Reviewed by
Chris Arnsby. Simon Bates:
“Thursday night. Welcome to Top of the Pops. We're working our way to Number
One just before seven thirty. Here's Peter Powell.”
Peter
Powell: “Thank you
Simon! And celebrating a massive hit in the States and now in the UK! Heart and
Soul! Here's T'Pau!”
T'Pau have, “been in the States, at the moment, for the last ten weeks,”
according to Simon Bates. So who did I see two weeks ago on Top of the Pops,
Simes?
[24] LEVEL
42: it's over. “Oooh
baby. I'm leaving you but I feel really really bad about it.Yeah, baby.” A song
written from the self-absorbed perspective of the leaver, but I prefer to
imagine the other partner mentally checked out of the relationship six months
ago and has been having a jolly time shagging the neighbour.
[32] W·A·S·P·:
scream until you like it. Today
we probe the big questions. Are W·A·S·P· rubbish hair metal, or a parody of
rubbish hair metal? You decide. Because I can't tell. The band seem to be
setting themselves up to look silly; the lead singer has a Lily Munster-like
white stripe in his hair, and one of the guitarists has come dressed as Spinal
Tap's Derek Smalls, but is it deliberate? W·A·S·P·are less rubbish than
Mötley Crüe, so at least we've got some beginning of structure W·A·S·P·> Mötley Crüe > KISS.
Geoff Beech is
on Lighting, and he lights the drummer by shining a green light in his face. It
makes the drummer look like he's going mouldy.
What the heck
is Simon Bates talking about at the end of the performance: “... and it's the
theme title tune to the sequel to Goonies, Goonies 2 it's called.” What? I'd
like to meet and shake the hand of the diabolical fiend on the Top of the
Pops production team who keeps feeding the hosts duff information.
Top 40 Charts. The old mix of The Wizard is still being used behind the
chart countdown. Songs what I taped off the radio; Karel Fialka, Hey Matthew at
[36].
[12] WAX:
bridge to your heart. Peter
Powell ends the Top 40 countdown with this, “and the highest climber up
twenty-four to this week's eleven! Pump Up The Volume! Here's M|A|R|R|S!” Excitement!
Have Top of the Pops decided they can't ignore Pump Up The Volume
(remember last week when they played terrible non-mover The Cult* instead).
Well no because the next song is non-mover Wax. Peter Powell obviously trips
over his words, but M|A|R|R|S absence from this week's programme is odd
especially as M|A|R|R|S appeared the same week on (you guessed it) The Roxy.
So why aren't Top of the Pops playing the highest climber? Well, it
could be the video's not ready. Or it could be the BBC has been given the nod
about the injunction Stock Aitken Waterman are about to file to stop the
single knocking Rick Astley off Number 1 prevent the unauthorised use of a
sample from their single Roadblock.
You can see The
Roxy performance here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYEipVyMGpU; it's notable for a) containing the
Roadblock sample and b) the close up which reveals two of the records being
DJ-ed are albums by Simple Minds and The Human League.
But we're not
hear to talk about [ctrl-v] M|A|R|R|S. We should be talking about Wax. One of
whom has grown a ridiculous beard in the three weeks. It makes him look like
Captain Haddock. Building a bridge to your heart is a risky preposition as your
first DIY project. Maybe a better first project would be constructing an
aqueduct to your appendix.
[29] JONATHAN BUTLER: lies. Speaking of lies, how come one of the
backing singers “plays” the saxophone during the introduction and then just
waves the instrument around for the rest of the song?
[1] RICK
ASTLEY: never gonna give you up. A
repeat from all the way back on 13/08/1987. Mr Astley's first appearance.
[4] U2: where the streets have no name. Next week it's Gary and Mike.
Here's U2 on video, I always preferred the Pet Shop Boys version.
Performance of the week: T'Pau, Heart and Soul.
*W·A·S·P·> The Cult> Mötley Crüe > KISS.
Worth noting that this edition was advertised and celebrated as "the first Top of the Pops to be sold to America" - they brought out a cake and everything, by the looks of the below stock photo, with an assemblage of the acts who performed in the UK and Gary Davies (also note ABC's presence, having pre-recorded an imminent appearance alongside a certain Rolling Stone who is conspicuously absent here):
ReplyDeletehttps://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-bbc-radio-one-dj-gary-davis-kneeling-right-with-pop-stars-appearing-106368183.html
Though it explains Michael Hurll's brief return on this show that surprisingly hasn't been mentioned here (!), the above is not the best wording for what the USA version of Top of the Pops was. Some of the material filmed as part of the most recent and previous UK shows was simply woven into a new programme, with live performances in a Los Angeles studio introduced by Nia Peeples (which don't start appearing on our TOTP until October), and new links filmed back at TVC with Gary Davies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6u0EySV4coY
Said new links by Davies were seemingly often recorded on the end of the UK tapes, but with one or two notable exceptions to come, these don't survive on the digitised VT remasters in the Mega.nz folder. The unaired pre-record performances like David Bowie's didn't always either, and questions have been raised on how many still exist. However, some of these were indeed shown on TOTP USA despite not making it here - full recordings of it are very rare, but a clip playlist exists:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcbd6jX78CrsLWtsfL03uXp0lTy-6efil
Alas, the USA show was cancelled in March 1988, with Hurll by that point gone and TOTP now under new producer Paul Ciani. Not much seems to have been gained from the shortlived endeavour besides the obvious fact that the US didn't really need the show, and Davies retrospectively made it clear in the 'Story of 1987' documentary that he wasn't best pleased when he never actually got to visit the L.A. studios and be the massive star he probably saw himself as in his mind's eye.