Introduced by Chris Arnsby. Mike Smith: “Good evening. And welcome to Top of the Pops. Some good acts in the studio tonight. Four live acts in here. Fourteen new entries in the chart. And over here a Top of the Pops debut, this is Iggy Pop.
[18]
Iggy Pop: Real Wild Child (Wild One). Mr Pop can be spotted leaping around on stage behind Mike Smith
during the introduction. It's part of his warm up for an exhausting
performance; Iggy writhes; Iggy leaps; Iggy skips; Iggy windmills his arms;
Iggy climbs onto the piano; the one thing Iggy doesn't do well is mime well.
He's also a bit casual with the studio equipment, tossing the microphone around
and flailing the stand in quite a dangerous way. Fortunately, he doesn't repeat
the excess of his 1977 performance of Lust for Life, on Dutch show TopPop,
during which he did approximately 50 guilders-worth of damage to a stage light
and studio palm tree.
[24]
The Mission: Wasteland. On video.
[6] Robbie Nevil: C'est La Vie. You remember Robbie Nevil. Don't you? Mr
Nevil, Nev, the Nevster, Nevsey-wevsey, Aston Nevila. I don't. I have no
recollection of the man himself although I
do remember the backing singers going “c'est la vie, c'est la vie,”
(very helpful at the time for my French GCSE). Looking now at his luxurious cascading
mop of curled hair, it's possible my brain combined my memory of him and
Michael Bolton. “Could
be number one next week,” says Mike Smith continuing his streak of tipping
apparently random songs for the top of the charts.
Top
40 Charts.
[15] The Style Council: It Didn't Matter. I've got nothing. The Style Council
passed me by in the eighties and these repeats have continued the trend. (John-
I doesn’t matter anyway according to The Well)
Top
40 Breakers: [31] UB40, Rat In Mi Kitchen; [30] Siouxsie & The Banshees,
This Wheel's On Fire; [29] Dead or Alive, Something In My House.; [28]
The Bangles, Walking Down Your Street.
[5] Elkie Brooks: No More The Fool. “It could be number one next week,”
says Mike Smith tipping another song. You can't keep picking songs Mike, choose
one and stick to it.
Lighting
Director this week is Eric Wallis, making a return to Top of the Pops
for the first time since about 1983. (John- I wonder where he’s been?) He
arranges a white spotlight behind Elkie Brooks that casts a dramatic shadow
across the smoky studio. It makes a suitabley vengeful atmosphere for the song.
The
audience are split. The bunch stage right have decided to wave their arms in a
jaunty way, which goes against the mood of the song somewhat. Stage left look
more serious. They stand and sway while they contemplate the question of what
dreams sound like when they fall and hit the ground, and if they did so in a
forest would anyone hear?
Top 10 Charts.
[1]
Jackie Wilson: Reet Petite. On video.
[3]
Alison Moyet: Is This Love? Mike Smith ends on a gag, wrapped in a scarf and wearing a Doctor
Seuss-esque towering wollen hat. Winter 1987 had turned cold. Gary Davies and
Steve Wright host next week and the closing credits background remains the
still from the opening titles and... what's this?
I'm downloading Top of the Pops from the super-secret-storage vault (https://mega.nz/folder/h0snQACa#uiNNqosfbdrfzODHsE1clw/folder/kpVhQAqJ shhh!) and a lot of them are copies from the BBC Archive; they have timecodes at the start. This one ends oddly. Alison Moyet is faded out abruptly and the screen turns blank. Suddenly a voice is heard, “right on we go,” and we hear studio chatter as the picture fades back on a wobbly wide shot of the studio. For a few seconds the picture bounces between various cameras before settling on a shot zooming across the studio -as we hear an alarmed squeak and the same voice from earlier says, “it's alright, don't panic it's only a camera.” We settle on a picture pointing at the shoes of a camera operator sitting up on a crane, then the picture pans left to the main stage. Beyond all the audience hubub, figures can be seen gathering on the main stage. It's another band preparing to film a post- show performance. Who can it be? It's a band of four and one of them has a bouffant hairdo and is carrying a guitar. Annoyingly, this is the point the tape runs out. It's an intriguing glimpse behind the curtain.
PERFORMANCE OF THE WEEK: Iggy Pop, Real Wild Child (Wild One).
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