Top of the Pops 19 May 1988

 

Reviewed by Chris Arnsby. Gary Davies: “'ello! Simes and I would like to welcome you to another excellent edition of Top of the Pops. In the studio tonight we have Derek B, Aztec Camera, Billy Brag, and Wet Wet Wet.”

Simon Bates: “So much more as well. A double A-side at the end of the programme. Plus here in the Top of the Pops studio. It's Prefab Sprout. The King Of Rock And Roll.”

 [14] PREFAB SPROUT: the king of rock 'n' roll. In May 1988 I was revising for my GSCEs. This process broadly involved sitting down in my bedroom at 9am and switching on Radio One. It was time to stop at 5.30pm when Newsbeat began. I feel more familiar with the Top 40 at this point than any other time, and The King Of Rock 'N' Roll is one of those songs I'll permanently associate with trying to remember why U-shaped valleys meander or calculating the surface area of five moles of Hydrogen disulfide.
New Quantel effect! Just before the line “Up from suede shoes to my baby blues*” there's a whooshing noise, a bit like a plane taking off, and the picture squeezes itself into a small box and arcs across the screen. Lovely.

What's the title of this song? Well if you're Simon Bates it's “The King Of Rock 'N' Roll From Albuquerque.” 
* a line which I've always heard as “hot frog, my shoes, my baby blues.”

 

 [4] KYLIE MINOGUE: got to be certain. On video. Simon Bates' link into this song runs on from his Albuquerque gaff, “down under... miles away from the States... Kylie Minogue is still doing it.”

TOP 40 FROM 40 TO 31. Gary Davies and Simon Bates are both sitting down to introduce the charts. Surely it's too early in the show for them be feeling tired?

[16] DEREK B: bad young brother. “Later on tonight he's going to be appearing in Norwich.” This must be the glamour of show business, about which I have heard so much. I was lukewarm about Derek B's previous song Goodgrove, Top of the Pops 03/03/1988. This one works a lot better. Goodgrove felt a bit lacklustre. Here Derek B has a stage presence which was missing from Goodgrove. He's really going for it with lots of pointing and arm waving, and aggressive rap posturing.

Henry Barber is on Lighting this week. He's turned up the lighting level in the studio which allows Paul Ciani to pick up a couple of magnificent long shots. The first one comes early in the performance, a beautiful wide shot of the studio which slowly zooms across the space towards Derek B. The shot takes in Derek B's stage alongside one of the scenery arches with the technical crew working underneath, the audience, and at the top of the screen (and taking up nearly a third of the frame) the lighting grid. I always got the impression Michael Hurll hated showing the process of making Top of the Pops, hence all those years of camera operators having to fling themselves out of shot to avoid being spotterd on screen, but I find it adds to the atmosphere. I'd prefer Top of the Pops to move in the direction of showing the hardware and the people rather than the Light Entertainment idea of trying to pretend all these performances find their way onto your television by magic.
SPOILERS FOR 1988: of course, in just a few weeks time that studio infrastructure I'm admiring so much will be discovered to be riddled with asbestos.

TOP 40 BREAKERS: [19 HEART what about love] “a beautiful song and an ideal one for tonight,” says Simon Bates. I have no idea what he means. Any ideas? Does he think it's Valentine's Day? May 19^th was the date of the relief of Mafeking, that's quite romantic I guess; [25 OFRA HAZA im nin'alu]; [22 HOTHOUSE FLOWERS don't go]; [27 DEBBIE GIBSON out of the blue].
[17] AZTEC CAMERA: somewhere in my heart. Song two of the soundtrack to my revision. Now which of hydrogen chalcogenides has a camphor-like odour?
Some great use of hand held cameras to get low angle shots looking up at the stage, and terrific use of white spotlights by Henry Barber to punch white beams of light through the studio smoke.
TOP 40 FROM 30 TO 11
[12] BELINDA CARLISE. Suddenly Gary Davis is sitting down and surrounded ten beautiful people from the audience, who are also seated. Well played to the blonde sitting behind Gary Davies' left shoulder who hovers her hand over Davies right shoulder and opens and closes her fist quickly -as if she was miming a Vulcan nerve pinch. I don't know what statement she's making by the gesture but it makes her brunette mate smirk.
Belinda Carlise is above such distractions. She's on video.
TOP 10.
[1] BILLY BRAGG WITH CARA TIVEY: she's leaving home. This is long, but here's Billy Bragg's account of this performance. From his Facebook page, an entry dated 24^th August 2019:

 “...Returning from a trip to the Yankee Stadium to watch a baseball game, I found there were several messages from my manager in London. The single had gone to number one and I was booked to appear on Top of the Pops the day after I flew home.

This was in the days when I insisted on playing live on TV. While everyone else on the programme was miming to a backing track of their single, I wanted to actually perform the song. 48 hours later I was in BBC Television Centre with a hastily assembled band. In recognition of her contribution to the track, the single had been credited to Billy Bragg with Cara Tivey, so she was on piano and vocals. But who was to play the recorder part? Dave Woodhead, who played trumpet on my early albums was a shoo-in, but I also remembered that my old pal and sometime sideman, Wiggy, had been in the recorder group at school, so I roped him in as well. 

The one factor I hadn't taken on board when I demanded that we play live was that I had only ever sung the song once, in the studio months before. I didn't know the lyrics very well, so hastily wrote them on a sheet of paper, which I placed at my feet. It all went fine during the afternoon run through, but when it came to the actual recording, things were decidedly different.

 As we began performing, at 23.45 on the clip, technicians unleashed a cloud of dry ice. It's not an uncommon feature of a rock show, where it surrounds the artist like a thin mist and allows the lights to look more meaningful than they actually are. But the BBC didn't want their performers to disappear into a fog. As a result, their dry ice clung to the floor, wafting around your ankles like a layer of thick cloud. My crib sheet of lyrics was soon obscured.

 You can see the effect at 24.42, when I fluff the lines. Although I look relatively calm, I was panicking inside, hoping that I'd get another chance to perform the song. My saviour appeared in the shape of a BBC technician placing a ladder onto one of the overhead gantries. I saw him walk across the space behind the audience, watching me intently. He continued to look at me while he put his ladder into position. Except he missed the gantry and the steel ladder fell from the vertical to the horizontal with a loud crash. You can hear it at 26.12.

 I relaxed a little then, feeling sure the director would be forced to go again. But no. We finished the song and were ushered off the green room to make nice with Simon Bates and Gary Whatshisname. I felt awful, like we hadn't delivered. I was Number One and it was shit. Fortunately, I didn't have to witness the broadcast, as the next day I flew to Warsaw to start a tour of the Baltic States.”

 24.42. That would be this moment here.

The moment of the ladder collapse can be heard, just, as Cara Tivey is singing “What did we do that was wrong/we didn't know it was wrong.” There's a faint metallic klak in the background on the word “didn't”. Certainly not enough to require a retake Billy. Sorry.

[1] WET WET WET: with a little help from my friends. This charity single is a double a-side and so the screen flips with a little Dino magic Quantel and here's nearly 50 seconds of Wet Wet Wet.

[3] LIVERPOOL F.C. :anfield rap. Mark Goodier and Steve Wright next week.

PERFORMANCE OF THE WEEK: Aztec Camera, Somewhere in my Heart.