, you put in Stargard into Wikipedia, and you get one of Poland's oldest cities, you know, which is about as funky as it gets. But it's seriously fucking good. And I go so far as to say this is probably the greatest ever bit of introductory music to Top of the Pops. Going straight into a song like this. I mean, it's a hybrid of the Isley Brothers, Rose Royce, and a bit of the kind of muscular, funky end of mid-70s Stevie Wonder. And of course, it's a normal Whitfield song,

so that's a Pixar-style guarantee of quality in itself. And what an absolute treat to get this in lieu of the regular theme. Because for me, the regular theme never really triggered unbridled excitement, but a sense of probable disappointment tempered with the occasional flash of accidentally trespassing brilliance or whatever. I mean, top of the pops is like football. It's mostly disappointment. Your fucking Arsenal support. What the fuck you going on about?

Even if you're an Arsenal supporter, it's mostly disappoint. The fucking Arsenal supporter telling a Forrest supporter that, man. The brass neck of you stubs. Al, they haven't choked yet, but we know they're going to choke. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's like Dick Dastardly, yeah, in the lead right until the end. It's not what Morris is saying, now, ma'am, which way's up? Yeah.

Let's leave the casting. vote to the platter chatter column in the Alcester Chronicle because they describe Stargall's album What You Waiting for Thusley Okay Disco music for the Mindless Two coloured girls, one white girl With anonymous voices and personalities

Uptempo disco tracks Mixed with string laden, meaningless ballads Make it an extremely predictable and boring mix tape Well, as long as everybody involved maintain their ethnic dignity Yes, exactly. Yes. But yeah, this is all right, man.

You could say it's a poor man's car wash, a host pipe and a sponge, if you will. But no, even a poor man's car wash is better than most of the shit we're going to hear tonight. I think it's a rich man's car wash. Oh, a valet service. Yeah. So the following week,

which way is up dropped two places to number 21? And three weeks later fell right. off the top 50. The follow-up, love is so easy, got to number 45 in April. They rallied somewhat when what you waiting for made it to number 39 in September, but they never troubled the charts again.

Over in America, though, they moved to Warner Bros. And made the occasional raid on the dance charts, but Anderson left in 1980, and the other two carried on until 1982. When you're going to think about it's nice Alright at number 30 in the top 30 this week A new EP release from the Tom Robinson band

Under the title of Rising Free TRB Tells us by a voiceover that there's a new live EP out And excitedly introduces Don't Take No for an answer By the Tom Robinson band Born in Cambridge in 1950 Tom Robinson spent his early teens taking up an interest in music and realising he was gay.

The former encouraged him to form a school band called The Inquisition, but the latter forced him to have a nervous breakdown and a suicide attempt at the age of 16. After his headmaster arranged a transfer to a therapeutic community in Kent, he attended a recycle by Alexis Corner, which gave him a severe kick-up-the-arse to pursue the music career. After leaving that community in 1973, he moved to London and became part of an acoustic trio called Cafe Society, who had been mentored by Corner.

And after taking up a residency at the Trubodore Club in Earl's Court, they were spotted by Ray Davis of the Kinks and signed to his label, Conk West. They were immediately hustled into a studio to record their debut LP, but Davis's other commitments meant it took no. three years to finish and a spat developed between Davis and Robinson, not only over the production, which he hated, but also the contract he'd been signed to, which meant that Davis owned the rights to Robinson's publishing and would get 10% of every penny he made until two years after he left Cafe Society. And when the LP finally came out, it only sold 6,000 copies,

and Robinson walked out on them in October of 1976. When he went back to the London gig scene with a sort of pickup bands, three things happened. He played music for a New York theatrical troupe called Hot Peaches when they did a residency in London, who were very gay and didn't give a fuck who knew about it. He was in attendance when the Metropolitan Police raided a gay bar and he caught an early gig by the Sex Pistols.

This led to him putting together a full-time band, all of whom were straight, bar him, and getting properly militant. After spending 1977 gigging on the punk scene and being one of the few musically proficient bands on the circuit and playing any anti-racism benefit going, they were pursued by every label in London and eventually went with EMI.

They put out their debut single, 2468 Motorway in the first week of October and a month later it spent two weeks at number five. This is the follow-up, a live EP called Rising Free, recorded during their recent UK tour at the Lyceum, Sussex University and High Wickham, which features this song, Martin, an update of Terry Scott's My Brother with more violence,

joyriding and borsdal, and the non-more 1978 right on sister but it also contains a song he wrote and demo with Cafe Society called Glad to Be Gay

which rips into the Met the media queer bashers and society in general and it is this song that Robinson wants to set before the living rooms of Albion this evening

also because it's 1978 Robin Nash has refused point blank So tonight they're playing this song, which is also the lead off track on the EP. It's entered the charts this week at number 30, the second highest new entry this week behind the free EP, which of course contains all right now. And here they are in the studio.

So chaps, yeah, mid-February, 1978, and the pop world is finally coming to terms with the death of the sex pistols. And the music papers are pretty much scouting. for new champions and they appear to have narrowed their search down to two people Jimmy Perse and Tom Robinson. Yeah, it's fun actually to sort of look at the way that he's dressed Tom Robinson in this because, you know, people are talking punk and they think of like the punks that used to hang around the King's Road with the big mohicans and everything like that.

And of course, punk was really more about this look that Tom Robinson's got, which is the big school tie, the flares. I mean, look at the Lionels on Tom, I mean, and that big sort of Glenn Huddle sent a parting. And that's probably what people into Tom Romero. And that's his constituency. And he's kind of reflecting back at them, you know, what they look like. Also, he took about, like, the death of the sex pistols. And I think a lot of people feel, well, that's it.

You know, there's no more punk. Punk was just a moment. And I remember at the time, somebody's saying, I wonder if boogie-woogie's going to be the next big thing. The reason for that was that, like, you got people like Johnny Fingers, Jules Holland, Dave Greenfield, out the stranglers. And this fellow here, you know, like, out Emerson, Emerson Lake and Palmer. You know, it's amazing all these kind of sort of keyboard warriors that you were getting at this time. But the thing is, if it weren't for other aspects of like the Tom Robinson band,

which I would get on to, I think I'd probably complain about a track like this, about the sort of the unreconstructed rockism, you know, as masquerading as part. It's kind of rugby-shirted rock in lots of ways, in and of itself. Yeah. I mean, the title itself, don't take note. It reminds you, you know, about fresh meat, you know, about the students. And there's a, and they rock up at this club, and there's this sort of nerdy Scottish bloke. And, you know, they're jean themselves up, you know, to be on the pool.

And there's Joe Thomason's character. And they like it's it. And then the Scottish student says, and we will take no for an answer. And Joe Thomas's character says, we will take no for an answer. It just made it a little bit like that, really. So yeah, Jimmy Percy and Tom Robinson

seemed to be the new standard bearers of whatever punk is nowadays. But Tom Robinson's obviously the safer bet for many reasons. You know, signed to a big label with none of the grief that the clash got, already had a massive hit with a Yorkie advert of a single. And they've also been voted Best New Act. in the NME readers poll.

But obviously we need to talk about the pink elephant in the room, don't we? Because everyone knows that Tom Robinson is the gay singer with the gay song, and he clearly wants to fill your kids' heads with gay. Yeah, well, he's wearing a very important symbol on top of the pops. Yes, he is. The logo of the Faw's Motor Company. No, it's the pink triangle from the Nazi death camps. I don't know what the Ford logo is about.

It's an option of the stranglers, isn't it? Is it? As we've mentioned in chart music's passing, Strangler's got done by the GLC for wearing a t-shirt with the word fuck in the style of the Ford logo, and they were banned from playing gigs in London. So JJB wore an actual Ford logo t-shirt on top of the Pops in the summer of 1977, presumably in order to stick it to the man or summer.

I don't know. There was a lot of industrial action involving the Ford company, but that was much later in the year. Oh, maybe it's that. Oh, so you're saying his siding with management then? It's not very right on Tom. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

He's not a sexy labour activist, is he? No, certainly not. No. But yeah, yeah, the pink triangle, and this, of course, years before Bronski B adopted it. Yes. Yeah, he's 28 here, and his status as a representative of the new wave was always a little bit tenuous, you know.

And I guess they were in some ways visually presented themselves being part of all that. That stencils logo with the fist and the military font, you know, and singing about taking speed, 357, 9 Little White Line and all that. But yeah, there's a guitar solo, and there are the Lionels that David mentioned. The guitarist, he cracks me up so much.

He's one of those side men who's bigging up his role. Do you know what I mean? Danny Custow, whenever I see Tom Robinson band, Danny Custow cracks me up, constantly mugging and gurning and pulling angular punky shapes, you know, just desperately trying to say, we're part of that, we're part of all that stuff. But Tom Robinson, obviously, five years was an,

an enormous difference in the 70s. And most of the punk musicians were at least five years younger than him. But clearly his heart was in the right place. And he just comes across as one of music's genuinely good guys. But yeah, the elephant in the room, please do carry on. Well, yeah, the gayness has been baked into the coverage of TRB right from the off. I mean, article in the NME dated 20th of August, 1977. EMI say yes to gay power.

The Tom Robinson band have been signed by EMI and the deal could prove to be as controversial for the company as its relationship with the sex pistols was last year. A self-confessed gay Robinson distributes

pamphlets at his concerts publicising Rock Against Racism the National Abortion Campaign gay switchboard and the free George Inns campaign. Because of the causes he openly supports, a number of venues have previously been reluctant to book his band. And already there is a, quote, minor boardroom drama at EMI, he claims,

because executives are reluctant to release his homosexual anthem, glad to be gay, as a single. But the signing has been interpreted as a political move by the company's record division who reputedly wish to demonstrate their strength and prevent boardroom interruption in artistic policy, as was the case during the pistols Farago. The record division was like a naughty dog who'd got a nice juicy bone with the sex pistols,

commented Robinson, but their master made them drop it. Now they've got another, and they're growling. It's strange, really, because sound-wise, appearance-wise and tone-wise, I mean, Tom Robinson band are about one of the least queer bands that ever existed. And that's the thing about Tom Robinson, because, you know, as people of a certain age, we would have seen loads of performative homosexuality on top of the pops in the 70s, all performed by and large by straight men.

But we're seeing absolutely none of that here. No, no. That would have fucked with people's minds. No one at EMI appears to be leaning on him to tone it down or completely hide his sexuality. And yes, he is wearing a lot. a pink triangle but that would have gone right over my end in 1978 to me pink triangles would have been a team on we are the champions it's one of the strangest top of the pop's appearances as opposed to performances and what i mean by that is the performance itself is it's fine it's pretty

straightforward it's sort of you know it's like pseudo-punkky as i was saying but it's all about backstory to it and why we're hearing the song that we're hearing just all right don't take no for an It's a song about somebody who got Tom into a shitty contract. And as you mentioned, that someone is Ray Davis. You've got the other tracks. You've got Martin. It's about Aenei-do-well, who Tom got into scrapes with as a kid. They could have performed that.

Right on sister, as slagged off by the enemy about women's lib and lesbianism. Lyric, she's a right-on sister and she knows what she likes. She needs you and me, man, like a fish needs a bike. It's a strange appearance in the... What's far more important than the song we're hearing is the song we're not hearing. And anybody who reads the music papers is probably really aware of that when they're watching this episode of Top of Pop's. It really is a massive pink elephant, pink triangle-shaped elephant in the room. So glad to be gay.

It's being called a UK's gay anthem, but it's a gay anthem in the least celebratory sense. It's the anti I'm coming out. It's the anti you make me feel mighty real. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, I'm stopping in. Yeah, yeah, because, you know, from that bitterly ironic opening line onwards, the British police are the best in the world, brilliant, bitterly ironic opening line. It offers no hope at all.

It depicts the grim reality of life for gay men in 70s Britain. And we're not even a decade after decriminalisation, I think, at this point. The book is illegal now. What more are they after? Exactly. Yeah, he gets to that, doesn't he, in the lyric. Still having their pubs raided, having their magazines shut down, getting beaten up by the police, getting queer bashing.

in the street and what thanks do you get for that you get demonised by the press while all that's going on. Yeah. It just feels like there's no sense of a sort of liberating rainbow on the horizon in this song. You know, and it must have felt like that at the time. I mean, his own life bears that out. You've touched upon when he got sent to Finchton Manor, that therapeutic

community for teenagers with emotional difficulties. Being gay isn't an emotional difficulty. It's society that causes the fucking difficulty. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Well, in the EP, on the live he actually introduces this song and he says this song is dedicated to the World Health Organization. It's a medical song and it concerns a disease

whose classification according to the international classifications of diseases is 302.0. Homosexuality had been classified as a mental disorder by the WHO in 1952 as well as Roger Daltry of the WHO on top of the pops in 1950s in 1980. But by 1975,

it had been amended to ego dystonic homosexuality. So the mental condition was thinking you might be gay when you only haven't met the right girl yet.

Fucking hell. They only dropped it as a mental disorder in 1990. Fucking hell. He first had a double with a song called Good to Be Gay

for a promo EP for the campaign for homosexual equality in 1975. And yeah, this is him writing an answer song to his own song. It was only meant to be performed once by Catholic Society at Gay Pride in London,

but it rapidly caught on to the extent that it was used as a title by the Scottish Minorities Group for their TV programme on the BBC 2 Community Broadcast Show Open Door, which was broadcast in December of 1976, at a time when homosexuality was still illegal in Scotland. So it was kept in their set throughout 1970s. started popping up on programs like So It Goes in the London Weekend Show. Almost as well known, a Tom Robinson band song as 2468 Motorway. Predictably Radio 1 would not touch it with a barge pole, apart from John Peel.

But Capital Radio, who are going to prove very influential on the charts of early 19708, as we'll discover, they weren't as preset. And it was number one on their listener phone in chart for six weeks. Wow. But we never got to see them performing this on top of the pops. And I feel we'd be living in a very different world if we did. Yeah. I mean, fucking, oh, yeah.

BBC grow up here. Just fucking let them play it. Oh, God, yeah. Imagine if this was a live broadcast and they just did it, man. Yeah. Robin Nash would have had to get fucking legs and cold and ordered them to get the tits out all. To restore heterosexuality. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In the crucible, it's the school playground. I'd have been in light. I don't know.

fourth year or whatever at this time. It was a chant, you know, say if you're glad to be gay, once managed to kind of encapsulate the rebelliousness of it, you know, singing this forbidden lyric, but also was sung in the spirit of complete homophobia as well. I mean, it's a hugely important record. It's a landmark in pop history, isn't it?

Even though it didn't reach, you know, the heights of the top three or anything. But prior to this, there was very little by high-profile artists on the topic of gay life as it was live. in 70's pop. You had Rod Stewart's The Killing of Georgie a couple of years earlier. And under one roof by the Rubets. And that's pretty much it.

And I just wonder how Tom Robinson felt at that moment coming on here on top of the pops and being obliged to sing a different song from the Rising Free EP. I guess maybe, you know, if he really gave it some and really tried to sell the other song that he's forced to perform, that it would drive people to buy the record

and discover Glad to Be Gay that way, at least. I don't know. Yeah. And the ironic thing about that, as you pointed out, Simon, this is a proper born in the USA of a song, isn't it? Because, you know, it's not saying, come on, lads, get some cockat skill. It's saying, look, if you're this way inclined, boy, are you in for some shit? Yes, that is true.

And the difference between this and born in the USA is we can understand the verse. Well, exactly, yes. But then again, as you pointed out, David, getting a venue full of Stratos to bellows sing if you're glad to be gay. sing if you're happy that way. He did. No small achievement in 1978.

Yeah, he talks about 10 plays like Middlesbrough and the crowd being full of all these guys that would expect to like beat the shit out of him all chanting along, you know. Exactly. Yeah, and this is worth talking about now because the day is going to come pretty soon

when, to use the enemy's words, self-confessed trans artist is going to absolutely blow up. And we're going to go through all this again, aren't we? As long as they maintain their gender dignity. But in terms of how it would have felt Tom Robinson, I mean, my guess is possibly, he just thought it's 1970A,

and probably rather than feeling bitter and devastated and crushed that you can't play the song, he might well have thought, look, it was never going to be a chance in hell of that, you know, so. Maybe, maybe. Ah, but he is going to get the chance to perform the song on national television

because two days after recording this, it's up the 24668 motorway to Birmingham for the Tom Robinson band because they appear on the pilot episode of Revemson. Volvo, which will go out at the end of May on a Saturday tea time to the horror of my mum. So yeah, they play the song and at the end he says, that was the song they wouldn't play on top of the pop. So there you go.

Brilliant. And when we did chart music 54, I chided him by inquiring how Top of the Pops could let him play it when it was never on a single. And I was talking right out of my ass because it's on this EP. So I apologise to Tom Robinson. I apologize to his band. and I apologise to you, the pop crazed youngsters, for my wrongness. But Tom Robinson, is he the acceptable face of punk or post-punk or whatever we're calling

this sort of thing? He definitely comes off as a bit of a posh boy by 1978 standards. You know, you see him in interviews, and he's practically Roddy Llewellyn's little brother. He's got the haircut of a Genesis fan. There's distinct kick in his black school trousers. he's definitely not a young rib. You know, he's 27 at the time, which makes him older than Elvis Costello

and younger than Ian Jure. And he's angry, but he's actually got something to be genuinely angry about. And he's at least doing something about it, isn't it? Totally. I mean, he's the head boy of punk, I suppose he might say. You know, a lot of people are sort of like

taking a kind of countercultural attitude or a sort of stance, vague stance, against capitalism, whatever, at this time, you know, on the new wave band. but he's actively prepared to tackle politics at a time when it needed tackling. And I guess in the late 70s he performs the same function that Billy Bragg did in the 80s,

or he'd profess themselves concerned with the state of the world, but then they've gone, but of course, we're not political than the Tom Robinson style, you know, like Lord forbid we should be so crudely blunt, you know. So there's Tom, you know, like fronting rock against racism, handing out his pamphlet, his leaflets, and he's like, he must have felt the time,

and said, okay, so it's just me doing the lifting here, is it? Yeah, yeah. And I'm sure that Billy Bragg might have felt similar later on, you know, being kind of disparaged or being the kind of the one person that's prepared to kind of, you know, less than non-committal when it comes to politics or whatever. Surely it's no coincidence that Archer,

the vegetarian cohort of Carlin in Scum, is the dead spit of Tom Robinson. You know, the well-spoken line who goes barefoot because he refuses to wear leather and he registers as Muslim to get out of Sunday service, who absolutely does the screws edding because they can't work him out at all. From this distance,

you know, Tom Robinson doesn't come off as a punk, but someone that punk has kicked the door open for. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. And the kids are all for it. There's a documentary that Granada did later this year, featuring TRB on the road.

And you look at their audience, and it's a proper mixed bag of ages and tribes. And, you know, afterwards, when he's out by his car signing autographs, there's loads of young kids hanging around and talking to him, none of whom seem to be terrified or of catching gay or interested in having to go at him. You know what I mean?

Yeah, my dad was into TRB. Yeah. I know that my dad wasn't a typical example, but, you know, still, yeah. Yeah. He reached that generation as well. And, I mean, they just had that really active relationship with the fans, you know,

they had this Tom Bromerson band newsletter, you know, which had addresses of all these kind of political and radical and alternative organisations. You know, you mentioned one to them early on, you know, like gay switchboard and all the things like spare rib and, you know, anti-Nazi League, of course. Yeah. Obviously, he was taken to talk at times for, like, sort of ghost lyrics.

I mean, ain't going to take it. There's like, was it, women with children always carry the can till they lose them in divorce suits to some pig of a man. You know, I don't like that. But Nick Kent, you know, he's reviewing power in the darkness. He says, like, you know, Robinson has committed man, that's almost too obvious to need stating. But his politics continually force him to humourless conclusions.

Why is it? Not everything has to be humorous. It's like, well, not meet the gang, because the boys are. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. If you can't have a chuckle of. about being gay and repressed them. What's the point?

Raising the rafters with a hey, hey, hey. Is that what are you doing? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. The NME gave T.R.B. their cover last week, along with making this their single of the week. And they did a four-page interview. We learned that Tom's calmed down on the benefit gig scene,

preferring to donate gig money to the likes of gay switchboard on the choir, as he wants to focus on the band now and let other people handle the policy. In between interviews, there was an incident where members of the Bradford Gay Liberation Front ran on stage while they were doing right on sister. And they grabbed the mic and accused him of being patronising. And his response was to say, oh, okay then, and then went into the next song. But, you know, he just talked about his worries that people like that, they're happy to have a go at him, but they won't have a go at bands like the stranglers for being who they are. Yeah, right. Anyway, chaps, the song were actually.

getting tonight. A big coat down of an old pop star who's done ripped off the kids and at face value you could take it as a bit of an uncharitable dig in the vein of Liam Gallagher having a go at Michael Hutchins at the Brit Awards. But you could actually say it's the return volley in a dispackle between Ray Davis and Tom Robinson. The kinks are still going and they signed with a wrist around about the time Robinson had walked out on Davis and they're playing a song at their gigs called Prince of the Punks about an aging chancer who jumps on the punky bandwagon.

Have you ever heard it? No. Sample lyrics. He tried to be gay, but it didn't pay, so he bought a motorbike instead. He failed at funk, so he became a punk,

because he thought he'd make a little more bread. He's the prince of the punks, and he's finally made it. Thinks he looks cool, but his act is dated. He acts working class, but it's all baloney. He's really middle class

and he's just a phony. Oh, I didn't see phony coming there. Came out as the B-side of Father Christmas last December and yeah, this could well be the response. You know, we first met in the winter, said, let's give it a try. I swallowed my fears a couple of years,

just living a lie. I'd just come from the country, wide-eyed and naive. I'd signed on the line. I've signed up on time. Now you won't ever leave. I don't want any trouble. I ain't after a fight.

