Top of the Pops 30 Aug & 6 Sep 1990

 

Words: Chris Arnsby

 30/08/1990

 The observant among you might be wondering why the last write up confidently asserted it  covered the 16/08/1990 edition, for a second time. It didn't. It was supposed to read 23/08/1990. This was the cat's fault. It has now been banned from jumping on the keyboard. (John- And my fault for not noticing either but it shows we are not A.I)

 Mark Goodier: “Ah! Good evening. Hello. Welcome to Top Of the Pops. Britain's favourite TV and radio pop show. Tonight, the complete top forty. Who's number one? You'll see the number one later and of course we have all the major climbers on the charts and big stars. We start with a band who are always the sound of sunshine. Here's Aswad.

 [25] ASWAD: Next To You. Back to business as usual for Top of the Pops with Paul Ciani credited as the producer and director. It's been just over a year since Asward last appeared, 10/08/1989 with On And On. What have they been doing in the meantime? Shopping for keytars. Three of them, issued to everyone on stage who isn't Brinsley Forde or the drummer.

Top of the Pops 22 June 1990

 

Jakki Brambles: “Hello. Good evening and welcome along to Top of the Pops on a Friday night thanks to the lovely little World Cup. Rockin' good show for you tonight. We're going to start off with a band who are at number thirty five in the chart. They've just been entertaining fifty thousand East Berliners. Welcome along, Magnum.”

 [35] MAGNUM: Rockin'Chair. England v Egypt (Group F) live from Cagliari, 7.30pm on Thursday. It's time to play schedule billiards. Eastenders moves to 7pm Thursday which canons Top of the Pops to Friday at 7.40pm after Wogan. It's basically a repeat of the schedule reordering which took place on 18/05/1990 when the FA Cup Final replay moved everything around in exactly the same way. Top of the Pops gets dropped neatly in to the Friday night schedule so something called Paradise can start, as always, at 8.10pm.

“John Taylor is the formidable force that stands between prosperity and catastrophe when a lumber company comes to town to clear his mountain.” Sounds exciting.

Top of the Pops 20 & 27 July 1989

 

20/07/1989

Gary Davies: “Hello, good evening, hope you're well. Welcome to Top of the Pops on BBC1 and also in stereo on Radio 1FM. If you want to see ten chart topping acts in thirty minutes, you're in the right place. In the studio tonight we've got...”
Girl to the left of Gary Davies: “Monie Love.”
Girl to the right of Gary Davies: “Blow Monkeys”.
Girl to the right of the girl to the right of Gary Davies: “Sonia.”
Gary Davies: “We start off with the London Boys.”

[2] LONDON BOYS: london nights. Paul Ciani is away, so Stanley Appel takes over the Producing and Directing duties. Stanley has not done this for a while. His last credit was (I think, take this with a pinch of salt because it's from IMDB) 08/09/1988.

Stanley is not here to make waves. There's no really big differences between this and a Paul Ciani show. There is however one small difference. Gary Davies introduces the first act from one of the studio bridges rather than the Crow's Nest. Ring those changes, Stanley!

The London Boys have a well practiced routine. Check out the smooth way Edem Ephraim hands his microphone to Dennis Fuller before doing a backflip. The passing of the microphone is done during a move where both London Boys splay their arms, it's so smooth it's essentially unnoticeable. More obvious is when Dennis has to chuck it back to Edem, while the crowd whoop at the backflip.

Top of the Pops: 6th & 13th July 1989

 

Words: Chris Arnsby
06/07/1989

Nicky Campbell: “Hello and welcome to another sizzling edition of Top of the Pops on BBC1 and Radio 1FM. Starting tonight with an absolute fairytale. A dream come true. She's eighteen. She's from Liverpool. She was discovered by Stock, Aitken, and Waterman. Her first record is the highest climber in the chart. Here she is. Sonia.”

[12] SONIA: you'll never stop me from loving you. I have nothing constructive to say about Sonia. I didn't like her in 1989 and I haven't warmed to her since although I'm sure she's a lovely person in real life who stops to stroke cats on the street, etc.

Time and changing social mores have not been kind to this hymn to stalking which sets out its stall with the opening lines: “Even when you're home/You won't pick up your phone/And take my call.” It doesn't get any better from there.

