It won't be shown on BBC4 due to some ridiculous situation regarding Mike Smith's contract.
Contract issues? Rip it up and start again!
10/03/83 (Mike Smith & Tommy Vance)
Modern Romance – “High Life” (18)
Made it to number 8.
Eurythmics – “Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)” (3) (video)
Went up one more place.
Orange Juice – “Rip It Up” (22)
The band's breakthrough hit was to be their only top ten hit, indeed their only top 40 hit, when it peaked at number 8.
Spandau Ballet – “Communication” (12) (rpt from 24/02/83)
At its peak.
Blancmange – “Waves” (21)
Went up two more places before being all washed up.
David Joseph – “You Can’t Hide (Your Love From Me)” (24)
The first of two top 30 hits for David in 1983, this was the biggest making it to number 13.
Bonnie Tyler – “Total Eclipse Of The Heart” (1) (video)
The first of two weeks for Bonnie's only number one single, taken from her number one album Faster Than the Speed of Night.
Thompson Twins – “Love On Your Side” (9) (audience dancing/credits)
At its peak.
Back to BBC4 next for March 17th 1983 and the return of a familiar old host...
Good Lord, whoever put this show on tube, seems not to have liked videos, but only studio performances, as the only two videos on the show, i.e. The Eurythmics and Bonnie Tyler were savagely edited out of the show. Wasn't it enough to have BBC4 editing stuff out, let alone other people uploading the shows on tube? If someone else has a copy of the full show with the two videos in, please pass on to Angelo, to replace the Calvin Henderson link with a fresh one with the full show please.
ReplyDeleteModern Romance - sorry but I just can't get into this new lineup without the initial lead singer who left in 1982. Nice to see big John Du Prez on trombone, still persevering with the group as the man there from when it all started for them.
Orange Juice - was that one of the Zoo girls (Julie?) behind Mike Smith when introducing Orange Juice. She was certainly dancing very well behind the group when they got started, and wearing a Grease-style dress. Oh, and the song - very average I thought.
Spandau Ballet - oh God, that embarrassing bungle again at the start when the guitarist walks backwards straight into Tony Hadley just as he was about to start singing, and has to swerve out of the way to get in front of the camera. How awful a moment for Hadley. Not one of their best songs either.
Chart rundown - I see Sheena Easton has got in with the Americans and is now in a duet with Kenny Rogers at no.29, singing the Bob Seger classic, We've Got Tonight. One of my all time favourite American rock numbers. Love it!
Blancmange - this was No Regrets by the righteous Brothers ripped off I thought. Or Ultravox or Roxy Music in disguise perhaps, and could easily have been Vienna part 2, especially with that ancient candlestick on the white piano. Was Midge Ure watching?
David Joseph - yes indeed, Zoo were back, and helping him out with no backing staff of his own to bring. I did like the white ribbons in the two Zoo girls' hair in the dance troupe, and their lovely dresses. Was worth having them back when they looked this good.
The two videos might have been blocked by YouTube, Dory, so better to cut them out than have the whole episode removed. Either that or like you say, Calvin just doesn't like videos!
Deleteit's actually the bass player that walks backwards into tony hadley - not the guitarist!
DeleteIt was the Walker Brothers who did 'No Regrets' Dory, not the Righteous Brothers.
DeleteI can see how you think 'Waves' sounds a bit like that, but I don't get the Ultravox or Roxy comparisons at all I'm afraid!
Good Lord, I always get those two 'Brothers' groups mixed up, but Waves did sound very much like No Regrets, in fact too much like it!
DeleteDory - you're spot on again with 'We've got Tonite' by Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band (no46 in Feb 1979 - huh!). Fabulous album 'Stranger in Town' that it's taken from too. Another version not so widely known (and better than Kenny and Sheena in my opinion) is Rita Coolige and Jermaine Jackson:-
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1MS8AAyYQI
What is the likelihood of a more complete edition surfacing?
ReplyDeletehosts: paired together for the second time, even though they make for strange bedfellows indeed. was smarmy (as he shall henceforth be referred to as) really a chum of tommy's? unlikely i would have said. there seems to be a new and most odd way of introduction that involves showing a few seconds of the each studio act "warming up" before switching to tommy and his "friend" and then back again. i do find it amusing that tommy refers to some of the records as "good ones", even though they haven't got a cat-in-hell's chance of being played on his "friday rock show"! by the way, did anyone notice the stunning blonde looking like a cross between kim wilde and marilyn monroe standing behind them during the intro for bonnie tyler?
