Top of the Pops: 6th October, 1977.

Yes in concert, in 1977 by Rick Dikeman (Own work)
[GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Those who follow me on Twitter know that, over the last few days, I've become increasingly obsessed with the back-catalogue of David Essex.

So, it's clear my musical taste's in fine fettle for the task ahead.

Also no doubt in fine fettle is Noel Edmonds who kicks it all off by making a baffling comment about things being black.

At first I assume its because the first few artists pictured on the chart rundown are all black. Why Noel should seek to draw attention to this, I don't know.

But then it then becomes apparent that Noel hasn't joined the Ku Klux Klan since we last saw him. He was merely referring to the track that's playing over the rundown.

Sadly, so bad is my memory as I enter old age that I can't remember who it's by even though they were only on last week.

But even my crumbling memory can't forget Smokie - mostly because they seem to be on every edition.

And so it is that they return, with Needles and Pins which Noel declares to be a classic.

Next it's the Emotions with Best of My Love.

Is that the Soul Train set I detect?

It is. Which means there's going to be plenty of dancing, not least from the Emotions who have a peculiarly jerky dance style that's somewhat shown up by the much cooler groovings of the audience.

As always, each member of the audience only has one actual dance move, which he/she repeats endlessly as though powered by clockwork.

Now it's Danny Mirror.

At first I make the fool's mistake of thinking I've never heard of him...

...but then he opens his mouth and I realise at once that I have heard of him.

For it is he who inflicted the song I Remember Elvis Presley on us.

As Elvis Presley was Number 1 only last week, it's not that great a feat of recall on Danny's part - but then I can't remember the names of acts who were on last week, so maybe I should cut him some slack.

But it does show how the mind plays tricks on one. I always remembered this as having been done by Les Gray of Mud.

"He's just a golden mammary," sings Danny. And, with his attempts to replicate The King's voice and random chunks of his hits, Danny's clearly determined to milk that mammary for all it's worth.

I hated this song at the time and I hate it now.

And now it's Legs and Co dancing to something.

It sounds suspiciously like the hirsute man the world in 1977 knows only as Giorgio.

And it is, with From Here to Eternity. It might be a million years old now but it's still a stunningly cool record.

Legs are waving lots of tin foil around. No doubt in the hopes of thwarting the radar of any World War Two bombers that might still be around.

Thwarting none but the forces of punk are Yes who are on with Wonderous Stories.

This song is the first I ever heard of Yes and it's one of those tracks I most strongly associate with 1977.

As we quickly see, Yes meet the challenge of punk head-on by completely ignoring it.

Someone else paying no lip service at all to punk is Deniece Williams, back with a song which seems to be called Baby Baby My Love's All For You, with which I've been previously unfamiliar. That's a shame as it seems quite pleasant but possibly no more than workwomanlike.

The Stranglers are back with No More Heroes.

And now Baccara are Bacc. They're as breathy as ever and they're still what can only be labelled, "Vocally challenged."

And now Steve Gibbons is back with a song in the same vein as his last hit.

As always, he's got his tightest leather trousers on but, frankly, this is a bit rubbish. Despite Steve's best efforts, it has no oomph to it at all.

Not that David Soul cares about oomph. Although displaying a total lack of that quality, he's at Number 1 with you-know-what song. He's still in that video and he's still not cheered up.

But now Noel's with a woman and doing a link that's got me totally baffled. It seems her name's Kim and she has a record out but he doesn't say what it is or let her speak. It seems to be some sort of in-joke but I'm oblivious to its in-ness.

We play out with Leo Sayer who's still got thunder in his heart.

In retrospect, I can't help feeling this week's show struggled to get going. I appreciated the Stranglers of course, as I always do, but it was a performance we've already seen before and I can't think of anything else that grabbed me. Even Smokie failed to work the magic they so often have.

In the end, the totally Zeitgeist deficient Yes were probably my highlight, which says it all about the strange failure of the edition to fully grip the handles of my nostalgia.

Top of the Pops: 25th August, 1977.

The Boomtown Rats in 1981. Author unknown;
Photo courtesy Orange County Archives
[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

A little bird tells me that tonight's show sees the Top of the Pops debuts of two very memorable acts.

