Reviewed by Chris Arnsby
"Kickstarting tonight’s Top of the Pops, back with a vengeance is Slade and Radio Wall Of
Sound.”
[33] SLADE: Radio Wall of Sound. That opening pan across the studio is lovely. Rod Litherland’s lights send beams through the studio smoke and the circular lighting rig at the centre of the ceiling glides over the camera like one of the UFOs from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
I didn’t know Slade had such a long career although I do remember their last
comeback, in 1984. After that they released six singles between January 1985
and August 1987; the most successful being Mysterious Mizster Jones which
peaked at [50] in March 1985. Their Wikipedia page is amazing. It ups
and downs like a roller coaster. Early years; Glam rock, success and peak;
Decline in popularity; Stateside; Wilderness years; Comeback and heavy metal
following; American breakthrough; Second decline in popularity; Brief comeback
and break-up; and there’s still time for a final section called Aftermath and
Later Years. Right now, in 1991, we are in Brief comeback and break-up.
You can tell
Slade are old hands. Watch how Dave Hill waves his foot over the lens of a
handheld camera in front of him, he knows what looks good on screen. Well done
also to Dave Lea for taking advantage of the live vocal to change one line to
“So just turn your TV up loud.” I get the impression Dave Hill’s brief walk
into the audience was unplanned (the new stages are much lower than the ones at
TV Centre, presumably to make it easier for camera operators to clamber on and
off them). It’s almost completely missed, or ignored by director Arch Dyson.
When the wall
of thunderflashes goes off. I get the impression it’s closer, bigger and
noisier than anyone expected. There’s a shriek from the crowd and Noddy Holder
flinches and glances behind him. It looks insanely dramatic on freeze frame.
The moment when director Arch Dyson goes: “Damn! Missed!”
Then, at the
end of the performance there’s a treat for set nerds like me. The handheld
camera operator turns away from the stage and pans behind him to reveal Tony
Dortie climbing a set of stairs that run behind the Scaffolding stage. Also, is
that Noddy Holder making the odd “nnyyyaaaaah” noise in the background while
Tony Dortie says his link?
Top 10. This week, 2 Unlimited are represented
in the top ten by a clip from last week’s performance. Video not ready yet?
[27] ENYA:
Caribbean Blue. Mark
Frankin has to be overlaid on top of Enya (oo-er matron, etc) to get his
introductory close up and caption.
Top of the
Pops shows off the
flexibility of their new studio by transforming part of it into a weird
nocturnal arcadian glade. I’m not sure which part, maybe the big Cyclorama
stage which is largely just empty space; the Cyclorama has a nice star field on
it. Nymphs and shepherds are undoubtedly frolicking just out of shot to Enya’s
live vocal but… how live is it? Enya sounds pretty processed to me. How come
Carl Cox has to go and find someone to sing his samples but Enya can
multi-track and overdub her vocals and add reverb?
[14] LISA
STANSFIELD: Change. Keep
an eye on Lisa Stansfield’s feet at the start of the song. For some reason the
dry ice machine isn’t turned on at first and you can see the mist roll in and
surround her ankles.
EXcLUsIVe.
U2: The Fly. Promo VT.
[15] DANNI
MINOGUE: Baby Love. “A
touch of drum and bass,” according to Tony Dortie. The live vocal requirement
does no favours for Danni Minogue, she can’t move around as much as she would
normally in a mimed performance so she largely stands while her dancers gyrate
around her.
[2]
SCORPIONS: Wind of Change. Promo
VT. Since the reboot, Top of the Pops has tried to limit the number of
videos to two, the Exclusive and the Number One. Obviously the Scorpions are
not coming to Elstree, so for the first time since September the Number Of
Videos counter clicks over from two to three.
ALBUm ChArt.
[5] PAUL YOUNG: From Time To Time.
I appreciate Top of the Pops has to keep moving but there’s something a
bit too abrupt about the way Mark Franklin marches on stage to shove a
microphone into Paul Young’s face. The Lisa Stansfield one had the same
problem. I don’t think the short interviews are working in this format. There’s
too little time for the performer to transition from the nerves of being about
to sing live on stage/just having finished singing live on stage to being asked
questions about a forthcoming tour or new album.
