Finally caught up with this weeks Top Of The Pops on tonight's late and long edition.
What the hell had happened to David "Kid" Jensen's dress sense in July 1978? I was shocked at how daft he looked. He was quite dapper previously, in trendy baseball jackets and the like. His hair looked more...bouffant, to say the least, as well!
What was with him introducing A Taste Of Honey's Boogie Oogie Oogie as Mr Boogie Oogie Oogie? It's never been known as that as far as I can tell, ever. The clip did the track no favours at all.
I think that Child were hoping to take up the slack left behind from the Bay City Rollers, judging by the visuals. Thank God it failed. Watching them I actually wondered if they were a group that had won Opportunity Knocks or New Faces at the time. It was an insipid 50's cover.
Raydio was interesting. It appeared to sample Earth, Wind & Fire's hit Saturday Nite didn't it? I'd no idea that kind of thing was going on as far back as '78.
Sham69 live up to their name for me. Pretend punks! A sham then. The track was catchy enough, I've heard it before. Suppose it was exciting then. Seems very tame now.
New Seekers, I genuinely cannot work that song out enough to form an opinion. It ain't no Bucks Fizz - Now Those Days Are Gone, which is a track that can almost bring a lump to my throat, it's so powerful and an under-estimated classic by them.
Enough has already been said about City Boy, Clout and Marshall Hain previously so I don't feel the need to repeat myself on those great tracks.
You can have too much Legs & Co in one episode however. I am also extremely sick and tired of that Floyd appearance to the No1, still with another 3 weeks left! It really is beginning to spoil my memory of that record. It is utterly preposterous that we have a song that will be at No1 for 9 weeks, plus the period it climbed to the top and appeared, yet in all that time and all those appearances we do not get to see more than a 2 second glimpse of Olivia Newton-John & John Travolta as a still image on the opening countdown. They're cutting the heart out of who was 1978 in music here. Never mind their next 7 week long No1 hit in 1978 and the other top three singles to come along between now and years end.
Playing out with A Little Bit Of Soap by Showaddywaddy, a song I liked at the time and recall, but looking back now, proving (excuse the pun) that they were just about washed up.
You may be interested to know that tonight as I watched the show, I was on another section of DS (Big Brother for my sins) with a young lad of 18 who I asked to watch the show and give me feedback. He agreed and stayed with it all the way through, passing comments with me. I actually think he enjoyed a lot of it! I was keen to hear a young view of the music and show. I'll share a few of them in a later posting.
Its intriguing that they didnt stump up for at least one showing of the video, or would that raise more questions?
Obviously ' Summer Nights ' will have the Xmas show performance brought forward, but what about the other Grease songs, 'Hopelessey Devoted', 'Greased Lightening' & 'Grease' itself?
Next year, 'Bright Eyes', was there a Legs & Co?
Longer term, this will be a problem in the 80's.
Billy Ocean's ' When The Going Gets Tough', when it hits No1, can be covered with a studio performance, but what else?
That Bryan Adams song from 1991, his studio performance was mixed with scenes from the film.
Its intriguing that they didnt stump up for at least one showing of the video, or would that raise more questions?
Obviously ' Summer Nights ' will have the Xmas show performance brought forward, but what about the other Grease songs, 'Hopelessey Devoted', 'Greased Lightening' & 'Grease' itself?
Next year, 'Bright Eyes', was there a Legs & Co?
Longer term, this will be a problem in the 80's.
Billy Ocean's ' When The Going Gets Tough', when it hits No1, can be covered with a studio performance, but what else?
That Bryan Adams song from 1991, his studio performance was mixed with scenes from the film.
Can anyone think of anymore?
BIB - The other Grease hits: I think TOTP are well covered.
Grease - That had three outings, two of them on JS and Hairy Scapegoat editions and the other was the chart rundown on a Peter Powell edition (the DLT show had a L & C routine, the JS show was the film clip video).
Hopelessly Devoted To You - Had three outings. A chart rundown on a DLT show. A L & C routine on a MIke Read show and the film clip video on another Mike Read show.
Sandy - Had two outings. One was a chart rundown on a JS show the other was a L & C routine on a PP edition.
Greased Lightning - Was only on once on a JS edition (and was the video film clip).
As for "Bright Eyes" they might have a problem as they do not have any L & C routines for it, it was only ever shown with the film clip (assuming we do get to 1979!).
As for "Bright Eyes" they might have a problem as they do not have any L & C routines for it, it was only ever shown with the film clip (assuming we do get to 1979!).
One might have fun comparing the New Seekers and Bucks Fizz, although I will always think Bucks Fizz the superior group (by a mile or million).
The New Seekers always suffered by comparison with the original Seekers although I believe they were managed by Keith Podger, a member of the Seekers at least at the start. Please correct me if I am wrong.
I will leave that debate for another time, but the New Seekers were MOR and also had about the same number of hits as Bucks Fizz. Unlike Bucks Fizz, though, they failed to win the Eurovision Song Contest (in 1972), although they were up against the winner Vicky Leandros's Come What May. They also dabbled in acapella (see I cannot even spell it). Help.
