Our group declare to be truePeter Powell welcomes us to our first #TOTP Mystery Year.
"Wanted" by The Dooleys plays during the chart. They were a family group from Ilford, it's the first of a handful of hits.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwc0iriZahI
#TheDooleys
YouTube
Another week, another #TOTP performance from Sham 69. "Hersham boys" this time, filmed in a horrid brown-yellow filter.
David Hepworth was unimpressed for Smash Hits: "A tired, hollow effort struggling between weary attempts at rabble-rousing and blush-making pseudo-Springsteen 'street' songs that reek of desperation and contract fulfilling. As empty self-satisfied a record as anything they supposedly set out to replace."
Yeah, but why's the drummer got a dead animal on his head?
#Sham69
Olympic Runners perform a song called "The bitch". Title track to the Joan Collins film.
It's not the most liberated disco number. Begins with close-up of the female backing singer, who moves front stage later in the song.
The band was put together by Mike Vernon, who does the percussion here. Olympic Runners split up later that year.
#TOTP #OlympicRunners #NotThatSort
"If I had you" chimed The Korgis.
A weedy bloke in shirt and tie sings a weedy number, loosely based on a Rachmaninov interpretation of Paganini - but more classical work on BBC4 a little later this evening.
If this is the sound of summer, bring back spring.
#TOTP #TheKorgis
As promised, some classical work. On video, "Voulez-vous" from ABBA.
"Bang bang" from BA Robertson, which - inevitably - has lots of shots of BA's bandmate banging his massive drums.
The lyric mentions Johnny Fruin, an exec at BA's record label. File this alongside "Orinoco flow" as a big hit naming a label exec.
#TOTP #ABBA #BARobertson
A 40-minute #TOTP doesn't fit into a 30-minute slot without some editing. Snipped here: the video for "Girls talk" by Dave Edmunds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uEXJNS1llg
It's Legs o'clock: "After the love has gone" by Earth, Wind & Fire sees the gals lounging on a BBC beach boardwalk.
#DaveEdmunds #LegsAndCo
'Girls Talk' - Dave Edmunds
#TOTP production meeting.
- How can we portray "Beat the clock" by Sparks.
- A montage of clocks?
- Brilliant idea. Trebles all round!
The glamsters worked with disco producer Giorgio Moroder.
Sadly, this is the Mael brothers' penultimate appearance - we see 'em in November, and never again on TOTP.
#Sparks
"Gangsters" by The Specials. Terry Hall looks incredibly young in a striped shirt, with two Running Men by his side. The rest of the band jigs about, playing guitar or blowing their brass section.
For viewers watching in black-and-white, you're missing *nothing* - everyone's in shades of grey.
More of the single's impact came from its B-side, "The selecter"; ska-punk can be eerie and morose, not just sunny and peppy.
#TOTP #TheSpecials
Another snip for time: "Duke of Earl" from Darts. A repeat performance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFpVlkOCtOs
"Ooh! What a life" from The Gibson Brothers. A very purple staging, two guys at keyboards and one singer.
The singer's got great stage presence, and I need to hear this song a lot more.
#TOTP #GibsonBrothers
Darts - 'Duke Of Earl' - TOTP 2nd August 1979
Number one: "I don't like Mondays" from The Boomtown Rats.
This video tells a story: children in a school assembly, the Rats stand on stage and sing. And then to a sitting room, and only then to the trademark white studio, before finishing back in the school.
I'm too young to appreciate how groundbreaking and subversive this was - if, indeed, it was like my cousins claimed.
#TOTP #BoomtownRats
#TOTP credits to "Born to be alive" from Patrick Hernandez.
And while Peter Powell stays in the hammock, hoping to surprise Legs & Co when they get back, we look at other channels.
Next on BBC1, Citizen Smith, where there's been a theft in the factory. Andrew Lloyd Webber conducts the Schools Prom on BBC2, and ITV sees Miss Ursa Minor crowned Miss Universe 1979.
Zap! Bang! Pow! More #TOTP in a few moments, it's one of my all-time favourite editions.
Jenny Powell and Steve Wright introduce Gun with "Better days".
Record Mirror summed up the mood:
"There hasn't been so much excitement about a new pop metal band since Def Leppard thumbed a lift from Sheffield many years ago. Gun are still hungry kittens in a world of sleek fat cats, and let's hope they always maintain some of their youthful enthusiasm. Deserve to be a surefire success." #TOTP
"Better days" is a tremendous driving rock track: it gets into the groove, gets loud, and by the second chorus we're all cheering with fists in the air. It is utterly brilliant, and Gun were impressive in this debut appearance.
Go listen to their album "Taking on the world", it is an under-rated classic. #TOTP
Martika with the video for "Toy soldiers", the standout single from her not-as-good-as-it-ought-to-have-been debut album.
She'll be in the studio in two weeks' time, channelling the spirits of Robert Smith and k d lang in one package.
Move over Terence "Trout" D'Arby, pop has new swoonesomest peepers!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV4iw8FFxzk
#TOTP #Martika
Martika - Toy Soldiers - TOTP - 1989
"This one" from Paul McCartney.