But well-respected man, you better understand. Man, you're standing in my light. And I do believe chaps, we've just seen the supposedly right on Tom Robinson using his platform on the BBC to indulging kink shaming. I don't think that's going to go down too well

with Bradford Gay Liberation from me. Again, another born in the USA situation, because you hear the chorus, don't take no for an answer, and you think he's saying, hey, kids, don't ever compromise. When in actual fact, he's saying, hey, Ray Davis, you've got me by the balls,

and it's not fucking right. Yeah. Oh, and of course the irony is by performing this song and kids going out to buy it on Saturday, another 10% of your pocket money is going to Ray Davis. Oh, yeah. As for the performance, well, it's your standard,

adjacent top of the pop's run out, isn't it? Robinson appears to be singing live and if the rest of the band aren't playing live, they're doing a really good job to appear authentic. Everyone's plastered with stickers and badges, you know, musicians union, keep music live

one, anti-Nazi badge on the drummer. The keyboard players wearing some rubber joke shop, wheelwolf gloves because it's 1978 and that's what keyboard players did. And the kids seem to be well into it, aren't that? And not surprising, because this sort of thing is as close to punk as a lot of the youth of 1978 wanted to get.

You know, something a bit spiky and shatter that they can have a good bounce about to without the fear of a load of skinheads bum rushing the stage. So, yeah, strong start to this episode, I believe. Yeah, yeah, it's orthodox and inclusive, I guess, in that respect. Anything else to say, boys? I just wondered when the quicksave Mussolini, Stephen Yatsley-Lennon decided on his stage name, if you like,

if he was aware of who had previously had that name. Oh, yes. And what their politics were. Do you know, it's ridiculous. It never occurred to me before. So the following week, the Rising Free EP would jump six places to number 24, and a week later would get to number 18, its highest position. The follow-up up against the wall would,

only get to number 33 in May, but a month later their first LP, power in the darkness, would get to number four in the album charts. Diminishing returns would set him by the end of the year when too good to be true failed to chart. The lead-off single from the next LP, TRB2, bully for you, only got to number 68,

and they never troubled the singles chart again. Splitting up in 1979, when they were dropped by EMI. Robinson immediately formed a new band called Sector 27, which supported the police on their 1980 tour of America, but after their management company went bankrupt, he relocated to Berlin, went solo, and had two hits in 1982 with War Babea

and listened to the radio, colon, atmospheric. In 1986, he was offered his own radio show, on the BBC World Service, which kicked off a radio career that has seen him appear on all six BBC national stations. And Robinson and Davis finally squashed the beef in 2020 when the latter appeared on the former's radio six show for a two and a half hour long interview. Don't take no for an answer.

Robinson bands in their new EP and don't take no for an answer and now making her debut on top of the pops is the exquisite Kate Bush with her new single Wuthering Heights We catch kid looking wistfully at TRB Before snapping back into the here and now And introducing us to the debut performance Of the exquisite Kate Bush And her new single Wuthering Heights

He says it as if we're expecting the song be called Wuthering Deps. I don't know what he's doing there. Born in Bexley Heath in 1958, Kate Bush is Kate fucking Bush. After a childhood steeped in music and learning to play her own songs on piano by the age of 11,

her parents shopped around a demo tape containing 50 songs to assorted labels in 1972 but was turned down flat. However, in 1970 it got into the hands of Dave Gilmore of Pink Floyd, who gave her time in his studio. And in 1975, he linked her up with the arranger Andrew Powell,

who had worked with Cockney Rebel, Donovan, Al Stewart, and the old sailor, and the sound engineer Jeff Emerick, who worked on Revolver, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band and Abbey Road, to record a three-song demo tape. After that tape was sent to EMI, they immediately, expressed an interest and signed her up in 1976 when she turned 18. But even though she'd already written and demo between 100 and 200 songs, depending on who you talk to,

they relented from shoving her through the music biz sausage machine, believing that she was too young to handle either the success or the failure of her first LP and put her on a two-year retainer instead, which she spent on mime and interpretive dance training from Lindsay Kemp while getting used to live performance by playing pub gigs in London. By the summer of 1977, EMI were ready to pull the trigger and she was summoned to air studio to record her debut LP, The Kick In Sight. When that was done, they decided upon the single that would introduce her to the world,

James and the Cold Gun. But Bush put her foot right down and insisted that it should be the four and a half minute track, which was on the end of Side 1, which she wrote in the late hours of February 2nd, 1977, after catching the last 10 minutes of the 1971 film adaptation of the 1847 Emily Bronte novel Wuthering Heights with Timothy Dalton as Heathcliff. After EMI caved in, the single was slated for release on November 4th, but when the design for the cover was shown to Bush, she hated it and demanded they'd change it. While an alternate design was being put together, delaying the release, Mull of Kintyre by wings smashed into the chartered No. 5, an EMI sniffing the heather-centred wind from the Highlands, studying the sales figures, and realizing that thanks to Paul McCarney,

they already had a big, fat, big-tittered hit on their hands, decided to hold back on release until the third week of January. However, copies of the single with the original cover had already been shipped out to every radio station in the country, leading EMI to rush out letters begging them not to play it. All of them complied, but Tony Myatt, the late-night DJ on Capitol Radio, came across it, went on the ear and said he'd found this really odd song and played it,

which led to a blizzard of phone calls from Londoners demanding he'd play it again. And it was on constant rotation on Capitol throughout December. Wow. It's entered the charts at number 42 last week of Fortnite after its release, and this week it soared 15 places to number 27. And she's been rushed into the top of the podcast. pop studios. However, due to the BBC's arcane rules imposed by the musicians union, her band are in attendance,

but only in the audience, because due to the fact that she's billed as a solo artist, she's going to have to pick her way through the moors with the crushing, suffocating dead weight of the top of the pop's orchestra on her back. Ooh. And if you think kids' introduction was a bit, over familiar, that's because he's become very well acquainted with this beguiling new songstress today. Quote from his autobiography, Kid Jensen, for the record. As I pushed open the door of my top of the pop's dressing room in February 1978, it appeared I was not to benefit from its

exclusive use. A lacy black dress dangled from the hook on the wall. It belonged, I was informed, to Kate Bush. A hasty, informal rota for the room, preserved modesty, as we prepared for our appearances. Fucking up. And once again, we have to say, thank God Kid Jensen's on tonight, hey, chaps? Yeah.

So what do we talk about, first panel, the song or the performance? Because they're both striking in their own way. I mean, we absolutely forget how fucking mental this song sounded when you heard it for the first. first time. Can you remember? I do remember. I mean, you got this kind of weird, almost like Partridgeian intro by Kid Jensen, you know, like, pray silence for Kate Bush, almost. It was like, wuthering heights. And it's almost like, you can have this delicate little

songbird and that out shrieks that voice like a parakeet, fucking hell. You know, I vividly remember that first. Ah! Yeah. I mean, Simon, you go on rightly about how great 1981 was because we allow the freakyer elements of pop to rise to the top of the charts. But this is three years early and in its own way, it's the absolute equal to all that insanity that hit the top of the charts in 1981, don't you think? Yeah, she was maybe a bit of an outlier in her era. But also, she's kind of a test case for the theory that if you present the British public with weirdness, quite often they will fucking buy it.

Yes. You know, just thinking of something, just off the top of my head, something like, oh, Superman by Laurie Anderson. I was just going to say that. A really strange record that became a hit. All flying lizards as well. Yeah. As I've already mentioned, I didn't see this episode,

but I clearly remember hearing it for the first time. I'd just not known what the fuck was going on. Yes, there is a tune happening and there's a chorus and all that, but a fucking voice and a delivery. I truly believed it was a foreign language. I could not pick out one line until bad dreams in the night. And I did think when she said Heathcliff, she was going, he-heed!

sort of proto Michael Jackson. And here, Chaps, is an oh, what, wow moment for you. Until I started researching this and actually looked at the lyrics. I had gone 48 years thinking that Cape Bush in the middle was singing, my one thing, my one dream,

a monster. You don't know whether to laugh at the weirdness of it or shit yourself. Because, you know, hearing this on the radio, it would put you in mind of an episode of Armchair Thriller. where a siren call over the airwaves turns people into killbots and makes them start rummaging through their knife drawer.

You know, it's Gabriel-era genesis for ginty readers, isn't it? It doesn't really feel like it's got anything to do with punk. No, I mean, I've occasionally described Kate Bush's post-punk pebble mill or whatever because there's a sort of MLR accessibility about her and the sort of, you know, the kind of sense of theatre as well, which is kind of conducive to a mainstream audience. But at the same time, you know, this absolute goggle-eye weirdness. Yeah, I mean, I was going to ask you

Who the fuck is buying this? But it's obvious, my, teenage girls. Teenage girls of all eras go mad for Bronte shit. Yeah. I mean, I remember eight or so years after this, we did a college trip to Hayworth. And me and some other lad, I think it might have been mad fill of chart music's passing.

We drifted off with these two girls to one of the moors, you know, tentatively wondering if something was going to happen. And the next thing we know, these two girls are just fucking. altered across the field like roadrunner, waving their hands in the air, screaming, Heathcliff! Heathcliff! Till they were a fucking speck in the distance.

Me and him just looked at each other and just laughed and went off to find a pub. Something in them that I can't understand. Yeah. I mean, even now, your release show went to see their new Wuthering Nights film, didn't she? Yeah, I think she liked it, yeah. She's not exactly familiar with the book, so that probably helps. Nor was Kate Bush, by the way.

No, absolutely, as Al said. Shelly caught the end of it. Kind of adjacent in a sense to punk. But it's not got goth in any way. It doesn't really have anything much to do with goth and all of its strokes. And gotheth is just about to get up and running with Susie and the Banshees. You know, it's something apart from that as well. And I suppose structurally wise, it's quite elaborate and it's quite ambitious

and it sort of changes and everything like that. And in terms of its musicology. But it's a sense of it, you know, in terms of the orchestration of it. I mean, it's almost like M-O-R-ish in some ways. But, yeah, she was so. right to insist on this as the debut. I mean, have you ever heard James and the Cold Gun?

It's very mid-70s, very polished, you know, steely Danielle, if you will. Right. And it's all right, but it wouldn't have made a fraction of a dent that Wuthering Heights did. Yeah. Because we're living in a time when even the average capital radio listener is craving something radically

different. Nowadays, if you hear a new single, and it's a bit weird, and you don't get it at first, you you just pass it over and go for something more familiar. But in 1978, after all the shit that's just gone before in the previous year, people seem to be more willing to take on board something new, even if they don't get it at first, but give it a chance to seep in. You know, not that they had any choice because it was absolutely hammered on the radio.

So you could say, really, that Kate Bush got as much benefit out of punk as Tom Robinson did. In a sense, and it's also the fact that 1978 is a year when, people aren't quite sure what's going to happen next or, you know, so people will prepare to, perhaps, you know, like, specular, as I said early on, maybe boogie-woogie's going to be the next thing, you know. And so, you know, there's lots of like leaping in the dark, I guess, and there's a sense that whoever's new could come from anywhere, will be anything. But you have to say, fair go to EMI for letting her have her way.

Yeah. The plan was to fix her as an album artist, who'd only really pay dividends by the third LP, and the performances of the singles didn't really matter as long as she got no, But, you know, that's bollocks because they wouldn't have helped the single back over the December otherwise. And they've played an absolute blinder at the moment, haven't there? Coming off the success of Mullerkin Tire. And, you know, it makes you wonder what would have happened to the sex pistols

if EMI had actually held their nerve after the Grundy incident. I think we'd at least got another LP out of it. Charlie Rotten at this time is saying that it's just as well because the sex pistols will be in the rolling stones of the 80s if they'd carried on. Yeah. You mentioned a sex pistols. About 12 years ago when Kate Bush was gearing up for her comeback shows at Hammersmith, which I went to, by the way, which were fucking amazing.

BBC 4 ran a documentary about her. And in that, John Leiden, I think perceptively stated that for a lot of his punk friends, Kate Bush was too much. And I thought those two words, too much. He kind of summed up the case against Bush, or at least the kind of alibi for, for anyone who ever found her a little bit off-putting. And we've talked about it before, but as a child, she scared me.

Yes. For reasons which are largely connected to that too muchness, you know. Her eyes and mouth, you see it here, you know, the deep red lips, the vocal range. It's all too big. It's like the granny wolf in Little Red Riding Hood. And, you know, to children, that's always going to be unsettling. Neil Culcani, RIP, pour out a little liquor. was also scared of her.

Yeah, the widening of the eyes. Yeah, and I'd later learn to love what had once filled me with fear. I think Neil did too. I don't know. But it's not surprising that Rotten and his mates couldn't get along

with what Kate Bush was about, what she was doing, because kind of uniquely among those towering icons of the late 70s and early 80s, Kate Bush didn't come out of punk. She did come out of Prague. She was inspired by King Crimson

and Pink Floyd as much as, you know, maybe the more obvious David Bowie and Stevie Nix of Roxy Music. Of course, she was mentored by Dave Gilmore and Peter Gabriel. And you listen to the complexity of her works, the multi-cord structures. And of course, this performance shows the earn a shame

theatricality of it or the presentation. All of that was rooted not in 1976, but in 1973. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She came from Kent, and I think it's kind of interesting, the kind of spiritual soil from which she sprang. It wasn't the Bromley contingent.

It's soft machine. It's caravans, the Canterbury set. And you could go a century earlier, William Morris. William Morris's Red House in Bexley Heath. It's where it was a rural retreat for Gabriel Dante Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddell and the pre-Raphaelite set. That was just a stone's throw from Kate Bush's childhood home. It's this kind of arsiness.

It's not limited by punk. It doesn't have those kind of strictures of punk. Yeah. She should probably be seen in that respect as the kind of last gasp, of the bohemian 70s, you know, the sort of living in a caravan kind of 70s. Flake advert. Yes, exactly that.

Just kind of this island of baroque excess amid those kind of tapered strictures that were coming in with with New Wave. And you look at this performance, she's absolutely starting as she means to go on. She's setting out of a fucking stall here, isn't she? Definitely. I mean, obviously, she later admitted

she'd not really read the book when this happened. But that's such a teenage thing to do, isn't it? Exactly, yeah. When you first start reading, kind of grown-up books when you're a teenager. The first book or the first couple of books, whatever they may be, whether it's the outsider by Camus or 1984 by George Orwell,

those books take up sort of undue prominence in your mind. You sort of start acting as if you're the only person who understands them and it's really important that you share it with the world. There's a little bit of that here with whether in height. I mean, it does sound like a massive stretch trying to find any influence that punk would have had on Kate Bush because it's definitely not their music clip,

but performance-wise, what did most punky women do on top of the pops? They looked a bit scary and they looked a bit mad. And Kate Bush does both of those things when she's on top of the pops, albeit a bit more subtler and a thousand times more effectively. The thing is, the kind of punk equivalent would be Susie Sue. I would say that in their later album, Susie and the Banshees ended up in a fairly similar place to Kate Bucs. They just got there by a different route. And I think Kate Bush and Susie Sue, despite having come from Prague and punk respectively,

had a lot more in common than might immediately be apparent. I really do. You know, I think they're kind of, God, it's reductive to call somebody the female Bowie or to have that. But certainly to have that kind of impact, I think Kate Bush and Susie Sue are the two who can make that claim. And as you say, you know, you recounted that story of the girls on your trip to Yorkshire who went running off shouting in Heathcliff. this record just had a massive power over girls. And I think that strange power has always endured. You know, you can, you know, it's fairly easy to make your own list of female artists

who've been hugely influenced. Well, by Kate Bush in general, but probably just by this one record. And you can see from this why girls responded. The weird thing is, though, I was doing a bit of reading up on this. And there's a book by Simon Reynolds, David's old colleague, and Joy Press, called The Sex Revoltz. And in that book, they've dug up some interview quotes with Kate Bush

from this time from 19708. And in it, she basically talks about almost sort of identifying or cosplaying as male when she's a songwriter. She says, when I'm at the piano writing a song, I like to think I'm a man, not physically,

but in the areas that they explore. Bobby Crush. For fuck's sake. For fuck's sake. Rock and roll and punk. They're both really male music she says and every female you see at the piano is either Lindsay to Paul Carol King that lot that stuff is sweet and lyrical but it doesn't push it on you and most male music not all of it but the good stuff really lays it on you it's like an interrogation it really puts you against the wall and that's what I like to do I like my music

to intrude that's and I think that's really interesting and also of course perhaps her most famous song now thanks to Stranger Things running up the hill is all about gender swapping, isn't it? But that idea of pushing you against the wall and intruding and forcing it on you. That's what she's fucking doing here in this performance. It's like scaring the shit out of you. It's like getting in your face.

It's practically hammering on the fucking window pain, isn't she? She is. She is. She's doing that that mind thing where you put your flat palm up, you know, as if you are at a window. And she's using every fucking minute of that Lindsay Kemp training, isn't she? To an extent. Oh, okay. We have to talk about the performance because, I mean,

this is the big reveal of Kate Bush in the UK. It's only a second ever TV appearance. Last weekend she nipped over to West Germany to appear in the TV show Beos Barnoff, a variety show set in a tram shed in Cologne, where she sang live over a backing tape in front of a backdrop of the Yorkshire Moors that for some reason had an active volcano slap in the middle of it.

Tonight, on top of the pops, she's going to be practically faced to, face with the sullen youth of Albion. And she's going to have a song completely shit on by our old friends, the top of the pop's orchestra. Oh, yeah. I mean, you could say that early 19708 is the imperial phase of the top of the pop's orchestra. They're still basking in their glory of their interesting take on uptown top ranking the

other week. But let no one say the top of the pop's orchestra are racialist. or don't understand the intricacies of their think music. They can turn their hands to this sort of thing to and make it just as unforgettable. Yes. A quote, if you don't mind, from the biography Under the Eye there

by Graham Thompson. Top of the Pops was the big one. She made her first appearance on the BBC's flagship music program on February the 16th when Wuthering Heights broke into the top 40 at number 27. what should have been a happy occasion turned into a nightmare

she discovered just prior to taping her performance that the show's arcane rules dictated that as a solo artist she was not allowed to play with her band instead she would have to sing solo to a new markedly inferior backing track of her song knocked off that afternoon by the BBC Orrard

orchestra. It was all dictated by stringent musician union regulations. Robin Nash, the programme's producer, came from a variety background and was unsympathetic to Bush's plight. He threw his

weight around, according to a member of the Bush entourage. It was not a nice experience for someone who was bust a gut, creating things properly and wants to be able to do it with backbone, an honest day.

So yeah, not the most convivial atmosphere for a new singer, and it does show in the performance. It's an absolute textbook example of a carefully honed image being lobbed into the sausage machine of television, don't you think?

Musically, yes. She got really badly fucked over there and on that stupid technicality. If she'd built herself as KBB, the K-Bush band, then it would have been different, wouldn't it? Or Kate and the Bushes.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. On that technicality, because she's a solo artist, they fucked her over. It's a dog's breakfast of a performance, obviously, you know. It's a dog's vomited breakfast, David. Yeah, pretty much, yeah. I mean, look, she's clearly nervous as far. She nearly comes in at a full bar earlier.

More importantly, she's been made to sing live into a big silver handmark while sat on a tiny circular platform, which she then has to stand on, while she gamely attempts to wait for the top of the pop's orchestra to catch her up, all by being watched, and in some cases being totally ignored by using American football T-shirts and late 70s dinge wear. They all not like extras in an advert for KP Skydivers, man. It's terrible.

That big blonde. Yeah, but that's as it ever was with Top of the Pops, you know, and it's on the performer to somehow cut through that and to transcend that. And I rate her performance more highly than you do. I really do. I think she's giving it loads. She's got a microphone in her hand, so that cuts off. like 50% of a dance routine. I don't know though.

She uses it. It's one of those microphones. It's like a slim panatella cigar. And she sort of circles it around like she's stirring porridge. So she's got to, at least she's sort of using it as a prop of doing something with it. I mean, I could go to everyone who's listening to this right now

and ask them to do an impression of Kate Bush singing Rothera Nights. And they do exactly the same thing as me because it's burned into our brains. You know, the hands swinging, the Hindu goddess finger gestures, the spinning around, particularly the spinning around, the pouring at the window, both hands, and the eye widening that terrified a young Neil Colcarnet. But in this performance, which is, remember,

the first impression we get of Cape Bush, we get very little of that. I thought it's plenty. I don't agree. I thought it's plenty. She might have got Lindsay Kent been to refine her a little, but he can't help her when she's been thrown into the country's most expensive youth club

with fucking Ray and Nobby soaring away. been made to hold a microphone which cuts off half of the hand gestures and told to get on with it. I mean, let's be honest here, there is nothing here that's going to make Faith Brown sit up and start scribbling in a notebook. I feel sorry for her, man. She's been hobbled. I mean, you mentioned Faith Brown. This record has been ruined to some extent by parody. Those three women, I always get mixed up.

Marty Kane, Faith Brown, Janet Brown. I always get a mixed up. They all seemed to have a crack at Kate. I don't know if they all did. I imagine not the 9 o'clock news had to go as well. Oh, of course it did. Oh, did they? Almost certainly.

You buy my latest hits, because you like my latex hits. Oh, God, yeah, yeah. And you're a trying hard to get inside my Leo Tard. Obviously, it's been partaged as well. Yes. I hated you. I loved you, too. Yeah.

But despite that, I think it's still strong. And I think this performance is better than you think it is. Right. And I think it's an incredible record. Yeah, I think there's probably a lot that's technically correct, definitely about what Al says, certainly. But I think she's think that the performance is so shocking and so overwhelming that, you know, misgivings are kind of waived, really.

I think she's got this kind of nice balance, you know, sort of coveting on this fine line between sexy and sexist, as it were, you know. I think the one thing that did you are with me is when it cuts to the, there's two geysers standing there at the front, like they've been abandoned by all their mates, you know, that big old blonde unit there. Just, it's like, what am I doing here? Where's everyone gone?

I wondered if they were her musicians. I was one, yeah. possibly. Yeah, we're going to have to agree to disagree on this performance, I think, because to these jaded old eyes that are embedded into this old, ugly skull here, I think this could be the only time we've seen a Kate Bush performance where Kate Bush is not in control of the situation, and fucking hell it shows. I think that's true, you know. The whole thing looks like a ridiculously talented six-former who's been asked to do

recycle to the second-year assembly, who'd much sooner be listening to Quo. And by the end, as the camera pulls back, we realise that by this point, she's performing to an absolute crescent of shame. Because it looks like 90% of the audience have either fucked off to the other stage or getting ready to cluster around Kid Jensen for the next link. Yeah, that's the bad bit.