Will we get to see them in full? Or will one of them be relegated to a thirty second slot, playing over the chart rundown, while the other gets stuck on the play-out ?

More to the point, will I actually be able to get through an edition without losing my reception?

Only Noel Edmonds can tell us.

And tell us he does - because the rundown music is by no debutante. It's by Donna Summer, with Down Deep Inside. Was this the theme tune to Peter Benchley's The Deep, or am I going completely mad?

Whatever it's from, she's sounding extremely tired as she sings it; loads of moaning, groaning and sighing. I think she needs a good lie down.

Eddie and the Hot Rods certainly don't. Why? Because The Bloke Who Isn't Eddie's full of bounce.

You can tell he's the authentic voice of punk. He keeps getting too close to the camera.

But who can believe it? The audience are actually showing an interest and are actually moving.

Could it be? Could the segment of the nation represented by Top of the Pops finally have embraced the new music that's forced Kid Jensen into endless euphemisms these past few weeks?

A man who forces no euphemisms is the highest new entry. It's Elvis Presley. I bet he was excited when he found out about that.

This doesn't seem to be a very highly regarded song but, as a non-Presley fan, I've always liked it.

But Legs and Co are looking far too cheery to be dancing to a song that's only on the charts because its singer's dead.

And why do they insist on pointing upwards when he sings, "Way on down"?

There's no time to ponder that because it's the first of those memorable acts I mentioned.

It's the Boomtown Rats.

They're doing Looking After Number One.

They don't seem to be taken very seriously these days but, to some of us, they were a breath of fresh air at the time.

First Eddie and the Hot Rods. Now the Boomtown Rats. The Top of the Pops' times really are a-changing.

Like The Bloke Who's Not Called Eddie, Bob keeps getting too close to the camera.

And, as with The Bloke Who's Not Called Eddie, the audience are joining in with Bob.

I'm not. But that's only because I've just lost reception.

What is it? Every week this happens. Are Elkie Brooks fans trying to block transmission to this house in a desperate attempt to stop me posting my always wrong opinions on her?

Whatever the truth of the matter, they won't succeed. I'm determined to inflict my irrelevant drivel on this land, no matter what it takes.

I'm back and the Rats have gone, replaced by a woman whose identity I'm not sure of. Is it Deniece Williams?

Whoever she is, she's wearing my curtains and singing what appears to be That's What Friends Are For.

It is Deniece Williams. My knowledge of pop never ceases to amaze me.

Thin Lizzy never cease to amaze me either. How many times can they be on with the same song?

Like Not Eddie and Bob, Phil's also too close to the camera.

Has he got a black eye or is it just makeup?

Someone must have put something in the audience's coffee tonight because they're even bobbing around to this one, creating an effect strangely redolent of Wings' video to With a Little Luck, only with teenagers instead of children.

Is that John Helliwell from Supertramp on sax?

Look at me. I can even identify sax players. I'm like the new Paul Gambaccini.

Now it's Space and Magic Fly.

I used to have a space helmet like that. I used to pretend it was a portable TV.

Actually, my space helmet was better. It said, "NASA,"on it and had a fake microphone that didn't do anything.

I got mine in 1969, eight years before Space got theirs. Take that, pop stars.

But now it's the second of the memorable acts I mentioned.

It's the Adverts and Gary Gilmore's Eyes.

Gary Gilmore's Eyes and Looking After Number One are the first punk songs the show's featured that I remember from when they came out. I suppose this means this is the week punk's finally arrived for me.

I never noticed before that this sounds like the Monster Mash.

And the audience are bobbing again.

Unlike Gaye Advert who looks suitably disinterested.

The Adverts depart and I miss Noel's intro to the next act, meaning that, so far, I don't have a clue who it is.

It's a strange woman who's borrowed her hair from Rula Lenska and her wardrobe from Suzanne Danielle

Whoever she is, she can't sing.

She looks like someone I used to know at school. Actually, she looks exactly like someone I knew at school.

It's all over and, apparently, she and her equally tone deaf friends were called Page Three.

And just to drag us all down completely from the show's previous highs, the Floaters are somehow at Number 1.

I wonder why luminous blues suits went out of fashion?

