Saved this entry for
my 20,000th post! 
Report card for
Top Of The Pops of
Thursday 25th March 1982 with
Peter Powell and Garth Crooks.
New at No41 - See Those Eyes, Altered Images. Quite surprised by the lukewarm reception this got on here. It was a solid, lightweight single of theirs. It ticked all the boxes but did end up falling a bit short on some kind of magic ingredient along the line. See those ears as she sang I thought, wondering what the danglies were. A little bit too moody from Clare for my liking after the first two hits. The whole performance immediately caught my eye as the kick off track because the set up seemed back to the more traditional TOTP performance, and I liked it for that. Looking at Altered Images by now in spring '82 it looks like they are set for a decent run into the 80's, yet here we are with a charismatic girl with a distinctive sound who broke through just under six months ago and after this hit there is nothing of note until a final top ten single another year away with the well received Don't Talk To Me About Love. All very disappointing in the end. She had so much more to give with Altered Images, which is also a great name for a group too.
The song had charted at No41 and after this it rocketed to No17, but then got stuck at No17 the next week. Very unusual thing to do. Then it made a peak No11. A strange chart run - 41, 17, 17,
11, 19, 27, 58. Ultimately a very disappointing one they must have felt.
No3 - Quiereme Mucho (Yours), Julio Iglesias. Yet another illiterate who just cannot say the name right, Crooks using the "ing" instead of "ig". I never understand this constant inability to say Julio's name. As for the actual song itself, it did well to make the heights of the top three but he was a very firm favourite with the ladies at the time. It's standard fare Julio for me. Later in '82 while on family holiday at a guest house on the IOW I came down to the strains of Julio singing this single, Yours, and also Amor every single morning for 7 days. He was everywhere in 1982. Definitely the housewives choice that helped him to No3. A few things about the video caught my eye, such as his hand mannerisms. He was contorting them into some strange shapes at times. Never point I was always told, but obviously Julio's mum never told him. The lady in the mirror was amusing. Clearly she had to stand there like a mannequin as he sung in front of her, so we just saw her reflection.
New at No33 - My Camera Never Lies, Bucks Fizz. Introduced with a total trip up on words by Crooks and his Buck Fizz. At least he didn't do a spoonerism with their name into F*ck Bizz. This has always been a fantastic pop record, well produced and so catchy. It's one of the sounds of Spring '82 for me that makes me feel good inside every time. After this performance it does one of the BIG climbs ever into the top five, with a 33 to 5 jump. In 1982 a lot of singles suddenly seemed to do so. For many years My Camera Never Lies was the No1 with the fewest weeks in the chart. It's run - 33, 5, 2,
1, 2, 11, 26, 46. Does anyone here know how many it actually sold? Like with Altered Images I found the actual TOTP performance and set up a traditional one which would not have looked out of place in 1977 or 1978. At least the crowd was livelier though. Perfect pop for me.
No28 - A Bunch Of Thyme, Foster & Allen. The best I can say about the song is that it is pretty, but dull. Not quite the same as saying it was pretty dull though. I have no memory of it at all from the "thyme". I first heard it on Pick Of The Pops last year infact and it seemed so out of place among the hits. A bit like the Furey's a few months ago in late '81. But who wants a homogenised chart? That's the problem nowadays, and that is when things are truly dull.
No44 - House On Fire, Boomtown Rats. Forgettable in the extreme. In my notes as I watched I wrote that it sounded like a UB40 cast off, which it essentially was. I don't get why The Rats went down the route of making themselves sound just like another already successful group of this sounding genre. No wonder it barely set the imagination alight. After some of the energy and classic tunes of the previous 5 years they were well and truly washed up and so it proved. Without Michael Buerk and his news item a couple of years later Bob Geldof would from this point in time have become a mere pop footnote in history, long forgotten by nowadays. In 1982 he was already a has been. Pop time moved fast in those days. Having said that, not long before Band Aid the Boomtown Rats did put out a final very minor hit which I remember well and rather liked at the time, called Drag Me Down but it languished no higher than No50 six months before the Band Aid recording.
Who'd believe that fellow Irishmen Foster & Allen could upstage the Boomtown Rats on TOTP but I think they did it.
No26 - Don't Love Me Too Hard, The Nolan's. Just like the Boomtown Rats before them, the Nolan's were now rapidly running out of steam too, as this horribly generic effort showed. Just so utterly forgettable and any video that has the dreadful Coleen Nolan gazing too closely into camera should be enough to send remaining singles off to the bargain bin for 5p max. Can't her or Linda swap places with the lovely Bernie, the true class in that group by a mile. God, what the hell were you up to when you chose her of the sisters to take?
I wonder if the parrot in the video is still alive though? I also wonder how many times the young boy in the video has dined out on his claim to fame in the years since about being in a Nolan's video. Unless he feels deep shame!
No43 - Empire Song, Killing Joke. Oooh my ears. Never heard it until seeing it Thursday night. Hated it. Watched the late showing on Thursday and tried to see if there was anything I could digest. It seemed less awful a second time. Watched it for a third time last night and started to see some positives actually. It must be a grower and not a shower then. I do have Killing Joke on the iPod with 1985's Love Like Blood. That was memorable and so was the performance. But where was scary face this time? Was that him on the drums without his slap on?