Anthem, their last hit, may not be as good as Now Those Days are Gone but it is acappella, and, hearing it again, I thought it was a corking track. Excellent:)
The New Seekers were a spent force, and they were replaced in the pop/mor by Dollar (who will soon start to appear) (hells bells) and by Bucks Fizz. Both these groups were seen as naff at the time, but in a famous NME article Julie Burchill praised them for being "ironic" (no I do not get what she meant, except the 1982 Dollar were a deliberate joke, under Trevor Horn). By the mid 1980s Bucks Fizz were gaining loads of credibility thanks to their high quality tracks. The writing of Andy Hill and also Jay Aston's wackiness drove them on. They are vastly superior to the New Seekers.:cool:
However, the New Seekers did something that Bucks Fizz never did and had big hits in the States with I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing and Pinball Wizard. Bucks Fizz could only manage a couple of big dance chart hits with I Hear Talk and New Beginning in 1986.
Their main claim to fame in the States is that their Heart of Stone written by Andy Hill and er . .. prog rocker Pete Sinfield was covered by Cher and became the title track of her biggest selling album, Heart of Stone. The song was also a hit single in the States for her.:)
We all can agree that Child were naff (though I rate their performance), but they were a dying breed. They were definitely created in about 1976 when they became very visible in teen mags like Oh Boy! as the Bay City Rollers slipped in order to make it big in America. In the early seventies there had been loads of bands aimed at this market. The Cassidys, Osmonds, and in terms of boy groups Kenny and then Slik were all aimed at teen appeal--to girls especially. It was this market that Child aimed for, as did Racey next year to some extent.
But what happened to this market? Certainly the Spandaus and Duran Duran, the former containing ex-Oh! Boy! picture story models will have appealed to the teeh market but they were much more sophisticated and much less naff than bands like Child.
So what happened to the naff Teenbop market by the end of the seventies I wonder? Did all the "little girls" go for Sting? Did this market just disappear? What will we see in TOTP 1979? (if we get it).
If the answer is staring me in the face, I cannot get it yet..I don't think po-faced ugly-pug punks would quite do it.
It revived with New Kids by 1989 and then with their (much superior) British equivalents Take That in 1991. But what about the teen "girl" market in the 1980s?
To paraphrase the Knack what did the "little girls" understand in the 1980s?
We all can agree that Child were naff (though I rate their performance), but they were a dying breed. They were definitely created in about 1976 when they became very visible in teen mags like Oh Boy! as the Bay City Rollers slipped in order to make it big in America. In the early seventies there had been loads of bands aimed at this market. The Cassidys, Osmonds, and in terms of boy groups Kenny and then Slik were all aimed at teen appeal--to girls especially. It was this market that Child aimed for, as did Racey next year to some extent.
But what happened to this market? Certainly the Spandaus and Duran Duran, the former containing ex-Oh! Boy! picture story models will have appealed to the teeh market but they were much more sophisticated and much less naff than bands like Child.
So what happened to the naff Teenbop market by the end of the seventies I wonder? Did all the "little girls" go for Sting? Did this market just disappear? What will we see in TOTP 1979? (if we get it).
If the answer is staring me in the face, I cannot get it yet..I don't think po-faced ugly-pug punks would quite do it.
It revived with New Kids by 1989 and then with their (much superior) British equivalents Take That in 1991. But what about the teen "girl" market in the 1980s?
To paraphrase the Knack what did the "little girls" understand in the 1980s?
well Adam Ant was on many a girl's bedroom wall by 1981 along with Duran and David Sylvian from Japan ("the most beautiful man in the world" as the quote at the time famously went). But Adam Ant and Sylvian were as likely to be on the cover of the NME as Smash Hits reflecting how they were not a teen marketed phenomenon. I think by the early 80s that had stopped and didn't start up again until the latter part of the decade with the likes of Bros, Tiffany, Debbie Gibson, Kylie and Jason and most notably, New Kids on the Block, paving the way for the boy band explosion of the 90s.
One might have fun comparing the New Seekers and Bucks Fizz, although I will always think Bucks Fizz the superior group (by a mile or million).
IMO Bucks Fizz have more in common with the Brotherhood of Man. Both groups were basically two men and two women who sang but presumably didn't play any instruments on their records (somehow the two guys in the BoM never looked convincing strumming guitars on TOTP ) and as far as I know neither of them wrote any of their own hits (I'm not suggesting that the New Seekers did). The careers of both groups started after they won the Eurovision Song Contest and each act enjoyed three No. 1 hits (BoM in the 1970s and Bucks Fizz in the 1980s).
In 2006 I watched a series on Channel 5 called 'The Seventies: That Was The Decade That Was' and one week it showed excerpts of the New Seekers on TOTP doing 'I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing' and 'Circles'. I'd like to know where they got hold of the 'Circles' footage in sharp, pristine colour because it clearly came from the 22 June 1972 show which the BBC wiped and as far as I know only exists as a substandard, washed-out print which turned up at BBC Glasgow circa 2001 (link below).
