Obviously do not click if you wish to avoid Jimmy Savile.
It's hot in here tonight, unless you play keyboards it seems....
21/07/83 (Jimmy Savile & Pat Sharp)
Jimmy The Hoover – “Tantalise (Wo Wo Ee Yeh Yeh)” (18)
At its peak.
Eurythmics – “Who’s That Girl?” (4) (video)
Went up one more place.
Shakin’ Stevens – “It’s Late” (23)
Peaked at number 11.
Roman Holliday – “Don’t Try To Stop It” (20)
Peaked at number 14.
The Police – “Wrapped Around Your Finger” (14)
The second single from their number one album Synchronicity, it became their final top ten hit, peaking at number 7.
Freeez – “IOU” (2)
At its peak.
Gary Byrd & The GB Experience – “The Crown” (21) (Zoo)
Their only hit, peaking at number 6.
The Cure – “The Walk” (12)
At its peak.
Paul Young – “Wherever I Lay My Hat (That’s My Home)” (1)
First of three weeks at number one.
Clubhouse – “Do It Again/Billie Jean” (29) (audience dancing/credits)
Peaked at number 11.
The story continues on BBC4 next with July 28th 1983.
Much better show than the previous week, but a pity that UK Gold edited out The Police with Wrapped Around Your Finger, especially as this is my favourite track of theirs, and I don't recall a studio performance, just the famous video with the candles.
ReplyDeleteJimmy The Hoover - presented by Jimmy The Saville was an apt start to the show, and nice to see the calypso keyboard player in the band wearing a QPR shirt. Can anyone tell me what was the meaning of "Wo Wo Eee Yeh Yeh, Wo Wo Eee Yeh Yeh" which waled on as the chorus throughout the song??
The Eurythmics - blimey, as mentioned before, Annie The Lennox does look striking in long hair, even though it is a wig. I wonder why she opted for short man-like hair instead of capitalising on her striking looks to go with long hair? She would certainly have got a lot more admirers if she opted for long hair. Opportunity missed here.
Freeez - IOU at No.2, as I remember this song as THE song of the summer of '83, getting stuck at No.2 for three weeks and then dropping only one place at No.3 in August, and just could not somehow get over the line for the No.1 spot. What a shame as it really deserved a long stint at No.1 in my opinion, if not for Paul Young.
Gary Byrd & The GB Experience - no video was ever made for this, and bizarrely no travel from America by Mr Byrd to the TOTP studio, especially given the artist title, which meant an obvious call-up for Zoo, but their costumes this week were really disappointing, and worse than the efforts of the studio audience. Sorry, but they could have done much better than this.
i don't think that annie was in the market for the kind of admirer that dory mentions...
DeleteHi Dory,
DeleteMy version is basically the same as this edition but someone has added the police performance on the end, do you want me to upload it ?
It's better to have the Police performance in the part of the show where it appeared, i.e., in the middle of the show. Surely someone must have it?
DeleteMany thanks for this, I've just downloaded it and will watch it tomorrow. These contraband shows are the only ones I get to watch these days, but like others from this era I probably won't have much to say about it.
ReplyDeleteI do, however, have everything to say about the BBC. Yesterday I read, in a vintage radio forum(!), the sad news that our old mate Brian Matthew had passed away. So I immediately went to the BBC News site to see for myself. It took a bit of drilling down (the news was still less than an hour old but seemingly didn't even warrant the front page of the 'Entertainment and Arts' section) but there it was, complete with the usual Twittering drivel and screen grabs that the BBC always include when someone famous dies. (Look BBC, I really don't give two hoots about what people 'tweet'. It doesn't constitute an official public statement. Unless your name is Donald Trump, apparently.)
I looked again later in the day and, erm, he's not actually dead, just 'critically ill'. And then in the 'Most Popular' list in 'Entertainment & Arts' was the news that Ronnie Corbett had died. Blimey, another one passed by 'under the radar', no headline news here... wait, hang on a minute............ Ah, it's 31 March 2016. :rolleyes:
Ye gods. I'm really, really glad that I no longer pay the wages of this shower.
Sorry, I just had to get that off my chest and here was as good a place as any ;o)
The news about Brian's passing was given by one of his relatives, so not the Beeb's fault this time, you would have thought the relative would have been more careful with what he said.
DeleteAs for the Ronnie story, that is bumped to the most popular list because lots of people are reading it, not because the Beeb put it there on the list. Same thing happened with Tony Hart, when there was a mistaken Twitter outpouring of grief at his death that had happened two years before!