Rum do. Back to the book. All the band were there, but they could only stand at the front and watch helplessly as the misery unfolded. Oh, it was then. She had a terrible time with Top of the Pops, says Charlie Morgan. If you had a sound like Kate had on Wuthering Heights with this wonderful guitar solo by Ian Berson,

and you want to use your own band, but the BBC says, Absolutely not. Kate is a solo artist, and she will sing with the house band. Well, it was a really, really unpleasant experience for her. She had a horrible time. She was practically in tears. Her band would have given her huge moral support, if nothing else. We all felt for her and we were really dejected

because we knew she hadn't done a fantastic performance and it wasn't really her fault. It's one thing being out of your comfort zone, but if you have an element of control, it's okay. But if you're completely out of control and you're 19 years old, that's not a very good experience. She later memorably described seeing the performance play, back as like watching myself die.

I mean, chaps, there is an alternative universe out there somewhere where Kate Bush appears on top of the pops does this and it ends up being remembered as well as mirrors in the sun by Sally Oldfield or even naughty, naughty, naughty by Joyce Arne. You know, a quirky song that came and went along with a singer. Totally. Only remember by old cunts who do a podcast about Top of the Pops. There was so many one-hit wonders around this time. I was actually thinking of naughty naughty as well because...

Yes, of course you was. I was convinced, actually, it was just going to be a kind of one-in-wondy. I thought, yes, it's something, but it's kind of a novelty thing. And how's you going to follow that up? Yeah. But Jilted John, who was interviewed at the time, he said everything that's happening now in New Wave is short-lived. And I think Jilted John is too. I think it's not like Kate Bush, who's immortal.

So, yeah, you got that exactly right. But, yeah, it could easily be, you know, like, clout or something like that. One thing that Kate Bush does have in column, with punk in the new way and in interviews quite often and it's this almost paralysing self-consciousness about the fact that you're kind of operating within the music industry and the kind of the commerce of all the whole art

versus commerce thing and people are almost like very painful about this as if they're being kind of examined by their peers you know for anything they might say that sounds like kind of commercial opportunously you know and she talks about the star making machine interviews and you know and she said you know her actually says

you see people who are into the glamour and the ego of it and not the work and really works what it's all about. It's not anything to do with ego. Music is like being a bank clerk. It still work on your different channel of energy. I mean, obviously she's not going to be a one at one. Well, yeah, certainly. Because EMI have got her back and she's got the man with a child in his eyes in the tank. That's going to be a fucking hit in any year. Yeah. But it could have easily derailed her path to the top, you know. But on the upside, this Ferrargo actually encourages her to get the fuck away from

studio performances whenever she can avoid them and getting early on video and completely control a ridge so that means we get to see remoting in a polythene womb joining the TA and stepping on a mine and sitting on the shoulders of a roll of disco Satan and you know a world without cape bush on the shoulders of a roll of disco Satan that's that's not a world i care to think about so well played top of the pops it was all for the good in the end yeah and i guess it might well be this experience that they'd like that because it's only right towards the end of her at pop career that she then lands up again on top of the pops and it's probably a side at that point she's on the slide so the following week despite that performance

wuthering heights soared another 14 places to number 13 and the week after jumped eight places to number five and after another top of the pop's performance this time with us sat behind a piano with a different sparse pre-recorded accompaniment. It shoved this week's number one off the summit of Mount Pop and would stay there for four weeks where she finally did a studio performance without a mic and with all the hand gestures and all the twizzling around and everything before eventually giving way to match stork men

and match stork cats and dogs by Brian and Michael. Back off. It would go on to sell half a half of, million copies in the UK would be the 12 biggest selling single of 1978, one above Sandy by John Travolta, one below Dreadlock holiday by 10cc, and made her the first woman to take her own self-written song to number one. An EMI was so delighted with Tony Meyer of Capital telling them to fuck off that they gave him his own gold disc. And Wuthering Heights would be covered. in a West Country reggae, reggae source by Morgan Fisher,

the keyboard player of Mot the Hoopal, under the name Char Wurzel later in the year. Have you heard that? No, I haven't. It's very similar to that song that was in the NME reviews page, covering uptown top ranking, but about flashes. It's just, what the fuck is going on with the Wurzels and Reggae in 1978? But also, in 1996, the object of Kathy's obsession was turned

into a musical written by and starring the child blood vintner of pop himself, Cliff Richard. Boys, have you seen that? No. Yeah, Cliff's on the stage, and he's wearing this kind of like shaggy mullet and beard combo that makes him look like a midfielder for Bocca Jr. at circa 1977, and he's deploying the kind of accent that all Southern is used when they're trying to take the piss out of anyone north of Leicester. It's terrible.

Oh, my God. Obviously, Cliff's taken the opportunity to build his part of a bit and improve upon the storyline because Heathcliff goes off round the world. So there's a bit in Africa, which is well-lying king. And we also learned that Heathcliff was responsible for introducing heroin to China. But there's a classic bit at the end when he comes home to find out that Cathy has died. And he's on the moors on his knees in pain. And he says, I cannot live without my light.

I cannot live without my soul! Does he do any danger dancing? He must do. Probably, yeah. I went to see a stage show of Wuthering Heights once a few years ago. It was actually, there's this open-air amphitheatre in Brighton. It was pretty good. But the thing that was really distracting all the way through

was that the guy who played Heathcliff was a dead ringer for Steve McMahon. Oh, no. I kept expecting him to sort of break off from the dialogue and do a mazie run down the wing and whipwere into the top course. The follow-up, the man with a child in his eyes, got to number six in July. And yes, was another single that she put a foot down for because AMI wanted them heavy people.

But she'd have to wait 44 years for her next number one when a re-release of running up that hill got there for three weeks in June of 2022, thanks to it being on some Netflix ramble. But the trauma from this performance, meant that from late 1977 onwards, she refused point blank to appear in the top of the pop studio, only coming back in 1985 for running up that hill,

when she had the authority to demand that she could load a bow with a real arrow and point it at the kids, and arseals to BBC health and safety restrictions. Well played, Doc. My magnificent album from... Kate Bush, lovely. And now for something different,

here come the darts, all right. We cut back to Kidd, flanked by three maidens of the studio floor, who were all dressed like the cast of an East German version of Charlie's Angels. Kid tries to convince us that we've just witnessed a spell-binding performance and quickly introduce us, in his words, Come back, my love, by the darts, all right. We've already covered Bob, Griff, Rita, Den, John, Horatio, Thump, George and Hammer in chart music number 45,

and this, their second single, is the follow-up to Daddy Cool slash The Girl Can't Help It, which got to number six for two weeks in December of 1977, and is the second cut from their debut LP, Darts. Clearly in the mood to kick on, they've rushed out this. A cover of the 1955 single by the Wrens. It entered the charts three weeks ago at number 43, then sawed 23 places to number 20, which got them in invite to top of the pops, which knocked it up eight places to number 12.

This week it's risen to number four, but as they're out of the country at the moment, they've just finished a mini tour of Sweden and are currently on the top and poppin circuit. here's a repeat of their performance from a fortnight ago and gaze upon their works show wadiwode and despair for their new gods in town. I've said this before but I'll say it again.

If you'd have pinned me down to one favourite group in 1977, probably would have said the wads, but by this time I'm opening myself up to everything that's set before me. But right about not, I am very keen on this new group who all looked like your favourite teachers doing a turn at the Christmas Assembly and I wasn't the only one I have a very distinct memory

of being in West Clay Junior School cloak room with my mates after school pulling our parkers on and we all gathered round and tried to recreate the opening bars of this song only to have our high school fantasy interrupted by the hysterical laughter of Mr Wright in the doorway

oh we were so shamed up it's understandable The boys can't help it. It's understandable. They appeal to kids. They're dynamic. In a way, they're more punk than Tom Robinson band. They're more punk than anyone else on this episode.

And it's because they're having a laugh. You know, even though they're not young by pop standards. They seem like they're on the side of the kids, you know. They're like madness before madness. Oh, yes. They're disruptors. They're subvertors. They're having a laugh.

They're doing what you would do. If you and your mates were on top of the pops when you were kids, they're sort of, you know, fighting to get on. camera shouldering each other aside and all that. So it's definitely catnip for kids that. Definitely. I mean, I was going to ask you, Simon, are darts a TED band?

Because to my mind, they definitely are and they're definitely not. You know, most of the signifiers are here, you know, the do-wop-rae, the harking back and the knockabout playfulness that the British always seem to impose on rock and roll. But, you know, they seem to lean more into the early 60s than they do the late 50s. And they definitely do as time. goes on. Yeah, they're a bit more kind of vocal harmony, a bit more do-wop bass than the Wadi-Wadi. And they don't have the kind of toughness to them that Stray Cats would have a few years later.

Obviously, for bands like Darts and Shwadi-Wadi, it was all over when Stray Cats came along. Because suddenly you got this band to a sort of cool, young, beautiful, and they've got this kind of punk toughness to them. But for their time, I think they were kind of a punk thing, a punk presence in a weird way, darts on top of the pops. Yeah. I like them. You know, I'm not especially a fan of music, but it's impossible. Who the hell would dislike darts, you know?

And I mean, especially like... And den Hegatively, he's got that kind of wonderful lurch-like presence. Just a thoroughly likable group. But I think also that at this point, we're at the kind of the tail end of this sort of whole rock and roll revivalism or era of like 50s revivalism that culminates in Greece. I think Shaking Stevens wants to have a word with you, David. Yeah, yeah.

As a sort of a mass thing, I mean, yeah, there are sort of sporadic things, you know, like shaky or whatever. stray cats or whatever. But it's a sort of high watermark in 78. And I mean, it's interesting, for instance, like John Travolta, who's huge in a 708. You don't really hear much of John Travolta now after this until Pulp Fiction, basically. By 1979, you know, it's kind of getting into the stage of back to the future. Simon, you're very pro-darts, aren't you? Yeah, we live in a time when going to see darts means dressing up as the Super Mario brothers or minions with 20 of your mates, going to Ali Pali and getting shit-faced while somewhere in the vague back

ground 50 year old teenager Luke Littler beat someone twice but also half his age. Yeah, I've become a regular darts goer in the do-wop sense. They hardly ever play live just a handful of times a year. But the last two years, I've seen them at the 100 Club. There's a reason I was wearing my brothel creepers at Chart Music Live. I was off to see darts at the 100 Club. This year for their 50th anniversary, they are playing dingwills instead and I'll be there again. The thing with Darts now is, and I think it's kind of unique for bands of their generation,

you go and see them, there are no ringers. The classic lineup, you know, they're not all alive anymore. Bob Fish sadly died a few years ago. But those who you do see on stage are all members for the 1970s. There's six of them, I think. No Triggers Brumery there then. No Triggers Brumery. Even though he did kind of look like a member of Darts.

They're all in their sempsies, and there's something amazingly beautiful about that, about seeing these men and one woman belting out the hits with genuine love for what they do and for each other. Griff Fender and Rita Ray are married. Oh, really? It hurts my heart. It probably makes me well up to see it.

Although if you're getting a bit too emotional, gong-like baseman, Den Hegarty of Tizwas fame, one eye going to the shop, the other coming back with a change. It's always there to provide some light relief if it's getting a bit too much. Oh, yes. It's a magical thing going on right now,

and I would urge anyone to just take, the chance to see darts live while you still can. You've told that great story, Simon, when we covered Darts last time, ages ago, about darts in Darbe. Refresh the memory of the pop craze youngsters. Yeah, basically Danny Baker goes on tour with them and he says that going on tour with them is, you know, the best band you could possibly go on tour with. It's in his NME days, Darts at the peak of their popularity.

And he says they're an absolute challenge to keep up with in the offstage, high jinks, no sleep till Hammersmith department. And yeah, he tells that story as proof. Basically, it's in the middle of the tour. They're booked into this motel outside Derby. They get there about half ten, only to be greeted by this snooty Jobsworth receptionist who says, if he'd known they're a pop group

and not an actual darts team, he would never have accepted the booking. And he refuses to serve them any drinks from the bar. So the first thing, George Curry, the guitarist, tells him to fuck off. And he does fuck off. He fucks off back to the back room. So the bassist, Thump Thompson. starts ding in the reception bell,

digging him really repeatedly to annoy him. Meanwhile, this stuck-up receptionist is in the back room, phoning the police. So rather than maybe do what most bands would have done, go quietly to their rooms, darts are sitting in the bar area. They start helping themselves to bottles of beer. They're not stealing, they're having a whip round

in a pint glass to pay for it, mind. But Danny Baker, who knows how switchboards work, because, you know, working at the NME, he was on reception. He leans over, he starts connecting random rooms to each other for a laugh, which is a little side plot to this that I love, you know. So you get people never spoken before,

like the phone going off in the middle of the night and talking to strangers. But darts are entertained themselves by leaping up and trying to headbut this giant glass bauble that's hanging from a light fitting successfully, sending it crashing into the upside-down wine glasses hanging from the bar. Obviously, almighty noise, glass shattering.

One member, again, Danny hints strongly. It's a guitarist, George Curry, says, all right, fuck it. If he wanted the sex pistols, Let's give him the sex pistols. And he throws his beer bottle through a plate glass window. At the exact moment, the police turn up and bundle everyone into the spackle van and slough him in a cell for the night. You've got to bear in mind, Danny Baker was closely acquainted with the actual sex pistols,

having shared an office with their management when he wrote for sniffing glue. But sex pistols, I'm imagining, were pussycats compared to the, you know, apparently wholesome family entertainers, darts. And I think of that story, whenever I think of darts, whenever I see them live or on TV, that's what's going through my head is them trashing a motel outside Derby. You're right, Simon. I mean, darts may postulate themselves as another group of crazy rock and roll funsters

who are happy to pitch up on everything from Revolver to Cheggers plays pop. But you clearly wouldn't want to fuck about with them and they're actually going to create an international incident in a few months' time. Simon, are you aware of the Musicale Malauca Festival? No, but I want to hear about it. Oh, well, it was an annual song contest

broadcast live across Spain, watched by an estimated 25 million Juvennes Locos Porrell Pop and then beamed right across South America. So it's a very big deal. It's like the professional Eurovision. Nice bit of Spanish there, Al.

I appreciate that. That was good. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know me, mate. And it's a fucking big lineup as well. You know, Manhattan Transfer, Tavaris, Demis Rousseau-Rusos, Julio Iglesias, Jorge fucking Ben, to name but a few. I mean, fucking Alzheimer's.

Darts and Manhattan transfer are on the same bill. And luckily for us, Roy Carr was there for the NME, and I'll let him pick up the slack in this quote. Okay. Like the rest of the darts team, drummer John Dumber was travelling light. To expediate the changeover of acts, the organisers had arranged for a kit to be on hand. All cameras were on darts as they swaggered into Daddy Cool.

Suddenly, without warning, the Spanish drummer with the festival orchestra, who was later quoted through a fat lip, the Englishman ill-treated my symbols, began dragging said symbols out of Dummer's striking distance. Enough was enough, and the next time the drummer grabbed at the hardware, Dumber didn't whack the symbol, but, without dropping a beat, caught his tormentor with a saber-like slacker-like slacker.

across his mouth with his stick. Ooh. First blood to darts and the signal for the Spanish brass section to bombard Duma with their seat cushions. Stage centre, the demonic Den Hegater achieved lift-off, leaping over the footlights, hurtling health for leather over the black tie and corsage audience and growling, I'm mad. He tumbled into the festival judges and right into the... the lap of the wife of Robert Stack, who plays Elliot Ness in the Untouchables. He then attempted to befriend the prima donnerish, seldom seen unclothed Emmanuel star, Sylvia

Christel. Back on stage, while the suave Bob Fish and the Foxy Rita Ray were ploughing through Make-It, and Griff Fender was preparing to dash to Dummer's assistance. Hegarty was now diving into an ornamental floodlid. waterfall. Pandemonium erupted as Haggerty emerged, soaked to the skin, playfully flicking a wet sock at the front row. As a parting gesture, he wrung the last remaining drops down the neck of one of the jabbering presenters. Jabbering. Shocked, but far from silent, the capacity audience responded with a standing ovation, punctuated with ecstatic cries of fantastical.

Apparently the cop has paid a visit to the dressing room afterwards but Darts as manager Bob England managed to talk everyone down No charges were filed And the band were pretty much celebrated in the media as heroes Because they were sick to death of this fucking ridiculous Folderol of a talent show There is a full transmission of the broadcast on YouTube But alas it's the version that's been broadcast to South America

And Darts have been completely edited out. What a shame man. Yeah, yeah, it is. The other thing about this performance is that it led to a great school playground urban myth, which is that we all thought darts had snuck asswear past the census. Oh, of course, yes.

Because at the beginning, you know, it does appear that he's singing, wop, do the wank. Do the wop, do the wank, and all of that, now I've believed that, or I've wanted to believe that for years. Yes. I sadly found out the definitive answer. It's in music. week, you know, the contemporary one from this episode. Big advert for the single. Yeah, big

advert, big full page advert that says do the wang, W-A-N-G with dance. And I'm really sad about that. I tried lip reading here and yet, sadly, it does seem to be wang. But wang is still pretty funny, mind you know. Yes, it is. Yeah, I mean, the intro was, um, it wasn't in the Wren's original version. It was added on by Dots. Exactly. Yeah. There are dancers called the Wop and the Wang, but the only examples I could find came long. long after 1978. The Wop was a

hip-hop dance of the mid-80s and there's something a bit more recent called the K-Wang so where darts got it from fuck-nosed

I think they knew exactly what they were doing yeah yeah I've got to say Bob Fish looks fucking amazing that jacket

right yes he does there's good right I'm a connoisse of leopard print clothing right yes

that jacket there's good and there's bad leopard in the world that one is to fucking die for

and the trousers as well he's got those kind of wet-look PVC trousers, very tight. Basically, it takes on balls to dress like that when you're going bald. And I ought to know, right? I would wear that fucking outfit. He looks so fucking cool in that.

A friend of mine's dad used to know Bob Fish. This is very convoluted. Right, friend of mine, Jake Schillingford from the band My Life Story. Right. His dad, Alan Schillingford, is still with us, was a very prominent visual artist. used to do poster art and things like that back in the pop art era. And he worked alongside Bob Fish. And Bob Fish used to work on record sleeves by sort of people like the pub rock artist Mickey Jupp, that kind of thing.

Happily, not the album, Japanese. I would advise everyone to maybe through parted fingers, look up the sleeve for Mickey Jupp's Japanese. Yes, he's doing that thing. He's doing that thing on the front. But yeah, luckily, we can't blame Bob Fish for that. The other thing about darts, they were fucking huge, right? Yeah, we forget. The thing I've noticed is that younger people, even just slightly younger than me,

look at me a bit blankly when I talk about darts, right? But I've got some stats here for Music Week, okay? So here we have the top-selling groups for the first quarter of 1978 in terms of singles, okay? Number 10, Althea and Donner. Number nine, Scott Fitzgerald and Yvonne Keely. Number eight, ELO. Number seven, Rose Royce. Number six, wings.

Obviously. Number five, Abba. Number four, Brotherhood of Man. Oh, I'm a Brotherhood of Man selling more than Abba. Fuck me. This country. Number three, Bob Marley and the Whalers. Number two, the Bee Gees.

Number one, darts. Really? Fucking out. Is that domestic? It's UK singles in the first quarter of 1978. They went on to spend a total of 20 weeks in the top 10 for the whole of 1978. The only acts to do better than that were Bonie M and the duo of John Travolta and Liv of Newton John. So they also sold more UK concert tickets than any other act in 1978.

Did they know? That is how fucking huge they were. Of course, and you'll probably come on to this, but cruelly. They had a string of number two hits. Never quite reached the top. They're the Jimmy White of do what. Yeah, because everyone goes on about squeeze roundabout this time, having two number twos on the bounce.

But they're three. It's ridiculous. Yeah, not fair. So the following week, come back, my love, nipped up one place to number three, and a week later edged up to number two. Its highest position held off the topmost of the popermost by this week's number one.

The follow-up, a cover of the 1964 ad-lib single, The Boy from New York City, repeated the trick when it got to number two in May, held off by Rivers of Babylon by Boni M. And one of their own songs, It's Raining, got to number two again in August, unable to dislodge three times a lady by the Commodores. They rounded off 1978 with Don't Let It Fade Away, only getting to number 18 in December, but they'd have two top 10 hits in 1979 with Get It and Duke of Earl.

What a band. I want to know, I need your love so badly. I need your love so badly. I need your love so badly. Come back, my love. Darts in full flight and now in full costume, it's Legs and Co with the music of Rose Roy. A

Kid! With a massive Tom Robinson band badge on his brown trousers And flanked by two very spaced out maidens draped in floral fabrics Alerts us to an impending blast of crumper tray Its legs and co dancing to wishing on a star by Rose Royce Formed in Los Angeles in the early 70s After a merger between a band from Watts and one from Inglewood Total Concept Unlimited

were linked up with Edwin's Star for a tour of the UK and Japan in 1973 and the war hitmaker was so impressed he bigged them up to Norman Whitfield who had just started his own label after leaving Motown

after changing their name to Magic Wond Whitfield employed them as the studio band for Whitfield Records and the backing band for the undisputed truth and it was when they were in Miami on tour with them that they were introduced to a local singer called Gwen Dicker, who was invited to L.A. for an audition and became the lead singer they were crying out for.