Its intriguing that they didnt stump up for at least one showing of the video, or would that raise more questions?
I definitely recall seeing the 'Shake Shack' film clip on TOTP2 circa 1999 so it seems strange if the BBC paid the appropriate fee to Paramount to screen it at that time.
Perhaps they are strapped for cash after shelling out £277 million of licence payers money on redundancy pay-offs over the past seven years?
I definitely recall seeing the 'Shake Shack' film clip on TOTP2 circa 1999 so it seems strange if the BBC paid the appropriate fee (thousands of pounds?) to Paramount to screen it at that time.
Perhaps they are strapped for cash after spending £277 million of licence payers money on redundancy pay-offs over the past seven years?
Maybe back in the 90s the BBC held the rights to show Grease. that's why they didn't have to pay any more. It's Channel 4 who've got the rights at the moment.
On this subject, I'm fully expecting when the Boomtown Rats perform Rat Trap later in the year, Bob will rip up a picture of Legs & Co and Floyd!
BIB - The other Grease hits: I think TOTP are well covered.
Grease - That had three outings, two of them on JS and Hairy Scapegoat editions and the other was the chart rundown on a Peter Powell edition (the DLT show had a L & C routine, the JS show was the film clip video). So we won't see a full performance then!
Hopelessly Devoted To You - Had three outings. A chart rundown on a DLT show. A L & C routine on a MIke Read show and the film clip video on another Mike Read show. L & C on both Mike Read shows then!
Sandy - Had two outings. One was a chart rundown on a JS show the other was a L & C routine on a PP edition. We'll see this one then!
Greased Lightning - Was only on once on a JS edition (and was the video film clip). Won't see this one then! Has it ever been on TOTP 2 ?
As for "Bright Eyes" they might have a problem as they do not have any L & C routines for it, it was only ever shown with the film clip (assuming we do get to 1979!).
How many weeks at No 1 then? The only occasion I can think of, where the No 1 was dropped on repeats, is one of the Einsfestival repeats where Glitter was dropped. One of the NyRainbow You Tube account has that on.
Yes, that commercial had slipped my mind but it came back to me when I looked it up on YouTube; he was advertising Campari and you are probably right about the two endings - here is a link to one of them:
I reckon Dave Clark's physical transformation will have raised a few eyebrows - including his own by the looks of things.
The sad thing with Dave Clark is that he must've got into getting cosmetic surgery quite early, when it was less advanced and at a time when the pressure to keep your heyday looks wasn't as great as it now. It looks like early surgery wasn't up to today's standard and since then he's been suffering corrective operations rather than treatments. It's just really not worked out for him.
BIB - a PC World technician once told me over the phone that this can cause a computer to overheat and crash (in which case "laptop" is a bit of a misnomer) but I'm not sure if his advice was right.
I use a lap top cushion tray £19.99 from Currys. it's great and stops the heat on your legs, and because it's a flat surface like a table, air can circulate around the lap top .....highly recommend.
Well that does sound like a good idea. I'll keep an eye out (hopefully in a sale). But it'll have to wait until after I've been to the David Bowie exhibition. I've finally got money set aside for it and I'm not putting back yet again.
Raydio was interesting. It appeared to sample Earth, Wind & Fire's hit Saturday Nite didn't it? I'd no idea that kind of thing was going on as far back as '78.
Although there are obvious similarities, there was no sampling going on in 1978 (certainly in the way we talk about it now).
Raydio, then in their infancy, were finding themselves and it's no surprise they had funkier tracks in their repertoire to play along the more mellow 'Jack And Jill'. Earth Wind & Fire may only just have started to have an impact in the UK charts, but they were massive in the US R&B charts, and a huge influence, even then.
The soul/disco music of the day was notable, however, for developing trends: certain sounds or even melodies that would originate on one track, then be picked up and used on others.
... all of which feature the same keyboard riff, but still manage to be sufficiently distinctive songs to stop them sounding like clones of each other.
Does anyone know who owns the rights to show Watership Down in the UK? If its the BBC then it won't be a problem.
The TV series from 1999/2000 was on CITV so it's unlikely the BBC has rights to it.
Stephen Gately recorded a new version of Bright Eyes for the theme tune. It was originally going to be his first solo release but it was put back and eventually became a double a-side with his official first single, New Beginning. I don't think it had an accompanying promo, though he did perform it at live shows. It was never performed on TOTP, so there'll be no issues showing it in 22 years time like the original.
well Adam Ant was on many a girl's bedroom wall by 1981 along with Duran and David Sylvian from Japan ("the most beautiful man in the world" as the quote at the time famously went). But Adam Ant and Sylvian were as likely to be on the cover of the NME as Smash Hits reflecting how they were not a teen marketed phenomenon. I think by the early 80s that had stopped and didn't start up again until the latter part of the decade with the likes of Bros, Tiffany, Debbie Gibson, Kylie and Jason and most notably, New Kids on the Block, paving the way for the boy band explosion of the 90s.
