Originally broadcast on 07/09/78
Watched
by Chris Arnsby on BBC4
Peter Powell. “Hello! As ever you're very welcome to Top of the Pops and here's the chart run down with just a slap of grease!”
Chart
music: Frankie Valli: Grease [24]
This
week there's chart fun when back-to-back pictures of Renaissance [20], and
Exile [19] look like they could be photos of the same group.
The
Jam: David Watts [26].
“All the energy exploding on Top of the Pops!” gushes Peter Powell after The
Jam finish. The Jam put in a good performance, and the audience bop along
enthusiastically, but for me this song just doesn't do anything. Somehow this
feels inappropriate. It's The Jam, an iconic band of the time, but I can't
muster anything other than a shrug.
The Jam: It's a little known fact that David Watts recorded a single called `I Wish I Could Be In The Jam` |
Leo
Sayer: I Can’t Stop Loving You (Though I Try) [NEW]. Uh-oh. Now we're two for two.
If The Jam really were exploding energy into the studio then
Leo Sayer sucks it all up, at least to judge by the audience who stand around
having their own private conversations while he performs. For myself all I can
do is observe that for a tiny man Leo Sayer seems to have an enormous mouth; he
looks like the Mouth of Sauron. Maybe his perm covers up most of his head,
making his normal sized bonce look smaller?
Boney
M: Brown Girl In The Ring [2]. Hooray it's Boney M! Boney M will save us from
ennui! And they do. Boney M are brilliant even played in on videotape from an
edition of terrible old variety show Seaside Special. They are of course
relentlessly uncool but, in the words of comedian Richard Herring, they are so
uncool they go all the way round past infinity and become cool again. If Boney
M are in the UK for Seaside Special then surely a live appearance on Top of the
Pops can't be far off; fingers crossed.
The
Motors: Forget About You [13]. The audience really like The Motors. Myself I'm
less keen.
Dee
D. Jackson: Meteor Man [65].Hooray it's Dee D. Jackson! Dee D. Jackson and her
fabulous robot who were responsible for the song Automatic Lover back in March;
a song which got in my head to the extent that I caught myself absent mindedly
singing “I-am-your-automatic-lover-automatic-lover” at work. The performance
starts brilliantly with some 1978 state of the art computer effects, and
there's Dee D. Jackson all decked out in her best Blake's 7 cosplay gear but...
where's the robot? It rapidly becomes clear that Dee D. Jackson and the robot
have split, and the song while pretty good is no Automatic Lover. One minor
mystery of this performance is where was it filmed? It looks like the Top of
the Pops studio but there's no audience, and a couple of video effects are used
which aren't standard for Top of the Pops (the spinning grid thing, and an
overlaid shot where the output of several different cameras are faintly mixed
over the main shot). Two explanations offer themselves. One; it was recorded in
the Top of the Pops studio earlier in the day which allowed slightly more time
to experiment with video effects. Two; it's a promo video recorded to look like
Top of the Pops, like the promo video for Hong Kong Garden last week.
David
Essex: Oh What A Circus [5]. I find it difficult to watch this promo film
featuring David Essex as a detached third-party observer commenting on the
ostentatious grief of a nation, and not compare it to the week between the
death of Diana, Princess of Wales, and her funeral. “We've all gone crazy,
mourning all day and mourning all night, falling over ourselves to get all of
the misery right.”
Herbie
Hancock: I Thought It Was You [25]. It's time for Legs and Co. They're
dancing round the same cube set as last week, but it has been stripped of its
glittery foil covering. It's not one of
Legs & Co's better routines. The lighting is too murky to see the routine
properly.
Sylvester: You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) [30]. Top of the Pops has made a clunking edit about 2 minutes 50 seconds into this promo video, and a trip to Youtube to watch the original reveals additional cuts to the introduction. My initial suspicion was that cuts were made because the original film was too libidinous for the 1978 Thursday evening BBC1 set but it quickly becomes clear that the purpose of the edits is to keep Sylvester on screen as much as possible while reducing the length of the song by cutting out the instrumentals. The editing of this promo film acts almost as a mission statement for Top of the Pops; it's never about the music, or the song, it's about the performance from the lead singer.
Manhattan Transfer: Where Did Our Love Go [NEW]. A cover of The Supreme's song. It's not bad but it feels out of step with the rest of the songs in this edition of Top of the Pops. The best moment comes when the lead singer decides to go the full John Travolta, and then starts singing directly to a young woman in the front row; to the amusement of the audience around her.
Sylvester: You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) [30]. Top of the Pops has made a clunking edit about 2 minutes 50 seconds into this promo video, and a trip to Youtube to watch the original reveals additional cuts to the introduction. My initial suspicion was that cuts were made because the original film was too libidinous for the 1978 Thursday evening BBC1 set but it quickly becomes clear that the purpose of the edits is to keep Sylvester on screen as much as possible while reducing the length of the song by cutting out the instrumentals. The editing of this promo film acts almost as a mission statement for Top of the Pops; it's never about the music, or the song, it's about the performance from the lead singer.
Manhattan Transfer: Where Did Our Love Go [NEW]. A cover of The Supreme's song. It's not bad but it feels out of step with the rest of the songs in this edition of Top of the Pops. The best moment comes when the lead singer decides to go the full John Travolta, and then starts singing directly to a young woman in the front row; to the amusement of the audience around her.
Hi-Tension:
British Hustle
[9].A third outing for this song, although disappointingly it's a repeat of
Hi-Tension's second performance; complete with Kid Jensen briefly dancing in
the first wide shot.
Arthur
Mullard & Hilda Baker: You’re The One That I Want [50]. From the
sublime to the ridiculous. Arthur Mullard and Hilda Baker's sparsely rehearsed
cover of the Grease hit is one of those performances which crops up whenever
someone wants to do a compilation of disastrous Top of the Pops appearances. Let's
just say it's no Funky Moped, and leave it at that. Incidentally, as I'm never
going to find anywhere else to mention this, track down Jasper Carrott's
performance on Top of the Pops (28/8/75) and then watch John Peel's Rock Bottom
segment from the 1992 TV Hell night. It's the same performance but the TV Hell
clip starts with Jasper Carrott standing awkwardly on stage waiting for a cue.
After a couple of seconds he pretends to use his microphone as an electric
razor before the music cuts in and he starts miming. The microphone/razor gag
must come from the studio master tape. I just find it amazing that, in 1992 at
least, these tapes still existed at the BBC. Incidentally looking up the TV
Hell clip will expose you to trace amounts of D*v* L** Tr*v*s and Paul
Burnett's execrable song Convoy UK. Sorry.
Number One: The Commodores, Three Times A Lady. There's a running gag in the comedy series Arrested Development (bear with
me this is going somewhere) that whenever George Michael Bluth mentions his
bland girlfriend Ann Veal someone goes, “her?” That's pretty much how I feel
about Three Times A Lady. It's inoffesive but every time I realise it's the
song which knocked You’re The One That I
Want off the number one spot my reaction is, “this?”
Closing titles: Crown Heights Affair, Galaxy Of Love [29]. This week's credit update. Vocal backing
is now by the Maggie Stredder Singers instead of The Ladybirds. After two weeks
Mike Jefferies has been taken off Lighting and replaced by John Farr, which
explains why the lighting seems more generic this week. There's no Director
listed but Robin Nash is bumped back up to Executive Producer, and Stanley
Appel is Producer. Got that? Good.
Performance
of the week: It was going to be Boney M, then it was going to be David Essex
(another example of a song which has grown on me on a week by week basis), but
actually it's Sylvester.
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