Around this time, Whitfield was approached by the director Michael Schultz, who had just had a massive hit at the pictures with the film Cooley High, which had a soundtrack soddened with Motown. He told them he had an idea for his next film called Car Wash and invited him to handle the soundtrack. Seeing the opportunity to launch his new act properly, he gave the entire soundtrack over to them, with Whitfield writing the bulk of the songs. Unlike most OSTs of the era,

where the material was written and recorded after the film gets made, Whitfield and the band were allowed to visit the set to soak up the atmosphere and bond with the cast, writing and recording on the fly, which led to them changing their show their show. name again to Rose Royce. The film and the soundtrack were massively successful, putting them over in America. Not only that, but the UK were immediately on board as well, putting their debut single Car Wash, which got to number one in America, all the way up to number nine in February of

1977. This single, their eighth, is the follow-up to Ooh Boy, which wasn't released over here until 1980. It was written by Billy Ray Calvin of the undisputed truth and after it was offered to and knocked back by Barbara Streisand, it was gobbled up by Rose Royce who made it the lead-off cut from their first non-sand-saintrack LP in full bloom, which came out in July of 1977. It entered the chart five weeks ago at number 44

and began a deliciously slow upward pull until a fortnight ago when it only got up to number 26 from number 28. But Top of the Pops came to the rescue when it aired the video

which helped it soar 15 places to number 11. This week it's jumped five places to number six so here's the conglomerate of lower limbs PLC, who this week have been given full ramp access to the studio floor

for a much-needed blast of satisfaction. Chaps, song or dance routine first? What'd your fan say? Dance routine. Dance routine, yes. Yeah, and I'm glad that, you know, true to fall and Flick Colby's

failed to resist the temptation to feature stars in the stage props, you know, taking an obscure cue from the title. I suppose indeed, there's a lot of running up and down, isn't there? Yes. They're running up that hill, the years in advance of Cape Bush.

Flamshing up that hill, I'd say. Yeah, I suppose so, yeah. I mean, legs and coat, they're in hot pantera with a neck curtain stapled to it that opens at the front so they can show off all their legs. There's a gold star on their crotch, and they're topped with a gold bra cap.

Big development here. Lulu Cartwright has ditched her clear out of Grange Hill, Flickback parted and got herself a poem because it's that era. I mean, by this time, by early 1978, Kevin Kagan's already got a mild

perm. It's a few months before he goes full old English sheep dog as an ITV panelist at the World Cup. But there is one man who's brave enough to go full bubble perm earlier. Simon Bates. Have you ever seen photos of Simon Bates with a per?

Oh, wow. Sadlet, he got rid of it before he became a top of the pop's presenter. David, me and Simon were too young. Were you not tempted with a poem. No. I was sent a party and I was. My nickname was butler, you know, because

I looked like a butler. Not after standing on the buses. No, no, no. In other leg-related developments, Rosie and Sue are going to be nipping off to do a bit of moonlighting possibly this very week to film an advert for the next Ronco LP

Boogie Nights. What's more, they'll be reuniting with none other than the much maligned Floyd Pierce. The ethnically dignified one out of Ruby Flipper. Who's about to strike back as a member of Hot Gossip? We'll see them having a cavort to knowing me, knowing you by Abba.

Ain't gonna bump no more with a big fat woman by Joe Tex. Yeah. Black Betty by Ramjam and free by Denise Williams while wriggling around in them dead tight, shimmery disco trousers in a way that will absolutely inflame the National Front. So good show to that. So yeah, it's your bog standard flick Colby Flans about again, isn't it? Against this Art Deco background of stars and arrow things.

But it's good to see that Top of the Pops have finally adhered to the chronically sick and disabled persons act 1970. I've got some ramps in, which they go up and down upon. And that's pretty much your lot there, isn't it? Yeah. First of all, you're quite right to point out the spaced out youths. Yes. Flanking. Oh, God, yeah.

at the start. Oh, but they've had their minds blown by Kate Bush, haven't they? Yeah. Yeah, already, already. Yeah, the girl on Kid Jensen's right is very Linda Blair, I thought. She looks like half dead, basically, and seems to be hanging in midair. Yeah. Someone called an exorcist, you know.

Absolutely. Kid Jensen's mother sucks cocks in hell. There's your episode title. Yeah. That woman, I think I was probably, you know, I wasn't scared of Kate Bush, but I've been scared of this woman, too. I mean, she looks like an apparition. You know, you can imagine.

Benson later on watching the playback, you know, the top of the bottom saying, wait a minute, there was no one to my right in that bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The one thing to be said for Legs and Coe's performance here is that at least it means we get to hear the record in all its genuine beauty, which is, given what happened to poor Kate Bush, you know, this is really important. No, they've got Rose Royce in for this. I guess so, because it's a band, yeah, unless they thought Rose is their name, yeah.

Yes, exactly. Bondi, you know, yeah. Yeah. It's interesting you point out the sparkly stars that are staple to their crotches by Flit Colby. Is that implicitly inviting us to wish upon their crotches? Is that what's been, yes? Goodness me. When you wish upon a fan.

But anyway, Rose Ross, what a fucking band, man. Oh, funky as fuck when they wanted to be. But also capable of knocking at astonishingly brilliant ballads, which not every band of their elk could do. You know, Earthwind and Fire, they could do it. Calling the gang in the Aventis, they had to go, and they were all right. But I'm not talking about Cherish and Joanna before you start on there. Yeah, I mean, I'm not a fan of Car Wash, particularly.

I know that's probably heresy, but I think it's a bit one note. Is it Love Your After? That's pretty decent. Yes. But I do prefer Rose Royce's ballets. I prefer them in this mode. Yeah. This is Norman fucking Whitfield at his very best.

Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong. here to make right everything that's wrong, to quote Billy Bragg. And, yeah, the production on this is incredible. The reverb gives this kind of ethereal dreamy quality. It's got almost cinematic sound effects on it. Obviously, it nods to When You Wish Upon a Star, Jiminy Cricket from Pinocchio and all that. It's one of the greatest records ever made for me, this.

To the extent that I can hardly speak about it, it's really, really hard to talk about. Yeah, it's one of them, isn't it? Yeah. Don't listen to us going on about it. Just go and listen to the fuck up. It's mint. Yeah.

I mean, we've already had a taste of Rose Royce doing the slow jams with. I want to get next to you and I'm going down. But it's a toss-up between this and Love Don't Live Here Anymore for the absolute best work. This is interesting. I think people fall into two camps. Some people rate Love Don't Live Here anymore, a bit higher. I personally am in the wishing on a star camp, although obviously Love Don't Live Here anymore is fantastic. I think what needs to happen is Jimmy Nell needs to do a cover of wishing on a sunset.

Yeah. So we can compare, yeah. Yeah. Fuck me. Rose Royce, they've got this body of work that's absolutely endured, but of course at the time, rock critics, like, with a lot of black music, yeah, yeah, it was a discode. You know, they talk about pleasant but disposable records.

You know, they talk about, like, Rose Royce or chic. You know, but Christa life, these records are still being played. They're just etched in the firmament. Meanwhile, like in 1978, rock critics, they're doing two-page spreads on the bands set to dominate the 80s and beyond, the shirts. Yeah. I met Rose Royce once

No Yeah it was at one of those Best Disco in Town package tours Yeah Shequa headlining and various other people From that era And I had a backstage pass And got very drunk

And I got it wrong You know sometimes you meet a famous person And you fuck it out Oh no I was talking Because by this point Gwen Dickie wasn't the singer Okay

Right It would have been either Ricky Benson or Lisa Taylor I'm not sure which one it was Right But my line of attack With the conversation was that that performance was so good

it didn't matter that it wasn't Gwen Dickey and obviously you can imagine the look on her face like you know, the smell of gas, you know what I mean? And rather than pick up on her visual cues and talk about something different or just quietly walk away and they go, I just carried on talking about Gwen Dickey. Oh, no, Simon. You can see each time I mention the name Gwen Dickey,

her face got more and more thunderous, you know, and I still cringe about that to this day. If you're out there, singing with Rosa Royce, In about 2000, whose name I can't remember, I'm sorry. It's weird, you know, people that were appreciative in the press of Rose Royce. They were constant saying, every article would say, look, Gwen Dickey has got a sort of look to solo career. It's obviously, as if that was the obvious next step.

I'm not particularly sure why, didn't it? I think it's going all right at the moment, Rose Royce. If she can find a backing band as good as Rose Royce are, good luck with that. But she didn't exactly, you know, do a Diana Ross, Gwen Dickey when she went solo. She'd probably have ended up on top of the pops and, of course, to say, of course if you had Rose Royce with the we wouldn't have to fuck it up with the top of the pop's orchestra but there you go

so the following week wishing on a star nipped up two places to number four and a week later got to number three its highest position the follow-up it makes you feel like dancing got to number 16 in May but they went back to the slowest to finish off

1978 when love don't live here anymore spent two weeks at number two in October. And wishing on a star didn't even make the American charts because they're all ignorant cunts. They all deserve Donald Trump

and their country's just a big Britain that thinks it's sort yourself out, Yank. Fucking hell, that's a shock. I didn't know that. Oh, by the way, chaps, who's this? Ro-ro-ro-ro-ro-ro-ro-ro-ro-ro-w. Um...

Ro-ro-ro-R-Rub. Um... Blue-chulip Rose Royce. Hey! I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Wishing on a star, legs and cold,

moving to Rose Royce. And now a lovely song from Billy Joel, a former record of the week of mine, in fact. We cut back to Kid, sat in the middle of three lines of ten young ladies,

all fustooned with TRB badges, arranged as if they're on a pirate ship at the fairground, and it's just starting to swing backwards. Kid then wants to tell us all about a lovely song Which he made his record of the week Earlier in the month Just the Way You Are by Billy Joel

We've covered Billy Joel many a time And often chart music But this, his tenth single, Is the one that finally put him over in the UK It's a follow-up to moving out Open brackets, Anthony's song, Close brackets, which failed to chart and is the second cut from his fifth album, The Stranger,

and old Pete Fraught with Mither, as his label CBS were on the verge of dropping him if he couldn't produce a decent selling album. He wrote the song for his wife at the time, who was also his manager, but once it was recorded, neither he or his band reckoned it in the slightest. But when other musos working in the studios next door, including Linda Ronstadt, heard it,

they told him to stop being a twat and bung it out. It rocketed up to number three in America and it's ended our chart last week at number 30. This week it slithered up four places to number 26 and Robin Nash is clearly gagging to put on something for the Mams. So here's a video of a live performance which marks his first ever appearance on top of the pops and yes chaps, all of a sudden this episode has gone.

properly adulterated, hasn't it? Yeah. You mentioned the pirate ship aspect to Jensen's intro there. For me, it's like adding to this sort of sense of foreboding, because he's surrounded by about a dozen very conservatively dressed and expressionless youths. It's like he's being held hostage by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We've already had that girl who looks like Linda Blair hanging from the ceiling. Exactly, yeah. It's getting creepier and creepy.

It is, yeah. This song, yeah, it is very kind of. and a mum friendly and all of that and it feels like such a standard that I've got to be honest I for a long time had no idea it was even by Billy Joel right yeah it's almost one of the songs that you can't imagine it being written by anyone it's just always been there yes and and the fact that it comes on the scene as late as 1978 yeah feels really weird to me you know I mean I first encountered billy Joel via it's still rock and roll to me yeah which is you know that strangely uptight passive aggressive, pugnaciously reductive moan about new stuff that he doesn't understand

or doesn't want to understand with maybe a 15 to 20% element of disco sucks sentiment that I'm detecting in there as well. I actually quite like it as a song. But he's a funny little man in he. I mean, you look at this clip now in its 1978 context. He's exhibiting this sort of weird premature permanence like he as well as the song is someone who's always been there, just someone from a previous hero who's still knocking round. The way he's dressed, he's got a suit, the colour of butterscotch angel delight.

He's got a kipper tie. He's sweating like Prince Andrew in a police car. Billy Joel denies all allegations of starting the fire. Yeah, but he looks like some kind of old showbies hack from the Vegas circuit. It's like a kind of cultural progeria, you know. He's like he's old before his time culturally. But he's 28, right?

I feel like that talk sport caller about why Ante Niemie couldn't play for Scotland because he's finished. He's not finished. He's 28. But in terms of the prolific new wave hitmakers of 1978, okay, had Billy Joel been on the same episode as Blondie, he's four years younger than Debbie Harris, had he been on the same episode as The Stranglers, he's the same age as Hugh Cornwell and 11 years younger than Jet Black and so on and you know let's not even get started on Charlie Arbor from the UK subs

Ian Dury as well he's about 11 years younger than Ian Durey. Yeah so maybe that's why he's really shirty about the new wave and it's still rock and roll to me because he's like you know fuck you all you people are older than me anyway yeah so in terms of this episode he's only a year older than Tom Robinson he's a year older than Kid Jensen he's a couple of weeks older than Bob Fish from

It starts. But it just seems so old. And like I say, the song, it just seems to have been around forever. It's a pebble mill at one standard, right? You imagine Tony Monopoly singing it when you're off school with a lurking, you know, that or orange-coloured sky. I associate it with the preset Bossa overbeat of the Bon Tempe organ, played by the covers duo in the bar of Barry Island Butlin.

You can imagine that. Definitely, yeah. Don't go change it. nah. And I suspect that all throughout his run of 80s hits, I didn't know that he had done just the way you are. I bet it pissed him off, in the UK at least, that, you know, Barry White says,

thank you very much, and takes it seven places higher in the chart the following year. Obviously, Billy's version does way better in America. I used to take Billy Joel during his run of hits on a single by single basis. I love tell her about it. I quite liked the long. longest time. I'm a sucker for a bit of sentimental

acopella. Yeah. Yeah. I don't like this one much, I have to say. But I've got a certain respect. I can't believe this is an old man thing to say, but I've got certain respect for the craft of songwriting. You know, for such an infinitely singable, coverable standard. Yeah. Like that. So, yeah.

If I was watching this at home and my mom and dad started looking at each other in that way, the way that turns your stomach. This is a piss break, isn't it? I mean, it's only on for a minute or So it's going to have to be a short prispray, but then again, I was 10. I've got a smaller bludder. I can do it.

First of all, yeah, 28 in 1978 is like 48 in lots of respects. Although, of course, Debbie Harry is the one that absolutely defies all of that. She's 33 at this point, yeah. I mean, he's only eight years younger than Bob Doolin. I mean, he's only 36 at this point. Probably 35, in fact, no, I think about it. Yeah, I mean, Billy Joel. I mean, I never carried a torture of Billy Joel,

or uptown girl, or we didn't start the fire. Oh, but you fucking did a minute. You deposed democratically elected government in Iran in 1953, you know. Yeah. Never a fan of anything else that he ever did, you know. There's something about his material quite often at the time, like him, a very sort of stumpy and pugnacious that, you know, turns me off a bit. But this, I like, I really, really liked at the time.

I really liked it, yeah. Fucking out. He's playing an actual piano, David, not a synthesizer. What's going on? Well, actually, that sound that he gets is actually, you know, that kind of very limpid keyboard sound. It's something very peculiar to the 70s. You get it on, I don't know, everything from Paul Simon slips sliding away,

love hangover, 10cc, I'm not in love. Yeah, I hear a lot of I'm not in love in it. It's not a sound that's very often revived, and of course, a lot to Stevie Wonder. So Stevie Wonder didn't make an album in 1970. He was preparing a journey through the secret life of plants, God helpers. And so, in a sense, with this very limpid ballad, I was strongly reminded of Stevie Wonder at the time,

when I was obsessed with Stevie Wonder at this point. So it's a dose of methadone, I suppose, for one of any wonder heroin, I guess. At the time, Billy Joel says an interview says, a lot of my romancism comes from novelists, because there was a big read, apparently, when it was a kid. F. Scotch, Fitzgerald, Ernest, Hemingway, Mark Twain, Sartre, Kafka, Hesse. I'm not really sensing an awful lot of them in this lyric about, just stay as you, so own sweet self.

I mean, it's not very existentialist. So it's not really so much to that, but from a musical point of view, I absolutely immersed myself in this. I thought it was lovely, but Billy Joel never remotely touched me again. Anyway, chaps, it's safe to say that when Milhouser's dad made his demo tape of cannabora feeling, this is what he was shooting for. You know, something that get people up on the dance floor of the Bernie Inn or make them reach their hands towards each other through the candles

and the plates pooling with cow blood. And at first glance, it does seem like a touching display of marital affection. But if the Bradford Gay Liberation Front had a common with Tom Robinson for Wright-on-Sister, then oh, they're going to have a field day with this, aren't there? Let us count the ways. So, one, he assumes that his misses would only go-changing for the specific purpose of trying to please him. Good point. Two, he tells her that she's not to get the ass with him if he doesn't notice her,

because he does actually. And when he looks like he doesn't give a toss, she's not to go on about it. because she's wrong. Yeah. Three, he tells her that she's not to try new fashions or change the color of her hair, which is essentially a demand that she's got to wear flares and have a Farrah Forcet Major's Flakeback for the rest of the life. And four, most damning of all, he doesn't want to have clever conversation with us.

So, yeah, no open university for you, Shirley Valentine. So to sum up, if the music is that date night at the Bernie Inn, the lyrics are. essentially saying you're not going to eat all them chips are you? And hey, the fruit salad looks dead nice. You should have that. Yeah, I like the adult one clever conversation here. Don't start one about it. I wonder if the Labour Party should stick to its 5% wage restraint policy.

I think it should. He's been in a five-year marriage with Elizabeth Weber and it's been properly Jeremy Kyle. They first met in the late 60s when she was married to Joel's partner when he was in the acid rock duo. Attila. And after Joel became their lodger, he started knocking her off, which led to her moving out and Attila splitting up.

They reunited a few years later and they got married in 1973. She recently tried to get George Martin into produce his current album, but he saw him live and said, oh, no mate. And yet, safe to say that marriage isn't going to last. She backs off very soon from the management aspect and gets her brother in. to do it and apparently he wrote this song as a gift to her and when he played it to her according to Joel the first thing that came out of her mouth was do I get the publishing as well it's a really good point you make about the lyrics there are red flags there all over the place

yeah it's always a bit worrying when a man tells a woman you know what maybe you should just stop wearing makeup you know you don't need makeup but you know I think you just got a lovely face you know yeah you don't yeah because we all know what's really going on there it's a very kind of controlling thing yeah Simon aren't you married to a goth listen I yeah yeah try that one so yeah talking to the video it's your classic 70s video trope isn't it the in-concert clip Joel oh yeah at the keyboard in his suit with massive lapels but no badgers slowly zooming in and out on his face and a few cross face to the rest of the band the thing about this is it's actually shot on video

isn't it? Which is kind of rather go ahead in 1978. Yeah, it's not grainy, is it? Yeah, it's not film. No, it's got that sheen, but so has Billy Joel's face. It just brings out the sweatiness even more. He looks like a Wess hot dog that's just been fished out of the tin. And you're looking at it, you think, what's he sweating for? What's he been doing in the previous songs? Like,

pushing the piano from one end of the stage to the other about ten times. Exactly. I mean, you know, if he sweats like this, just performing a limpid ballad, I mean, imagine I'd be sweating if it was like we didn't start the fire. It would be coming off in like Niagara Falls, wouldn't it? It's ridiculous. So the following week, just the way you are,

only managed to nip up one place to number 25, and a week later got to number 19. It's highest position. But it won two Grammys this year, one for best record, and one for best song, which is fucking thick, if you ask me. What the fuck is that all about?

I suppose they go for production and stuff like that. I suppose so. But in 1982, while Joel was still in hospital after a motorbike crash, his wife filed for a very costly divorce, with her claiming that he had changed. Oh. To try to please himself. Soon afterwards, he learned that her brother had been dipping his hand in the jolly till

to the tune of millions. Consequently, when he recovered and went back on the. road he fucking hated playing this song and after he heard his own drummer singing she took the house she took the car during a gig

he dropped it from his life set for over 20 years fucking out the follow-up a re-release of moving out got to number 35 in July and he closed out the year with my life taking 11 weeks to

pick it its way up the charts and spend two weeks at number 12. The same position that Barry White reached with his cover of Just the Way you are in January of 1979. I don't know why, but I'll take it from Barry White, but not from Billy Joel. I love you just the way you are. That was called Just the Way You know, there is so many good singles around at the moment, just like the mid-60s, all over again.

after being away from the scene for a long time or back with a vengeance. And here's another example of one of those good singles around at the moment with love is like oxygen. Love is like oxygen. On his own, reminds us that we're in a glorious age of pop

going so far as to compare it with the mid-60s. He then introduces us to a band who are back with a vengeance. Sweet with love is like oxygen. That's what he said. What the fuck is going off with kid this week? Is it some kind of reference to Jean-Michel Jard?

Yeah, yeah. We've sucked off sweet on many and occasional chart music. And by God, we'll suck them off again because their fucking skill. M-nom, nom, nom. After ripping through the charts of the early 70s with the assistant sashed so-cooked control of Cheney Chap, they severed ties with their songwriting overlords and struck out on their own in the summer of 1970. in an attempt to establish themselves in America as a serious rock band, which led to modest sales over there and diminishing returns over here.

By late 1977, they've left RCA, signed with Polydor, and have taken a year off gigging, partly to work out a more chart-friendly style for the Yanks, but mainly because Brian Connolly's voice has been fucked after an assault in 1974. They reconvened to France to record their 6 LP, level-headed, which came out last month, and this is the lead off track from it. The week it was released, they were immediately rushed into the Top of the Pop Studio for their first appearance in nearly two years,

which got it into the chart three weeks ago at No. 48. And after it soared 27 places to No. 21 the week later, Top of the Pops repeated the performance, which got it up three places to number 18. This week it's jumped nine places to number nine. Their first top ten placing since Fox on the Run in March of 1975. So here's yet another repeat of that performance. And boys, I would have been absolutely fizzing with glee about this, because as you all know, the suite were my first favourite band of all ten.

time ever since I heard Popper Joe on a Ronco album me Dad had. To see them on top of the pops of the first time in ages, it would be like hearing about a new series of the banana splits or even better, tree boy blobs coming back, especially the top of the apple ones. Fucking yes. The trouble with me is that I wouldn't have been excited. Oh, David.

No, no, no, insofar as, same phenomenon as with Slade. I loved Sweet and Slade when I was about sort of like 10, 12, but now is 15 and now is on the cusp of like more serious music and so people like Sweet and Slade had to be repudiated and I did repudiate them rather formatively at the time I bet his teddy beer went right in the skin I'm afraid so but I haven't said that

I think it's a tribute to the song that it's pretty infatful actually it scared me a bit this whole idea about love it's like auction you get too much and you can't survive not enough and you're going to die I wasn't top of the class when it came to chemistry and I trusted that Sweet had done their homework when they wrote this and that this was based on some sort of chemical reality. And I started to get concerned that if there should be a kind of oxygen surplus

or oxygen depletion, that was in mortal danger. Isn't it you get too much, you get too high? Yes, David. Yes, you'd be walking around, like just buzzing off your tits on all the oxygen you'd had. Get it right, man. You can't survive, not enough, and you're going to die. That's what I heard it at the time. All of these years, all of that needless worry was a 15-year-old.