BreAKers
[32] CE CE
PENISTON: Finally
[26] MOBY:
Go
[3] MONTY
PYTHON: Always Look On The Bright Side Of Live. Stand by for several paragraphs
joylessly sucking the life out of jokes by dissecting them humourlessly. This
is an insanely ambitious performance but a lot of it doesn’t work terribly
well. It’s a masterclass in how hard it is to direct comedy.
Take the
opening gag. When Eric Idle sings the opening words of the song he’s not
visible on stage. There’s a band, there’s three random blokes dressed as
Pepperpots, but no Idle. The camera pans across the stage but Idle remains
hidden. Then there’s a close up of a cloud of dry ice and the viewer realises
Eric Idle was at the back of the stage and the joke is supposed to be that he
can’t be seen because there’s too much dry ice. This would work if we knew
where he was supposed to be but the setup of the stage and the camera moves
work against it.
Then there’s a
weird explosion sound effect. It turns out a bit of scenery has been rigged to
fall down but the moment is lost because as the camera pulls back, it is
centred on Eric Idle and the scenery drops at the edge of frame.
Then there’s a
cut and a thing explodes at the front right of frame. It’s supposed to be a
monitor blowing up but there’s no time for the viewer to take this in because it
explodes right as as vision mixer Hilary Briegel cuts to the new camera angle,
so there’s time to register an explosion and nothing else.
There’s a much
better timed joke where Eric Idle knocks the keyboard player off stage. This
gets another shriek from the audience, possibly the same person who was
traumatised by the thunderflashes going off during Slade’s song and now has
PTSD.
And then just
to finish of this list of why I’m the most miserable bastard to ever watch this
performance, a really badly timed gag which involves a cymbal shattering. It
falls flat because it happens in the background of a close up of Eric Idle, by
the time the picture cuts to a better angle of the drummer its too late for the
viewer to really register what is supposed to have gone wrong. Most of the
jokes don’t work because of the setup or timing but it’s important to remember this
is basically a live slapstick comedy sketch, and that’s really hard to do at
all, let alone well. By god the production team deserve so much praise for even
attempting something this ambitious.
Speaking of
slapstick, well done for whoever came up with the gag of squirting Eric Idle
with soda water to censor the “life’s a piece of shit,” line without making it
obvious it had been bowdlerised for prime time BBC1.
Next Eric Idle
goes for a walk round the studio. This is great, obviously. It’s always exciting
to see performers walking through the audience and I wonder if this is where
Dave Hill got the idea to do this same thing during Slade’s song.
There’s another
gag involving something falling from the ceiling and hitting a hand held camera
operator. I think it’s supposed to be a dummy but the studio’s too dark to
properly see what it is. Well done to the camera crew for getting involved in
stunts. I hope they got some danger money. Eric Idle then walks up on to the
Scaffolding stage and a 20 foot fake scaffolding tower tumbles over. It looks
genuinely dangerous. Roger Barham, credited with visual effects, has been a
busy boy this week.
Finally, a
lovely walk round to the studio exit opposite the Mess stage, where Eric Idle
started the song. The floor manager gets a cameo, doing a 3-2-1 countdown as
Eric walks towards him. “Don’t wave at me sir,” says Eric Idle, “get yourself a
proper job,” and hits him in the face with a custard pie. This bit is really
well done because the person handing over the pie is hidden from the camera by
the floor manager and so it seems to come from nowhere.
And then we
follow Eric Idle outside to the back street of Elstree studios, where a taxi
waits for him and he drives off. Almost immediately, in a well-timed moment,
Mark Frankin pops in from the left side of the picture and introduces the
Number One which is, of course…
[1] BRYAN
ADAMS: (Everything I Do) I Do It For You. Promo VT. The show ends with Eric Idle custard pieing Tony
Dortie and Mark Franklin in the final seconds before the credits roll.
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