Evelyn Thomas - High Energy. Although that wasn't a bad song, more pop than pap IMO.

Ditto - Modern Talking - Brother Louie.

I remember the mid 80's quite well in respect of not being able to go into a bar in the likes of Amsterdam or Paris around that time where you were pretty much guaranteed to hear one (or both!) of them within a maximum 30 minutes. Maybe that was just within the sort of places I used to go though.

Yes Torch, I wouldn't quite put Evelyn Thomas' hit in the same category as Modern Talking's. It doesn't sound as 'Eurotrashy', if you know what I mean.
Another one I've just thought of from the period is the very strangely titled 'Live is Life' by Opus that definitely had that unmistakable Euro sound. I thought it was piss poor at the time, but it's grown on me slightly in the intervening years.

Hmm.

I wonder by this time Friday, there will be either a few missing posts or a few missing posters?

Euro pap!! - Yes that's one way of describing it! - I can possibly recall more - but luckily my brain has made a conscious effort not to remember the names of the artists if I can help it!

To be perfectly honest - I think my memory had wiped all of the Europop pap out of my mind - but I knew there must've been another reason (apart from the obvious SAW) why I wasn't keen on the mid - late 80s!!

Yeah, agree Gary. All the one's you've listed are way better than mine to be honest.

Had a brief re-think - I'd maybe add Spangna (?) (I think that's what she was called, she wore what looked like a right fright-wig to me, or maybe it was her own hair? ) - 'Call Me' to the more pap than pop list personally.

That might be a given.

Yep, totally agree on Spagna - a worthy contender for the Pap Idol trophy. 80s Euro pap in all its splendour.

Well I'm Still Standing - as Elton would say! (For now! )

Haha. And long may that be the case Ms U!

Well up until 1984 at least - it could be touch & go after then!

Yep. I can relate to that. It's gonna be a bit touch and go from around that time on if we hopefully get that far isn't it.

BIB - Which is precisely what Glorious 12th was doing the other night by posting a particularly well known podcast to provoke a reaction. Only his aim was to get others to throw shade at the woman who appears on that podcast rather than making any kind of case for Dave Lee Travis. After that post, one poster was scornful towards the woman while another suggested she lied in court. It's clear that Glorious 12th is quite happy to light the blue touch paper and then sit back to watch the fall out. He has the audacity to talk about "bad" posters on social media when he's someone who pursued a cancer patient on Twitter to antagonise them about their ill health and then go on television to defend his own trolling. He is someone who really does luxuriate in their own confrontational tediousness.

Not one of Hot Choc's best but a catchy enough intro with all the 'doo, doo, doo, doos'
At the time, I thought the guy from Bardo had a unnaturally deep singing voice that didn't fit his youthful looks at all.
I really liked the Joan Jett song back in the day.
'A Little Peace' was played constantly at the time, so sounds boring to me now.
The Sweat/Deodorant patches under the arms of the Monsoon singer were distracting. Or was that only me? Good tune though.
Never liked 'Only you' at all, neither in this version or the one by the Flying Pickets. Boring, boring, boring. But I really loved 'Don't Go' at the time. Guess I just generally prefer up-tempo stuff.
That Spandau track was pretentious crud. But worse is to come next year with the sleep-inducing yawn fest 'True'. I preferred 'Gold' 'Only When You Leave ' and 'Through the Barricades'.
Rocky Sharpe seems to be almost replaying this stuck in a 50s timewarp type revival that has plagued the charts over the last year or so (all that rockabilly stuff) especially, but stretches back to the mid 70s I guess with the Showaddies, Mud etc.

1. Yay! Good on ya! We're all team Joan on here you know. Well, most of us, I'm sure there's one or two who have dubious taste and maybe aren't.

2. Well, I never noticed that! As I didn't see the show with everyone else last week I'm now wondering if anyone else picked up on that?

3. Ditto Gary! Of course there's always exceptions to the rule, but for me and with 99.9% of artists I like I always generally prefer their up-tempo stuff to anything 'ballad like'. (including Soft Cell!).

4. 'True' is genuinely quite possibly my least favourite song EVER!!!! Hate it with a passion. And I've regularly to this day been known to rapidly vacate department stores, supermarkets, pubs, 'wherever', if and when it comes on. Total dirge.

