Well let’s put all the fixtures and fittings back, which must surely include the semiweeklyish survey of the nation’s former chart show. This week’s, available to our UK residents on the iplayer includes a real highlight – Steve Wright endorsing ‘a really great live band – because I’ve seen them’ which is none other than AC/DC miming in the studio to what sounds a badly rerecorded version of Touch Too Much. Several bits of the track appear to be entirely missing – but it is a mighty, mighty appearance nonetheless. Playing support are The Tourists – Annie Lennox channeling Amelia Earhart , a dull video from Cliff, Bob Geldof in full paranoiac messiah mode leading the Rats through Someone Looking At You, there’s eurodisco from the Nolans, blink and you’ll miss em Jam copyists the Chords (given the dreaded ‘I’m sure we’ll be hearing much more from them in the future’ from Steve – the Toppie equivalent of the chairman’s vote of confidence), the deeply spooky and somewhat brilliant 17 fromThe Regents, and two two tones – The Selecter doing 3 Minute Hero, and a live video from The Specials who are still number one. Brief clip of Queen on video too…. 40 minutes which is never dull…
Toppie Klaxon – with added AC/DC
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Quite possibly the last public appearance of Bon Scott.
Whatever happened to the other bloke in the Tourists – he was obviously a front man, but it was Annie and Mr Stewart hiding in the background that went on to bigger things….
According to TOTPFacts’ very informative twitter feed during last week’s episode, it was Bon’s last appearance. He died just a couple of weeks later.
Other bloke in The Tourists was Peet (sic) Coombes. After the Tourists split, he left the music business until the mid 90’s, when he formed a band called Diminished Responsibility, which never released a record. He died in 1997.
Regarding the re-recorded AC/DC track, am I right in thinking that this was a Musician’s Union requirement? That is, acts appearing on TOTP had to go into a studio and record the track that they would mime to? Or at least in theory, I remember a Word podcast when they talked about the rule being ignore most of the time. However, I can think of a few TOTP appearances where the soundtrack is different to the single: Thin Lizzy doing either Jailbreak or don’t Believe a Word. And Queen with Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy.
Does this mean the BBC are sitting on an archive of alternative versions of hit singles?
Lovely, I’ve missed me weekly stroll down TOTP Lane.
Re Touch Too Much, it sounded to me like it was the album version, just appallingly edited, even in the “long” show version. Quite why is was so badly edited I have no idea. The sight of Angus having to stand fairly still was quite amusing though.
And I never quite realised that the Chords were so astonishingly similar to the Jam.
I remember thinking at the time that it was strange to put out a video for Too Much Too Young that was a different version to the single?
On the whole, a touch too much “Too Much”?