As we contemplate that mystery, we play out with Jean Michel Jarre and what I think is Oxygene, meaning we've had two foreign instrumentals in one show - the show in which Noel Edmonds declared it's rare to get instrumentals on the chart.

So it's all over and you can't get away from it, it was a show in which the bracing wind of modernity was unmissable. Instead of the usual rubbish, we got not one but three songs that could be called punk. We got two euro synth instrumentals. We got Thin Lizzy who were hardly new music but certainly weren't traditional Top of the Pops fare and we got Donna Summer.

Page Three and the Floaters aside, it has to represent a jolting leap into what was then the present, a reminder that the 1970s were nearing their end and a whole new musical age was inescapably looming into view.

Top of the Pops: 12th May, 1977.

Kenny Rogers was edited out of tonight's early
edition - but not out of this blog.
By ACT1 at en.wikipedia
[GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)
or CC-BY-SA-3.0
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)]
from Wikimedia Commons

It might be Eurovision this weekend but there's a far more important battle for pop supremacy underway.

And that's the battle to be Number 1 thirty-five years ago.

Can ABBA reclaim their crown?

Will the sound of punk spit its way majestically to the top of the hit parade?

Or will some previously unexpected twist of musical fate appear from nowhere to claim that coveted crown?

Only Jimmy Savile can tell us.

And tell us he shall - for it's his turn to play Katie Boyle and guide us through the douze and nul pointers of this week's chart.

First up, it's someone or other.

The producers have done it to me again. They've started with an act I don't recognise at all.

This time it's not as bizarre as Contempt but it still seems a pretty rum set of coves.

Whoever they are, they clearly believe in having loads of sax.

That main singer's pelvic rotations and groinal thrustings are disturbing me. I'm not sure they're appropriate for a show like TOTP.

The group're very funky and groovy, whoever they are.

Jimmy's just told us they're all the way from that legendary home of funk - Southampton. And they're called Honky. There's a name you couldn't imagine a modern act having.

Barbra Streisand's back with that song about chairs.

But Kris Kristofferson seems to have disappeared since last week.

Oops! No! He's back again!

Stop kissing her hands, Kris! I don't like it. I like my TOTP performances to be devoid of all affection.

I'm sure it's a lovely song but it really doesn't hold my attention at all.

Was Kris Kristofferson in the Jessica Lange King Kong remake? Or was that Kurt Russell? I still can't remember which is which.

Now it's I'm Going to Capture Your Heart by someone or other. One of these days I'm going to have to try and pay attention to the intros, so I actually know who the acts are.

This is all pleasant but insipid.

And now my razor-sharp senses tell me that - from the huge writing on the drums - that they're called Blue. Weren't they on the other week, doing another song?

Either way, this track really isn't getting going at all.

“Gonna take my soul to town,” They declare. Why? Do they normally leave it behind?

Now it's The Trinidad Oil Company. Another act I've never heard of.

By the looks of it, they've literally brought the entire oil company along with them. And I thought Showaddywaddy were the most overstaffed group in history.

Now, for those who don't know what they are, they're helpfully running through the months of the year.

And now they're doing it again.

It's not what you'd call lyrically involved.

In fact, it's what some might call total crap.

Still, they all seem to be wearing fluorescent visibility clothing, so at least they won't get run over while they're in the studio.

Argh! We're suddenly on the receiving end of that music they used to use in The Muppets and The Benny Hill show. It might be called Mah-Na Mah-Na but don't quote me on that. Speaking as the only person on Earth who was immune to the appeal of the Muppets, I could do without it.

Dressed as giant flowers, Legs and Co have looks on their faces that suggest that even they think dancing to this is beneath them. It says something when even Legs and Co look down on your work.

And it just goes on and on and on...

And on and on....

Oh, for God's sake, go away!

The nightmare's finally over and we launch into 10cc with Good Morning, Judge and that video again.

Now it's The Martyn Ford Orchestra. Yet another act I've never heard of.

They're treating us to a song called Let Your Body Go Downtown. Yes do. But, as Blue could tell you, don't forget to take your soul with you.

Its bass-line sort of reminds me of the South Bank Show theme tune.

And, of course, its title reminds me of every song Lana Del Rey has so far recorded.

With its square-looking orchestra members and its "funky" singers, has there ever been an act whose two constituent parts seem so ill-designed to go together ?

