April 1976 was chosen as the starting point mainly because this is the point that most episodes exist in the archive, with only a few shows lost. The most famous show with missing episode from the 1960s, Doctor Who, fares pretty well in comparison to TOTP: fan-written episode guides show that the earliest surviving footage isn't until show 8 in February 1964, and the first episode to exist in full, incredibly, isn't until Christmas 1967. But whoever decided the point to stop junking most episodes was to be April 1976 clearly had a sense of humour, as we've been finding out over the last two months on Thursday nights.
As a place to start with a complete repeat run it's a pretty poor place musically. Falling in the gap between glam rock and punk, the vast majority of the music in the show and therefore the charts at this point is pretty dreadful. To be fair to BBC Four, this was flagged up in advance in an excellent documentary about 1976 - and the recurring comment from anyone who has seen the 1976 TOTP repeats is that their content is basically asking for punk to to rise up and stop this turd of a programme in its tracks.
The show seems to have given up any pretence of being either for young people, or to be showcasing an exciting new musical world as must have been the case in those lost shows in the 1960s. Instead, it is pretty much a bog-standard light entertainment show, complete with gurning hosts, fancy-dress outfits and bad gags. Even the audience seem to have given up, with exuberant dancing and exciting fashion giving way to a lot of beige and the sort of awkwardly shuffling around you'd do at a disco where you knew your parents were in attendance. Compare and contrast - mostly contrast - the two clips below, the first from 1970 and the second from 1976 (with thanks to a poster on the Popscene forum who dug these gems out originally):
And we haven't even mentioned the music yet. In the two months that the repeats have been running, I can honestly say that the number of tracks I've genuinely liked I can count on the fingers of one hand. And that's not from the point of view of a muso (anyone who knows me will know I like a bit of crappy pop as much as the next person) - the music of 1976 was just so depressingly dire it's amazing they managed to fill 40 minutes every week without all ending up weeping in the corner of the studio. So far we've had Brotherhood of Man at number 1 seemingly forever with their Eurovision winner (and its slightly disturbing twist in the last line), Paul Nicholas informing us whilst wearing a bowler hat that reggae isn't what it used to be, JJ Barrie and "No Charge" (which is less a song and more Mumsnet set to music), a gollywog drawn on a drum kit, a Dave Lee Travis "comedy" record and The Wurzels, who at least acknowledge that they are taking the piss.
The one big exception I've seen is "S-S-S Single Bed" by Fox - a great track that I can't believe I haven't heard before (apparently I haven't spent enough time in Flares). Even the clip below has the spectre of Travis looming over it as he awkwardly grooves in the background at the start. Interestingly it emerged as a result of these repeats that lead singer Noosha Fox is the mother of Bad Science writer Ben Goldacre - but not, surprisingly, Alison Goldfrapp.
It's not just the music that depresses. It's hard to believe that the hosts are really the best the UK had to offer in 1976. Despite their woeful attempts at humour Jimmy Saville and Tony Blackburn aren't too bad, but Dave Lee Travis seems to have styled himself the "wacky" one - opening one show in a gorilla costume, insisting on joining in during a Ruby Flipper dance routine and larking about with one of the Wurzels' tubas at the close of one show (oh how we laughed). David Hamilton seemed flummoxed even by the act of presenting itself in one episode and instead made pervy comments in virtually every link towards any women featured. So it's surprising to see Noel Edmonds come out of this as a beacon of restraint and gentle wit, but given the competition it isn't difficult. All of which means the much derided 1991 relaunch hosts and Tim Kash probably deserve an apology from us all.
As a modern TOTP viewer some of the conventions of the show seem a little unusual although no doubt were standard at the time. The top 30 countdown is at the start of the show, rather than the end, which seems the wrong way around (although this was apparently the case for many years). There are no captions for the songs so unless you were taking notes in the opening minute or the presenter mentions it you can forgot knowing what position a song is at. From today's branded world it's odd to see the TOTP logo only appears at the start of the end credits, and there is no title sequence at all. Plus watching it week after week you are reminded of all the old "rules" that were dropped in the 90s - only songs going up the chart are featured, and even then not in consecutive weeks unless it's at number 1. Most odd of all is the pointless opening link, where the presenter either simply says "hello and welcome to Top of the Pops" or attempts a dreadful gag. David Hamilton opening one show claiming to be able to present the show standing on his head - followed by a predictable visual gag with the image being flipped. I'd like to see him made to present the show actually standing on his head, with the audience waiting patiently as he tries to do handstands and balance himself upside down as the show's duration ticks away.
All of this leads you to a conclusion: there was no golden age of Top of the Pops, or if there was, those that banged on it about eventually leading to the show's death conveniently forgot about a huge chunk of the 1970s being dirge. Apparently the show doesn't get a great deal better until the famous "party atmosphere" kicks in around 1981/2, so it's to be hoped BBC Four stick with these repeats long enough to get past this period. On the subject of BBC Four, until 1985 TOTP regularly ran up to 40 minutes depending on the schedule that night, and slots of that length are quite rare in peak schedules today. This resulted in a couple of performances per week being edited out of the first few repeats (surely an opportunity for a Stalinist re-writing or indeed improving of history), so the channel deserves credit for placing the full shows in the late night repeat slots where time is not so much of the essence.
We shouldn't overanalyse too much of course (he says, ten paragraphs later). There is a danger in implying you can read some sort of social history from a light-hearted pop programme, so the events of 1976 can no more be reflected in these repeats than you can look at Tim Kash's episodes for the country's response to the Hutton Report in 2004. But it's great to be able to watch it week in, week out, warts and all. We've seen Pan's People "exit stage left" (in the words of Edmonds) and be replaced by Ruby Flipper, leading you to imagine the incredulity of Dads nationwide as their weekly perv is now tarnished with scantily-clad men dancing as well as women. It's like a car crash - you can't not look. I've got a series link setup on my PVR, and Kate and I spend 40 minutes every week decrying the fashions and music of 35 years ago. Who knows, we might start exhibiting Stockholm syndrome if the run carries on for long enough...
1 comments:
To me the 1970 and 1976 versions seem indistiguishable - both equally crap! But not as dire as most of today's crap. Maybe the only conclusion one can objectively draw is that all pop music seems crap except that which happened to be on the go when one was about 14. BTW my brother was in the TOTP audience once in about 1965. It came from a disused church in Manchester and all the audience were Manc uni students.
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