If it's too hard, that's all right. I've got to say this is a fucking tune I fucking loved it when it came out and listening back to it now it's like yeah this is mint I'm not saying it's ballroom blitz or anything like that but fucking out it'll do it'll do it's the last

sweet top 10 hit but for me it's not their last great single because I'm not as fond of it as you are for me that would have been the aforementioned Fox on the run back in 75 and that was the last really amazing sweet single to me by this point it feels like they've had their wings And it's all self-inflicted, because as you say, by this point, they are in charge of their own destiny.

But the way they look, they look like a sensible band of the late 70s. They could be the motors, they could be pilot or something like that, instead of, you know, transvestite space Nazis. Exactly. So what you're saying is this is a sugar-free sweet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, Steve Priest just looks like an off-duty Tim Curry instead of an on-duty Tim Curry. Yeah, yeah. They don't give him enough to do in this.

You're right, Simon. Time has moved on. By now, Andy Scott is the only one still in his 20s. Right. The others are in their early 30s. And as we've already pointed out with Billy Joel, that's early 30s in the old money. They're a little bit heftier. They're a lot more serious.

And if you've come here hoping for a bit of Mike stand snapping, tigery jumpsuits and gay Nazi action, well, you're going to be very disappointed, I'm afraid. Mick Tucker is wearing a black leather waistcoat, like as in Frankie goes to Hollywood. Brian Connell has got a top cowboy shirt with B.C. written on the pocket in Marker Pen. Andy Scott seems to have been replaced by Derek Smalls. Oh yeah, exactly. Absolutely.

And Steve Priest, hero of charred music. He's wearing a white top with an Egyptian cat-headed woman on it and matching Saxons. Looking like Terry Gorda of the fabulous freebirds. Don't worry, chaps. Some people will know what I mean. But more importantly, he looks like. fucking Jim Baines by now. You know, the mechanic at Crossroads. And not only that, they've got

two extra people on stage. What the fuck's going on? Yeah, ringers. Jeff Wesley on keyboard and some bloke on rhythm guitar, which absolutely confused the fuck out of me at the time. It's like, this is not my sweet. Yeah. Well, Jeff Wesley plays on the record,

but I think they might be Nico Ramston and Gary Mobley on the actual top of the pop's performance. Right. But either way, they are ringers. is not canonical sweet is it. The Derek Smalls thing is screaming the obvious. It's just as well that nobody knew what a Derek Smalls was in 1978

because everyone would just say and hope you enjoy a new direction. There's a lot of Cossack hairspray going on because it's like anything that might be wild and flying around free is sort of hemmed in. They put this spray to make sure their hair doesn't get out of life. You put cigarette lighter anywhere near that. They're going up in flames.

Sweet in flame. And if you get too much of that, We'll get too high. Well, you know, fire needs oxygen. Fire needs oxygen, doesn't it? But the close harmonies feel significant. The close harmonies, it's like it's all rained in. It's like everything's afraid to strike out and be freaky.

Like even, you mentioned the album title, level-headed. Yes. Which tells you a lot. You know, to me, it just feels like they're being penitent. Like a lot of early 70s stars did after Punk came around. Yes. The big difference to me is that all the fucking one, wonderful hysteria has gone.

You know, in the chorus, instead of a timely Steve Priest's falsetto interjection, we get too high and gonna die. It appears to have been sung by the Honey Monster. No, we don't need that. And just as well that I never heard the LP version at the time. Have you heard that? It's about seven or eight minutes long in there. Seven minutes long so they can get a really progressive acoustic guitar solo in

because it's 1970 fucking eight. But it's very secondmented, isn't it? All the other kind of meshy pieces, it's almost like they're trying to go for a bohemian rhapsy type effect. There's a lot of other sort of weird business going on. Yeah, yeah. One aspect of their appearance we haven't mentioned, did you see the red rosette that Andy Scott is wearing? Yes, it's that Retsam FC rose at again, isn't it?

He's getting on the Rexam bandwagon five decades early. Yes, that's impressive, isn't it? Just imagine if Sweetened invested their fortune in Rexham FC. Yeah, and made a reality series. I would watch the shit out of that. Are you ready, Joey Jones? Mickey Thomas. Arvon Griffiths, Eddie Niedzviersky.

All right, fellas, let's go! But yeah, Kid might be excited by all this, but they are playing it really low-key in the UK. This is the third time this performance has been on top of the pop, so they haven't bothered to come back in. They're playing their only UK gig this year at the Hammersmith Odeon next week, and there's been no interviews whatsoever in the music press,

but there has been a full-page ad for the single-a-page ad for the single with the headline there's no mistaken sweet with a photo of a Jimmy Edwards style headmaster lifting up the skirt of a school girl who I think is Jilly Johnson all the better to show off her stockings and knickers

as she fails to spell oxygen on a blackboard different times hey chaps wacko just as well he didn't come in to do similar with Kid Jensen for pronouncing oxygen wrong the next link is Kid Ben over his knee getting six of the best

on his bare ass. It's quite interesting watching Sweet on top of the pops for me now because since the last time we dealt with them, I've acquired a copy of Steve Priest's amazingly titled Autobiography, Are You Ready, Steve? Which is

it's both very partridge and very spinal tap and very hard to find. When you can find a copy, it's the best part of 100 quid you're looking at. How much did it cost you? I'm not saying. So Steve didn't like Top of the Pops growing up. He thought it was, in his words,

Nambi Pambi compared to Ready, Steady Go, which he thought was a proper rock show. Among other things he says by Top of the Pops, he admits that Sweet got their first appearance by cheating. They sent record company minions around the country buying up copies of funny, funny. And then he says dumping them in the Thames, which seems a bit excessive.

He reckons, that when they did, I think it was funny, funny. Oh no, it was Coco, I think he says, that he was the first man to appear on top of the pops wearing hot pants. What he did was, he was wearing a pair of big baggy green trousers and he sort of hoisted them up with carpet tape. And then he got really pissed off

when David Bowie got the credit for being the first man to wear hot pants. There's a bit of running theme of, you know, he reckoned sweet did this, sweet did that, and then David Bowie gets the credit for it. Berlin period, yeah. He really hates Robin Nash for a number of reasons. He hates Robin Nash for not allowing Fox on the run on the show at first because it had the words, for God's sake, in it.

He hated it when Robin Nash would send a cameraman around the back to get a shot of him from behind. So what he did was, when they performed Ballroom Blitz, he wore a jacket with a skull and crossbones embroidered into it and the words, fuck you at the top. Wow. Which he then had to cover up with Gaffer tape. Robin Nash was furious about this.

Didn't the other members have something on the back of their jackets as well? Oh, maybe. Because I've seen a photo years ago on a glam rock blog, a photo of the suite on their tour of Japan in 1976, and it's taken from the back and they're waving to the crowd. And one of them's got, fuck you on the back of his jacket. One of them's got bollocks. Another one's got a swastika,

and I swear damn, the fourth one was a big spunking cock made out of sequence. And I've been looking all over ever since for this photo. Can't find it anywhere. Pop Craig's Youngsters, Elmere, please. So there's this one theme in the book of Robin Nash being furious with the Sweet. And he was even more furious when Andy Scott picked his nose on camera during a recording of action. So Sweet had a nickname for Robin Nash. They called him Knob in Rash.

Oh, very good. If you don't mind, I'd like to read you an extract from Are You Eddie Steve? Oh, yeah. And this is all about Love is Like Oxygen. Love is like oxygen and the effect that the success of that song had on their career temporarily at least. So if you'll bear with me. Go ahead, mate. We did our first TOTP for God knows how long time with our new lineup.

It was a happy time when at last the charts came out and we were in them. It was a good time to take advantage of the situation. So we decided to tour the UK. We began our first tour of Britain in four years and were pleasantly surprised by the audience. reaction. It appeared that the old stigmas of the so-called glam rock era was slowly being forgotten. Even though level-headed didn't do

too well in the charts, the fans that attended the shows knew the song, so they must have had copies. Someone decided that the time was right to put in a London date. The venue that was picked in England's capital was to be the Hammersmith Odian. We had reservations as to how well it would sell, however. Three weeks before the show, we were

very surprised to learn that it was, in fact, completely sold out. and that there were rumours of a second show. No one had the guts to go for it, though. We had absolutely no idea what our audience would be like. There had been no sweet records in the charts for some time now. This is despite the fact that these songs have been some of our better material. Oxygen was our first big hit in years,

which meant, I would suppose, that our audience may well have changed a lot. Punk rock was in vogue, and I didn't expect to see any of that crowd. I was completely wrong about everything. When February the 24th rolled around, it was a day of total chaos. As it was a local gig, the wives and kids had to come too. This only added to the pandemonium. They thought they were bigger stars than we were and demanded their own limos. Having your wife at a gig is really nerve-wracking.

This is especially so when they are inexperienced backstage. You really have to try and stay calm and collected behind the scenes so as not to panic anyone. Having your misses there getting hysterical Because you haven't spoken to her for five minutes Tends to sap your nerves He doesn't want clever conversation, dog No Just sit down and just be the way you are, okay?

For five minutes And it continues For some reason, instead of using a warm-up band Someone had the idiotic idea of opening with a comedian And this is me talking here I don't know who this is I would love to know who this is And he says,

While this poor schmuck was trying to get his humour across I had a chance to see what the crowd was like. I'd never seen such a cross-section of humanity in my life. There were 40-year-old businessman in suits, punk rockers with mohawks and rings in their noses, and whole families with their young kids. I was completely taken aback. So was the comedian who had no idea what would make them laugh.

Backstage was beginning to look like a circus. There were semi-celebrities, roadies, wives and kids, and to my horror, the two girls from Japan that I had made whoopee with. Oh no. Luckily, I spotted them before they saw me and I was able to get my faithful roadie jammed to usher them into a safe area, possibly Jan. Be still my heart. I know things weren't too good between me and Pat, his wife, but I did want any aggravation before this show. Oh, God certainly. The time to start the show was rapidly nearing and he could feel the tension growing in the audience and backstage. I had forsaken the habit.

of tooting half a gram of coke before a show, unlike the rest of the band. I found that it dried my throat out too much. I would lose my voice. While the rest of the lads were imitating vacuum cleaners noisily in the dressing room, I would knock back a few bells of brandy. This numbed the nerves.

I would do my blow after the show when I needed help standing up, exclamation mark. When we took to the stage, the suspense was incredible. We opened with what had become our anthem, ballroom blitz. The crowd went nuts. I had never seen a crowd in London react this way. The atmosphere remained electric through the whole show.

Nothing went wrong. Even during Lady of the Lake, my eight-string bass stayed roughly into you. I never used it again because I thought I was pushing my look. We did two encores and then lined up arm in arm like chorus girls and thanked the audience. Then came the after-show party. even Nikki Chin was there.

He hadn't changed one bit and was as polite as ever. Christine Woods, our fan club secretary for many faithful years, was really overcome with emotion. She came over and knelt down in front of me, hugging my legs. This didn't go down too well with my wife, needless to say. Chicks, eh? Christine and I had been more than close for years. But as she is now presumably in wedded bliss,

I won't go into that in detail. it would make good reading though and there ends the extract Well of course there's got to be loads of punk kids there They grew up on the sweet Well that's the thing In the early 80s There was quite a sort of cult following

That belatedly grew up around sweet On the goth scene The sort of back teeth scene They all loved sweet You know and it makes sense But I love that extract Just for the phrase making whoopee With his Japanese fans

Yeah Fucking how I mean it's lovely to see them back But this is my suite. No. They are working musicians now. Yeah.

Which was something the sweet I love never were. It's just another performance in another TV studio. This could be Brayman. Yeah. Yeah, the thing is just when they're moving away from the sort of hysteria of glam, they are sort of excising from their music the thing that the punk's actually liked, which is, you listen to something like Hellraiser, you know, look out!

Like that kind of crazy shit. You know, that is a hellraiser is a fucking punk record, you know. But for Sweet, that's the past. That's glam. That's something that's forbidden now. But actually, that's what the punk kids grew up on. They wanted that kind of visceral thrill, didn't they? So the following week, love is like oxygen dropped one place to number 10,

but rallied back to number nine a week later. It's highest position. And we don't know it yet, but this is the last time we will ever see the sweet as an active band on top of the pops because after Levelhead had failed to dent the LP chart and Connolly collapsed on stage after getting K-Lyed at a gig in Birmingham, Alabama, the band would spend the rest of the year

attempting to work on their next LP, but Connolly left in November and the rest of the band struggled on as a three-piece until 1981. Oh God, I love that band. elegant Elky Brooks is here to brighten up the dark recesses of our top of the pop studio tonight with her new single release it's called lilac wine I lost myself in that misty light was hypnotized by strange back amongst the dowdy youth of Albion introduces us to in his words the ever elegant Elky Brooks with lilac wine

Born in Salford in 1945, Elaine Buckbinder began her singing career as a child singer at Bar Mitzvah's and Weddings. In 1960, at the age of 15, she won a talent contest in Manchester, with the prize being a slot on a package tour of the UK, promoted by Don Arden. She signed to Decker in 1964 and released her first single, a cover of Etta James as Something's Got a Hold of Me. But even though she landed a spot on the Beagle's Christmas show and put out a slew of singles, the hit never came. She was dropped by Decker and she spent the rest of the 60s as a cabaret act with the occasional dabbling jazz with Humphrey Lickleton's band. But near the end of the 60s, she approached Pete Gage, Gino Washington's guitarist, in an attempt to work with the Ram Jam Band. And although the collaboration never came off, they became an item, and in 1970 they formed a 12-piece collective called Dadaar. A year later, after one LP, Dardar's label, Atlantic, sub-licensed them to Ireland, who advised them to slim down, and after myriad line-up changes, they became a five-piece called Vinegar Joe, which did include Robert Palmer, but not Phil Collins, because,

as they turned down an application from him to fill the drum stall. Vinegar Joe would go on to put out three LPs and be constantly bigged up by the music press, but chart success eluded them, and they split up in early 1974, with Brooks spending the rest of the year as the backing singer in the American Southern Boogie Band, Wet Wille. In 1975, she returned to the UK, signed a solo deal with A&M, and put out the LP Rich Man's Woman. But it received more attention for its cover

with Brooks wearing nothing but a feather bow a strategically placed round her bits than the actual songs and failed to chart. However, the next LP, two days away, spawned the single Pearls a Singer, which got to number 8 in May of 1977, and she scored another hit that year when Sunshine After the Rain got to number 10.

in October. This is the follow-up to her cover of Do Right Woman, Do Right Man, which failed to chart in December of 1977. It's a stop-gap single between her last album, two days away, and her next Shooting Star, and is a cover of a song from the 1950 Broadway musical Dance Me a Song, which had already been covered by Arthur Kit and Nina Simone. It's not in the charts just yet, despite being out for the best part of a month,

but Robin Nash has got a feeling about it. So here she is, without her backing band, all her looks, on the top of the pop stage. And yes, chaps, like poor old Kate Bush, here she is on a lonesome with the top of the pop's orchestra, but they can piss this sort of song out of their ass all night long, can't they? Yeah, they're much more in their comfort zone doing this, aren't? Yeah.

And I do hope that, like, a seven-year-old Michael Jackson sitting in the wings of the Apollo absorbing every erg of James brand stagecraft. Kate Bush is doing likewise here because this is how a solo singer puts over a record on top of the

pops. And never mind Kid Jensen. Kate Bush should have been put into Elky Brooks's dressing room so she could sit down and say, hey Kate you see all those kids out there, fuck them, they're just for decoration. That red dot on top of the camera, that's your audience.

So what we get here is instead of trying to win over some sullen youths with a song that says nothing to them about their lives, Elkie Brooks is towering over them, glammed up to Ross in a blue dress, a chiffon throwover, and a necklace of what looks like giant tadpoles, which could have gone massively wrong but doesn't. And she's absolutely hurling this ballad right down the barrel of the camera, with a full wind of the top of the Pops Orchestra at her back directly into the faces of the older viewers who know exactly what she's going on about. Love and Lost.

I mean, what are these kids in the audience ever loved and lost? Some fucking football cards up against them all. Fuck them! Yeah. I took it to be a ballad about home brewing at the time. Yeah. Because my granddad, or seven days, Janke's. He's a very enthusiastic home brewer, actually.

It was an absolutely like rocket fuel, the stuff that he did. So that was, yeah, that was my dad. Yeah, that was my take on it. I think you're absolutely right. I mean, looking in it now, objectively, it's a big old proper performance. It's real kind of the Thespian stuff. 1950, Broadway, that would appeal to a lot of people

who are actually watching Top of the Pops. And, I mean, that era of like 40s, 50s musicals is big with a huge segment. You know, it's why the black and white minstrel show is still being broadcast in 1978, because essentially, you know, that's a sort of cavalcade of show tunes. Because at the time, I'd have been tapping my watch,

and I'd be looking at like, you know, like Judith Han, You know, because Elkie Brooks has Judith Hand to me at this point. Oh, yes. Fuck up. Yeah. Micro processes. Robot washing machines, we fucking get it.

Just hurry up. Yeah. But now, you see, this is a constant season performance. Yeah, the song's all about making wine from the tree where you first snog the love of your life and getting pissed up on it after they've gone, which I'm sure we all can relate to, Chats. I mean, for example, I first kissed the love of my life on a bench by the Thames. So for me, the song would be called River Wurts. water with me lamenting and vomiting and shitting myself all at the same time whilst being

loaded into the ambulance. Very poignant. Listen, mine would have been over a trolley of seafood, so, you know, with the treacherous death. So fuck knows what I'm drinking. Some kind of vine some kind of vine, you know. Apparently it could be based on a picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, where Lord Henry discovers Dorian with his face buried in a load of lilac blossoms. But, you know, This is Oscar Wild. That could be an analogy for anything. And I feel with that, we've had far too much lick crit for one episode. So, yeah.

This is certainly not the Elkie Brooks of Vinegar Joe, which is what you could call your cocktail there, Simon, and prawn juice and brine. Oh, nice. But neither is it the Elky Brooks of two years later being manhandled by Travis over a Datsun. And with this single, she's properly established herself, hasn't she? Well, it's weird with Elki Brooks. Maybe it is the industry clout of Don Arden,

mentioned there but I always felt she was spoken about as if she were a bigger star than her record sales would justify. Like as if she was our strisand, our midler or something, you know, and hence getting name checked in that two Ronnie song, Elkie Brooks and all her looks, you know, and hence getting booked by Robin Nash for a month old non-hit single like this. Yes. She does present like a diva, to be fair, you know, wearing that dress, It has those high priestess wings on it that look like your nan's tablecloth that she only gets out on special occasions, you know.

Yes. All her looks present and correct, and her asymmetric nostrils. The camera gets right up those asymmetric nostrils as though searching for little white rocks or something, like it's some kind of airport security feature. Neil Young at the last waltz. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

The first we see of her, though, it's really weird. She appears in this small, soft-focused, kind of lozings shape in the middle of the screen which then sort of expand. So yeah, they really have pull out all the stops production-wise, haven't they? She appears as a little hazy circle in this field of purply lilacly velvet. Maybe the same backdrop that they used when the queen snuffed it. Oh, yeah.

It looks like a cabri's advert, doesn't it? Yes. You get a glass and a half of lilac wine in every Elky Brooks performance. It's definitely a bias there, isn't there? It's as if Robin Nash is saying, now, look, Mr. Sokol's. Sid Vicious. This is how it's done. And you're right, the studio audience are rooted to the spot, motionless, aren't they?

And it's not because they're transfixed or awestruck. It's because a man called Colin with a clipboarder shouted at them to keep still and pay attention. That's what's going on here. So yeah, song about getting pissed under a tree to block out intrusive thoughts about someone you've lost as far

as I can tell. It's not a bad song. I've never heard of the musical Dance Me a song. Have you? I've never heard of it. No. Previously recorded by Arthur Kit and Nina Simone. So old Elkie clearly reckons herself to be following those footsteps. And it ends up on

that album Pearls in 1989, which is the one everyone bothered buying, which was a sort of a best-of but with a few newly recorded cover versions. It's the one with Fulliff, you think it's over on it, stuff like that. But this is also on there. And whatever you think about,

she can fucking sing, that's for sure. You know, that big theatrical show-stopping finale. I'm not surprised. The song's actually at the end of Side 1 of Pearls, because after belting out that big note at the end, there's nowhere you can go after that. Side 2, I suppose, but yeah. And yeah, she's established now,

because this month, Richard Dijans puts out his cover of her previous hit, Earl's a Winger. Have you heard that? No, for fuck so. About the rubbish footballer. No, okay, no, no. And, yeah, when someone does a Barron Knights on you, you are clearly winning at life.

I guess so. So, the following week, Lyluck White, enter the charts at number 47, then soared 20 places to number 27. And a fortnight later, after another top of the pop's appearance, it made it to number 16, its highest position. It was also covered by Jeff Buckley for his LP Grace in 1994. Hey, because men have feelings too.

May I share mine with you? The follow-up. A cover of Only Love, Love, break your heart only got to number 43 in June but she'd round off 1978 with don't cry out loud getting to number 12 for two non-consecative weeks in December but she'd have to wait eight years for her next top 10 hit when no more the fall got to number five for three weeks in January of 1987 all the songs about being shit on what's going off elk yeah but that's true of so

many great female singers of a certain era. Look at Dusty Springfield, you know, this kind of feminist icon that she is, but all the songs about being a dormant. Oh, better choices, ladies. Toxicating, what? This week's highest new entry is in at 18 from the film Saturday Night Fever. It's The Bee Gees with Staying Alive. Turn to Kid with his spear hand in his pocket,

with three more slightly better-dressed maidens of the studio floor. He leans over to one of them and says, intoxicating what? She doesn't have anything to say and smiles game layer. So he then goes on to introduce us to this week's highest new entry, Asterix. Staying Alive by the Bee Gees. We've dealt with the brothers give on numerous occasions on chart music, and this single, their 55th since they started in 1963, has sealed their reputation as the sexy lions of disson.

go. It's all started in 1976 when Robert Stigwood, their manager, bought the film rights for tribal rights of the new Saturday night, an article written by Nick Cohn for the magazine New York about the burgeoning disco scene.