Legs and Co are back, this time dancing to what might be Marvin Gaye. For some reason I can't imagine, they seem a lot more into this than they were Mah-Na Mah-Na.

But now that's over and at last we get a good record.

What am I talking about? It's not a good record. It's a great record.

It's Billy Paul and his version of Wings' Let 'Em In, which we all know is far superior to the original and brings a whole new dimension to it in a way few cover versions of songs have ever done.

Billy Paul looks like he's just walked in fresh from a movie.

The audience look like they've just been drugged. Move! For god's sake, you shuffling zombies of indifference! Move!

Sadly Martin Luther King couldn't be with us tonight and Billy's having to do all the speechifying himself. Personally I'm disappointed they didn't get Jimmy Savile to do the talky bits.

But this really does show the idiocy of the BBC's insistence on the acts having to record new versions of their hits for appearances on the show.

To be honest, I felt Billy was a little inhibited by the lack of proper speeches and the lifelessness of his audience.

Now it's Dr Feelgood with a song that might be called Lights Out.

It might be pub rock but, slowly but surely, we're edging closer towards punk actually putting in an appearance.

The singer seems quite angry. I'm not sure about what.

Perhaps he's angry about Deniece Williams still being Number 1.

In which case, he shouldn't be because it's still a very nice song and she's still doing that thing with her hand that impresses me more than it strictly ought to.

I wonder what's going to be on the play-out?

It's Joe Tex and Ain't Gonna Bump No More (With No Big Fat Woman). It's an outrage. As we all saw a couple of weeks ago, a man like Joe deserves to be seen as well as heard.

But, then, tonight's show could be seen as a tale of people who deserve something other than what they've received, with Billy Paul deserving better than having to do a half-arsed version of his classic record, and the people behind Mah-Na Mah-Nah deserving a good shooting.

Top of the Pops: 21st April, 1977.

Because Jolene Blalock alone cannot keep Aggy satisfied,
here's ex-Star Trek Voyager sex-bomb Jeri Ryan.
Photo by Gary Burke  (Jeri Ryan)
[CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

It's been an exciting day today, as the nation's gone to the polls to decide just who's going to be ruling our towns and cities for the next few years.

But there's only one man rules our hearts.

And that's Tony Blackburn.

Why?

Because only he can guide us through the strongholds and marginals that are the pop charts of 1977.

And we kick off with someone or other.

Is it Eddie and the Hot Rods? I'm basing this assumption on the singer's bared chest and the fact he's moving around a fair bit. I don't have a clue what it's called but I do know it's not Do Anything You Wanna Do.

He's dangerously close to doing the splits. Some things I don't want to see even on TOTP. I can't help feeling he's what you'd have got if Iggy Pop and Get It Together's Roy North had produced a love-child. Then again, who's to say they didn't?

It WAS Eddie and the Hot Rods. No wonder they let me do a life-or-death blog about pop when I have musical knowledge like that.

On the other hand, here's OC Smith. Apart from him having a very well-known TV show named after him that featured the bloke who was Jim Robinson in Neighbours, I still don't have a clue who he is.

Is this the song he did the other week? Or is it another one?

He still looks like Phil Lynott's dad.

I'm still not gripped by it.

It's all gone scary as we suddenly get a weird lingering close-up of a woman's face.

But no. It's not just any weird woman's face. It's a Legs and Co weird woman's face.

They're dancing to Sir Duke by Stevie Wonder.

I must confess I've never been a Stevie Wonder fan. I always like his songs when they start but, after about a minute, I'm always starting to lose the will to live.

Legs and Co are very shiny and sparkly tonight. I don't know whose idea those outfits were but one thing's for sure, the chicken'll be going without bacofoil this week.

They've flashed their bums! It's shocking the things people'll get up to now it's 1977. I've got a good mind to ring Mary Whitehouse. Wherever will this Rock and Roll anarchy end? I predict, if it's not checked, it'll end with people wearing meat bikinis. And I'm making that prediction in 1977, so, if I'm proven right, it'll be an incredible act of foresight.

Now it's Tavares.

I remember this one. I remember liking it - mostly because it mentions Ellery Queen.