Top of the Pops 19 and 26 February 1987

 

Reviewed by Chris Arnsby

19/02/87: Gary Davies: “Hi how ya doin'? Welcome to another mega Top of the Pops. Tonight we have an excellent show for you. In the studio we have Eric Clapton, Curiosity Killed The Cat, also Man 2 Man Meets Man Parish, but first we start with a band who've just released their first single. It's the highest new entry in the chart this week. Here's Westworld and Sonic Boom Boy.”

 [22] Westworld: Sonic Boom Boy. For some reason I keep getting this song mixed up with Love Missile F1-11 by Sigue Sigue Sputnik. There must be some vague similarity that my brain keeps locking on to, although obviously the key difference is that Sonic Boom Boy isn't rubbish. Top of the Pops are confused. The opening caption calls the band Westworld. The closing one calls them West World. Which is it? Christine Buttner is credited as Graphic Designer this week (I assume she handles the captions), and when the charts roll round she plumps for Westworld again, so I'm going to take that as correct.

Top of the Pops 13 Jan 1983

Reviewed by Chris Arnsby. [John Peel and David Jensen are both wearing Mexican mariachi hats] John Peel: "Hello. We're on a five pounds a man bonus for wearing these hats. Welcome to another Top of the Pops. We're the Burke and Hare of British broadcasting. I'm John, he's the likeable Canadian." David Jensen: "And this week we're going to kick off, amigos, with Incantation and Cacharpaya."

It's a new year on Top of the Pops. Michael Hurll (now credited with Production, rather than as Producer for some reason) has resurrected the dual presenter format. Wisely he's gone for two Radio 1 DJs instead of the terrible DJ plus guest format used in 1980 that gave us such combinations as Peter Powell and BA Robertson, or Tommy Vance and Roger Daltrey. Also different, weirdly, are the Top of the Pops titles. The 23/12/1982 edition introduced a modified version where the Top of the Pops logo was superimposed over the flying records rather than being on its own slide with a black background. This week we're back to the original film which strobes as it rapidly cuts between the logo and the records. Three editions of Top of the Pops have just been skipped by BBC4 and a quick check of Youtube shows all these (25/12/1982, 30/12/1982, and 6/1/1983) used the old titles. Was the new version done as a one-off technical demo, or did Michael Hurll hate it, or was it just lost in the Christmas hangover? Lets see what version gets used next week.

Top of the Pops 21 Oct 1982

Watched by Chris Arnsby. Peter Powell: "Hello! Welcome to another edition of Top of the Pops! We've got Toyah! We've got Bauhaus! We've got Kool And The Gang! And we've got a new number one! But for openers it's The Piranhas and Zambezi!"

[37] The Piranhas: Zambezi. Top of the Pops is in full wacky party mode tonight. Check out the audience cheerleader dressed early for Halloween as a skeleton. The Piranhas are keen to join in for their first studio appearance in two years. Lead singer Bob Grover is dressed as Dennis the Menace, complete with a copy of The Beano sticking out of his pocket. The backing singers are done up as school girls. And the drummer is wearing a magnificent colourful budgie costume, lovely plumage. It puts to shame the lousy dead-eyed efforts The Tweets wore in 1981. (John- Brilliantly the lyrics include the line “Zambezi, Zambezi, Zambezi, Zam.”)

Top of the Pops 9th and 16th Sept 1982

09/09/82

Reviewed by Chris Arnsby. Peter Powell: "Hello everybody! Welcome to another party! It's Top of the Pops! We've got Gillan, we've got Dire Straits, we've got... Shalamar, and we've got Shakin' Stevens! But for starters we've got one Evelyn King and Love Come Down!"

[29] Evelyn King: Love Come Down. "Baby you make my love come down." Is this really a good thing? The song is upbeat, and down is a negative word. It seems to work against the intent of the lyrics. Then again I'm aware that the lyrics are also meant to work as a low level innuendo (about 3.7 on the Croft-Lloyd scale, say equivalent of Lieutenant Gruber inviting Rene into the back of his little tank) with the word love acting as a synonym for something else (use your imagination). So changing the chorus to "love rise up" wouldn't necessarily work and might also accidentally make people think of being sick.