Ok so here we are back in 1980. No boating blazer for Tommy Vance – he is resplendent in a white satin bomber jacket and those glasses. First up is New Musik – the poor mans Buggles – with their slightly less catchy second single World of Water. Whatever they are doing with a vocoder is incredibly annoying. However All can be forgiven once you realise how like Lionel Messi the frontman looks.
Some pop-funk next from Narada Michael Walton – he shoulda loved ya – ushering in this week’s theme, the golden age of drum kits. His is quite modest but he does sing from it.
legs and co look like they’re having a quite night in on the worlds longest sofa, but before long Rodney Franklins the groove has them up and gyrating. I had to Shazam Mr Franklin, a tasty bit of instrumental jazzy grooving.
Why is Tommy hosting? Part one coming up: video for Fool for your loving no more. After Whitesnake in the ‘solo singer’ cage of no band shame is Jimmy Ruffin – there is an corking key change hallway through the inconsequential piece of pop-soul that is Hold On To My Love.
Somewhere along the way is The Chords with Somethings Missing – the sound of the mod revival petering out before our ears.
Tommy Vance is loving Saxon and their Wheels of Steel. After the cure last week with their impressive roto Tom set up, we have new musik with their clear acrylic set, and Saxon with a complicated double bass drum set up. Truly this was the golden age of drum kits, with Philthy Phils rig still to come. Do check out the clone zone village person who is playing bass – amazing to think all this, like Rob Halford, was consumed without a shred of irony at the time.
Spooky filters for hot chocolate no doubt about it as they go all scifi disco – errol is rocking a black diamanté jacket that would possibly look a bit Ott in studio 54, while The bass player has no truck with the B and W theme the rest have bought into.
Motörhead complete Tommy’s heavy trio with Leaving Here. They bring their Wall of speakers despite (presumably) miming, and some of their head bangers in the audience are loving it. Can’t quite catch what’s on Phils tshirts but it starts with whale oil. Answers please. Their amps all have girls names which is nice.
Some pop fluff – what a segue – from ver head to ver Nolans – in identical quintuplet mode with Don’t Make Waves. From this to The Beat with Mirror in the Bathroom – great performance including a real mirror. love this song. Bush alert! It’s the video for Breathing – very very slow zorbing from Kate. We can tell that Dexys are back live in the studio To reprise their intense Geno gig, with Kevs towel, as there is a huge number one behind them.
That’s your lot. A great show – Motörhead to the Nolans to The Beat is just what Top of The Pops should be all about. Variety is the spice of life.
the golden age of drum kits – it’s top of the pops
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The chords were the second hitherto unknown to me utter “jam-alike” band to be on totp lately.
The t shirt says ” whale oil beef hooked”. My sides are just this side of splitting. Sounded like live vocals by lemmy, and he’s always been known for customising his Marshall tops. “Murder one” is one of his current ones?
Saxon’s “clone zone village person” bass player, aka Steve “Dobby” Dawson, was Harry Shearer’s inspiration for Derek Smalls this is a fact DO NOT DISPUTE ME!
Definitely live Lemmy vocals. A very decent episode. Love the Hot Chocolate tune, should’ve been a number 1.
Tony Mansfield (the Lionel Messi lookalike from New Musik) will be seen in 2 years time playing keyboards for Captain Sensible’s Happy Talk.
He produced a lot of his stuff (and wrote the very New Musik like “Glad it’s All Over) as well as Mari Wilson and the first A-ha album.
You can always tell if a clip has been extracted from TOTP if it appears in another show. The drums at front of stage is a dead giveaway.
Didn’t they also do that on Colour Me Pop? And Late Night Line-Up? And, er, Pinky and Perky?
That is true. Wonder if it was the director looking for visual interest – there are an awful lot of groups on TOTP who appear with their drummer where you expect the lead singer to be. Whereas on Soul Train (or wherever the Narada MW clip was from) he’s at the back of the stage despite drumming and singing the lead vocal.
Saw this last week and it seemed to go on for ever. When I saw it was 1.15,am, it turned out that it was actually 45 minutes long. When was TOTP ever 45 mins long? Or has BBC3 pulled a fast one here and edited together two episodes to lose one presented by Savile?
Very cynical review with loadsa hindsight Mr, @moseleymoles
I think it is virtually impossible to review the repeats without hindsight – whether it’s as simple as seeing one act’s debut and knowing this was the start of a gilded career, and seeing another and knowing that was it, the (to us now) institutional sexism of Legs and Co (discussed here a few months ago I recall) or the fact that (now) us as adults perhaps can enjoy the campery that was evident in much of seventies/eighties rock that as callow teenagers escaped us at the time. I don’t think it’s an overly cynical post – The Beat, Motorhead and Dexys are all terrific clips.