ReplyDeletemodern romance: i have no memory of this at all - not that i need one! imagine them sitting down at a meeting planning their next chart assault, with david jaymes saying "we need to release another dance track, but the bottom's fallen out of the salsa market. so what do we do now?" then one of the others chirps up "there's this really cool and trendy new dance music coming out of africa now called highlife". jaymes: well, we can cash in on that like we did with the salsa craze by just rehashing "everybody salsa" and calling it "highlife"!"
orange juice: according to smarmy they came from scotland, although the drummer actually came from zimbabwe. yes i suppose you could call it funk, although it's of the extremely clunky variety in my view and hardly likely to give the jb's sleepness nights. and the jarring last note of the guitar solo (if you can call it that) still sounds like a bum one to me, even if it might have been intentional. and the bassist plays like he's strumming a guitar, which is just as annoying!
blancmange: following up the infectious "living on the ceiling" with a lacklustre effort, that rather than make waves was more likely to see them waving goodbye to the charts. was that weird-looking guy writhing back and forth at the right-hand side of the stage actually part of the act?
david joseph: before starting to review this i checked wiki to confirm that he was previously a member of hi tension (which he was), but sadly he doesn't even merit a solo entry despite this hit! in my view most brit post-disco efforts were a bit wanting compared to their american counterparts, but not in this case - for me this is the real mccoy from the word go. again i'm not sure if the dancers are part of the act or brought in by the show's producers, but unlike the blancmange guy they add even more class to proceedings. the only criticism i can offer is that mr joseph might have been better advised to have used a microphone so he looked less like an audience member gatecrashing the stage!
I can now see why the top ten video concept could not work every week. This week there were only two new entrants into the top ten, i.e., Bananarama and Forest (Rock The Boat), and 8 of the songs in the top ten were in the top ten video rundown last week, so it would largely have been a repeat than something new, so to have this concept once a month is all that was needed really, much like the JK concept, as then you would have totally new material or videos each time.
ReplyDeleteMy main memory of his Modern Romance hit isn't the actual record, it's of hearing the Radio 2 big band version on Brian Matthews' Round Midnight and wondering why they bothered when it sounded exactly the same, just without vocals. So there you go.
ReplyDeleteOrange Juice, a very nervous Edwyn in happier times before his affliction befell him, great squelchy pop tune, cheeky Buzzcocks lift for the guitar solo, invisible sax player, not my favourite of theirs (heard it too many times) but they were always a class act.
No recollection of this Blancmange track whatsoever, and I can hear why, it's not as catchy as their bigger hits and doesn't really go anywhere. Threatens to get inspirational, but doesn't quite make it.
No recollection of David Joseph's song either, the staging looked like the director had put out a plea "Is there a singer in the house?" and Dave manfully stepped up to fill in. Another one that's a bit monotonous, but it grooves away regardless.
Well, that was quick! Sort of seeing what Smitty was afraid of, too, he does look like a prannet.
The Smitty/Vance partnership gets a second bite of the cherry, with TV in particularly booming form and Smitty, unfortunately, continuing his trend of getting more annoying with each appearance - why did he keep holding his lapel in that affected way? As Wilberforce has already noted, some of the links on this show began only after we had already had a glimpse of the act, which didn't feel right at all. Hopefully this was just a one-off experiment...
ReplyDeleteModern Romance were now nearing the end of their hit-making career, and you can understand why on the back of this tired-sounding effort, which even resorts to mimicking the vocal harmonies on Best Years of Our Lives at one point. Geoff Deane's departure also left them without a visually arresting frontman, which doesn't help their cause. The famous Eurythmics video next, not that we get to see it on this posting. Annie looks formidable and scary in her suit and cane, but I've never understood the significance of the cows, if indeed there is any!
Edwyn Collins looks very young here, but also rather cool with his shades and slicked-back hair. The song itself isn't bad, and I like the squelchy synths, but it's not one that really sustains repeated listening. Neil Arthur ought to have left his shades on for this Blancmange performance, as he doesn't look anywhere near as cool without them! A disappointing follow-up to Living on the Ceiling, which tries too hard to be big and epic without having anything resembling a memorable tune.
