Review by Chris Arnsby. Janice Long: “Hello and welcome to Top of the Pops. Tonight we've got Mel and Kim, we've got A-Ha, we've got Erasure, we've got Al Jarreau.” Gary Davies: “But before all that we start off with a mega-band at number twenty seven, from Liverpool, here are the Christians.”
[27] Christians: Forgotten Town. Top of the Pops treatment of this song is odd. This is Forgotten Town's fourth week in the Top 40 and it's finally granted a performance the same week that it's a non-mover at [27]. What's that all about? If anything, I'd expect the band to be featured the week the song broke into the Top 30. Interestingly, looking back at the line up for that week (19/02/1987) Top of the Pops featured an unprecedented four Breakers. Did a previous booking for The Christians fall through? We'll never know, but I'm determined to whip this up into some sort of conspiracy theory.
[13]
A-ha: Manhattan Skyline. It's here. Finally. A performance recorded all the way back in
the studio session for the 29/01/1987 edition. Keep an eye on some of the
Audience Cheerleaders dancing away behind the band, they're happy enough to
rock out for the faster sections but the slower moments of the song, and the
change in tempo, foxes them slightly. A-ha are lit a moody blue by the studio
lights and it suits them.
[20]
Erasure: It Doesn't Have To Be. Admire the way Andy Bell can move his body around while keeping
his head stationary. It's like watching a Kingfisher preparing to swoop down on
a fish.
Top
40 Charts.
[25] Mel & Kim: Respectable. Mel and Kim are all shoulder pads and straight lines. With their wide flat hats, and broad shoulders narrowing down to pinched waists, I want to describe them as looking like a pair of sharply dressed nails; but I'm worried that's someone else's line I'm pinching.
Top
40 Breakers: [10] Jackie Wilson, I Get The Sweetest Feeling; [9] Freddie
Mercury, The Great Pretender; [7] Boy George, Everything I Own.
[29]
Al Jarreau: Moonlighting. Oh yes. Moonlighting mania. BBC2 had started showing Moonlighting
in May 1986, although oddly the very first episode went out on BBC1 to,
presumably, drum up an audience. By one of those odd coincidences, the episode
scheduled next after this edition of Top of the Pops, on Monday 7th
May was Symphony in Knocked Flat which is the first episode I remember
watching. It was on at 9.30pm, immediately after the very first episode of French
and Saunders. That's not a bad evening of television. Anyway, enough of
this nostalgia. Al is lit a moody blue by the studio lights and (sorry, I've
done this already).
It
turns out the Lighting Director this week, Terry Brett, also handled A-Ha's
recording session on 29/01/1987. He obviously likes the effect, and he's quite
right. It looks super.
Top
10 Charts
[1]
Ben E King: Stand By Me. On video.
[2] Percy Sledge: When A Man Loves A Woman. “Five of the Top 10 this
week are oldies,” says Gary Davies. A bit of sustained Googling reveals the
lad's right. Outside of the obvious three there's also The Great Pretender,
originally by The Platters, and Everything I Own, originally by Bread. “We've
played four of them,” Gary continues and here's number five which is currently
being used to sell jeans. This is the advert where the young soldier gets on a
bus and slips his girlfriend a mysterious brown package. It's his jeans.
Fortunately she finds this romantic, rather than being annoyed that he's passed
her his dirty clothes to wash and iron.
Mike
Smith and Steve Wright again, next week. Oh boy.
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