Bros would've been my first pin-ups in the traditional sense. I had their posters on the wall in the late 80s (I particularly remember a big fold out poster that doubled as a calendar). 'I Owe You Nothing' is, as far as I'm concerned, one of the great British pop songs. Robbie and Mark from Take That were my main pin ups in the mid 90s, then later Boyzone. I was never into New Kids On The Block, though.
I actually got big into Adam and the Ants a good 10 years after the fact with the release of their greatest hits in the early 90s. I had it on cassette (since updated to CD) and played it to death. While I've never fancied Adam Ant, had I been around at the relevant time, I would definitely have had his poster on the wall as I liked the look and style.
We all can agree that Child were naff (though I rate their performance), but they were a dying breed. They were definitely created in about 1976 when they became very visible in teen mags like Oh Boy! as the Bay City Rollers slipped in order to make it big in America. In the early seventies there had been loads of bands aimed at this market. The Cassidys, Osmonds, and in terms of boy groups Kenny and then Slik were all aimed at teen appeal--to girls especially. It was this market that Child aimed for, as did Racey next year to some extent.
But what happened to this market? Certainly the Spandaus and Duran Duran, the former containing ex-Oh! Boy! picture story models will have appealed to the teeh market but they were much more sophisticated and much less naff than bands like Child.
So what happened to the naff Teenbop market by the end of the seventies I wonder? Did all the "little girls" go for Sting? Did this market just disappear? What will we see in TOTP 1979? (if we get it).
If the answer is staring me in the face, I cannot get it yet..I don't think po-faced ugly-pug punks would quite do it.
It revived with New Kids by 1989 and then with their (much superior) British equivalents Take That in 1991. But what about the teen "girl" market in the 1980s?
To paraphrase the Knack what did the "little girls" understand in the 1980s?
From Leeds, Child were signed to German label Ariola (whose 1978 signings also included Japan) and, as you say, were an attempt to come up with the next BCR - but 1978's pin-up was probably Travolta and the rise of Smash Hits in 1979 made Sting punk's heartthrob.
In the ten years between the collapse of the BCR-type market and Bros/SAW, Smash Hits' teen audience were indeed fixated on Duran Duran, Adam Ant, Spandau Ballet, Michael Jackson and (although it seems hard to credit it now) Depeche Mode, all of whom had sufficient visual appeal to their core audience. But, with the possible exception of the MJ-influenced Five Star, the younger end of the market was indeed neglected - which is possibly why the Bros/SAW double-headed horror was able to make such a splash in the late 80s ...
David Sylvian from Japan ("the most beautiful man in the world" as the quote at the time famously went).
:eek: :eek: :eek: ... beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Talking of 80s male pop stars with teenage girl appeal, I see no one has yet mentioned the boys from Wham! or Haircut One Hundred starring the fresh faced, Smartie eating "boy next door" Nick Heyward.
One might have fun comparing the New Seekers and Bucks Fizz, although I will always think Bucks Fizz the superior group (by a mile or million).
The New Seekers were a spent force, and they were replaced in the pop/mor by Dollar (who will soon start to appear) (hells bells) and by Bucks Fizz. Both these groups were seen as naff at the time, but in a famous NME article Julie Burchill praised them for being "ironic" (no I do not get what she meant, except the 1982 Dollar were a deliberate joke, under Trevor Horn). By the mid 1980s Bucks Fizz were gaining loads of credibility thanks to their high quality tracks. The writing of Andy Hill and also Jay Aston's wackiness drove them on. They are vastly superior to the New Seekers.:cool:
The 1982 Dollar were a deliberate joke under Trevor Horn? Not a chance in hell is that true. The productions are exquisite. I've bought them, with no shame attached! I'm looking forward immensely to their UK chart debut later in the year with Shooting Star, although my fave spell of theirs is 1981/82, with Hand Held In Black And White, Mirror Mirror, Give Me Back My Heart and Videotheque. Nothing naff, or desperate about any of those fine hit singles. :cool:
You say that both Dollar and Bucks Fizz were considered "naff at the time". Presumably meaning at the time of their biggest hit songs. I don't believe that is the case at all, for either group.
Servalan, so Raydio did not sample Saturday Nite, how fascinating. I was so convinced they had, it was so similar.
The 18 year old I was online with last night while watching the show wanted to know why young people in the 70's and 80's were all so ugly! How do you answer that? I've pointed him in the direction of a few of those good '78 dance numbers and more.
Fave St, unlike the blond lead chap from the group Child (having checked the Buzzcocks ID parade clip) Nick Heyward appears to still be very much the boy (man) next door, and seems as cute and smiley, with his own hair as ever he was! People often forget that after the brief spell with Haircut 100 he actually had some pretty decent solo hit singles albeit not as big as in the group. I have a copy of the Daily Mirror from this very week in July 1983 when they profiled Nick, alongside Paul Young, whose first solo effort was about to make No1, and compared the two against each other.
But what happened to this market? Certainly the Spandaus and Duran Duran, the former containing ex-Oh! Boy! picture story models will have appealed to the teeh market but they were much more sophisticated and much less naff than bands like Child.