The staging for David Joseph's turn was somewhat unfortunate, as he is totally obscured by the audience and dry ice before he finally makes it on to the stage with his band. It's a reasonable dance tune, with some mildly Jacko-type vocals, but as with so many examples of this genre it just lacks that extra something that would make it stand out - at least the Zoo dancers do pretty well, enhancing the visual appeal of the performance. Bonnie deservedly ascends to the top, though again the video is cut out here - it would be interesting to see if it was edited, as the clip from it that we saw in the previous week's show featured part of the full-length version of the song. In any case, it's a fittingly epic promo that certainly stuck in my mind as a very young child at the time - I think this must be the first TOTP I can definitely remember watching.
Finally, Love on Your Side shows up for what feels like the umpteenth time as Zoo lead the crowd in some more flag-based choreography. I do think Phil & Cliff should have been the playout music this week, given they were still climbing while the Twins were stalled at 7...
3 TOTP in a day - never done that before. To be honest, I'm quite glad that the videos aren't there because it makes this one quicker. Also, I don't like the songs and we saw them in the video countdown last time anyway!
ReplyDeleteModern Romance - Although it's similar to their party hits from before (even nicking a bit from the last one!) it somehow doesn't do the business for me.
Orange Juice - Great song, and a shame that it was their only hit as they had some other good singles too. I think the other Pops performance of this better as I recorded that edition from UK Gold (and we'll all get to see it next week!) Plus it doesn't have Mike Smith talking all over the intro - I'm beginning to see why he's embarassed about these shows now....
Oh, if only we did have Bucks Fizz next instead of the Spands poncing around Tommy...
Blancmange - Here's the one I'd really like to see on TV and feel annoyed that we've missed out on. This isn't just one of the best songs of 1983, it's one of my favourite songs ever. I think it's a beautiful piece of melancholy magic which wasn't exciting enough for the 11 year old me as I have no recollection of this from the time but have since grown to love it.
David Joseph - Soul garbage of the kind which would sadly become more prevalent as we move towards the mid-80s.
Funny how I forgot that 'Billie Jean' was only No.1 for a week. Shame it couldn't hold off the Steinman garbage.
There. I got through it. To save my sanity I'll leave tonight's one until next week!
BBC police obviously been quickly off the mark - video no longer available
ReplyDeleteJust worked for me
DeleteOoh thanks - yes it is back! - if it went away :-)
DeleteWatched this and made some mental notes to put in my review only to find that each and every one of them had already been said above!
ReplyDeleteFor what it's worth though.......
Hosts. TV has a tendency to speak (or rather, boom) his links AT the viewers rather than TO them, and the Bucks Fizz non-sequiter was bizarre to say the least. Smith was highly irritating, too - especially the odd way he kept on leaning to the side.
Orange Juice. One of my favourite songs of the year, and one which I still like to this day. Lovely jangly guitar, unusal vocal tics. and a great tune.
David Joseph. Great chorus - but rather disappointing otherwise.
Blancmange. No recollection of this, and I doubt I will ever have.
Modern Romance. Kind of like a lightweight Kid Creole, but without that band's brilliant stage craft. They follow in fellow-chartmate's Thompson Twins footsteps by having a brief musical motif referencing a previous hit.
Final note - and one which I have meant to include for a number of editionsnow, but kept on forgetting. A few weeks ago, I noticed in the credits that the sound engineer was one Bob Foley. Does anyone know if this is the Foley whose name is now used to describe the people (Foley Artists) who make sound affects for films?
Anyway. A better show than of late with Orange Juice being my favourite - 7.
The presenting duo here just didn't work. Neither had the comfortable-in-front-of-camera appearance of a Kid Jensen or Mike Read, or the way with words of a John Peel. Neither did they gell as a pairing. 4
i knew the the term "foley artist" to describe people who add synchronised sound effects to visuals in film and tv was around long before the 80's, and research has revealed it is named after jack foley who was a pioneer of that technique in the early days of hollywood. that reminds me of a couple of other specialist terms often used/referred to in the film industry:
Delete1 - the "wilhelm scream", a stock/library recording of a guy screaming in shock/fright, that has been used in probably hundreds of films since originally recorded decades ago. it was named after the character who first "made" it
2 - the something-or-other "bus" that was named after its director whose name escapes me at the moment. this is the technique of making the audience believe something really bad is going to happen on screen, and then turns out to be a false alarm (often with comic relief, and sometimes what the audience anticpated as the fright moment comes for real after the fake scare). can anyone here remind me who it was actually named after?