Thought Junior's hit was great at the time. Must be unique in the Pop's history to have 3 football songs in one edition. The B side to the England Squad's song wasn't bad, but 'This Time' was stronger. I think the 'Spurs Are On Their Way to Wembley' is better remembered than the 'Tottenham,. Tottenham' effort though Chas and Dave do a good catchy chugging piano melody on this latter one. What happened to Ardilles and Ricky Villa during this period- had they already left Spurs or were they banned while Argy Bargy hostilities were in the air.? B.A. Robinson must be the scene-stealing, limelight hogging mentor for the artist formerly known as 'Fairbrass' and LMSO. The tune for the Scotland song is catchy enough, but B.A's 'look at me, mum' antics are distracting.
The PhD song benefits from being a big but not enormous hit and therefore it has not been overplayed to death in the interim, and as a previous poster said, this means that it is very evocative of nostalgic feelings for and nicely transports us back to that time and what we were doing, rather than doing nothing for us, because it is over-familiar and stale.
Tight fit's 'Fantasy Island' is great to hear for the first few listens but then gets boring.
I was not aware of Patrice Rushen's hit at the time, but it has since become familiar through its sampling on other hits. A good song, I enjoyed.
'Ebony and Ivory' is a classic and deserved number one. It looked like Paul wanted to say more than his short, non-descript answers in that 'interview' but he was cut off by Simon Bates. One of Paul's career highlights- being simultaneously number 1 in the singles and album charts,. 1982 was a good year for him.
Not the best effort from the Bananas- liked the jungle drums though. Preferred 'Cruel Summer' 'Robert De niro's Waiting' and 'Nathan Jones'.

No, I'm not a member of the group.

When you announced on the TOTP 1980 thread last October that you had set it up and asked for support, a couple of fellow FMs posted to let you know they had signed up. At the time there were only about 90 members, so it was relatively easy to suss out who they were on the Facebook page. With the present 221 members that could have proved a Herculean task.

I won't mention any names but have included a link to the relevant DS page below, and in the words of the late David Frost "the clues are there ...."

http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showt...31662&page=403


According to Glorious 12th several forumites had sent him private messages asking what was his favourite era of TOTP - going by the average age of posters on here I suspect they may have been disappointed when he replied on the open thread that his personal favourite period was 1972-73.


Evelyn Thomas is American and High Energy was written by ex-DJ Ian Levine who hails from Blackpool, Lancashire and was one of the principal talking heads on the BBC Four documentary 'Northern Soul: Living For The Weekend'.


I've always lumped Susanna by The Art Company (1984) and Live is Life (1985) together in the same Euro-pop/pap* bracket (*delete as appropriate).

It's an earworm if nothing else!

A great talent and I love that all this heartfelt American RnB sprung out from a man from Cleethorpes!

Spangna? Or was it Spaniel with Call Me?

However bad it was none of it was as bad as the homegrown Reynolds Girls!

Who is the delightful young lady - one of the Zoo dancers, I think - who appeared in the previous TOTP hosted by Simon Bates? She has dark braided hair and is behind him (on his right) after the Tottenham song, and one of 5 Zoo dancers dancing together during the Patrice Rushen performance, and is again behind Bates just before the top 10 countdown. She looks a little like Pepsi (of the Pepsi & Shirlie duo).

It's my guilty pleasure this song. I absolutely love it. I own around a dozen different mixes of this song.

Its got very good memories for me as I was in the South of France on holiday when this came out there, so I always associate it with the sunshine and the beach, the cafes and bars and nightclubs etc who were always playing it.
This was where I bought the 12" single from. Amazed it never warped in the heat transporting it back actually.
Out of all the ones that made the trip back to Blighty from the SoF over the years, I am surprised that only one record ever warped.
Last edited by Evil Genius : 07-10-2016 at 16:12

I’ve been away from this thread for a few months, but wanted to return because 1982 was such a significant year for me. Tonight’s show is the first TOTP of my 20s, and I’m about to embark on the best year of my life. The first few months of the year have been eventful to say the least.

I lost my dad in February, he’d only just turned 57. Now I love Madness, and I know it’s valid social comment and all that, but when a song called Cardiac Arrest enters the chart the day after your dad dies of a heart attack, you’re going to struggle to like it. It was their smallest hit during their peak period, and was left off the Complete Madness compilation, so maybe I wasn’t alone in my reservations. Whatever, even if I fell out with them over that, we made up big time with their next single which is just around the corner.

Later that spring I paid tribute with a sponsored hitch-hike from Land’s End to John O’Groats to raise funds for the British Heart Foundation. The Saturday I set out from Manchester to get to Land’s End happened to be the day after the Falklands invasion – so my main memory is of scores of military vehicles making their way down the M5 to Plymouth to supply the Task Force. It took me just under two days to get from end to end: the main music-based memory of that trip was listening to the Tuesday Top 40 rundown while waiting for a lift at a roundabout just outside Ayr, with the Goombays at number one.

And later that month Eurovision was something of a personal landmark – details (if you want them!!) at post 23 of this Popular thread: http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/0...e-all#comments !

It looks like it. I posted a link to Nicole singing 'A Little Peace' from 2015, maybe that's what done it!!!

Haha - and what about my post about Kate Bush?!! - it took me ages to write that!!

I didn't think there was anything on that particular page that rendered it to be taken down.