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: 31st March, 1977.

Lynsey De Paul by AVRO
(Beeld En Geluid Wiki - Gallerie: Toppop 1973)
[CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

A week; it's a long time in politics but nothing compared to a fortnight in popular music. What massive changes'll have swept through British musical culture in the two weeks since the last edition of everyone's favourite music show? What new musical empires'll have risen, and which will have fallen?

Only Diddy David Hamilton can tell us. For it is he who's to guide us tonight through the brave new world of pop we're set to encounter.

I do feel sorry for the first act on each week because they never get an introduction. It must've been hugely frustrating; you get your big break, appearing on TOTP, excited about the huge boost it's going to lend your career, and then no one has a clue who you are because you weren't introduced.

This week has to be a perfect case in point because I don't have a Scooby who the opening act are. They seem quite easy-going - a bit Smokie but without their charisma, or the self-confidence that comes from having been on virtually every week since the dawn of time.

Whoever they are, their song seems to be called Capture Your Heart and, lack of introduction aside, they seem quite pleased to be there.

But why do I have a feeling they were to never be there again?

Apparently they were Blue. Amazing to think that Blue were around back in the 1970s - though Antony Costa's clearly changed a lot since then.

Now it's Billy Ocean and Red Light Spells Danger. He seems to be going for the world record for the size of collars and cuffs a man can support before the sheer weight of them renders him immobile.

Legs and Co are on next, dancing to David Soul and This Time I'm Going In With My Eyes Open.

The last time I saw skirts like that they were on one of those dolls that boarding house landladies used to use to cover up toilet rolls.

In a shock twist, David Dundas is back, out to prove he had more than one hit in him.

He has a very strange look on his face,

On the strength of this and his last one, I do get the feeling he was the Mungo Jerry of his day.

It's all quite Eurovision.

Which leads us perfectly into Lynsey De Paul and Mike Moran, flying the flag for Blighty, with Rock Bottom. It can't be easy having a rock bottom - especially if you have Dave Edmunds' rock piles.

But it shows how the memory plays tricks on you. I remember talking about this in the playground at primary school, which is impossible as it didn't come out until I was in secondary school.

I know people love her and she has the most popular mole outside of Wind In The Willows but I always felt there was something vaguely sinister about Lynsey de Paul, a feeling that refuses to go away.

I would say there's something sinister about Mike Moran but there isn't.

This always reminds me of a Bill Oddie song that often got played during silent scenes in The Goodies.

Berni Flint's back.

And now he's gone, replaced by The Stylistics - looking weirdly like Gerry Anderson puppets. This is the third song on this week's show that I have no memory of.

Their dancing can only be called half-hearted.

Their singer has a weird look of permanent startledness on his face.

And their dancing's still half-hearted.

The last few minutes have led me to conclude The Stylistics are a band best heard and never seen.

Bonnie Tyler's More Than A Lover is the fourth song on this week's show that I have no memory of. Can it be? Can our hero be going senile?

Argkh! That first note was a bit rough. Frankly, if a bloke on your local building site came out with it, you'd send him off for a packet of Strepsils.

Though, in fairness to her, she's looking better than I remember.

What does this tune sound like?

Is it When Doves Cry? Or is it Time to Hide by Wings? Or is it something else altogether?

Whatever it sounds like, I quite like it. It has a vague unconventionality about it.

Now Mike Nesmith's on, talking to David Hamilton and plugging his song Rio.

He has a beard!

Did he ever talk in The Monkees? I don't remember

Whatever, he wasn't with David for long.

ABBA are at Number 1, with Knowing Me, Knowing You: A-Haaaaa.

It's still that video. They're still freeze-framing and looking through each other. I still prefer the one who's not blonde. She looks cheeky. The blonde one never looked cheeky.

We play out with Elvis and Blue Bayou.

I do feel sorry for David Bowie though. He's now at Number 5, having been on the chart for what seems like months, and still can't get on the show. I only hope it doesn't finish his career.

In summary, I do feel this week's show was a let-down after the upturn in quality we got a fortnight ago, full of songs that made so little impression on me at the time that I had no memory of them, mostly mid-tempo and resolutely unchallenging. The fact that – ABBA aside - a Bonnie Tyler song I've never heard before in my entire life was the highlight can't be taken as a good sign.

Still, the good thing about TOTP is that no matter how disappointing an edition might be, there's always the hope that next week's will be better.

And that David Bowie might finally be allowed on.