So what happened to the naff Teenbop market by the end of the seventies I wonder? Did all the "little girls" go for Sting? Did this market just disappear? What will we see in TOTP 1979? (if we get it).
If the answer is staring me in the face, I cannot get it yet..I don't think po-faced ugly-pug punks would quite do it.
It revived with New Kids by 1989 and then with their (much superior) British equivalents Take That in 1991. But what about the teen "girl" market in the 1980s?
To paraphrase the Knack what did the "little girls" understand in the 1980s?
I was a little girl in the late 70's and early 80's - but I must admit - my musical tastes were a bit more sophisticated than the norm (if I say so myself) - probably due to having much older brothers and sisters!
Teeny bop bands like Racey & Showaddywaddy were around - but remember Abba and Grease had a big influence on young teenagers and children back then - so there wasn't necessarily a market or need for any boy bands to be around.
Personally, back in 1979/80 - I was into acts like The Police ( so yes Sting I suppose), as well as Blondie, XTC, The Pretenders, Madness, Squeeze etc etc. There was no need for teeny bop stuff as there was so much other decent stuff out there!
:eek: :eek: :eek: ... beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Talking of 80s male pop stars with teenage girl appeal, I see no one has yet mentioned the boys from Wham! or Haircut One Hundred starring the fresh faced, Smartie eating "boy next door" Nick Heyward.
Yes the early 80's started bringing along the teeny bop male pop stars - but there were virtually non back in 78/79! - Only maybe flash in the pans like Andy Gibb!
The 1982 Dollar were a deliberate joke under Trevor Horn? Not a chance in hell is that true. The productions are exquisite. I've bought them, with no shame attached! I'm looking forward immensely to their UK chart debut later in the year with Shooting Star, although my fave spell of theirs is 1981/82, with Hand Held In Black And White, Mirror Mirror, Give Me Back My Heart and Videotheque. Nothing naff, or desperate about any of those fine hit singles. :cool:
You say that both Dollar and Bucks Fizz were considered "naff at the time". Presumably meaning at the time of their biggest hit songs. I don't believe that is the case at all, for either group.
Servalan, so Raydio did not sample Saturday Nite, how fascinating. I was so convinced they had, it was so similar.
The 18 year old I was online with last night while watching the show wanted to know why young people in the 70's and 80's were all so ugly! How do you answer that? I've pointed him in the direction of a few of those good '78 dance numbers and more.
Fave St, unlike the blond lead chap from the group Child (having checked the Buzzcocks ID parade clip) Nick Heyward appears to still be very much the boy (man) next door, and seems as cute and smiley, with his own hair as ever he was! People often forget that after the brief spell with Haircut 100 he actually had some pretty decent solo hit singles albeit not as big as in the group. I have a copy of the Daily Mirror from this very week in July 1983 when they profiled Nick, alongside Paul Young, whose first solo effort was about to make No1, and compared the two against each other.
"Give Me Back My Heart" is one of the greatest singles of all time, absolutely superb. But it is a fact that both Dollar and Buck's Fizz were considered naff at the time by a lot of people (although probably driven by the music snobs of "Sounds", "Melody Maker" and "NME" who always looked down on pure pop).
From Leeds, Child were signed to German label Ariola (whose 1978 signings also included Japan) and, as you say, were an attempt to come up with the next BCR - but 1978's pin-up was probably Travolta and the rise of Smash Hits in 1979 made Sting punk's heartthrob.
In the ten years between the collapse of the BCR-type market and Bros/SAW, Smash Hits' teen audience were indeed fixated on Duran Duran, Adam Ant, Spandau Ballet, Michael Jackson and (although it seems hard to credit it now) Depeche Mode, all of whom had sufficient visual appeal to their core audience. But, with the possible exception of the MJ-influenced Five Star, the younger end of the market was indeed neglected - which is possibly why the Bros/SAW double-headed horror was able to make such a splash in the late 80s ...
The 1982 Dollar were a deliberate joke under Trevor Horn? Not a chance in hell is that true. The productions are exquisite. I've bought them, with no shame attached! I'm looking forward immensely to their UK chart debut later in the year with Shooting Star, although my fave spell of theirs is 1981/82, with Hand Held In Black And White, Mirror Mirror, Give Me Back My Heart and Videotheque. Nothing naff, or desperate about any of those fine hit singles. :cool:
You say that both Dollar and Bucks Fizz were considered "naff at the time". Presumably meaning at the time of their biggest hit songs. I don't believe that is the case at all, for either group.
Servalan, so Raydio did not sample Saturday Nite, how fascinating. I was so convinced they had, it was so similar.
The 18 year old I was online with last night while watching the show wanted to know why young people in the 70's and 80's were all so ugly! How do you answer that? I've pointed him in the direction of a few of those good '78 dance numbers and more.