After the film was shot and John Travolter had already been filmed dancing to Stevie Wonder and Boss Skaggs and his navigation of the film rights for disco hits of the day was proving problematic. Stigwood contacted his charges who were sequestered in Chateau-Laheroville working on their next LP, Children of the World,

to put everything on hold right now and knock out a few songs for the soundtrack. And in one weekend, while knowing next to fuck all about the film, they hacked out, if I can't have you, night fever, how deep is your love, and this. It was immediately pegged as the theme tune for the film, to the extent that Stigwood leaned hard on them, to change the title lyric to Saturday Night. But the band dug their heels in, stating there were loads of songs called that,

and they were worried people would confuse it for the bassity roll as single, which caught Stigwood to back off and changed the film title from Saturday Night to Saturday Night Fever, so he could latch on to one of the other songs. It wasn't even slated for a single release in America, as RSO preferred how deep is your love. But when it appeared on the trailer for the movie in November of 1977, people bombarded radio stations to play it. So it was put out in America in mid-December, spending four weeks at number one, including this week.

Over here, it's the follow-up to How Deep is Your Love, which got to number three for five weeks in December and early January. And even though Saturday Night Fever still hasn't come out in the UK and will only have his pre-level. British premiere in five weeks time, we are fully primed for that polyester look. It's entered the charter fortnight ago at number 34 and only moved up three places to number 31, but this week it's soared 13 places to number 18. So here's the official video, which has been shot at MGM Studios backlock number two in Culver City, California, while the boys are filming Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band.

And yet, let's go back to that asterix. The highest new entry confusion. Because Kid is clearly seeing this as the highest new entry in the top 30, which is what Top of the Pops is using at the time. So in a way, he's right. But obviously for me and Simon's generation, it's all about the top 40, isn't it? And if you go on that metric, the highest new entry is that free EP. As far as Radio 1 goes, well, Tom Brown is currently broadcast.

in the top 20 on Sunday tea time. So all very confusing. It's all going to be tidied up at the end of the year when the chart rundown on Radio 1 goes up to a top 40. So there we go. Who's right, who's wrong? Who cares?

For me, anything below the top 30 was like non-league football. That's my generation. Yeah, all about a 40 for me, definitely. Chateau-deruville, that was also where Sweet recorded their album level-headed. So, you know, like the idea of the Gibbs

and, you know, Steve Priest knocking around together. And around the same time as Saturday Night Feeb was being made, David Bowie was in there making low. All right. I don't know how many studios they had going at the same time, but you can imagine some quite bizarre scenes in the green room, let's say. Anyway, chaps, a clear indication that we are into the second month of 1970 Gibb. They've got an actual promo video like they're having the 80s.

You know, it's not an on-stage performance. it's not set up like a TV performance and it's not even the band having fun in the studio it's like a film yeah I mean it is a disused film set on the MGM lot but it looks like a ghost town and the video is kind of

disco urbex isn't it because of that you know they're just walking around this sort of deserted derelict looking buildings and it is fitting in a way because there is sort of weird Wild West Showdown feel to staying alive I would say it does kind of fit the music What's even more mental

This song is soundtracking the opening of a film We haven't seen yet That's actually cut like a music video You know, you can see it now John Travolta strutting around in New York With a paint booking And that's burned into the mind of everyone Who hears this song

I mean they could have put that out as the pop video And we'd have been more than satisfied by that Because we are going to see a lot of pop video slash movie tie-ins over the next few years And they almost always follow the same pattern you know, clips of the artist mixed with the best parts of the film, which kind of reached a peak with Billy Ocean and the cast of romance in the stone on when the going gets to...

But as we can see, cross-platform synergy, it clearly isn't a thing yet in 1978, but then it doesn't have to be because the BGs are going to be just as important to this film as John Travolta is. Yeah, you're right. I think that even people who to this day have never seen the film, Saty Night Fever, can picture Travolta walking down the street just from that opening thing, just maybe from the trailer or just from seeing clips of it.

Because, yeah, it's very memorable. He's kind of like Richard Ashcroft or Shaw and Nelson, but in a bit more of a hurry, you know. Well, a bit more up-tempo. It does have that kind of confrontation layer, and you've got it with John Travolta as well. And I think at the time, it's almost like there was a certain cultural primacy of disco, because, as we mentioned, there's a great deal of condescension towards disco, and the whole idea of disco that's faithly racist at time. It's like black people aren't capable of doing anything that's more than time.

superficial or ephemeral. Of course the irony is that the people really asserting that are white and the people that become these kind of great disco icons are white. And straight. Yeah, yeah, that's right, yeah. I mean, a great thing about this song is it is utterly open to parody, you know, the hebe, Ghibis and all that, but it is utterly brilliant. And I think it's a test of the prunes. It's the fact that it's open to parody, it resists it like water off a duck's back so successfully, you know, it's struts and its tight white trousers into eternity. Very tight white trousers. God, yes. Barry dresses to the left.

You can certainly see that. I mean, what they would have done, if this was made in like 1988, they would have reshot John Travolta strutting about with his paint pot, but having the BGs in the background through the windows of the paint shop

or in the doorway, that would have been fucking brilliant. Or it would have been like, you know, against all odds or something where you get clips from the film and then it goes to a bit of singing and then back to the film and it's all a bit clunky,

but this is better. It's so weird actually, seeing the kid introduce it as a film called Saturday Night Fever. Similar to the kind of Billy Joel thing, really. It feels like it's been around forever. And yeah, him just introducing Saturday Night Fever as if it needs explaining. We're witnessing a time in history when the kids around him and the kids watching at home. I'm like, never heard of it, you know.

Yeah. Fucking out. In the video, we see the sexy lines themselves strutting through some vaguely famous and very knackered upsets. If you're into your old films, you might be able to spot the quality street sets. that was used in the Three Musketeers in Young Frankenstein and the Grand Central Station set that was used in the opening sequence of that's entertainment with Fred Astaire.

But you'd really have to know what you were looking for because everything's just fucked. Shame there wasn't a bit where the entire side of a building falls on them and they step over the doorway that they were conveniently positioned and strut off into the next scene. Well, in a way, they look so futuristic, or least so of the time,

that it emphasises how fucks the surroundings look and it does look kind of post-apocalyptic, doesn't it? Yeah. There they are in their silver bomber jackets looking like men from the future, just striding through this, you know, it looks like World War II was just ceased or something. Or it's like disco who's exploded everything.

Yes, and now they struck triumphantly across the child landscape. There's been a disco inferno. Yeah. I mean, they claim in interviews that they knew fuck all about the film when they wrote this song. But bleeding out, if you can make sense of the lyrics, it practically tells you everything you need to know about Tony Minero and what happens to him.

The gist is, look, don't bother me. I'm out for the fan air. I live in the most important city in the world, but it's shit, and I've been treated like shit. But I'm dead good at this one thing, and I live for Saturday night, and it might even be the key out of my rubbish existence. And all the bits in between last Saturday and the next Saturday,

All me and everybody else is doing is just staying alive. I mean, living for the weekend is quite a common trope in pop music. But there's something quite dark about this one. Apparently, it was Robin Gibb who started it off by scrolling some lyrics on a Concord ticket. You can't get more 70s pop Babylon than that, can you? God no. But yeah, stuff like, you know, life going nowhere, somebody helped me and feel the city breaking and everybody's shaking. Because New York, it's a very New York.

It's a very New York record. New York was a broke and broken city in the 70s. And even if the lyrics don't completely hang together in a satisfactory way, you do get a sense of somebody just striving to live through that, urban survivalism through disco dancing. The one bit that famously is harder to figure out is the line, we can try to understand the New York Times effect on man. Yeah.

Which the effect the New York Times currently has on this, man is that I can't get out of bed until I've completed wordel. A hundred percent record, my threes come to be clear of my fives, but my fours are way out in front. And all my other games, Traveller, Whirdle, and Unzoned, sometimes chrono photo as a treat. But the New York Times effect is a phenomenon in journalism, whereby if the New York Times goes big on a certain story, other publications follow suit and give it prominence. and then that has a knock-on effect on the actual world.

And I've seen it argued that BGs are using that as a metaphor about the social pressure to conform and disco dancing being a rebellion against that. Yeah. Not that Saturday Night Fever was originally actually about disco, of course. It's secretly, originally about Northern Seoul because Nick Cohn, who, you know, he wrote that article, the tribal rights of New Saturday Night.

He'd moved to New York, And he'd only just got there and he hadn't really had time to sort of look around and get climatized. He was immediately commissioned to write a piece about the disco scene. Right. And he's not going to say no to the work. But he had no experience of the disco scene. So he faked it based on his experience of Northern Seoul back in the UK. And he wrote it up under that, you know, the headline tribal rights on the new Saturday night.

Robert Stigwood saw that and got the idea for the film. But yeah, that's really funny that the defining film of the disco era was kind of initial. by somebody who had never experienced disco. Yeah. But I think he was very much into the idea of being a kind of working class phenomenon. And I think I guess one of the things that gave disco a bad name at this point is Studio 54. Yeah. Yeah. Eliteism and stuff like that. And I think he's like reclaiming disco as something that's very, you know, like it's almost like brutally working class in lots of ways.

We can try to understand the Wiggin' Post's effect on Man. But it does translate weirdly. So it does work. And when the sweet go low, the BeeGs go high. I mean, we got a taste of that falsetto last year with you should be dancing, but fuck it, it's in full effect here. Sounds good, but you don't understand

half the fucking lyrics, and I still don't. It's one of them songs where you go, you know what, now might be the time to learn what they're actually saying in this song. But then you think, well, why bother? Will it detract from your enjoyment of it in future? So, you know. And being 10 years old, I had the album

way before I saw the film. Yeah. Anyway, chaps, Disco, the name's around for ages as a DJ term for anything you can dance to in a club. Simon, you'll remember the early days of Chantmes when we did that 1975 episode with Emperor Roscoe and he introduced her so good by Susan Cadogan by saying we're going into disco land right now. It's like punk, you know, a label that had been floated around for all of the 70s just waiting to attach itself to a movement.

Yeah. Properly breaking out in America, not quite yet here, to the extent that it actually has to be explained to the readers of the Evening Standard next week by Amanda Lear, who is currently being touted as Europe's first white disco queen, because apparently we really need a white disco queen. Anyway, quote, in the States, they don't want to know about anything but disco. When I was there, the head of Billboard, you know, the big magazine, he said, Amanda, disco is the new religion.

It will bring people back to God on the dance floor. I thought, wait a moment, maybe this guy is some kind of religious nut, but he explained that people want to perform, and they can do that on the dance floor. It's healthy and exciting, and it takes away the energy you might spend on beating up old ladies or whoever else you want to beat up. I guess in England there is not much money,

and if you don't have money to eat, then you can go to discothex. The kids go to pubs instead. and that's why you have punk rock but I think they will like disco too it will catch on so there you go the music of 1978 explained

and encapsulated by Mandelaire and God catch on it did because you know at the end of the year we're going to see the world disco dancing championship in the Empire Ballroom at Leicester Square broadcast on ITV and hosted of course by David Hamilton

and yeah we're going to get a lot of that shit even Kid Jens and got involved in 1979 champs. He hosted something called the UK boy girl disco dancing championships. Yeah. Yeah, well, this is that, you know, proper disco heads often make the argument

that disco died at this exact moment or died with Saturday Night Fever in any case because it went fully overground and the squares and the straits got into it and children like me, like me and you, you know. I also remember reading of the Daily Mail at the time, an article about

where interviewed of, you know, people who actually did frequent discos and said that anybody who sort of acted up like solo on a dance floor like John Travolta, they'd get their arse handed to them, you know, they'd get their arse handed to them. You know, it's much more of a communal thing. The film itself, how old were you when you saw Saturday Night Fever? David, weren't you old enough to see it or old enough to sneak in with a moustache? I was kind of monastic and very reclusive at this point. The most recent film of what I was seen at the cinema would have been a family outing to see Star Wars.

There really wasn't any question of my going to see Scy. at that time. I just didn't really do that. So I was probably about 28 when I first actually saw it. Simon? I was probably about 28 as well. It would have been some time in the 90s. I had the album way before I saw the film because it was an X and yeah,

I'd shagging in it or something and swearing. Same thing with Greece, which I think was a double A. I had the album and I had to invent the film in my head from the songs and a few photos in the gatefold sleeve. You know, you try and figure out what the narrative is. But as a result,

Disco is absolutely how I imagined adult life to be. I thought disco would still be there waiting for me when I was older to be going out, but of course it was all fucked by then. But yeah, I love this album, Satina Feeva. I just played it to death, yeah. The disco wave in the UK, it's mainly down to this lot, which is Menkel, you know, the Second Division 60s band, becoming the dominant force of disco. Yeah, that's like Smokey being in the Vanguarda Techno, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah, Herman's Hermits or whatever, yeah, absolutely. It is a bit weird, though, because, you know, Britain has bought lots of disco records before that, like, you know, go back to George McCray, Rock Your Baby, being number one, and stuff like that. Oh, yeah, bigger hits here than in America. Yeah, but you're right, you know, it's the BGs who really bring it overground for better or for words. David says that the parodies were water off a duck's back. I'm not so sure, you know. I'm sure they were very sensitive about them, yeah.

Yeah, they were. In his BG's biography, Children of the World, Bob Stanley argues that. that the backlash against disco, his words now, affected the Bee Gees far more than other acts like Donner-Summer, Sheek or Michael Jackson, all of whom survived the backlash, adapted and prospered. And Bob thinks that's strange because he says, it's clear with hindsight that the resultant American kickback against disco, slick rock acts like Journey and Ario Speedwagon, and especially Toto,

owed far more to silky late-70s' BG's recordings than it did to the guitar ethos of Bruce Springsteen. or Led Zeppelin, which is a good argument, I think. But Barry Gibb was really hurt by the backlash against disco. And the fact that for all that they'd achieved before Saturday Night Fever and all they achieved after Saturday Night Fever, they are forever pinned as being this sort of slightly comical disco act. When there was a Saturday Night Fever reunion concert in 1998

and younger people showed an interest in it again. He made comments the effect of, how come you all suddenly want this song by which he meant staying alive, but you hated at the day. time. I think he's right, they are pretty thin-skinned people, the beauties. I remember when it, it walked off Clive Anderson. Although he was being a dick, to be fair. It was, absolute dick. Yeah, but when I was talking about

Walshoff a duck, I think I was talking about the entity, the song, and talking from the point of view of the far future, you know, that rather than, obviously there was a whole disco-subs thing and everything like that, which not a lot of people sideways, including Sheik, of course, but I mean, Sheik and Rodges are absolute treasures these days. Here's a fascinating fact about staying alive. The drums from staying alive are the drums from night fever. Did you know that? Really? Yeah, Night Fever was already recorded,

and they were in the middle of making Stain Alive when the drummer Dennis Bryant had to fly home to Cardiff because his mother was very ill. Right. There's actually a lot of Welsh input on Saturday Fever. Vigi's keyboardist Blue Weaver is from Cardiff. So anyway, they took four bars from Dennis Bryan's drumming on Night Fever and spliced it into a tape loop,

and that's what you hear on Staying Alive. Right. And also the intro, and this might interest David, if they're not already, but the intro is partly inspired by Stevie Wonder's superstition. That riff, you hear the start, was originally played on a clavinet by Blue Weaver before they redid it

with guitar. And if you think it, you can imagine it, you can actually imagine it done on clavinet in that superstition style. Yeah, yeah. So, the following week, staying alive, jumped four places to number 12. The week after that, he got all the way to number four, but for some reason Robin Nash

elected not to play it again, and it got no further. But the follow-up, Night Fever, crashed into the chart at number 14 in April, soared 12 places to number two, and then spent two weeks at number one. Their first ascension to the summit of Mount Pop since I've got to get a message to you

nearly 10 years earlier. One of the years most talked about new bands is this one. They're called magazine and here's their debut single shot by both sides. Kid! Now slarming about on one of Legs and Co's accessibility ramps, he's very keen to introduce us to what he calls one of the years most talked about new bands and points a finger gun at us to press home the point. As the camera swings round and just before it plows into the kids like a crimpoline and denim harvesting, He raises a leg to show off his tan cowboy boots and the cut of his trousers, which are not flared.

It's a new era, everyone. As that camera pans across a load of old men who are probably younger than us now, we realize that he's talking about shot by both sides by magazine. Born in Scunthorpe in 1952, Howard Trafford's family relocated to Leeds in the 60s. and after having a dabble in electronic music, ended up at the Bolton Institute of Technology in 1972 to study psychology. In 1975, he changed his name to Howard Devoto, after a friend of his landlord, and placed an ad on the notice board of the common room,

looking for musos who wanted to place Sister Ray by the Velvet Underground, which was responded to by Peter McNish, and before the end of the year, year they had formed buzzcocks. After playing their first gig at college in April of 1976 they were swept up by the excitement generated in the music press by the sex pistols, which led them to travel to High Wickham to see the band, which led to them organising a sex pistols gig at the lesser free trade hall in Manchester that summer, which led to them becoming one of the first name punk bands in the provinces. By March of 1970s,

however, Devoto wanted out as he was well dischuffed by the direction punk was heading to and returned to the Bolton Institute to finish his studies. But he wasn't done with music and a month later he was introduced to an arts graduate called John McGiotch

and together they formed a new band, magazine. They were almost immediately picked up by Virgin and this is their first single, named after an argument about Pollyte. politics Devoto had with his girlfriend, which ended with her telling him he'll end up being shot by both sides. Oh, clever conversation, Howard. It was released less than a month ago and entered the charts last week at number 46.

This week it's nipped up three places to number 43, but Robin Nash, with his finger on the pulse as always, has rushed them into the studio for their debut top of the pop's performance. and chaps this episode of Top of the Pops has taken yet another strange turn, hasn't it? Because as we've discovered on our chart music odyssey chaps, Robin Nash is not going to cock his nose up at the new sounds emanating from the punk uprising, as long as they're pulling the weight in the charts and not been banned.

But this would have been an absolutely huge surprise for anyone in the know who's watching Top of the Pops at the time. This is proper our band business here, isn't it? Yeah. I just wished I could have been. like magazine more. I mean, I felt like I ought to block them more. Oh, David. Sorry, hell. Well, it's all right.

Doesn't like trio. There's various things. I think musically, it's just a bit too ordinary for me. You know, the progression, do, do, do, do, do. That just didn't do it for me. The sentiment of the song, it's a very centrist sentiment. Yes. I think that there's something painfully

non-committal about a lot of people in a new way with the time. Deep self-control. Go on to that in a second when he's being interviewed about. this performance. Painfully and uncommittable and yet very, very self-conscious about the whole idea of being in a band and working within the capitalist industry and all that kind of stuff.

Everybody's talking along those lines. He's got that kind of alien-like Brianino-esque look. I mean, and a very conscious choice of haircuts if he's wanting to show off his big brain. Yes. The me-con of post-punk. Yes. Yeah. He was the absolute epitome of the ultra-self-conscious

new waiver because people weren't talking about post-punk yet. He was interviewed about this performance at the time. And this guy, Bob Edmunds, who interviews, and he says, you know, he's describing what it's like to interview. And he says, like, put full stops after every word, and you'll get something of the pace at which he talks. On occasion, people sitting nearby, hold entire conversations

in the time it takes Howard to begin to answer a question. You can't deny that he does a lot of thinking. And he's talking about this performance. And what the pop says, like, oh, yeah, sure, there was absolutely no way that, I mean, I can't fake enthusiasm. There was absolutely no way that I could get worked up about anything in the Totha Pops situation. so I worked on a very negative performance.

Oh, so you were working against a jolly face of rock and roll. Exactly. What do you see? All these people jumping about. So I just wanted to stand there, let the camera come to me. Elky Brooks wasn't jumping about, mate. Exactly, I know. So, awfully enough, his performance doesn't seem to be actually that kind of self-sabotage.

He's got this opportunity of being on top of the pops, and he's kind of subverting it for the sake of some obscure principle. Well, I've been trying to work out how and why and everything. because you know this is a song of number 43 in the charts a band that nobody outside people who read the music special know of if he shagged their man and I have worked out that they've been in London this week they recorded their first peal session a couple of days ago

so they're practically in reception maybe someone pulled out of the last minute I don't know but anyway here they are there's something in record mirror they actually lost a slot the previous week because they insisted on playing live so they almost blew it completely. Oh, right.

Fucking out. But they're not playing live here, are they? No, certainly not, no. But it's clearly magazine's time because next week, Howard's very distinctive head is going to be staring out from the cover of the NME, complimenting an interview by Charles Shaw Murray, which clearly lays out what they expect from him.

Quote, Devoto's face fits his music as if they've been designed by some bright art student. He could be a 2,000-year-old man who discovered the secret of youth in his early 20s. He has the ear of a man who's been somewhere else. On stage, he gives the impression that he's just been somewhere other than isn't a sleazy dressing room, that he's arrived at the gig by Space Warp, and the fact doesn't bother him unduly. When I saw him on So It Goes, he came on with the most powerful presence I'd seen, since I first claptize on Johnny Rotten or Elvis Costello or Ian Jure.

The kind of guy who gets the big hoopla but also deserves it. By next week there'll be a big deal. The most convincing post-punk band so far. The true inheritors of the mantle of the original Roxy music. So yeah, big things expected of them. Yeah, the music critics were obsessed with Howard Devoto Mel Zia Maker put him on the front cover saying Devoto, the man for 78. And there is a phenomenon in 70s rock and pop.