I remember seeing the pilot ep for the Ellery Queen show in the 1970s and concluding that Ellery Queen was the murderer. I didn't realise it was Part 1 of a series and he couldn't be the murderer because that would've made it a very short series. I'm still smarting over the humiliation.

Tavares, meanwhile, are giving an oddly winning performance. You wouldn't exactly call their dance routine twinkle-toed but you can't help liking them.

It's time to round-up the votes of the Steve jury as Mike Moran and Lynsey de Paul are back with Rock Bottom.

I don't care how pretty she is, I just can't warm to Lynsey. There's still something I don't trust about her.

Actually it's probably because she is pretty that I don't trust her. I don't mind beautiful people – I'm fairly scrumptious myself - but they who are pretty, I don't trust.

The audience look bored rigid.

I don't blame 'em.

It's no Scooch.

Leo Sayer's on now. I don't recognise the track yet and I thought I knew every hit Leo ever had.

I know it now he's finally started singing. It's How Much Love. I think this is one of his high-pitched ones.

What a strange video. There's millions of Leos leaping up and down, spinning around, floating about in mid-air, and mostly being silhouettes.

I'm trying to work out if it's heavily influenced by Elton John or if Elton John was heavily influenced by Leo Sayer. Either way, this track could easily have been on an Elton John album.

Now for Delegation and Where Is The Love?

Someone else had a hit with a song called Where Is The Love, didn't they? Was it Black Eyed Peas? Or was it Lisa Stansfield? Or was it both?

As for Delegation, I'm not familiar with them but their style's familiar.

It's very pleasant but very like the Real Thing. I suspect you could easily sing Can't Get By Without You right over the top of it.

Elkie Brooks is back – and backless. I hope she's not going to be sexy again. The trouble I got into last time over the whole issue of Elkie and sexiness. All I can say is I will never again question the untrammelled eroticism of Elkie Brooks.

Deniece Williams is back with Free. It's another one I always like for the first minute before completely losing all interest.

She's doing strange hand movements to try and keep us interested. She's succeeding. I'm still not interested in the song but I am at least strangely taken by her hand gestures.

Now she's starting to sound like a kettle boiling.

ABBA are still at Number 1.

This week's show seems to have flown by, which I suppose means I must've found it entertaining even though there was little on it you'd call either remarkable or memorable.

And, continuing the TOTP tradition of saving the best song till the play-out, we finish with Peter Gabriel and Solsbury Hill.

This is bad news. I think I'm starting to get how it works; which is that, once a track's been on the play-out, it's doomed to never be on the show proper. Which presumably means Peter's had it.

That's a shame, as Solsbury Hill's one of the few songs from 1977 that I'd call a classic.

Top of the Pops: 7th April, 1977.

Yet again I couldn't find a decent Free Use image of any
of tonight's acts, so here's a pic of Spider-Man sexpot
Emma Stone looking like an explosion in a Christmas
cracker factory.
As well as playing Gwen Stacy in the new movie, Emma
was a founding member of The Family Stone and is thus
massively relevant to Top of the Pops.
By Mark Kari (Emma Stone)
[CC-BY-SA-2.0
(www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons.

It's a case of, "Phasers on stunned,” as we once more beam down to the year that Mankind knows as 1977. What hideous nightmare creatures'll await us when we get there?

And what unlikely allies?

It's David “Kid” Jensen injecting a bit of energy into proceedings with his intro. It's a long way from the deliberate cheesiness of Tony Blackburn.

But who'll be the first band on - the one cursed to never be introduced, leaving the audience perpetually baffled as to who it is they've just seen?

It's the Dead End Kids, socking it to us with their own unique brand of anarchy, by reliving the glory days of proto-punk outfit the Bay City Rollers.

I don't want to harp on about it but that really is an epic quantity of hair the singer's got. I do swear that if he fell off a cliff and landed on his head he'd simply bounce on it for several yards before coming to a peaceful and serene halt.

He's banging his chimes.

And they still carry on playing after he turns his back on them. Being able to play chimes without touching them's a rare gift too few modern pop stars possess.

Now it's Deniece Williams and Free. Not that I didn't like the Dead End Kids, but this is more like it.