Fave St, unlike the blond lead chap from the group Child (having checked the Buzzcocks ID parade clip) Nick Heyward appears to still be very much the boy (man) next door, and seems as cute and smiley, with his own hair as ever he was! People often forget that after the brief spell with Haircut 100 he actually had some pretty decent solo hit singles albeit not as big as in the group. I have a copy of the Daily Mirror from this very week in July 1983 when they profiled Nick, alongside Paul Young, whose first solo effort was about to make No1, and compared the two against each other.
I am afraid that I am going to challenge you here. By "joke" I meant that their hits with Trevor Horn refer to the band's image a shaving been two lovers who were always fighting. If you listen to the lyrics of hand Held in Black and White, there are references to a big gossip story that saw them having a row in Tokyo. Also, Mirror Mirror is perfect for David Van Day who was extremely handsome and knew it. The songs gently spoofed their image, so my use of "joke" was not quite there; and anyway I see these songs as excellent, even if there was a bit of humour going on.:)
Comments
What the hell had happened to David "Kid" Jensen's dress sense in July 1978? I was shocked at how daft he looked. He was quite dapper previously, in trendy baseball jackets and the like. His hair looked more...bouffant, to say the least, as well!
What was with him introducing A Taste Of Honey's Boogie Oogie Oogie as Mr Boogie Oogie Oogie? It's never been known as that as far as I can tell, ever. The clip did the track no favours at all.
I think that Child were hoping to take up the slack left behind from the Bay City Rollers, judging by the visuals. Thank God it failed. Watching them I actually wondered if they were a group that had won Opportunity Knocks or New Faces at the time. It was an insipid 50's cover.
Raydio was interesting. It appeared to sample Earth, Wind & Fire's hit Saturday Nite didn't it? I'd no idea that kind of thing was going on as far back as '78.
Sham69 live up to their name for me. Pretend punks! A sham then. The track was catchy enough, I've heard it before. Suppose it was exciting then. Seems very tame now.
New Seekers, I genuinely cannot work that song out enough to form an opinion. It ain't no Bucks Fizz - Now Those Days Are Gone, which is a track that can almost bring a lump to my throat, it's so powerful and an under-estimated classic by them.
Enough has already been said about City Boy, Clout and Marshall Hain previously so I don't feel the need to repeat myself on those great tracks.
You can have too much Legs & Co in one episode however. I am also extremely sick and tired of that Floyd appearance to the No1, still with another 3 weeks left! It really is beginning to spoil my memory of that record. It is utterly preposterous that we have a song that will be at No1 for 9 weeks, plus the period it climbed to the top and appeared, yet in all that time and all those appearances we do not get to see more than a 2 second glimpse of Olivia Newton-John & John Travolta as a still image on the opening countdown. They're cutting the heart out of who was 1978 in music here. Never mind their next 7 week long No1 hit in 1978 and the other top three singles to come along between now and years end.
Playing out with A Little Bit Of Soap by Showaddywaddy, a song I liked at the time and recall, but looking back now, proving (excuse the pun) that they were just about washed up.
You may be interested to know that tonight as I watched the show, I was on another section of DS (Big Brother for my sins) with a young lad of 18 who I asked to watch the show and give me feedback. He agreed and stayed with it all the way through, passing comments with me. I actually think he enjoyed a lot of it! I was keen to hear a young view of the music and show. I'll share a few of them in a later posting.
Obviously ' Summer Nights ' will have the Xmas show performance brought forward, but what about the other Grease songs, 'Hopelessey Devoted', 'Greased Lightening' & 'Grease' itself?
Next year, 'Bright Eyes', was there a Legs & Co?
Longer term, this will be a problem in the 80's.
Billy Ocean's ' When The Going Gets Tough', when it hits No1, can be covered with a studio performance, but what else?
That Bryan Adams song from 1991, his studio performance was mixed with scenes from the film.
Can anyone think of anymore?
Grease - That had three outings, two of them on JS and Hairy Scapegoat editions and the other was the chart rundown on a Peter Powell edition (the DLT show had a L & C routine, the JS show was the film clip video).
Hopelessly Devoted To You - Had three outings. A chart rundown on a DLT show. A L & C routine on a MIke Read show and the film clip video on another Mike Read show.
Sandy - Had two outings. One was a chart rundown on a JS show the other was a L & C routine on a PP edition.
Greased Lightning - Was only on once on a JS edition (and was the video film clip).
As for "Bright Eyes" they might have a problem as they do not have any L & C routines for it, it was only ever shown with the film clip (assuming we do get to 1979!).
They could always use this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elkCXVp_BqU
The New Seekers always suffered by comparison with the original Seekers although I believe they were managed by Keith Podger, a member of the Seekers at least at the start. Please correct me if I am wrong.
I will leave that debate for another time, but the New Seekers were MOR and also had about the same number of hits as Bucks Fizz. Unlike Bucks Fizz, though, they failed to win the Eurovision Song Contest (in 1972), although they were up against the winner Vicky Leandros's Come What May. They also dabbled in acapella (see I cannot even spell it). Help.