The "bus" was what producer Val Lewton named the sort of scare where the threat is misdirected by a loud noise or whatever, after the scene in his 1942 horror Cat People where one character believes she is being stalked at night and the roar of a bus drawing up initially made the audience think she'd been got by a panther, only to realise it was her public transport arriving.
Deleteyes, the lewton bus! thanks for that thx - i thought i might get the answer i was looking for here
DeleteModern Romance with another rehash of their previous tunes. You could distill their output into about 20 seconds of music. Absolute shite. I tried to hit the high notes of the David Joseph groover but failed sadly..
ReplyDeleteit sounds like he sings the whole of the first three minutes in falsetto, and as such the higher notes are easier to sing than the lower ones. this is actually quite easy compared to the first note on the rubettes' "sugar baby love" that most guys probably wouldn't have a cat-in-hell's chance of reaching (i can just about manage it on a really good day!)
DeleteAs charlie cook says youtube have apparently taken this down as i cant view it either. Can anyone else come to the rescue and upload it to We Transfer or something like that? PLEASE. BTW we really are in a golden age here and i have thoroughly enjoyed every show so far, the best one for me being the janice long & pat sharp show from 10th feb. A top draw taste of the 80s!!
ReplyDeletegia seems to be providing many the full shows lately, and seems to use WeTransfer superbly, so he/she is probably our best source for this currently.
DeleteAnd I would like to take this opportunity to thank him/her - and indeed Angelo for persevering during this excessive period.
DeleteNot sure why people are having trouble with the YT link - I've just checked and the upload is still there.
DeleteBit of fast forwarding in the one...
ReplyDeleteOrange Juice - a great favourite on 120 minutes on MTV, so nice to see a studio performance.
Blancmange - another track I don't recall ever hearing. Pleasant, but not a patch on Living On The Ceiling. I was just forced to look to see when they relased their cover of 'Day Before You Came' - another 4 singles to come before that!
A strangely truncated videoless edition, but thanks to Calvin nevertheless.
ReplyDeleteMike Smith came across as a prize prat. Annoying, and also forgetting to return the compliment and introduce Tommy. This partnership really doesn’t work, neither did that practice of showing snippets of the acts before we hear the vocals.
Modern Romance served up an unedifying stew of their previous hits. No second helping, please.
Edwyn Collins seemed really pleased to be there. Shame Orange Juice didn’t borrow John Du Prez to mime a sax when needed.
A touch of Liberace with Blancmange’s sparsely lyricised but enjoyably mellow track.
David Joseph started out looking like some random bloke chosen to sing the song early doors. His vocals were a tad too high for my enjoyment.
Erm, that’s it. Not a great deal to say about this edition.
Thanks to Calvin for posting this. I was in the Bonnie Tyler zone after watching this (and the elongated clip from last week’s show, followed by it being cut here) so I cranked up the volume on the PC and watched the full video and it’s just wow! What a powerhouse of a song and visual treat to go with it. Well deserved to knock you-know-who off the top spot and reminded me what an absolute surprise it was at the time to see such a stunning return to form from Bonnie Tyler. ‘Lost in France’ this ain’t!
ReplyDeleteModern Romance – High Life – I am sure I spotted a brief reprise of ‘Best years of our lives’ in this. It’s OK but hardly a progression. A bit like ‘Jealous Mind’ being an inferior repeat of ‘My Co-ca-choo’.
Eurythmics – Sweet Dreams – Looked like a good video…
Orange Juice – Rip it up – The regular singles reviewer in ‘Record Mirror’ (a lady calling herself ‘Sunie’) at the time used to rave about this band. Every new release was her record of the week, and one after the other they flopped into the lower regions of the charts (and I must admit I never heard them). Singles like ‘L.O.V.E.’ and ‘Felicity’. Then suddenly this rather ordinary song went top 10, and then it was back to the nether regions of the charts. Weird.
Spandau Ballet – Communication – Collision time again!
