Top of the Pops: 11th August, 1977.

Thin Lizzy's Phil Lynott; by Helge Øverås (Own work)
[CC-BY-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

As the nights start to draw in and we begin to say goodbye to the summer, we plunge straight into the sunset with Kid Jensen who introduces us to Jonathan Richman and his Modern Lovers.

Sadly, Jonathan's not able to be with us tonight and so we just get to hear him played over the countdown.

I don't care how time-saving such a move may be, it's still not right to hear anything that's not a theme tune performing such a function.

Not only that but its use as the intro music means we don't even get to hear the whole of the song, even though Kid tells us it's this week's highest climber.

I have no doubt we will however get to hear the whole of Showaddywaddy.

This is a good thing, as they might not be musical heavyweights but they do know how to do Top of the Pops. In fact, I'd go so far as to say they're the quintessential Top of the Pops group.

Are Dave's flies undone?

That's definitely not Quintessential Top of the Pops.

Neither are the Steve Gibbons Band. Assuming, as always, that the singer's the eponymous Steve, he looks to have been round the block a few times too many for that.

Kid clearly doesn't care. He's happily dancing along in the background.

I wonder if Status Quo ever did a cover of this? You could imagine they would have.

Barry Biggs is back, what seems like months since his last appearance, but still doing the same song as before.

But now hooray! It's Eddie and the Hot Rods with Do Anything You Wanna Do - even though Kid seems to think they're just called The Rods.

This has to be one of the greatest pop songs of the late 1970s; the closest Britain's ever produced to its own version of Born to Run. Quite frankly, anyone who doesn't like this has to have something wrong with them.

They're getting close to the spirit of punk, even if they have see-through drums.

Not getting anywhere near to punk are Legs and Co who're on next, dancing to Rita Coolidge.

They seem to be doing some sort of corrupted Gap Band type dance. I hope everyone at home's joining in with it. I know I am even though I'm on my own.

I really don't know what this dance has to do with the song, and I'm missing Rita's cactus.

A band who're so good they can get by even without the aid of a cactus are Thin Lizzy who're still dancing in the moonlight.

As always, halfway through the show, I've lost my reception.

When it comes back, as always I'm confronted by someone I don't recognise.

Whoever he is, he seems to be in the Labi Siffre envelope, though I say that as someone who doesn't have a clue what the Labi Siffre envelope is.

No problems of recognition with the next act. It's Fleetwood Mac doing Dreams.

This isn't good news, as the only Fleetwood Mac song I like is Tusk.

Don't get me wrong. It's not that I actively dislike any of their other tracks. It's just that, pleasant though they are, they just make me start to nod off after a minute or so.

On the plus side, Stevie Nicks is looking nice.

John McVie's looking like that impressionist, the one with the long nose who does all the sports people but never looks like any of them.

Lindsey Buckingham's looking like Jeff Lynne.

Between them they could start their own lookalikes agency. Admittedly Stevie Nicks would have to work as a Stevie Nicks lookalike but I like to feel she could pull it off.  She really does look remarkably like herself.

But I do wish they'd liven themselves up a bit. Does this song actually go anywhere? It just seems to meander endlessly, like someone doing the feather dusting.

Now it's another act I've never heard of - JALN.

The intro sounds like Diamonds On The Soles Of  Her Shoes. Could it be that Paul Simon wasn't being as original as we thought when he did Graceland?

My god, this is bad.

It sounds like something from a children's show.

Meanwhile, Donna Summer's photo's still Number 1.

Kid, give up on the whole, "Good Love," thing. I can say this as someone living thirty five years in the future, it's just never going to work.

More importantly, there's no play-out this week - and that means no Boney M. For a seasoned fan of The M, like me, that's almost enough grounds to throw my TV out the window.

So it's all over, and there's no doubt about it, Eddie and the Hot Rods bestrode the show like colossi. So much so that I'm straight off to Youtube to listen to them all over again.

The Jam didn't manage to make me do that, the Stranglers didn't manage to make me do that, Showaddywaddy didn't manage to make me do that but Eddie - and Eddie alone - has. If that doesn't prove the Hot Rods deserve a place in music history, I don't know what would.

Top of the Pops: 7th July, 1977.

Boney M by TROS
(Beeld en Geluidwiki - Gallery: Showbizzquiz)
[CC-BY-SA-3.0-nl
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses
/by-sa/3.0/nl/deed.en)],
via Wikimedia Commons

Last Friday night's Olympic opening ceremony magnificently proved to me the UK has a musical heritage to be proud of.