Anthem, their last hit, may not be as good as Now Those Days are Gone but it is acappella, and, hearing it again, I thought it was a corking track. Excellent:)
The New Seekers were a spent force, and they were replaced in the pop/mor by Dollar (who will soon start to appear) (hells bells) and by Bucks Fizz. Both these groups were seen as naff at the time, but in a famous NME article Julie Burchill praised them for being "ironic" (no I do not get what she meant, except the 1982 Dollar were a deliberate joke, under Trevor Horn). By the mid 1980s Bucks Fizz were gaining loads of credibility thanks to their high quality tracks. The writing of Andy Hill and also Jay Aston's wackiness drove them on. They are vastly superior to the New Seekers.:cool:
However, the New Seekers did something that Bucks Fizz never did and had big hits in the States with I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing and Pinball Wizard. Bucks Fizz could only manage a couple of big dance chart hits with I Hear Talk and New Beginning in 1986.
Their main claim to fame in the States is that their Heart of Stone written by Andy Hill and er . .. prog rocker Pete Sinfield was covered by Cher and became the title track of her biggest selling album, Heart of Stone. The song was also a hit single in the States for her.:)
But what happened to this market? Certainly the Spandaus and Duran Duran, the former containing ex-Oh! Boy! picture story models will have appealed to the teeh market but they were much more sophisticated and much less naff than bands like Child.
So what happened to the naff Teenbop market by the end of the seventies I wonder? Did all the "little girls" go for Sting? Did this market just disappear? What will we see in TOTP 1979? (if we get it).
If the answer is staring me in the face, I cannot get it yet..I don't think po-faced ugly-pug punks would quite do it.
It revived with New Kids by 1989 and then with their (much superior) British equivalents Take That in 1991. But what about the teen "girl" market in the 1980s?
To paraphrase the Knack what did the "little girls" understand in the 1980s?
well Adam Ant was on many a girl's bedroom wall by 1981 along with Duran and David Sylvian from Japan ("the most beautiful man in the world" as the quote at the time famously went). But Adam Ant and Sylvian were as likely to be on the cover of the NME as Smash Hits reflecting how they were not a teen marketed phenomenon. I think by the early 80s that had stopped and didn't start up again until the latter part of the decade with the likes of Bros, Tiffany, Debbie Gibson, Kylie and Jason and most notably, New Kids on the Block, paving the way for the boy band explosion of the 90s.
IMO Bucks Fizz have more in common with the Brotherhood of Man. Both groups were basically two men and two women who sang but presumably didn't play any instruments on their records (somehow the two guys in the BoM never looked convincing strumming guitars on TOTP
In 2006 I watched a series on Channel 5 called 'The Seventies: That Was The Decade That Was' and one week it showed excerpts of the New Seekers on TOTP doing 'I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing' and 'Circles'. I'd like to know where they got hold of the 'Circles' footage in sharp, pristine colour because it clearly came from the 22 June 1972 show which the BBC wiped and as far as I know only exists as a substandard, washed-out print which turned up at BBC Glasgow circa 2001 (link below).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeByq1llkkA
I definitely recall seeing the 'Shake Shack' film clip on TOTP2 circa 1999 so it seems strange if the BBC paid the appropriate fee to Paramount to screen it at that time.
Perhaps they are strapped for cash after shelling out £277 million of licence payers money on redundancy pay-offs over the past seven years?
I last saw it listed on ITV 3 not so long back.
They would still have to pay ITV Studios surely.:D
(I'm assuming ITV Studios, as the current holders of the former ATV archive)
Maybe back in the 90s the BBC held the rights to show Grease. that's why they didn't have to pay any more. It's Channel 4 who've got the rights at the moment.
On this subject, I'm fully expecting when the Boomtown Rats perform Rat Trap later in the year, Bob will rip up a picture of Legs & Co and Floyd!
That's the one. Quite pleased I actually managed to bring a bit of TOTP 78 related trivia to the thread.
The sad thing with Dave Clark is that he must've got into getting cosmetic surgery quite early, when it was less advanced and at a time when the pressure to keep your heyday looks wasn't as great as it now. It looks like early surgery wasn't up to today's standard and since then he's been suffering corrective operations rather than treatments. It's just really not worked out for him.
Well that does sound like a good idea. I'll keep an eye out (hopefully in a sale). But it'll have to wait until after I've been to the David Bowie exhibition. I've finally got money set aside for it and I'm not putting back yet again.
I'm afraid I don't know which part of my post you're responding to so don't actually get what that means.
Although there are obvious similarities, there was no sampling going on in 1978 (certainly in the way we talk about it now).
Raydio, then in their infancy, were finding themselves and it's no surprise they had funkier tracks in their repertoire to play along the more mellow 'Jack And Jill'. Earth Wind & Fire may only just have started to have an impact in the UK charts, but they were massive in the US R&B charts, and a huge influence, even then.
The soul/disco music of the day was notable, however, for developing trends: certain sounds or even melodies that would originate on one track, then be picked up and used on others.
Try Al Hudson & The Soul Partners' 'You Can Do It' ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2dzvx98fYs
... Kool & The Gang's 'Ladies Night' ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_uQQQ_K9Rs
... and Leon Haywood's 'Don't Push It, Don't Force It' ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2xodXRX_3I
... all of which feature the same keyboard riff, but still manage to be sufficiently distinctive songs to stop them sounding like clones of each other.