Blancmange – Waves – Now I don’t think I have ever heard this before. I don’t think I even watched this edition at the time (a rare miss). Do you know what, I think it’s fabulous! A great follow up to ‘Living on the Ceiling’ without doing a Modern Romance.
David Joseph –You can’t hide your love – What???!!! Awful! As noted above, hardly something for Tommy to play on his ‘Rock Show’.
Bonnie Tyler – See above…..sublime..
Thompson Twins – Love on your side – Playout stuff indeed.
Not too keen on some of the DJ links here in this show. Slightly annoying. However, it’s interesting that although annoying they’re confident. I noticed in the 22/06/72 ‘wiped’ show on YT that I mentioned on the posting for the 24/02 show that Ed Stewart’s links sounded very nervous. Perhaps they didn’t do so many retakes in 1972?
Whether nervous or confident, it doesn't matter, cos the mere fact that these supposedly 'wiped' shows from 1972/73 are surfacing 45 years later, is frankly a mystery, considering that there were no VCRs available for people to record the shows from their TVs. The mind boggles.
DeleteHaving said that, the first ever Laurel & Hardy film called Duck Soup, was considered lost until 1984 when a print was found in Belgium of all places, some 58 years later according to this link (and not 1974 as wikipaedia claims) but still, never give up:
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58l9VCgtey8
A nice short film for a Sunday afternoon, even though L&H were obviously still getting to know each other in this first one!
I'm not sure if lack of rehearsal/retakes are the reason for Ed Stewart's hesitancy back in 1972, more likely he just wasn't particularly good in front of a camera - I remember he was similarly hesitant and uncertain on the shows he presented in '76 and '77, as seen on BBC4 a few years back.
DeleteDory - there were primitive VCRs around in the early 70s, but they were very expensive. Bob Monkhouse had an early model, and used it to record many of his shows that later had their master tapes wiped. Shows could survive for various reasons, most often because they were sold to foreign TV stations, but also because they were deemed important enough to retain or were secretly retained by someone involved with the production. In some cases, I think sheer chance was involved!
Felicity is a great single. Blue Boy might be my favourite OJ single, though. Guitar's brilliant on it.
DeleteIn reverse, there is a song called Boy Blue by ELO on their 1974 Eldorado album - worth a listen I would say.
Deletesct i know what you mean about the first two alvin stardust singles sounding practically the same (even though apparently it wasn't actually alvin who sang on the first one!), although i think my vote actually goes to "jealous mind". which gives me the chance to mention the b-side "guitar star" that i would say was worth a listen, especially for the brilliant acoustic finger picking soloing going on throughout!
Deleteapparently the reason for these "lost" totp's resurfacing is that all the artists who appeared on the shows were given a recording of it (presumably as film stock, although i do believe that videotape existed at the time) to keep for their own use. and presumably the more astute ones (or more likely their management or record company) stashed them away securely in the belief that one day they might come in handy?
Deletei remember reading that one of the first people in this country to own a video recorder (no doubt paying the kind of price that one could buy a house for at the time) was the guy who played john in "the tomorrow people"!
DeleteWilberforce I think you are correct. There is a lot of stuff surfaced on YT unavailable elsewhere (some film with transmission timings on it). A good case in point is Clodagh Rodgers where she gave some of her personal video collection to be transferred and loaded on YT for everyone's pleasure.
DeleteWas pleased to watch brie's link to the full show of 10.3.83 coming from Neil B. Thanks to both of you.
ReplyDeleteReally liked the Eurythmics video, especially the bit where Dave Stewart merges the typewriter with an early computer screen. Yes folks, 1983 was indeed a momentous year in Britain, as we took to the computer in school classrooms for the first time, taking over from typewriters, and I guess soon to follow on office desks within a few years, I would imagine.
Certainly I remember that it was 1983 where in my school we had one classroom with a number of new computers which led to excitement for some, but confusion and bewilderment to others like me, as a 15-year old reluctantly (or forcibly) making the transition.
I seem to recall we were having learn that a $ symbol and other similar keys on the computer pad, was an instruction to action something, and had nothing to do with money!
Thanks Neil B and brie! link of full show https://we.tl/81fzZrwNS0
ReplyDeleteThanks all - I see they didn't edit the Bonnie video, although it got brutally cut off a long way before the end.
Delete