Actually it isn't. Despite my initial enthusiasm, I'm getting a bit bored with it now. Like They Shoot Horses Don't They? it's a song that sounds better in your memory than it does in reality. It's all very nice but it could do with livening up a bit.

If only Deniece had the Dead End Kids' chimes to fall back on.

Not literally, of course. Falling onto a set of chimes would make a terrible racket and be against the spirit of Disco.

Deniece has gone and it's Showaddywaddy. They're still wearing the multi-coloured outfits.

I do find it worrying that I always seem to like the naff acts more than the classy ones.

Is it just me or are there more of them than ever? As with Boz Scaggs' band, they seem to multiply like Tribbles every time you look away from the screen.

Kid's just told us he has a Saturday morning show. Does this mean Fearne “Kid” Cotton's been given the push to make way for him? If so I must make a note to tune in.

Now it's Elkie Brooks again. Not only is she doing the whole retro-thing like Manhattan Transfer but, like the singer of that combo, she's wearing a thin dress with no supporting garment beneath. She's not rampantly nipple-tastic like the singer of Manhattan Transfer but she is more jigglesome. This goes against all I've ever held dear, as I've never thought of Elkie Brooks as sexy before, seeing her as a sexless matriarchal figure like the mother in the OXO ads.

Cliff Richard's back, with My Kind of Life. He's giving it plenty of effort but neither he nor his faceless guitarist can disguise the fact it's not one of his classics.

No offence to Cliff but I've taken to looking out the window while I wait for him to finish. Despite us being in the middle of the worst drought since the year before this show was first broadcast, it's bucketing it down out there.

The Manhattans. My expert musical knowledge tells me they're no relation to the aforementioned Manhattan Transfer – though, by the way the record starts, they might be some relation to Barry White.

Suddenly they're all pointing. I don't know why.

They certainly have slicker and livelier moves than the Stylistics did last week.

More pointing!

They've got more pointing than my gables.

Now they're spinning!

You can tell they've been rehearsing. I don't know if the song's any good – there doesn't really seem to be one - but I like the choreography.,

The audience are shuffling around, clueless as ever. Wherever did they find so many young people with no sense of rhythm whatsoever?

Kid's surrounded by female boxers!

What am I on about? It's not just any female boxers. It's Legs and Co, done up as pulchritudinous pugilists in order to dance to Maxine Nightingale's Love Hit Me. At last, after weeks of sensible and restrained performances, Flick Colby's returned to her insanity of old.

This is so absurd it can only be labelled genius. Why isn't this as famous as her Disco Duck routine?

Spinning!

But, sadly, no pointing.

This is the first time I've ever thought of Legs and Co as sexy.

OC Smith and a track called Together. I could lie right now and say I have knowledge of OC Smith that'd intimidate even Wikipedia but the truth is I'm completely unfamiliar with both he and the song.

I do know he's another one with big hair.

Its not as big as the bloke from the Dead End Kids but he too need have no fear of mountain tops.

Was this filmed at the same time as the Deniece Williams video? It seems to have the same dancing members of the public in it.

Like Deniece Williams, it's struggling to hold my attention.

He looks like Phil Lynott's dad.

I wonder if he is?

After what seems like an aimless eternity, OC's finally finished, and now Elkie's with Kid.

Isn't she petite?

“A position I would like to see her in,” says Kid of Elkie. I just bet you would, you naughty boy.

ABBA are Number 1 and still trapped in that video.

I'm in trouble now. How can I possibly find anything new to say about it?

I can't.

So I might as well just watch it.

And we're playing out with Smokie. As we should. It wouldn't be TOTP without them.

The producer's giving them a good old play. None of that early fade-out stuff for them. Early fade-outs are reserved for lesser acts, like David Bowie and Elvis Presley.

I must say this week's edition did drag badly in places, especially whenever videos shot on one particular set reared their slow-tempo head, and there was little on it that we haven't seen before in recent weeks.

But I did learn much in this week's show. I learned that Deniece Williams is a thing best left to nostalgia and that, despite being named after a giant ungulate, Elkie Brooks is somehow daintier than I thought.

I also discovered the burgeoning sexuality of both Elkie Brooks and Legs and Co, meaning that, at last, at the age of 48, I'm going through a strange kind of surrogate puberty on their behalf. Well, that at least was certainly worth tuning in for.