Reviewed by
Chris Arnsby. Simon
Mayo: “Hi. Welcome to Top of the Pops and we have tonight, we have Chris Rea,
we also have Fairground Attraction, and Yazz, and also with his curls cut off,
Mike Read.”
Mike Read:
“Absolutely. The first group up tonight, really really good, went to see them a
few weeks ago live, they are great, Aztec Camera, Working in a Goldmine.”
I'm not going to
beat around the bush. Cumulatively this is one of the flattest episodes of Top
of the Pops I've seen for a while. Individually none of the songs tonight
are bad but one after they other they flop onto a pile and lay there; or, maybe
I was just tired after a day at work.
Working in a
Goldmine is not a bad song but it's the lowest of low-key starts for the
programme and it gets quite a muted response from the audience. It's rare for
the programme to dip outside the top thirty (for studio performances, it's a
little more common for videos, and the Breakers do it regularly) and this is
the first time a low-charting band have been invited in since T'Pau with
Valentine, [33] on 21/01/1988. Stanley Appel deserves credit for opening
the studio doors to less obvious songs but I wouldn't have put this up first.
[2] KYLIE
MINOGUE: the locomotion. Mike
Read does his funny Australian accent to introduce Kylie's video.
TOP 40 FROM
40 TO 31.
[19] CHRIS
REA: on the beach. Note
to self, check through before emailing to make sure I haven't called him Chris
Rhea.
The full title
of this single is On The Beach Summer '88, or to give it the correct typography
according to the single cover; “CHRIS REA on the beach SUMMER '88”. Nice of
Chris to copy the Top of the Pops caption style guide. It's another very
laid back song.
BREAKERS: The Breakers return after a three week
absence. [30 STATUS QUO runnin' all over the world]; [28 VAN HALEN
when it's love]; [24 BIG COUNTRY king of emotion]
[7]
FAIRGROUND ATTRACTION: find my love. This
week everyone in Fairground Attraction gets a guitar,except for the percussion
bloke who still has a gourd.
TOP
40 FROM 30 TO 11.
[17]
JULIO INGELSIAS / STEVIE WONDER: my love. On video. Turgid.
TOP 10.
[1]
YAZZ AND THE PLASTIC POPULATION: the only way is up. Yazz is back in the studio.
She joins Mike Read and Simon Mayo up on the studio bridge for a terrible bit
of banter. “Can we join the Plastic Population?” asks Mike Read. The jape here
is that Yazz will decline because Read and Mayo don't have plastic instruments.
Unfortunately the reply is lost because in the stress leading up to her
performance Yazz momentarily forgets how microphones work, she holds hers too
far from her mouth for her words to be properly audible. It's up to Mike Read
to salvage the joke. “We need plastic instruments?” The two hosts then produce
two inflatable saxophones and the bit is complete. “I don't believe it,”
squeaks Yazz. Hilarious. Yazz then dashes down the stairs to the stage where
she rejoins her two dancers for the rest of her performance.
Dickie
Higham has rented London' supply of rotating light poles and placed them all on
stage behind Yazz. They burst into life about two thirds of the way through the
song. I don't remember seeing these used for a while, maybe Paul Ciani banned
them? Sensible man if he did, I'm not a fan of their flickering magic.
The
performance ends with a long pan right across the studio from where Yazz was to
the main stage where Mike Read and Simon Mayo have relocated to say goodnight.
Simon Mayo still has the inflatable saxophone (the other has been given to a
member of the Studio Crew). Mike Read is now clutching an inflatable guitar.
Unfortunately he relocates the guitar to crotch height and starts rocking out
on it. It's an image which will haunt my insomnia; Mike Read pulling a face
while jerking his hips backwards and forwards and gripping the weird
flesh-coloured flexible neck of the inflatable guitar. And now I've shared it
with you. See you at 3am.
[22]
ROBBIE ROBERTSON: somewhere down the crazy river. Nicky Campbell and Gary
Davis next week.
These are slight production credit spoilers, but Paul Ciani does actually take a bit of an extended break from TOTP until the end of the year, when he returns for the 15/12/88 and 25th anniversary editions. Stan Appel fills in until the middle of September, then Brian Whitehouse takes over for pretty much the remainder of 1988.
ReplyDeleteThis can be likened to Michael Hurll's absences to focus on the Late Late Breakfast Show, with Appel and Whitehouse as well as Gordon Elsbury bridging the gaps left. Ciani, meanwhile, produced the final series of Call My Bluff elsewhere in the Beeb light entertainment department during 1988.
Ciani does still oversee one TOTP edition in late September too, merely producing it and leaving direction duties to Tony Newman (who then directs a few more), but only because neither Appel or Whitehouse were available - indeed, the latter may have had to cancel fairly late as he is still credited on BBC Genome.