I have faith that this week's Top of the Pops 1977 will do its level best to prove we don't.

Not that Tony Blackburn cares about that. He's too busy introducing us to this week's chart.

What he doesn't introduce us to is the opening act.

Fortunately I don't need him to. With my vast knowledge of popular music, I know the act to be someone with a keyboard.

When the director shows us who's actually playing that keyboard, that's when I'm in trouble because, as always with the first act of each edition, I don't have a clue who it is.

It's all a bit glam rock.

It's all a bit Goldfrapp.

Whoever it is, they look like the world's worst-dressed terrorist organisation.

I take it the keyboard player's a producer pretending to be a group. And I'm not at all convinced that any of the others are really playing those instruments.

Tony finally comes to my rescue and tells me it's the Rah Band. Were they the people who did Clouds Across the Moon?

Olivia Newton-John's back.

Sadly for her, Sam's not. She's still sat there pining for him. “Sam, Sam, you know where I am,” she bemoans.

Of course he does, woman. You never move. You've been sat there for weeks. That's probably why he left you.

Smokie are on next with It's Your Life. I don't think I recognise this.

They've gone a bit reggae - in the Paul Nicholas sense of the word.

It might be reggae but it's the same song they always have hits with.

This is strange. For no noticeable reason, it's suddenly changed tempo and turned into Baby You're a Rich Man.

And suddenly it's turning back into reggae again. Frankly I don't have a clue what's going on. It's all a bit daring and experimental by Smokie standards.

All it needs is for Suzi Quatro to appear and it's had everything.

Sadly Suzi doesn't put in an appearance.

Happily, The Brotherhood of Man do.

Seeing the looks on their faces as they sing of suicide does remind me of when Westlife appeared on Top of the Pops and grinned their way through every moment of their cover of Seasons in the Sun.

But I like to think this is where Steve Nieve stole the piano sound for Oliver's Army from.

Bob Marley's back with Ecksidass. You really do think someone should've told him he was saying it wrong.

It doesn't matter how hard he tries, he'll never be able to do reggae like Smokie can.

It's the Alessi Brothers with Oh Lori. I assume they're no relation to the Alessi Sisters from Neighbours, even though they too were twins.

To be honest, it's not one of my favourite songs, being the musical equivalent of candy floss. And, for some reason it's giving me the urge to stand in a lift.

But forget the Alessi Brothers! We don't need them any more.

Why?

Because we've got the return of Barry Biggs!

God alone knows what he's dressed as. He seems to be auditioning for the part of Harry Secombe's stand-in in the worst-ever version of Oliver.

Showing the level of daring that even Smokie could only dream of, he's singing Life is a Three-Ringed Circus, clearly not at all sticking to the format that gave us Sideshow. Personally I've always found life to be a three-ringed lemur.

Does it say bad things about me that I'm quite enjoying this?

I think I'll be singing this in bed tonight.

And now Legs and Co are dancing to Boney M and Ma Baker.

This is driving me up the wall. When are we actually going to be allowed to see the band the world knows as The M? I want to see Bobby dance, not these bums.

I really don't understand what's going on. There's a granny dancing on the screen while the rest of them're sat rogering chairs. What does any of this have to do with a female Chicago gangster?

It's Andy Gibb.

This is very Bee Gees. Did they write it for him?

Hot Chocolate are still at Number 1 - which means they've won again.

Errol shows his class by managing to sing the last line with his mouth shut.

And we play out with Donna Summer and I Feel Love.

This pleases me because I do recall watching this play-out upon first broadcast all those years ago, making it one of the few moments since I started watching these repeats that I actually remember seeing at the time.

So, as predicted, Top of the Pops did indeed fail to play any of Britain's rich musical heritage. Instead it gave us a tale of the familiar with the odd surprise.

I'm not sure if it reflects worst on the show or on me that the act I missed most on tonight's show was Boney M and the one I enjoyed most was Barry Biggs. If only they'd let me choose the soundtrack to that opening ceremony, what a show it would've been.

Top of the Pops: 28th April, 1977.

10CC By AVRO (Beeld En Geluid Wiki - Gallerie: Toppop 1974)
[CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons.

Britain's greatest music show's clearly determined to work me into a frazzle by broadcasting two editions in one night.

Needless to say I shall rise like a lion to this challenge by running away from it and saving my account of the second of tonight's shows for a couple of days' time when the internet has had chance to recover from the strain of this posting.

It's Steve Does Top of the Pops' first ever cliff-hanger. I feel just like an episode of Dr Who.

But first it's Dave Lee Travis doing the honours.

And, with no introduction from him, we launch straight into a song by...