Howard Devoto, Brian Eno, whereby balding men with names ending in O, who leave the band early, get hailed as the real genius behind that band. And it made me think that if Bob Fish had been called Bob Fischo, he could have quit Darts for a critically acclaimed career in avant-garde post-do-op, post-wop. Like David says, Howard Devoto doesn't attack the camera, but he is quite a beguilingly alien presence. He's got one vein throbbing in his temple. He's got the emaciated teeth-bearing scowl of a recently exhumed corpse and a thin stroke of eyeliner under each eye. I can imagine he would have been quite an arresting sight in 1978 if you're a viewer.

God, yeah. Because again, like Cape Bush, unsecling terror has come upon the youth of the nation. The sight of how a devoteur would have sent me to the bedside of my mum and dad at 3am tonight, whining to be let in. Because he looks like the sort of bloke. When you're a 10-year-old, he looks like a sort of bloke who you prayed wouldn't knock on your door while your parents were out with some leaflets in his hand. That's the irony. It's a very impactful performance, actually, despite any attempt at self-sabotage. I mean, we've discussed it before, have we chaps?

Fear on top of the pops. You know, the grown-ups behaving in a way that you as a child, just can't understand. You know, he looks like an extra in which finder general, doesn't it? And there's a lot of colour in correction on the various shots of the band in an attempt by top of the pops to jazz up what is a pretty bog standard performance. The kids are not freaking out in the slightest. One or two of them are gingerly bouncing about like they're waiting for a bus in the middle of December.

But that's it, isn't it? One positive that stood out for me. You know how I often express concern for keyboard players on top of the pops and the damage that they're clearly doing to their posture when they play standing up? Well, Dave Formula, who's just joined the bad. He's come up with a solution because he's got his keyboard on a stand like everyone else, but he's tilted it back so the keys are at a more manageable height. Yeah, it's more ergonomic.

It'd be a bit awkward to get to the back to the knobs and the black keys, but maybe he doesn't need them because it's post-punk and I'll wait at that man's feeling the benefit now. Well done, Dave. Yes, so the lyrics like David says are about Howard Devoto being a bit of a centrist dad, you know, the both sides being the left and the right and he had that argument with his socialist girlfriend.

He was supposedly playing devil's advocate saying yes, but, and she got exasperated. I said, oh, you'll get shot by both sides. Yeah, and I've heard some things about Jeremy Thorpe, mate. Yeah. Here's what Simon Reynolds says about it and rip it up and start again about this song. It captures the era's sense of dreadful polarisation and the vacillation of those caught in the crossfire with the centre ground disappearing beneath their feet. It is about a non-combatant and inactive.

It's a defence of the bourgeois art rock notion that the individual struggle to be different is what really matters. I think that's great. And Reynolds goes on to say that in an era where you've got these battles between the anti-enactuals, Nazi League and the National Front, that it's actually a bit of a dereliction of duty. You know, Devoto's refused to stand up and be counted is questionable. I'd go along with that. It's also a song about disaffection with punk itself. And the thing with that is, if you want to cultivate the mystique of an artist who is

ahead of the game, then almost as important as being an early adopter is being an early rejecter. Yes. And this song is Howard Devoto rejecting punk. I wound my way into the heart of the crowd. I was shocked to find what was allowed. I didn't lose myself in the crowd. The crowd, I assume he's referring to the punk crowd,

the Roxy, the Vortex and all of that. Yeah, yeah. I was expecting David to be Captain Post Punk here and really speak up for magazine. But I do personally think the magazine are a bit overrated by posterity, by critics, by history. For me, they are notable as a precursor band.

You've got the great John McGekech on guitar. who was moonlighting in Vizage at this time and went on to play with the Banshees and Pills. You've got Barry Adamson on bass, who was also with Vizage, later became a bad seed. You've got Martin Jackson on drums who less gloriously ended up in Swing Out Sister

and Day Formula, as you mentioned. I've tried with magazine's actual albums. Oh, I just, yeah, I can't get into them. Maybe you had to be the right age at the right time. But David was and wasn't into it. That said, for me, shot by both sides is an absolutely banger. I often play it in my spellbound DJ sets, even though it's in the 70s,

because you would always hear it in alternative nightclubs in the 80s. The main riff is danger music, you know what I mean? It's car chase music. It's very exciting that riff. Later this year, of course, Buzzcox repurposed it on lipstick, which is fair enough because it was co-written with Pete Shelley when they were in the Buzzcox together.

You can also hear that same motif towards the end of Chequered Love by Kim Wilde slightly interpolated. And that's fine because Kim Wilde is Kim fucking Wilde and she can be what she wants. This performance, it's kind of laying the ground for Gary Newman, isn't it? Yeah.

I guess it is. Yeah. Someone a bit weird and distant. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a thing. For me, there is that element of the alien and the other about Devoto, but it doesn't really carry through, for me,

into the music here. I mean, it's something like danger music. I personally prefer the theme to the professionals. It's got a bit of that about it, though, yeah. And of course, Devoto only appeared on one Buzzcox release, you know, spiral scratchy people. So it must be kind of.

of heartening that he's beating his old band to the top of the pop stage by two months because they're going to make their first appearance in April with I don't mind but oh a choice between magazine and Buzzcox fucking Buzzcocks fucking Buzzcox all day mate yeah yeah I still can't get over Howard Devoto walking out on the buscox after just one EP that's fucking Menkel isn't it yeah yeah well things are fast moving at the time you know have you seen this clip that's going around at the minute of so it goes in 977 with Matthew Corbett and Sutty in the studio. Yes.

And Sweep comes out dressed as a punk rocker with a guitar and he starts singing boredom and him and Sutty start pogoing. It's the most incredible thing I've ever seen in my life, man. But Howard Devoto must have seen that and thought, what have I done? What have I walked away from? But then again, when Sweep's covered you, is there anything more to achieve with that band?

So the following week, shot by both sides dropped three places back to number 46, and although it rallied the following week getting up to number 41, it got no further. The follow-up, touch and go, failed to chart, as did their next five singles, and their nearest they ever got to chart success was the EP Sweet Art Contract, which got to number 54 in July of 1980,

by which time three members had splintered off to form Vizard, And after myriad line-up changes, they split up in May of 98. I think you can safely say that Abba, I don't have a fear of heights, because they're back at the top of the charts once again. Another number one. This time it's for, take a chance on me. If you change your mind. On the first in line, honey, I'm still free.

Take a chance on me. We cut back to Kid in a box at the bottom, left-down corner of the screen, as the text pods at the BBC prepared to do a bit with their Quintel DFS 3,000, I think. I know it's not paintbox, and that's not coming along for another three years. You know, basic as fuck, but would have been an absolute mind-blast in 1978, wouldn't it? Jesus. Yeah. I mean, in July, Thames are going to go absolutely menkel with it on the Kenny Everett video show.

But yeah, God, it's the future, everyone. He then introduces this week's number one, take a chance on me by Abba. We've done Abba many a time and often. This is the follow-up to the name of the game, which got to number one for four weeks in October. It's the second cut from their fifth LP, Abba, the album, which came out in six. Scandinavia on the 12th of December last year, but completely missed the Christmas rush over here due to the massive amount of pre-orders in the UK and the inability of the British pressing plans to fulfil them, meaning it only came out in the UK three weeks ago, where it immediately

smashed into the album chart at number one, dislodging rumours, and is currently spending its third week there. It entered the single chart at number 10, the highest, entry a fortnight ago then soared eight places to number two last week and this week it tapped figaro by the brotherhood of man on the shoulder and barged it aside to become abba's seventh number one and their third on the bounce

Abba happened to be in the UK right now they flew in two days ago to promote Abba the movie which is having its British premiere in Leicester Square tonight before hitting the rest of the country tomorrow And yes, they make an appearance on BBC 1 today, but on Blue Peter, where they've been interviewed by Leslie Judd while giving Shep a proper fussing. Consequently, they've elected not to appear on top of the pops, so we get the video again. And yes, chaps, here we are at peak Abba. By this time, they are officially the biggest group in the world.

They're being trumpeted as the first band in the world to outsell the Beatles. They've just put out the biggest selling LP of 1978, which is nothing to do with John Travolta, and their film is here. So why the fuck are they not on top of the pops to receive their triumph? That's Mencl. It is, but the video is almost as sort of groundbreaking as Bohemian Rhapsody or anything like that.

So it's quite right that we're seeing it. I'd like, or rather didn't like, how Top of the Pops try to set up kids' introduction so that he takes Bjorn's place in the four-way split-screen, start of the video, but he crashes the vocal when it comes in. Shabby, kid, shabby stuff. Yeah, it's not good, is it? Another thing I noticed about the split screen in the video is that the four of them repeatedly swap partners, what could they have been trying to tell us? It's also a bit, and David as a comedy connoisseur would have noticed this, where

Benny Anderson becomes Benny Hill at one point, chasing after Freda with hoping, groping hands. He's probably seen a bit of Benny Hill in a hotel or something. He's thought, oh, all right, this is what the Brits want. Let's give him it. He doesn't slap Bjorn on the head, though, repeating. No, fair play. Yeah, as far as Top of the Pops goes,

they've not been in the Top of the Pops studio since Fernando in April of 1976. And as it turns out, they never will again. Well, they're too big. They're too big. Yeah, yeah, they are. They're in their imperial phase. Most definitely.

They could not be more imperial right now. And as you say, they are, you know, one of the biggest bands in the world, probably excluding America, because they never really did over there. That's right. You know, playing Australia and Japan. and all sorts of places.

They can't be everywhere. And to this day, you know, that's why they've got the bloody Abba voyage thing going on. Because if they existed as a flesh and blood band, you could not have a run of dates or a venue big enough to accommodate it. So that's why they have to do this sort of virtual thing that they're doing now. So I suppose this is an early example of that. They're too grand to be pushed around by Robin Nash at this point. Yeah, because in interviews around about this time,

Benny bangs on about how England was always the most important market for them. When they were starting, the goal was, we want to be big in Britain, because they saw that as the epicenter of pop in the 70s. I bet he says that to all the girls. So it's strange that the showcase television show of pop, they cocked the nose up at it. It's very strange. Robin Nash must have said something. I guess so. It's interesting what you're saying about the record sales and the pressing plants and all of that. Yeah. It does give you a hint that I think 1978, you'll know the stats more than me probably, but we were approaching a peak of people buying records, buying physical records. Saty Night Fever is also an example of this. Apparently, record shops were constantly having to

stick signs in the window saying, we'll have some more copies this afternoon, you know, because they just could not keep up with demand for that album. And I think, yeah, the same was clearly happening to Abbott. Yeah. I mean, by the end of the year, we'll have Abergraced its volume two on our wall unit. Oh, I love that. Yeah. And I've got to admit that Aniafelsko was my second. second crush after Rosemary, the telephonist with the classy chassis from Hong Kong Foui. Hello, hello!

Where's Madame Shole then? Oh yeah, you're right, I suppose Annetta goes down to third. I suppose it goes, Madam Shole, Rosemary, the telephonist, and then Annetta. Well, she's the most popular human one. Yeah, exactly, I'll give her that. This video probably had a lot to do with it because it's the way she winks at the camera

over her shoulder in soft focus. I must have triggered something in me. You know, the girl with a golden hair to quote the lyrics. she's absolutely bewitching. And I must similarly have been affected by Frida's crimped, crinkled cut hair. She gets on it early, doesn't she? She does. Ten years later, I was crimping the fuck out of mine,

as well as dyeing it a similar shade of Hena Red. So it must have lodged in my subconscious somehow. And the song, like the video, is just brimming with playfulness and flirtatiousness. And I might even prefer it to Dancing Queen as an Abago Disco tune. And it's timely. you mentioned name of the game. It's timely to have a happy Abba song. Yes.

Because this was their third number one in the row. Coming after knowing me, knowing you and the name of the game, it was all getting a bit bleak, you know. But this is just so full of joy. And it would take a soulless life-hating loser not to love this one. David, over to you. I mean, yes, I appeared infamously on that documentary, the BBC 4 documentary about Abba and I was there to play devil's advocate really so I received peltas for that absolute pelters about a million people saw it the first time around and it can't get repeated and so yes I was that soulless loser and you'll never be allowed to forget it David

anyway for a lot of people chaps this could well be the first time they've seen this video if they were too busy to see it on cracker jack or swap shop of course Two weeks ago it was lumped on with a chart run down Last week it was a motor two by legs and co And this week we finally get the video And yet it's a continuation of the Abba image isn't it Two lovely ladies slinking around in Scandinavian knitwear And massively long principal boy boots And two bloke sitting around and generally keeping out the way

Cut with saucy winks and snapshots of domestic bliss and I can actually recall a rumor that ripped a gouge through the playground of the time that Agnietta was actually naked when she filmed the winked. Even though it's a head and shoulder. Why would they do that? Well, the Swedish, Simon, you know, that's who they are. That's what they do. Just walk around naked the whole time.

You're right, Simon. The song is a step down from the one-two punch of knowing me, knowing you in the name of the game. And, you know, you can see it as a swung song for Phase 1 Abba. You know, it's a uncomplicated come on to some lucky young man with a ton of breezy hockiness baked into it. I mean, the Take a Chance bit sung at the beginning. A tachad, tick a chad, tick chad. That came from Bjorn, who was an avid jogger at the time.

Right. And while he was slogging his way through the parks of Stockholm, he'd pretend to be an eyeball the engine-like locomotive in his head. And again, this exposes the rank hypocrisy of David Stubbs because, you know, You know, when craft work make noises like trains, that's all right. But when the toothpaste society do it, it's cat shit. You fucking hypocrite. I know, I know. If Abba were Welsh, the song would start to put together.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah, yeah. I mean, like I say, the thing is, if I had sexy thoughts about Abba at the time, I would have suppressed them on principle. But what I could never admit, certainly back then in 1978, was that this is a really brilliantly turned pop song. It's, you know, brilliantly, completely turned.

It's not common denominated. it's inventing its own denominator. And the thing is, like in the critique of Aba that I made, all those years later, I kind of said that there wasn't really a trace of black or blues about them, and it's interesting that, yeah, they could be the biggest group in the world without really breaking America, which is fine.

But then the thing about that is, you know, so I'm saying they're a bit sort of suspiciously aerial or whatever. But why should there be? You mentioned craftwork is absolutely right. And the whole thing about crackworks, the rejection of Anglo-American blues was vital in the sense of establishing a sense of cult. identity. It was black kids ended up body pop into. Yeah. Five years later. Absolutely. Yeah.

So that really isn't the problem that I kind of made it out to be while playing devil's advocate. Paul Morley said that simple mind of post-Aba, not post-punk, you know, there was a lot into so I get their gleam. The only slight problem I have with this is although yes, it is a very sort of vivacious, flirtatious sight, the narrator, you know, she's basically saying that this bloke, like, have your fun with everybody else and when they've all fucked off, I'll still be around. And I do actually imagine, perhaps Sagita, you know, reading this lyric, she's a loser. Oh, I'll happily wait around for many years, decades it takes, so you've shagged every other woman in Sweden, and one by one, they've got bored of you,

because you're a beardy stone age asshole. Sure, I don't have standards, I don't have any of self-respect. You expect me to sing this shit, you sexist little twerk. Chik-a-choo, chuk-a-choo, you could fuck-off. I want a divorce. Go and see if your non-existent ideal female is still free and take a fucking chance on her. cunt. There is this air of desperation about it, which is odd when you add the video to it, because yeah, as you've already mentioned some, you know, Agnietta is clearly being positioned

in this video as the Swede that all the boys want to mash. Because the notion that Sweden was the crumpet mecca of the world, it was at its absolute pinnacle in 1978, wasn't it? You know, Mary Stavines, the reigning Miss World, Films like Made in Sweden Spell M-A-I-D and what the Swedish Bucleusor are still getting in airing at the local Wank pits

and in a few months' time Ingrid Svensson is going to be introduced to the second series of Mind Your Language as a direct competitor to Danielle Oh, there's also that Pepsi advert where Kenna, a citizen-smith, chats up this girl who turns out to be speaking in Danish but everyone in Britain assumes she was Swedish

so that counts too. And you've got Britt Eklund knocking around with Rod Stewart. Yeah. And this week, as Abba navigate the choppy waters of the British press, Agnetta's ass is getting a lot of attention. To the point where the journalists are 1978 are always obliged to say Agnietta has the nicest bottom in Europe, like today's journals, are obliged to say, Andrew Mountbatten Windsor denies all allegations of Rodden.

And it has to be said that this is all Abba's fault. We'll talk about the film in a bit, but there's a scene in it where they're reading the reviews of last night's gig. And much mention in the press is made of the Agnet Arse. And she reacts by saying, don't they have bottoms in Australia? And this week, as Abomania reaches a peak, a Eurovision arse contest has broken out in the media. Article in the Daily Mirror tomorrow, accompanied by a shot of our sweet advertising friend Jilly Johnson. headline, top of the bottoms. B-side blushes for Aber Bute.

When it comes to backing, these two singers leave the rest behind. Model and singer Jilly Johnson, whose record on Saka on Saka is riding high in the Japanese charts, doesn't object to her B-side being a hit, but Abbegill Agnetta Foltzg was much more coy. At a press conference yesterday to promote,

the London premiere of Abba the movie. She was asked how she felt about being dubbed The Girl with the Sexiest Bottom in Europe. Agnetta blushed and whispered, I don't like it. On the same day, the London evening news steamed in with a second opinion, quote, Bottoms are rapidly becoming the tops,

but who has the sexiest posterior? The pop world tried to get to the bottom of the matter with two principal contenders. Agnetta Falscog of Abba and Cathy McKinnon, girlfriend of Diddy David Hamilton, a daughter of the judge in the N-word row. Last month, he let off a racist cunt

who was done for being a racist cunt in public and he gave the newsreaders and newspapers an opportunity to drop the N-word quite a lot. First, Agnieta, her bottom is described as the best in Europe. But is it? At a cafe royal party after the premiere, David Hamilton announced,

it's a nice bottom, but a bit too large for me. Now, Cathy, she said, I think my bottom's okay. I've been complimented on it once or twice. Agnetta is a very sexy lady, but I didn't watch the film and think, wow, look at that bottom. Personally, I prefer men's bottoms,

My favourite is David Hamilton's. It's nice and trim. But Mick Jagger is a close runner up. Keith Moon, wild man of rock, was at the party with his girlfriend, Annette. He brought up the rear with a comment of his own. Yes, they've nice bottoms, but Mayanette's is better.

So, yeah, well done, Abba. You could have been on top of the pops, but you chose to throw a party where people are coating down Agnetta's ass. Other searing questions asked at that press conference included, have you really sold over 50 million records in less than four years? And are you millionaires yet? An unnamed music paper presented them with three trophies for coming top in various categories in their recent end of year poll.

But the Daily Record reported that those awards were still lying on the table after the group had gone. Oh. Yeah, we don't really see much of Agnetta's ass in this video, do we? Well, he's shot from above mostly, isn't it? I guess the main trick or the main conceit in the video, apart from the forced griefing, is that Bjorn and Benny look so bored and uninterested by these clearly beautiful women who are dancing around them,

apart from the moment where Benny goes all Benny Hill. Apart from that, they're just sat there, you know, looking completely not into it. Deliberately. Yeah, comfortable with each other. That's the kind of feeling you always get from her, but they're comfortable in their rarefied position. Rearified, yeah.

Oh, very good. Anyway, chaps, the film, have you seen it? Oh, years ago, I can't remember it. Essentially a corporate video for Abba the brand, isn't it? You know, there's loads of footage of their tour of Australia in 1977, wadded out with backstage scenes where they're being chaperoned by a tour manager who looks frighteningly like Del Boy and being pursued by a hapless radio DJ. It's all a bit odd.

He's just like, look, just do a big film. You're fucking Abba. People want to see you. Yeah. They're so big they can just do any old boring shit and people come along and watch it. Let's look at a review in the Sunday Express. A lively record of the gorgeously dressed.

It was 1978, after all. Two-man-two-girl group on a tour in Australia now provides a chance for all to appreciate their clean-cut appeal and musical excellence. Australian actor Robert Hughes chases after them gamely in the film's daft linking story as a radio reporter striving to get an interview.

but we never learn much about these opulent Swedes as individuals save their names, ages, and that Blon Singer Agnetta won an award for owning the sexiest bottom in Europe deserves it too. But I guess that's the whole point of the film, isn't it? That they don't want to be known. They don't want people to know them.

And proving ever elusive to that reporter is kind of the whole gag, I guess. And we don't realise it yet, chaps, but this is where the guaranteed number one's M for Abba, isn't it? It's going to be a while before they get another one. What would that be, Super Trooper or Gimmy Gimmy? Winner takes it all. Yeah. In the summer of 1980.

Why is that, do you think? Well, there you are. They strayed from the formula and they paid the price. When they get back to the kind of, you know, all the somber stuff, then, uh, Kaching. So, take a chance on me would spend two more weeks atop the top the summit of Mount Pop, eventually giving weight a wuthering height. it would become the ninth best-selling single of 1978 one below rat trapped by the boomtown rats

one above match stork men and match stork cats and dogs by Brian and Mike fucking Meanwhile ab of the album would spend seven weeks in total at number one in the LP chart and would become the best selling album in the UK that didn't feature John Travolta on the cover the follow-up summer night city would only get to number five in October of this year, however, and as mentioned before, they would have to wait until 1980 for their next number one when the winner takes it all got there in August.

completely engulfed by the maidens of the studio floor, including one girl next to him who appears to have come dressed as one of the techly tea folk, sadly informs us that our Thursday evening busy pop treat is nearly over and throws us toward the studio lights to the accompaniment of hot legs by Rod Stewart. We last chanced upon Little Rabbit Arse

in the last episode of chart music when he kicked a garage fredo ball about in his encore presentation of Maggie May in the 1971 top of the pop's boxing day special. Since then he's knocked out three more number ones, worn women's knickers, developed a tart and gimmick, knobbed off the faces, worn loads more women's knickers, fucked off to America, denied the sex pistols their rightful place at number one, and put some women's leopard print knickers on. This single, the follow-up to you in my heart,

he's got to number three for three weeks in October, November, 97, is the second cut from the LP, footloose and fancy three, his eighth solo album. It entered the charts three weeks ago at number 35, then sought 17 places to number 18, and this week it's left nine places from number 14 to number five. And it is this song that has been chosen to accompany the usual top of the pop's

credit sequence and oh dear so chaps only one episode ago we chanced upon the young rod stew in late 1971 still of school age trapped in a sexual relationship with an older woman and seven and a bit

later or how the tables have turned yeah I think by this stage you could kind of make a case for rod isn't a sort of an abiding symbol of glam transgressiveness but No, he's just gone. As you said, you kept the sex pistols off number one with I don't want to talk about it.

