Top of the Pops: 29th September, 1977.

Golden Earring in 1974 By AVRO
(Beeld En Geluid Wiki - Gallerie: Toppop 1974)
[CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

For  the most part, today's proven to be a battle with the madness of modern technology for me.

But will that deter me from tangling with yet more technology in order to sample the finest music the 1970s can offer?

Of course it won't.

And I'm not the only one, because Ed Stewart too is braving the latest hi-tech, in the form of a tiny spaceship that all my sci-fi geek instincts tell me has Mat Irvine's fingerprints all over it.

And it's not the only Space Age thing Ed brings with him, because, straight away, he launches us into Jean Michel Jarre, for the countdown.

And what do you know? Jean Michel works much better as countdown music than most records have lately.

But how futuristic the future sounded in the late 1970s.

I don't have a clue who the next act are but there's plenty of them and they've got the funk. Whoever they are, they're putting Honky in their place - and that's not a phrase I say every day.

Ed's back and he tells us it was Rose Royce, which gives some hint of the level of musical knowledge I have.

And this is David Soul.

Lots of meaningful looks from David.

I am really disappointed that, when the camera pulls back, it turns out the thing he's riding around on so moodily isn't a Raleigh Chopper. Just how great would that have been?

If he'd had any style, he'd have followed that up by whipping out a pair of Clackers.

But, now, not a Clacker in sight, he's out on the street, doing something that vaguely resembles the purchasement of druggage.

But David's cut off barely before he's begun, to make way for Legs and Co dancing to Bob Marley's I Don't Wanna Wait in Vain For Your love.

Needless to say, they've dressed appropriately for reggae by wrapping themselves in their local boarding house's net curtains.

Old Flick did like plenty of skirt waggling, didn't she?

You have to hand it to her, there's not many choreographers could come up with something quite this inane at such short notice.

But now Ed's back, and staying well away from females. After weeks of you-know-what, it is quite striking to be confronted by a presenter who shows no interest at all in the audience members around him. At the time, it must have seemed very stand-offish. No wonder he hardly ever got the gig.

And now it's the man who gave us the cover of Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band.

That's right; it's Peter Blake.

He's changed a lot since then, hasn't he? In fact, he's practically unrecognisable.

Hold on a minute. Is that Kirk St Moritz?

Whether he is or not, it does seem like there was a union rule at the time that every edition had to include a Rock and Roll revivalist with what looked like roadkill on his head.

In fairness, it may be hokey old rubbish but he's giving it a go.

And now it's Ram Jam with Black Betty.

Quite frankly, I've never really known what to make of either Ram Jam or Black Betty. I don't like to judge people on appearances but they do look like very dodgy people and it does seem a somewhat mean-spirited song. On top of that, it has one of the most ludicrously out-of-place guitar solos in history...

...which we don't get to hear, as Top of the Pops fades it just as we're about to receive its full glory.

David Essex is back and he's still Cool Out Tonight, a phrase that has as much chance of catching on as Kid Jensen's, "Good Love."

"Bump bad a boo boo," declares David, clearly out to capture the eternal angst of the human spirit.

Orville's back! with I Plead Guilty.

I wonder if he looked that permanently surprised in real life.

I wonder why bright yellow suits never caught on.

I wonder why this one sounds exactly the same as their last one.

Their bolt well and truly shot, they make way for a woman about whom you could never make that accusation. It's Donna Summer with I Remember Yesterday. Let's be honest, it's not that great an achievement. Most people do. After all, it was only a few hours ago.

It's not the greatest video I've ever seen either. In fact, a far crueler man than I might label it, "terrible," as Donna prannies around dressed like a bad magician who's lost a fight with a bottle of bleach.

And her hat doesn't fit.

And it's a totally pointless song.

Now it's Golden Earring and Radar Love, one of those records I've heard mentioned plenty of times without ever having encountered.

If it's to win me over, the singer has to make an effort to bear less resemblance to Bono than he currently does.

This is getting worryingly close to heavy metal for my enjoyment.

Nope. I've decided I don't like it.

Someone who doesn't care what I like is Elvis. After five weeks, he's still dead and still at Number 1. Sadly, the latter of those two facts is likely to change sooner than the former.

Legs and Co are still dancing to him. They must be completely knackered by now.

Here's a turn-up. We've just had the Number 1 but, instead of the play-out that we'd normally get, Ed's joined by a man in the Steve Wright envelope. Ed introduces him as, "Giorgio," a no-doubt obscure personage from Italy.

Apparently, he's the man behind a song called, From Here to Eternity.

And then, it's dawned on me.

It's Giorgio Moroder!

That's right, Top of the Pops has sandwiched Giorgio Moroder in as some sort of afterthought and not even bothered telling us his surname.

To be honest, up until now it'd never occurred to me that Giorgio Moroder actually existed. I'd sort of had the notion he only existed in anecdotes, like Gloria Swanson. It's a bit of a shock to see there's actually a man behind the legend. In this sense I should probably thank Top of the Pops but, in another, I should probably curse them for destroying my fantasies.

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.