I'm amazed this song got such prominence on TOTP actually. Almost immediately it struck me as being so very un-1982 in sound, and even in the way that TOTP had decided to present the group, with huge name banners behind them. It was very strongly reminiscent of TOTP in 1995 infact. It looked and sounded mid 90's. Not quite the same as saying Empire Song was ahead of its time though. Powell called them a "cult" following which I think was his way of saying he couldn't stand them or the single.
No22 - Your Honour, Pluto. As a reggae single this has little to commend it and goes into the generic bag. Dull reggae by numbers, and it passed me by as I have no memory of it. As it was playing all I could think was that it sounded already slightly familiar from another tune of the same genre. It has taken me quite a while to finally deduce which I was thinking about, as I only had a brief lyric - "beware of the devil" in my head which I googled along with reggae and found my answer. This Pluto single sounds uncannily similar to Dandy Livingstone's Suzanne Beware Of The Devil, a No14 hit from a decade earlier in 1972.
No14 - Ain't No Pleasing You, Chas 'n' Dave. Great song and deserved the No2 spot. My nan loved this at the time when I stayed with her during the Easter holidays. It reminds me of her. Robbie wrote a post which I will dig out and reply to regards our late gran's/nan's, as I want to tie up my memories with his actual post proper. Peter Powell said they had undergone a change of image, which was pushing it a bit I think. I'm surprised they weren't in the studio as they were the kind of guys that always turned up it seemed, but as they'd made a nice video and I guess they wanted it seen at least once, and as has been mentioned here before, we easily forget how few chances there were to see these clips in the pre-internet age of just three channels. That's how rapid the changes have been in just 3 decades. In parts the 1980's sound like out of the ark, it's shocking to realise.
Britain's No1 - Seven Tears, Goombay Dance Band. Keith Lemon at the top spot! A lot of dislike on here, quelle surprise! Worth remembering that it was not seen as quite so bad when it topped the chart in 1982. At least I don't think so from my pre-teen self of the time. I prefer it to Tight Fit. I've found myself humming it again since Thursday. It's what Boney M could have been by 1982 if they'd tried! I wonder if they would have indeed had a first No1 hit since 1978 and first major hit in 3 years if they had recorded Seven Tears? The actual recorded single was far superior to the TOTP performance which came over as insipid, and not a very saleable effort. Three of the four Goombay's are actually totally anonymous and invisible, even in 1982, yet blond perm fireraiser was and has always seemed memorable to this day. How many people at Radio 1 and in the industry and country at wide cried far more than seven tears when the chart got announced just before 1pm on Tuesday 23rd March I wonder? The worst of Europop that infected the UK charts but it did not happen all that often to be fair. I'd love to know what it was that gave this record an initial boost in Britain that got it on a roll that saw it all the way to 3 weeks at the top spot.
No9 - Party Fears Two, Associates. One of the best playout singles ever on TOTP. Typical it had to be a playout in the first place but at least it got a decent go. Would have liked to see the video however. After the show ended on Thursday evening I stuck my iPod into my docking station and belted it out loud and proud twice. The front room window was ajar after a hot day and I don't care who heard it! My copy does seem to have a rather quick fade out however and I'm sure I've been shortchanged a bit with it.
One of the major positives of this edition was that Zoo were mostly absent and many of the performances were like some of the older TOTP shows in previous years again, without the comatose crowd though. Unfortunately the end inflicted us with the professional show off's trying to grab attention with poor dance moves as ever.
Bottom of my notes and I wrote - "Where to go with this edition?" It was one of the strangest shows in quite some time. Best one word to describe it is
"Eclectic". For anyone looking at the 25th March 1982 edition of TOTP in isolation it would be hard to fathom what direction or state the UK music scene was in at that point. It gave few clues. It was a very poor top three in the context of the early 80's generally. Indeed the entire chart was probably one of the poorest of 1982, and my iPod proves it to me, with the fewest singles from it of any chart in 1982, which is one of my heaviest year's for singles in my collection.
10/10 for sheer diversity. You cannot argue with that. Almost back to the 70's with some of it from Nolan's, Julio and Goombay, yet way into the 90's with the likes of Killing Joke.
Garth Crooks was shaky in places but nothing more than many of the so called professional's have been on the show over time, so we can forgive him. He certainly looked enthusiastic. I wonder what his footy mates made of it when they found out and saw this? At least he never had an actual solo Top 40 single like fellow footy presenter Kevin Keegan had done by the time he co-presented. His dress sense was also far better than Powell's.
.....and finally a poster said that Adrian Gurvitz who had risen to peak at No8 with his Classic was eligible a play and didn't get it. Disgusting for such a fine song!
Edition rates
6/10 for me.
That concludes my 20,000th post. I don't know where I've found the time, but most haven't been as long as this!
Yes I think I now remember that being announced somewhere! 