And we don't want to talk about it either. We certainly do not. I mean, everybody else is rocking against racism right now. Well, he's an Enoch Powell. He's team Enoch. I mean, in 1970 he said, I think Enoch is the man. I'm all for him. This country's overcrowded.

The immigrants should be sent home. That's it. And then he fucked off to America. They all do, don't they? He mates with Donald Trump. He thinks we should give reform a chance. I mean, right wing this runs through him like rock through a stick of rock. I mean, we have to get this out before we dig in.

Rod Stewart has made it clear that he never went down the playground, bang around route in the 70s. And no one has popped up to dispute him. In an interview with a telegraph in 2021, he said, The 70s were a hedonistic era, the shagging era. I did nothing wrong at all. I never had sex with anyone. underage, never forced anyone to have sex. In fact, sex was always too much for me.

It was always there, and it became boring. So, Rod Stewart there, not a bunty man, not a shrub rocketeer, nor is he the crazy world of Arthur Brown. So that's out of the way. He just loves singing about it. So let's move on to the song, Chaps, because fucking hell, different times. Yeah, I mean, the first verse, it's like hot legs, you're wearing me out, hot legs. You can scream and shout, hot legs, are you still in school?

I mean, fuck's sake, man. He loves a song about grown-ups having sex with school kids, you mentioned Maggie May, where he's the jail bait, and yes, indeed, the tables are turned on this one, but that's not enough. Later on in the song, he takes it into the territory of taboo incest porn, because it goes, hot legs, you're an alley cat, hot legs, you scratch my back, hot legs, bring your mother too.

And if she's got any spare knickers going she doesn't want. Yeah, the bigger the better, yeah. Yeah, you're right, Simon. The first verse, you know, Rod's at home going about his business when there's a knock on the door. And he assumes that it's quarter to four, which initially alludes to early morning, but the youth of the 70s would be well aware what he's getting up

because, as we all know, at half past three, we go home to tea or maybe a quarter to four. And yes, it's going to be rough and tumble, rattle and noise at Rod's house, and no mistake, Governor. Fuck it out. Rod makes clear that he is of working age, but what he does, fuck knows,

because while he invites his paramour to love him all night, she has to be gone in the morning, which it leaves very little time to put a shift in, I feel. And it's made equally clear that she isn't of working age, because yes, as pointed out, he asks in the first chorus if she's still in school. But we're discovering a later chorus that, yes, she is still at school. And then we learn in verse three that she's actually seven,

And, you know, Rod thinks he's boxing clever here, doesn't it? Because, you know, 17, that's the British shorthand for old enough. You know, she was just 17, you know what I mean. But the problem is now, Rod's now an American resident. Yeah, good point. And the video's been shot in America. And, yeah, we'll probably get to that later on. Would you care to guess, chaps, the age of consent in California in 1978?

18. Oh, no. Yes, as you pointed out, Simon. He implores her to bring a man next time. But it also implies that Rod's still living with his dad because he nearly has an incident when he sees her jet black suspender belt. So it's all getting very Jeremy Kyle, isn't it?

Yeah. Do you think Rod's trying to arrange a double date for his dad? Who knows? Is it similar like the little house on the prairie where just like generations and generations all live in one big house? And it's like, you know, bring your whole lot over. We'll all shag. Yeah.

Or Rod wants her to come over to chaperone and just prevent any funny business from happening. We're only getting the single version here because the extended version on the album informs us at the end that she's making her mark. She keeps Rod's pencil sharp. She's well equipped. Her pussy's whipped.

And Rod loves her lips. Oh, you've got very beautiful lips. That's the other ranch phrase as well, isn't it? When she talks about Abigail going out in her boiler suit and everything, She goes, foot loose and fancy free. Oh, wow. Everything's connected. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, the new wave groups of the time, you know, 1978, they were very earnest and self-conscious and struggling with issues of sexism. I mean, 1978 was the first year I ever saw the word sexist related to blondie. But none of that for Rod. No. Now, come on, Rod, a woman should be judged on the content of her character, not the temperature of her legs. Oh, man, that reminds me of the worst line in a song full of them.

the one where Rod says she's got legs right up to her neck. So she pisses out of her throat, does she rod? Oh, that's sexy. That means her asses at the back of her head. Like one of those Teddy Boy, Duck's-Arse hairdoes, you know, her hair is sort of just curled in to hide the chocolate starfish, you know what I mean? And I suppose, chance, this is yet another opportunity to broach the subject of the 70s pop star and their dalliances with the underage.

And more importantly, the lack of a fuck anyone seemed to give about it at the time. I mean, we live in an age now that blithely assumes that every male in the pop scene of the 70s was a wronger, up to and including Father Abraham and the Smurfs. But while there was tabloid furority over the paedophile information exchange at the time, paedophiles were always gay men who hankered after young lads. And when this single came out, there was absolutely zero outrage about it, because after all, these girls know what they're up to. They know what they want.

And if they're putting it on offer, well, who's going to refuse? Go on, Rod, give a one for us, said the tabloids. As an example of the media's treatment of this sort of thing, here's an item in teasers, the enemy's gossip column in December of 1976. Keith Moon recently spent 500 quid on 100 imported Swedish and Danish magazines from the backroom of an adult bookshop in Hammersmith. Blimey. Penthouse magazine reports that Moon's porno tastes are mainly for straight sex, although there appear to be a slight tendency towards what's known in the trade as Juvgir,

that is, girls under the age of consent. As far as I know, boys, that wasn't even reported on in the newspapers, which would not have happened even 10 years later. And if it had been someone like Huey Green buying all these mags, that would have been a massive news story. But hey, it's a wacky pop star. You know, maybe he was buying research material for his book. I mean, we've already spoken about fear being a driver of a 10-year-old's emotions.

And one of the most terrifying things for me around about this time, was sex. You know, this would be the year that some youth in my class had nick a wank-mad catalogue out of his dad's garage. And it featured every fucking thing. Straight, gay, BDSM, even paedophilia. And I remember flicking through it and thinking, oh my fucking God. So this is what the grown-ups get up to.

Ah! And just the thought of Rod Stewart pulling down his knickers and fucking a head on legs, like a panel in Dullogrept by Brogel the Elder. That would mean not wanting to eat your tea for a week and demanding all the lights on in your bedroom for a month. Imagine his face while he's doing it. Jesus Christ. Well, we don't need to because we can see it in the video, can we? Not that we get to see the video.

We don't get to see the video. What a shame. And thank God. Go on, Simon. We've got to talk about the video. Yeah, I mean, it's got Rod and his band pissing about in a town that looks like but fuck Idaho. But fuck, Idaho. California. It's

Peru in Ventura County. So we see the whole group sort of riding bareback on the bonnet of a truck and we see his guitarist doing the duck walk along a dusty railway track. Or I should say railroad track because it's definitely a railroad track to the bewilderment of the mostly

Mexican locals. Because Peru, right, because it looks so desolate, but it's also quite close to Hollywood. It's been used a lot as a filming location. So it's been in Dexter, in Charlie's Angels, it's been in the Rock for Files, films like a star is born, and the film noir Desert Fury. Now, I haven't seen that, but according to Wikipedia, Desert Fury has been praised as a seminal and unique Hollywood melodrama due to its bold overtones of homosexuality.

Well, Hot Legs by Rod Stewart hasn't been praised as a seminal and unique music video due to its bold overtones of homosexuality. Hot Legs by Rod Stewart has been praised as a seminal and unique music video due to its bold overtones of heterosexuality. Sing if you're glad to be straight. Several shots are filmed through the splayed legs of a woman in fishnets. You know a poster to the film, The World is Full of Married Men. Yes. 979 adaptation of Jackie Collins' nilthploitation classic

with Carol Baker in a leather cat suit doing a sexy legs apart stance. It's like that, but only the bottom half. Like if you've got the record sleeve, snapped it and folded it in half. That's basically the POV you're getting here. Or if you prefer Theresa May's Tory power stance. Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. I mean, if you prefer George Osborne's Tory power stance,

wherever floats your boat, you know, I'm not here to kink shame anyone. But either way, we never see the woman's face. we see plenty of Rod and his face gurning through the gap in her thighs and looking pleased with himself because women aren't women to Rod they're just giz receptacles right you know legs up to their necks as you say

and shaggy blonde hair just like him a mirror image so that he can only figuratively of course go fucking so the thing is that exact camera shot could have been replicated in 2004 in a video by

say the darkness or Harmar superstar. And that would have been done with a certain layer of playful irony or whatever. There's none of that with Rod. He's entirely serious. This is the OG of that star. Yeah, absolutely. And you can imagine the camera panning up from her legs to reveal the back of her head. And she turns around to reveal she has Rod Stewart's face.

Now, at least in Robert Palmer's addicted to love, you get to see the faces of these women. Oh, she turns around as Bella Enberg or something. Oh, yes. Yeah. And then there's that bit where they bring some kids in walking on the train truck. Hey kids, come and meet the woman. Yeah. Never mind bringing your mother.

Fucking out. So we don't get to see the video. What we do get to see is that spinning six-sided fish-eye effect that they love around this period on top of the pops. But what they've clearly done here, right, Robin Nash and Stanley Apple, they trained a camera on the empty studio and just set it running. because midway through, if you watch closely, the central hexagon shows a man taking the drum kit apart. The message of which is just horrible. It's like basically saying, fun is over, do your homework,

get your uniform ready for the morning, go to bed, erase any dreams of a more fulfilling and, in a way, real life that pop music might have kindled in your nascent brain. Come on, Stanley Apple. Come on Robin Nash, don't do that to us. As far as the song goes, chaps, it's a bit of a farewell to rock, Rod, isn't it? Things are going to change a little bit from here on in. I suppose you'd call it Southern Fried Bougar, which is short and for all the horrible old

shit that punk was supposed to have got rid of. Oh, I hate it, man. I mean, it's a fucking stupid song, but it's burlesque boogie. It's music to strip to, isn't it? Yes. It's Rod in his full pomp of, you know, your leopard print leg in, Kenne Everett, Inflatable Ars phase. It's that. And I don't mind it, you know.

When I was a kid, and I probably mentioned this before, but my mum had four albums that she used to play while she was doing the housework. Simon Agarf uncle's greatest hits. The Beach Boys' 20 Golden Greats. An Elvis Presley Live album from his Vegas jumpsuit era. And Rod Stewart's greatest hits. And it's that one where he's in a pink satin jacket

against a pink satin backdrop. And the opening track of that is Hot Legs. Right. When I hear Hot Legs, I can smell the pledge polish and I can see the condensation inside the window from the vegetables being boiled free of all their nutrients, you know. I probably would have quite enjoyed it at that age because at least it wasn't one of the boring slow ones. Yes. Got something about this song and the video as well is that it prefigures ZZ Top in the 80s.

And of course the song and video for Gimmie Older Loving is this, but done absolutely properly. Unlike this catalogue of crassness. Yeah, there's something a bit more lovable about Zizi Top. I don't know. They just get past for me. Anything else to say, chabs. I must say I never found any wank mags in my dad's garage. No. But I did find a paperback called Love Positions in the top drawer of a...

Oh, God. I know. That's terrifying, isn't it? I put me off to my 30s. The only porn ever found, though, was behind a stone wall, which divided our school with the vicarage. Right. Fucking out. Sally Thompson was in there.

Pods out. someone who very much looked like Sally Thompson. Good God. So I don't know who it belonged to. A teacher, the vicar, the verger? It's probably the verger, isn't it? Oh, God, my doubt. It's usually the verger, isn't it?

Well, maybe mum's had these books on sex positions just in case they get invited around by Rod Stewart, you know? Yeah. Oh, yeah, there was one magazine that I remember being stashed in a hedge near the house of my friend, Alan Price, no relation. Right. And not the keyboardist from the animals either. I think I found the whole thing vaguely terrifying at that age.

But I think I maybe did console myself with the thought that, oh, well, it's only people like Rod Stewart who actually have to do it. The rest of us can probably live our lives and not have to worry about all that. Just a chore, wasn't it? He's taken one for the team. He's doing it for the rest of us. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

There were a few wank mags under a chest of drawers in the wall unit of my mom and dad's bedroom, but they knew fuck all about it because I'd put them there. because I thought I was being really clever with my porn stash, removing it as far from the scene of the crime as possible. But, you know, looking back, what a fucking cunt I was, that could have gone so fucking wrong. Anyway, anything to say about Rod? Yeah, I don't mind a bit of Rod, you know.

He's a burke, but he's a redeemable burke. Obviously, his politics are sickening. Yes. You know, we've mentioned the Enoch Powell thing. And by the way, he got about 5% of the shit for that that Eric Clapton rightly did. Yes. And yeah, the Farage thing. And it's hard to get past that.

But even if he hadn't come out with that stuff, his tin ear for racial matters, to put it politely, was made abundantly clear. 11 years ago now, when he recorded the reggae track, Love and Be Loved, which is about an island

full of happy people with clothes so bright, on which there's a verse that goes on the beach at the Cocoa Bar, little Jimmy, he plays guitar. He says, all the riches you can possess, they never bring.

new happiness, which is all very well to say when you fucked off to Los Angeles. Yes. But you can imagine the accent Rod sings it in, of course. Oh, no. Yeah. So basically, if you're thinking at this moment of Mike Reed, you kick clipso, or maybe Sandy Shaw's reggae number, you're in the right ballpark. Yeah, yeah. Video playlist, everyone.

But he does have a good voice. You know, he's got a sort of voice which can turn bad material into decent material and can make decent material deeply affecting, I would say, sometimes. In his defence, I would cite Reason to Believe. I would cite In a Broken Dream by Python Lee Jackson. I would cite the first cut is the deepest, although I do prefer P.P. Arnold's version. And I would cite the super exciting runaway lovers narrative,

young Turks from 1980 weren't really underrated track. This, it's just daft, wobble-bottomed blues rock. And I don't mind it. in the scheme of things. So the following week, hot legs developed cramp and drop back two places to number seven.

The follow-ups saw Rod team up with the Scotland World Cup squad for Ole Ola, open brackets, Spulla, Brazilian era. Close brackets. He's got to number four in June, but he closed out the year

by ripping off Brazilians once more and taking DURY You Think I'm Sexair to number one for a week in November. and that closes the book on this episode at Top of the Pops. Six days after this episode was aired, white smoke billowed from the roof of Broadcasting House,

and Dave Lee Travis was announced as a new pontiff of Radio One, taking over the breakfast show in April, a position he would hold until the 2nd of January 1981. But the Blow Kid must have suffered was soft and considerably by the second announcement. He would be taking over Travis's post-school slot, which he held for two years and a month before pissing off to America. That's a good spot, isn't it?

The one after school. Everyone goes on about the breakfast show. That could be just as important, you know. I mean, the thing is, though, I never got to hear the breakfast show, except when my dad gave me a lift to school in the car. That was the only time. Yeah, I also used to hear the second half of Steve Wright in the afternoon

when I got home from school. and I would rush home from school to catch it. So, yeah, it was quite an important slot. So what's on television afterwards? Well, BBC One kicks on with a repeat of the Good Life from the first series, where Tom puts his back out at Harvest Time, and Jerry and Margo are in Kenya on Safari. Then it swings the drama series about the Royal Flying Corps during World War I

and Paul McCartney's involvement in it, followed by the 9 o'clock news. Then it's over to last week. Vegas for this morning's title by it between Ali and Spinks, then Omnibus commissions the composer David Bedford to knock up a tune for the White Horse of

Uffington. After tonight, it's the weather and close down at 13 to midnight. BBC 2 is finishing up Newsday, then it's over to the countryside of Brecken for the 1977 International Sheep Dog

Society's three-day events for the Supreme Championship. in one man and his dog. There's massive excitement at Clack's farm when a new polythine greenhouse is erected in Gardner's world. Then George C. Scott goes mad

after a military base gasses all his sheep and his son in the 1972 film, Rage. After the late news, it's part five of men of ideas, where Brian McGee talks to a sort of philosophers and after a recycle of madrigal by Gobert, they closed down.

down at five past midnight. That program about philosophers, I know it's about Wittgenstein, and I just thought, fucking hell, all human life is here. That's proper public service broadcasting. One man and his dog and Vicenstein

on the same channel on the same evening. Genuinely brilliant. ITV is halfway through the bionic woman, Steve Austin with a fan air, who goes to Africa when her bionic hearing tells her there's a rigged election that needs sorting out. Then Ruth,

takes up first aid training in rising damp, causing Rigsby to lie about pretending to need the kiss of life. My God. Youther Joyce puts the shits up her husband when she tells him she wants to be impregnated in George and Mildred. Then it's this week, the news at 10. Pepper Anderson getting kidnapped by terrorists in policewoman. We're taught about bunker shots in Master Golf, and it's closed down at midnight. So, boys, what are we? talking about in the playground tomorrow?

Did the man from darts really say do the wank? And on a scale of 1 to 10, how petrifying is Cape Bush? Yeah, we're very much talking about the weird whiny woman. I wonder if this is the first and last time we'll ever see her on telly. No, I mean, if I'd have seen this episode, I would have felt sufficiently informed about the state of playing pop for the week, more than enough to have discussed it in the playground with authority and already looking forward to next week. What are we buying on Saturday?

Abba, BG's, although I had the album, Darts, and in later life at various carboots sales in the Vale of Glamorgan, Kate Bush, Rose Royce, Sweet and magazine. Good episode for me. Yeah, strong episode. Well, oddly, and I did, the Billy Joel. Wow. Yeah, I know. Why? Because it's like, as that Stevie Wonder, like I say.

And I was obsessed with Stevie Wonder at this time, but of course he didn't release anything as such in 1978. And what I would have bought as well if I'd had my ears about me is, Starguard. Yeah. Because I'm fucking excellent. And what does this episode tell us about February of 1978? Glad to be gay, no way.

Glad to be straight. Knock yourself out. Yeah, it's that funny time. It's like the aftermath of rock and roll where people thought, okay, well, that's that then. They didn't realize that this was, you know, that the punk was going to be such a kind of pivotal moment.

They just thought it was just a sort of phase like glam, whatever, that would just peter out. And then we get back to Sailor and stuff like that. and Brotherhood of Man. He sounded like it's a bad thing. And that's Pop Craze Youngsters brings us to the end of the latest episode of Chart Music.

Use your promotional flange. www.chchartmusic.co.uk. Facebook.com slash chart music. Reach out to us on Twitter at Chart Music, T.O.T.P. Or do likewise at Blue Sky at Chart Music, TOTP. Money down the G-string. Patreon.com slash chart music. Thank you, David Stubbs.

You're welcome. God bless you, Simon Price. Yes, you are. My name's Al-Nidem, and I have the nicest ass in Europe. Chart music. You up, you pop craze youngsters. This is Al-Nidem,

and I've been handed the following statement, which has been prepared by David, which I'm obliged to read. In the latest episode of chart music, I, Al-Nidem, cast doubt upon an assertion made by my esteemed colleague rock expert David Stubbs regarding the existence of a song performed by Rod Hull's Emu. In response, David's solicitors have instructed me to introduce the following record. What do you folks say? Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, a friend like me by Enew. You're so lucky to have a friend like me.

You'll never be on your own or miserable or alone or blue. It's true. You're so lucky to have a friend like me. To help the day along to cheer you. you with a song or two when there are troubles ahead. So fine. In light of the proof that has been categorically presented to Mayor,

I now realise that not only is David Stubbs a rock expert and Europe's foremost electronic music chronicler, but also a world authority in British Light Entertainment and Emu expert. And rather than scoff, rather than accuse Mr. Stubbs of confusing Emu with Keith Harris's Orville in his dotage, I was wrong, open brackets, emphasised the word wrong, close brackets, not to have taken his word for it, for he was right, open brackets, see wrong, close brackets, as in all matters. Once again, my humblest and most profuse, apologies to David Stubbs.

Furthermore, on the subject of Arsenal FC, I wish to... No, I'm not saying that. Fucking assholes to Arsenal. Hit the fucking end bit! Eddie and some fine U-sons. Tanny Spooky and I gotta go home. Same.

Before I urge us now, I'd say you must be Capush. Be dirty, and I will be. For these days, I don't know. with an in-depth investigation on the declining youth morality, Matthew Corbett and Friends. Thank you, Tony. Hey, Suttery, you wanted to talk to him about sweep, didn't you? You think he's a punk?

Well, no, I know he's a little bit silly sometimes. Oh, I'm sorry. See what you mean? A punk rocker? Who sweep? No, never. Not sweet. See that noise, no.

He can't stop him once it starts. Thank you very much. Look, you can't make that din sweep. What are you making all that din about? What's... You got into punk? Well, I wish you'd get out of punk quickly. Look, we're on the television, and so it goes. What, where's John Peel? He's not here. It's Tony Wilson, Tony Wilson.

He's he one of the beach boys, of course he isn't. And what's that thing in your coat? What is it? A safety pin? Is that to make you look like a punk? No, it's to keep his trousers up. Listen, Sweep, you can't be a real punk because you know, punks read fanzines and things like that. Yes, fanzines. You see, and he couldn't Hang on, sweet, you can't even read. You just look at the pictures. I don't blame you. Not, not, don't do that again, sweet.

Stop it, Sucty. Now, don't you start, look, if I... Boys, will you stop bouncing up and down? Please stop it, stop it. Look, what's with all the bouncing up and down, sweep? What on earth are you doing? You're pogoing? Well, I should be carefully you don't shake your brains out.

That's... Oh, Souty says he's got the pistols in the studio sweep. The sex pistols? No, the water pistols. Let him have it, Soutty. Not me as well. Anyway, Sweet, I should stick to reading Bacoonian if I was you. There you are. So from one very wet punk dog and Souti and myself, it's bye-bye, everybody. Bye-bye. Thank you very, very much. And for those of you who didn't recognize it,

Sweet was doing an extremely avant-garde version of boredom there, a classic song from a classic band.