...someone.

The first few bars in and I still don't know what it is yet. So far it all sounds a bit Cockney Rebel but the singer seems to be Mr Benn – and I don't mean Anthony Wedgwood.

We're well into the thing and I still don't have a clue who it is. Is it someone from a musical? They sound like Queen but don't look like them.

Is that Mika on guitar?

Frankly I'm baffled. Is that the bloke from The Band on the drums?

Whoever they are, they do seem fixated with money.

Dave Lee's back-announced them but I didn't hear what he said. So I still don't have a clue who they were or what they were on about.

Not only that but, while I was typing, I missed the intro to the next act.

It's a woman being danced to by a totally different woman who I assume to be from Legs and Co.

Actually I'm not sure it is a woman singing. It might be a high-pitched man.

Wait. It seems to be I Wanna Get Next To You. If only I could remember who did that.

Was it Gladys Knight?

Oh. No. It seems it is a man singing.

It turns out it was Rose Royce, danced to by Pauline, which leaves me no closer to knowing if it was a man or a woman singing.

Now for a bunch of people whose gender is never in doubt. It's the Detroit Spinners with Could It Be I'm Falling In Love?

Blimey they're getting stuck in. They're moving around like their backsides are on fire. You have to hand it to them; they're not very coordinated but they certainly are frisky.

Now it's 10cc and Good Morning, Judge.

I liked this when I was younger but will I like it now? I must confess that, in adulthood, the appeal of 10cc has paled somewhat. I can't help feeling they sacrificed emotional integrity for the sake of futile cleverness.

Now that it's almost over, I've come to the conclusion that Good Morning, Judge is still acceptable to my adult ears, although I'm really not that bothered if I never hear it again.

From them, we launch into Joe Tex, with Ain't Gonna Bump No More (With No Big Fat Woman) in another clip from Soul Train.

I do like what I've seen of Soul Train. Everyone on it seems to be enjoying themselves so much more than the audience on TOTP ever do - although you do start to realise after a while that each of the the dancers has just one move that they keep repeating endlessly like they're a living animated gif. It's an effect that reminds me of the dancing scenes they sometimes used to have in old Charlie Brown cartoons.

Someone's got up on stage to dance with Joe! If it were TOTP instead of Soul Train, that person would've been Dave Lee Travis. Bearing in mind the title of the song, he'd probably have been in drag and blacked up. I'm sure that would've gone down well on Soul Train.

Next it's Kiki Dee. Until I started watching these repeats, I never realised how many hits she'd had. Or what an attractive woman she was. For some reason, until I was reintroduced to her by these shows, I'd always remembered her as having a face like a slapped haddock. What a fool I was.

Billy Ocean's back for what seems like his 99th consecutive week. I don't mind, as it's a great song and he always gives it his all but he does seem to be hogging the show somewhat.

At least this time he's got company, as he now has a pair of dancers with him.

I assume they're also from Legs and Co, clearly determined not to be outdone by Pauline's earlier bid for solo glory.

I once bought some wrapping paper like Billy Ocean's jacket. It was actually quite expensive.

When I say expensive, I mean I didn't get it from Poundland. I might have got it from WH Smiths.

Barbra Streisand is on now with Evergreen.

This is all a bit creepy. Some bloke with his back to us keeps doing stuff to her.

Is it Kris Kristofferson? We can't see his face and I always get him mixed up with Kurt Russell anyway.

Either way, it's a terrible video. Objects and backs of heads keep getting in the way, and now Babs is trying to strangle herself.

Barry Biggs is back with a thing called You're My Life.

What the hell is he wearing?

He's somehow managing to make Billy Ocean look conservatively dressed.

Frankly, I don't fancy his chances of reaching the top of those stairs.

I never realised before that Barry Biggs looks remarkably like Hans Holbein's portrait of Henry VIII, with the huge body, the beard and the tiny head.

Not that ABBA need worry about that - or anything else. With the staying power that saw them become Sweden's biggest export apart from Volvo, they're still Number 1.

This week's victim of the play-out curse is Rod Stewart with First Cut is the Deepest, which, going on previous experience, presumably means we'll never get to see it on the show proper.

All in all, it was an odd edition. In terms of quality it was probably the most consistent since I started watching. Off the top of my head, I can't remember a single bad song - even the first act were too weird and disorienting to actually be described as bad - but, then again, it seemed an oddly unfocused show that never quite got into its stride. The breaking up of Legs and Co into splinter groups was a noteworthy innovation and it'll be interesting to see if it's a policy that's maintained in coming weeks.