HRH Sir Lord Paul Fab Macca Whacky Thumbs Aloft!!! McCartney of Kintyre is back in the studio, with Dame Linda on keyboards and tambourine.
Paul rips his jacket open to reveal a heart on his t-shirt, and the twangy and psychedelic love song is well under way.
#TOTP #PaulMcCartney
"This one" is centred on a mondegreen, hearing "this one" as "the swan".
Absolutely typical McCartney song, comes across as insubstantial at first, but by the final chorus we're singing along.
Melodically, the song is trite; lyrically, it treads familiar ground (seize the moment); the combination gets stuck in your ear and does not leave for *years*. We'll all be humming this next week.
#TOTP #PaulMcCartney
A bit of the video for "Alice Cooper" by Poison. Wait, strike that, reverse it.
Kerrang!: "Desmond Child wrote it, and it shows: slowly-picked guitar verses and a big, big chorus with heaps of backing vocals. I think he's singing about kissing his snake, though I could be wrong."
#TOTP #AliceCooper
Transvision Vamp are in the #TOTP studio for "Landslide of love".
Wendy James has come dressed for tonight's weather, a bra just large enough to contain her bosom, denim shorts just large enough to keep Mike Read quiet.
The performance is lit really brightly for the Paul Ciani years, we didn't often see the backing band share the spotlight with the singer, particularly when the singer is the focal point of the band.
#TransvisionVamp
"Landslide of love" sounds naggingly familiar, a cross between "Leader of the pack" and something by Blondie that we can never quite put our finger on.
Smash Hits was impressed: "the Vamp now give us a tribute to 60s pop producer Phil Spector. Nips between sensitive quiet bits and immensely loud bits with everything and the kitchen sing thrown in while Wendy (the grumpiest woman in pop) yearns, in squeaky anguish, for lost love."
#TOTP #TransvisionVamp
Wendy and Lisa are in the studio for "Satisfaction". Corks, to be in the studio tonight!
The couple are Prince protogées, and write in the funky vein of The Purple Miniature.
"Satisfaction" has Lisa behind the keyboards with the sumptuous groove, Wendy does some excellent guitar work and takes lead vocals.
#TOTP #WendyAndLisa
"Satisfaction" is familiar - sounds like every Prince funk wig-out from the past five years.
And it's modern without sounding modern, the gals were about four years ahead of the curve with a jazzy number for warm summers evenings. Why this didn't replace Gun at number one remains a mystery.
#TOTP #WendyAndLisa
"Nobody knows much about The Lightning Seeds," claims Jenny Powell. "Pure" is the hit single, we see the video.
Record Mirror said, "Fragile and lemon-flavoured. A New Order guitar part picks the song up for its second wind towards the end and when it is all over you're ready for a second helping. You can eat this between meals without ruining your appetite."
And that may be all there is to know.
#TOTP #TheLightningSeeds
Kylie Minogue is in the studio with "Wouldn't change a thing". 63,000 sales and another number two.
Gold trousers and four (count 'em!) gentlemen backing dancers - that's three more men than Sonia got last week.
The song's for kids to listen to on their ghettoblasters on the beach, and to be tinkling out of bars just before the sun sets to draw in a crowd. Comfortable and familiar, even if it's a new release.
#TOTP #KylieMinogue
A new number one, it's Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers with "Swing the mood".
"That record's going to go to number one," threatened Lord Gary Davies two weeks ago; shame he was right.
It's like a K-Tel album compressed to a single. Got to appreciate how they've beat-matched so many different and disparate tracks and made them flow so well.
Megamixymatosis was contained in small doses: #TOTP showed the video in installments, picked up where they left off the previous week.
#JiveBunny
The Mastermixers were Les Hemstock, John Pickles and his son Andy Pickles. Each of their megamixes had a central core, in this case the John Anderson Big Band's "Glenn Miller medley" from 1984, which is almost exactly re-created on the B-side.
This week's trade press carried a "thank you" note celebrating the hit - and over 100,000 sales this week alone.
#TOTP #JiveBunny
Shakespear's Sister play out with "You're history". Siobhan Fahey from Bananarama and Dave Stewart work with soprano Marcella Detroit on a video of dancing ballerinas and strummed guitars and close-ups of a very gothy Siobhan.
They'll be in the #TOTP studio next week.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGYwrbeoOlc
#ShakespearsSister
Shakespears Sister - You´re History (Top Of The Pops 1989)
That was spectacular! 1989 the second mystery year.
By popular request, here's Kirsty MacColl performing "Days" from last week's ep.
Proms next on BBC4, followed by Cliff Richard Night.
BBC2 has Dionne Warwick Night tomorrow, and it's George Gershwin on BBC4 on Sunday.
Two episodes from 1996 next Friday at 7, with a Mystery Year to follow at 9.20 after the proms.
Whatever you're doing this weekend, #TOTP hashtag, have a great one!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvbMAgjKuDc
