Top of the Pops: 3rd November 1977.

The Carpenters in 1972.
White House photo by Knudsen, Robert L.
[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

A new face joins us for this week's show. It's Perky Peter Powell, surely the world's cheeriest living human. Will he be able to maintain that cheeriness through half an hour of 1977's finest music, or will he be left a bitter twisted husk of a man vowing never again to work in British television?

Only the next thirty minutes can tell us.

But it's ELO over the rundown, doing Turn To Stone. And that can only mean one thing; we're off to a flying start and Peter's sanity won't be crushed just yet.

Nor will it be even now because we're suddenly served up the Jam with The Modern World.

To be honest, it's not one of my favourite Jam tracks, being blessed with a tune I can never in any way, shape or form remember but it's still the Jam; and bad Jam is better than no Jam.

As if to prove it, Peter's back, with sanity resolutely uncrushed.

I'm not totally sure I can say the same for the Carpenters, who join us for their legendary cover of Klaatu's Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft.

You can tell the Star Wars/CE3K sci-fi boom's starting to hit big. And was that Meco I spotted in the chart rundown?

But the special effects budget for this video must have been epic. It's a wonder Steven Spielberg wasn't straight on the phone to them to get them to redo the SFX on Close Encounters Of The Third Kind for him.

Well, aliens might be coming for us but, more importantly, so is Christmas. And that can only mean a visit from the band who only seemed to exist when there was tinsel in the air. It's the Barron Knights with Live In Trouble.

They're doing the impossible and sending up the Floaters who themselves went so far into the realms of self-parody that they came right back out the other end.

I'm not sure I'm enjoying any of this but the the Barron Knights clearly are.

Someone I'm bound to enjoy more are Queen giving us We Are The Champions

I've always remembered the first time I saw this video on Top of the Pops - mostly because Freddie's half black and half white in it, like that bloke in Star Trek.

Unlike that bloke in Star Trek, Freddie doesn't go mad and start trying to strangle himself.

But who's that on bass? Is it the bloke who normally played bass for Queen? As you can see, I have an encyclopedic knowledge of the band and its membership.

Sadly, an encyclopedic knowledge of Dorothy Moore is something I gravely lack. And so, as Legs and Co come on, dancing to her track I Believe You, I must confess it's a song I'm not familiar with. Its style is, however, highly familiar.

As for Legs, they seem to be wearing their shower curtains - and not in a good way.

But, hooray! It's Status Quo and Rocking All Over the World.

It's easy to knock the Quo - and just calling them that has suddenly made me sound like Les Battersby - but no one does empty-headed knees-up music quite like them.

As for Peter, he's getting bouncier as it goes along. I actually think he's filled with helium and only held tethered to the ground by a piece of string.

And now! At last! It's David Bowie! After all these months, they've finally let him on the show!

Then again, maybe they shouldn't have. He's doing Heroes and, to be honest, this is rubbish compared to the record.

The wall of sound seems to have been replaced by a desultory attempt at light hedging that's been hit by a half-hearted stab at topiary

Is this the Top of the Pops band playing? I can't help feel they lack a certain bite.

After a complacent sounding start, David's starting to give it some but, without an equal level of some-givingness by his band, I fear it's all doomed to do a classic record poor justice.

These days, I actually can't see David Bowie without seeing Ricky Gervais in my head. That can't be a good thing, can it?

But what's on next is definitely a good thing.

It's Showaddywaddy, with Dancing Party.

It's a radical departure from their usual sound.

Well, OK, it's not. It's exactly the same song they always have hits with.

But they're getting stuck in - the extraneous members, especially, demonstrating how to turn extraneity into a crowd-pleasing asset.

Dare one suggest they're giving David Bowie a lesson in how to do the show?

A band who don't need any lessons in how to do the show - mostly because they never bother appearing on it - are ABBA, and they're Number 1 with Name of the Game.

But, meanwhile, is that Smokie I hear on the play-out?

I do believe it is.

To be honest, whatever mood I come to this show in, I often find myself having to bury rather than praise it.

But, this time, resistance is futile. Tonight's edition was packed with great songs - and at least one great performance from the band they don't call The Wadd. And, if the Jam and David Bowie weren't at their very best, at least they were there.

I can only credit Peter Powell who must have somehow worked his smiley, bouncy magic to lift the show to undreamed of heights. Well done, Peter. Long may you reign over us. Now please don't get arrested before your next appearance.

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: 28th July, 1977.

Rita Coolidge, 2002
By Seattle Municipal Archives from Seattle,
WA; crop by Jmabel
(Rita Coolidge, 2002Uploaded by Jmabel)
[CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

It's that magical time of week again. And we leap straight into it with Noel Edmonds giving us the incredible Steve Gibbons Band.

No. I don't know who the incredible Steve Gibbons Band are either.

I do though recognise this song, even if it's one I don't know the title of.

Is the singer the eponymous Steve Gibbons? If so, Steve's wearing leather trousers. It takes a certain kind of man to get away with leather trousers. And, fair play to him, I think he might just be managing it.

The guitarist has leather trousers too. How many cows had to die to make this performance possible?

It quickly becomes clear that Steve - if Steve he is - is like a version of Shakin' Stevens from that Star Trek universe where everyone's the opposite of how they are in our universe. This means he's from a universe where Shakin' Stevens is cool.

Noel's back and it turns out the song was either called Too Late or Too Lame. I suspect it was the former.

Now we get the countdown accompanied by Feel the Need in Me.

Somehow, without Whole Lotta Love, the countdown's totally robbed of its power to excite.

Someone who'll never fail to excite are Boney M and, at last, after endless appearances on the play-out, they're finally allowed on the show itself.

My finely-honed senses tell me they're not actually in the Top of the Pops studio but are instead on one of those weird European shows you see clips of on Youtube, ones that usually feature David Bowie or Toyah performing to a totally baffled looking bunch of Bavarians.

This time, the audience don't look baffled but do look anomalously mature beyond their years and have their backs to the act. What kind of director thought having the audience facing away from the entertainment would be a good idea?

But no one with any sense cares about that. All that matters to the connoisseur is Bobby.

And, needless to say, Bobby's getting well and truly stuck into it. You can stuff your ABBA. This was the greatest band of the 1970s.

Not far behind them are Showaddywaddy, the next act on, with You Got What it Takes.

You have to say it, the forces of punk are being well and truly repulsed tonight.

Romeo seems to be nowhere in sight. Have they sacked him?

Oh. No. There he is, off to one side, hiding behind that blue drum kit.

Legs and Co are on next, dancing to Jonathan Richman and Roadrunner.

I'm not sure quite what kind of car that's supposed to be but I'm not sure the wheels are in the right place.

I used to really like this song.

Listening to it now, I'm not sure why.

Neither am I sure that what Legs are doing really constitutes dancing so much as randomly moving around. Was there actually any rehearsal involved in this "routine"?

Bob Marley's back with what feels like his millionth performance of Exxidass.

And a wooden stake is well and truly plunged into the heart of punk with the return of Dana

This is all very pleasant. I always thought she only had one hit. What a fool I was.

But who'd have thought that, within three years of this, Sheena Easton would have so totally doppelganged Dana as to have completely taken her place in our national consciousness?

Emerson Lake and Palmer are back with probably the worst Olympic opening ceremony ever.

And now Rita Coolidge returns, surviving possibly the worst joke even Noel Edmonds has ever cracked.

After all these decades, it's just dawned on me that I actually don't have a clue what this song's about.

I do at least know what Thin Lizzy are on about as they give us Dancing in the Moonlight. This is much better than the song they were doing on their last appearance - the one Noel Edmonds cheerfully admits he thought would reach Number 1.

There's half-hearted dancing going on on the stage - and for once it's not being done by Legs and Co.

For the second week running, I've lost reception during a vital part of the show.

I get it back in time to see a photo of Donna Summer on a giant screen as the Top of the Pops audience dance along to I Feel Love.

Legs and Co are still in their Jonathan Richman car and still looking totally unrehearsed. Despite the track and all the dancing that's going on, it's not exactly wild.

So, there we have it, the week when Boney M finally got the chance to prove themselves supreme, and Legs and Co got to prove themselves not supreme. It wasn't a vintage week but I enjoyed all the acts you're not supposed to and I discovered I didn't like one act you are supposed to. I suppose this counts as surprise - and surprise is a good thing. Therefore, despite its general lack of excitement, I give this week's edition a cautious thumbs up.

I do pray, though, for the return of CCS. It's simply not Top of the Pops without them.

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.

Top of the Pops: 17th March, 1977.

Billy Ocean sings live, by Ronzoni (Own work)
[CC-BY-SA-3.0 or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons

Christmas may come just once a year but – bouts of Patrick Moore aside - Top of the Pops is with us every week.

And that's why Top of the Pops 1977 is 52 times better than Christmas.

So, what thrills, spills and ills will 1977 bring us?

Only Tony Blackburn can tell us; for it is he who's to guide us through tonight's Nephilim Fields of Nostalgia in which may lurk untold menace – and the Rubettes.

With no need for an introduction – which is a good thing because she didn't get one – it's Suzi Quatro with that not-altogether-classic song that I don't know the title of.

She's ditched the leather and changed her bass. She's giving us strange purple-y effects. I wonder what it's meant to signify?

Whatever it's meant to signify, it's failing to make the song seem any more exciting than it did last time.

“Don't talk to me about Louisiana Sue,” says Suzi. And, if I ever meet the bass-tastic Miss Q, I won't.

“Coz she can't do the things I can do.” For a start, she probably can't make everything go all purple-y. It's not a generally prized quality in a woman.

There's a man with a corked hat in the audience!

Up next it's Keith Flint's dad Berni. I seem to recall him winning Opportunity Knocks for eighty five million weeks running. In fact, for all I know he might be winning it every week still.

But what an engaging song I Don't Want To Put A Hold On You is. It's the sort of thing you could imagine David Soul doing but drowning it in treacle.

Berni doesn't make that mistake. As a seasoned Opp Knocks veteran, he keeps it as gloop-free as possible.

He seems an amiable cove. I wonder what happened to him? I hope he's still with us. I wouldn't want to think of bad things happening to Berni Flint.

ABBA are at Number 2.

It's Knowing Me Knowing You; A-ha. In which they claim to know about a 1980s' Norwegian pop trio that doesn't even exist yet.

This has to be the quintessential ABBA video; all freeze-framed hugging and meaningful looks. Though watching it does make you try to remember which one was married to which. I think all of them were married to all of them at one point. Even they probably lost track of who they were spliced to.

But this is why ABBA were better than the Brotherhood of Man; all that Nordic angst. The Brotherhood never got it. They aped the catchy tunes but forgot to include the misery.

Now it's Cliff and something called My Kind of Love. I don't know this one.

He's as wild and rebellious as ever.

He's reached the chorus and I suddenly realise I have it heard it before, though I don't know where.

Is that a Nashville guitar that man's playing? Despite being the world's greatest living guitarist, I couldn't claim to be an expert on such things.

As for the track, it's no We Don't Talk Any More and it's already starting to outstay its welcome.

Now there's two of him. Two Cliffs, like the ones Neptune pushed aside in Ray Harryhausen's Jason and the Argonauts.

From the British Elvis to the American original, as we get The Pelvis's Moody Blue danced to by Legs and Co. Those outfits are a bit revealing for this time of night; the strumpets. It's just a shame they have nothing much to reveal.

They're dressed like Princess Ardala in Buck Rogers.

I always preferred Princess Ardala to Wilma Deering. Wilma had the spray-on spacesuits but she was always a bit too wholesome for me to feel she could be entirely trusted. With Princess Ardala you always knew where you were – in trouble. Still, you could always win her round with a bit of impromptu disco dancing.

Now we get Barclay James Harvest.

I don't know much about them. My sister had one of their albums when I was younger. It wasn't what you'd call exciting. It featured a strange song made up entirely of lyrical phrases from old Beatles songs – and that was the highlight!

The world hasn't seen so much facial hair since Sasquatch lost his razor.

It's a bit like watching that bit in Spinal Tap when we see them before they became a heavy metal act.

You know you've landed in the 1970s when you see a double-barrelled guitar.

Maxine Nightingale. This is more like it, something a bit lively. And it's not the one you expect it to be - although it sounds noticeably like the one you'd expect it to be.

This is my favourite so far tonight.

No doubt she'll be eclipsed by Showaddywaddy later on.

And now, as promised, it is Showaddywaddy.

They've got different coloured jackets on from each other. Is it a sign of terrible splits in the camp or just a statement that they always wanted to be a packet of Opal Fruits?

The singer of Showaddywaddy always reminded me of Roy North.

When Will You Be Mine, it appears to be called.

As expected, with their slick ways, Showaddywaddy are proving to be the highlight of the show for me, so far. And who'd have thought, when we first watched this broadcast all those decades ago, we'd be saying that 35 years later? It's funny what does and doesn't stand the test of time.

Billy Ocean.

Red light.

He's looking cool and relaxed.

Like Debbie Harry, his head's disproportionately large for his body but I don't care. He's already eclipsing even the great Showaddywaddy in tonight's fame-packed firmament. Even the normally apathetic TOTP audience are moving to it – although in a way that suggests they can't hear it, so uncoordinated to the music are they.

At last it's number 1 time.

It's Manhattan Transfer and their nipples. It's the same nipples as last week.

I can't deny I may have been singing this in the last week. But that doesn't mean I actually wanted to hear it again.

Who're we playing out with? Tony Blackburn's not told us.

Hold on. Is this Boney M? For a moment I thought its intro sounded like Happy House by Siouxsie and the Banshees which didn't seem right for 1977.

Still no sign of Ken Morse. In the absence of Ken, my Top of the Pops experience feels, as always, incomplete.

I don't feel I learned much from this week's show. In fact I don't feel I learned anything.

But perhaps learning is overrated. Perhaps it's better by far to dwell in a cesspit of one's own ignorance. Perhaps, when it comes down to it, that's the lesson to be learned from this week's Top of the Pops. It's a lesson I decide I like.