The TV series from 1999/2000 was on CITV so it's unlikely the BBC has rights to it.
Stephen Gately recorded a new version of Bright Eyes for the theme tune. It was originally going to be his first solo release but it was put back and eventually became a double a-side with his official first single, New Beginning. I don't think it had an accompanying promo, though he did perform it at live shows. It was never performed on TOTP, so there'll be no issues showing it in 22 years time like the original.
Bros would've been my first pin-ups in the traditional sense. I had their posters on the wall in the late 80s (I particularly remember a big fold out poster that doubled as a calendar). 'I Owe You Nothing' is, as far as I'm concerned, one of the great British pop songs. Robbie and Mark from Take That were my main pin ups in the mid 90s, then later Boyzone. I was never into New Kids On The Block, though.
I actually got big into Adam and the Ants a good 10 years after the fact with the release of their greatest hits in the early 90s. I had it on cassette (since updated to CD) and played it to death. While I've never fancied Adam Ant, had I been around at the relevant time, I would definitely have had his poster on the wall as I liked the look and style.
From Leeds, Child were signed to German label Ariola (whose 1978 signings also included Japan) and, as you say, were an attempt to come up with the next BCR - but 1978's pin-up was probably Travolta and the rise of Smash Hits in 1979 made Sting punk's heartthrob.
In the ten years between the collapse of the BCR-type market and Bros/SAW, Smash Hits' teen audience were indeed fixated on Duran Duran, Adam Ant, Spandau Ballet, Michael Jackson and (although it seems hard to credit it now) Depeche Mode, all of whom had sufficient visual appeal to their core audience. But, with the possible exception of the MJ-influenced Five Star, the younger end of the market was indeed neglected - which is possibly why the Bros/SAW double-headed horror was able to make such a splash in the late 80s ...
:eek: :eek: :eek: ... beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Talking of 80s male pop stars with teenage girl appeal, I see no one has yet mentioned the boys from Wham! or Haircut One Hundred starring the fresh faced, Smartie eating "boy next door" Nick Heyward.
The 1982 Dollar were a deliberate joke under Trevor Horn? Not a chance in hell is that true. The productions are exquisite. I've bought them, with no shame attached! I'm looking forward immensely to their UK chart debut later in the year with Shooting Star, although my fave spell of theirs is 1981/82, with Hand Held In Black And White, Mirror Mirror, Give Me Back My Heart and Videotheque. Nothing naff, or desperate about any of those fine hit singles. :cool:
You say that both Dollar and Bucks Fizz were considered "naff at the time". Presumably meaning at the time of their biggest hit songs. I don't believe that is the case at all, for either group.
Servalan, so Raydio did not sample Saturday Nite, how fascinating. I was so convinced they had, it was so similar.
The 18 year old I was online with last night while watching the show wanted to know why young people in the 70's and 80's were all so ugly!
Fave St, unlike the blond lead chap from the group Child (having checked the Buzzcocks ID parade clip) Nick Heyward appears to still be very much the boy (man) next door, and seems as cute and smiley, with his own hair as ever he was! People often forget that after the brief spell with Haircut 100 he actually had some pretty decent solo hit singles albeit not as big as in the group. I have a copy of the Daily Mirror from this very week in July 1983 when they profiled Nick, alongside Paul Young, whose first solo effort was about to make No1, and compared the two against each other.
I was a little girl in the late 70's and early 80's - but I must admit - my musical tastes were a bit more sophisticated than the norm (if I say so myself) - probably due to having much older brothers and sisters!
Teeny bop bands like Racey & Showaddywaddy were around - but remember Abba and Grease had a big influence on young teenagers and children back then - so there wasn't necessarily a market or need for any boy bands to be around.
Personally, back in 1979/80 - I was into acts like The Police ( so yes Sting I suppose), as well as Blondie, XTC, The Pretenders, Madness, Squeeze etc etc. There was no need for teeny bop stuff as there was so much other decent stuff out there!
Yes the early 80's started bringing along the teeny bop male pop stars - but there were virtually non back in 78/79! - Only maybe flash in the pans like Andy Gibb!
"Give Me Back My Heart" is one of the greatest singles of all time, absolutely superb. But it is a fact that both Dollar and Buck's Fizz were considered naff at the time by a lot of people (although probably driven by the music snobs of "Sounds", "Melody Maker" and "NME" who always looked down on pure pop).
Now, now.....
I am afraid that I am going to challenge you here. By "joke" I meant that their hits with Trevor Horn refer to the band's image a shaving been two lovers who were always fighting. If you listen to the lyrics of hand Held in Black and White, there are references to a big gossip story that saw them having a row in Tokyo. Also, Mirror Mirror is perfect for David Van Day who was extremely handsome and knew it. The songs gently spoofed their image, so my use of "joke" was not quite there; and anyway I see these songs as excellent, even if there was a bit of humour going on.:)