Reviewed by Chris
Arnsby: John Peel: "Hello and welcome to Top of the Pops. Who's sold
out then? To start the programme yet another one of those ensembles that has a
funny foreign name."
[34] Toto Coelo: I Eat Cannibals. Toto Coelo -or, if
you are more cynical, someone in Toto Coelo's record company- has done a lot of
thinking about how to look good on Top of the Pops. The group is
distinctively dressed in multi-coloured bin bags, and they've worked out a
dance routine which works well on camera. There's a lot of hip-swaying and
stamping on the spot but not too much moving around which allows for shots to
be well framed, and makes life much easier for Vision Mixer Carol Abbot when
she wants to cut between cameras. Toto Coelo's second and last Top of the Pops
appearance is available on YouTube (it's embargoed on BBC4, D*v* L** Tr*v*s), along with the official
video, and it turns out Toto Coelo only have one dance routine for this song.
This reminds me of The Brotherhood of Man who also used to devise one cringy
routine per song and then plod through it on multiple Top of the Pops (sample
example: Angelo, where the band assumed Flamenco-like positions while singing
the ANGELO! bit of their cheery song about teen suicide). It should be noted
that I Eat Cannibals is infinitely more fun than anything by The Brotherhood of
Man. Toto Coelo won't be seen again. Their follow-up single Dracula's Tango
(Sucker For Your Love) reached 54 in the chart. This is something of a relief
for me as I'm finding their name very hard to type. My fingers keep rendering
it as Toto Coleo. Oddly enough The Brotherhood of Man gives me the same
problem; it keeps coming out as The Brotherhood of Mann.
 |
| Toto Coelo fail to spell their name |
[4] Madness: Driving In My Car. If you asked someone
to describe an idealised Madness performance it would resemble this one.
There's staccato dancing, loads of mucking around with props -a ventriloquist
dummy, a skeleton used for percussion, a Policeman with a blue light on his
hat, playing two saxophones at once- and a general sense that the song is
considerably less important than having fun. There's also a dirty great car
parked in the middle of the main studio performance area. How are Cecila
Brereton and her army of scene shifters going to cope with that in a live
programme? The answer is disappointingly simple, you can spot the moment Suggs
releases the handbrake and then the boys push the Maddiemobile out of the
studio. Only one question remains, what happens to the hat with the blue light
on it? It disappears without a trace during a change of camera.