Are we to believe that Jimmy is wearing a vintage vest top from the 60s, judging by the logo? Those days were over, man, and jeez, I hope he washed it...
ReplyDeleteJimmy the Hoover, was there ever a band with a more welcoming sound that looked so offputting in performance? What the hell were they wearing? Were they insane? Even for 1983 that was some dreadful dress sense.
Must admit I didn't recognise all the celebs in the Eurythmics video, Bananarama and Marilyn of course, but the others are lost to me in the mists of time. Best bit of the song? The "just one thing" bit.
I was wondering where Shakin' had got to, and here he is with a jaunty little number, think this is a cover, seems like it. Some fancy footwork, poor mic technique, bright tune, textbook Shaky.
Roman Holliday somewhat cramped on that postage stamp sized stage, I kept expecting an accident to happen.
The Police with possibly Sting's most pretentious lyrics, which is saying something. You think it's the opposite of Every Breath, then it turns out to be more of the sinister same in the final chorus. Very wobbly set here.
Freeez looking a lot more confident when they have their proper record to mime to, though there's a surplus of dancers, again a distraction. Gotta love the sampled vowels instrumental break.
Gary Byrd, wot, not the full length version? I'm sure Zoo would have been up for it! Sort of an "I'm Black and I'm Proud" for the 1980s, terrific record, so exuberant. Gary was a DJ and I think he still is.
The Cure cock-a-hoop at their biggest hit so far, they can barely contain their excitement. Another Japanese-ish tune, following on from Sakamoto last week, but this isn't the real deal.
Well done Paul, and the play out is an early example of the mash-up, though not a particularly good one.
Jim'll has worn that vest several times during this repeat run, stretching right back to 1976 - I suspect it's even older than that! The Shaky song is indeed a cover, of an old Ricky Nelson tune.
Deletehosts: perhaps the most disparate pairing so far, and i'm not just talking about the age gap. i don't know if mr as it appens was giving young pat either a hard time or the cold shoulder off-camera or not, but the latter seems somewhat over-pleased with himself after getting through his first intro. jimmy the pervert (ho ho) clearly hasn't been listening to the charts himself recently (quel surprise), as he fails to mention a single song title in his bit of the chart countdown. but somebody obviously gave him a sheet of paper for the shared top 10 bit so he wouldn't look such an ignorant git compared to his younger, hungrier and better-informed partner
ReplyDeletejimmy the hoover: i'd forgotten about their penchant for wearing those new-fangled boxing helmets (as modelled by the bassist here), but somewhat sadly i still have a memory of the synth player's (ill-suited) mohican! after the follow-up flop they abandoned the high life sound, and surprisingly re-surfaced on a new label a couple of years later with the actually-quite-good dance-rock sound of "use it"... but all to no avail as far as the charts were concerned!
eurthymics: annie raids the fancy dress shop again, this time for a sixties syrup. sleb ladies i think i recognise in the vid are: cheryl and jay from bucks fizz, rat girl from hayzi fantayzee, kiki dee and a permed hazel o'connor. sadly marilyn was well into his rasta-boy look by now, and thus nowhere near as alluring as when he was an actual monroe clone a few years earlier!
police: presumably recorded at the studio at the same time as the last hit? this is superior by far in my opinion, and possibly the best thing they ever did. but why is andy summers using an acoustic guitar?
gary byrd: another record with somebody talking over it that is somewhat indebted to the riff from "good times" (did the chic organisation demand a cut of the royalties, as they did with the sugarhill gang?). even though gary was a pussycat compared to what came later, i still had to give this one a miss as these days even a nanosecond of (c)rap triggers a pavlovian response of making it go away in some manner!
An improbable presenter pairing of the old and the new here, though perhaps ironically this would be Pat's last TOTP before he jumped ship to the commercial sector. He actually gives his best, most self-assured turn here, and also copes manfully with his ageing co-host giving him most of the work to do. While this is presented as a joke, it does nod to the fact that Jim'll clearly couldn't care less about most of the acts on the show, with the possible exception of Shaky. It just makes it all the more mystifying as to why he was still on the roster by this stage...
ReplyDeleteThe Jimmy the Hoover track has grown on me a bit, though I still think it's pretty lightweight. Chesney Hawkes/He-Man is dressed most inappropriately for the season in that heavy jacket, and to make it feel even hotter a fire eater is doing his thing to the side of the stage - sadly for him, the camera cuts away just as he starts spinning the flaming torches around on his face! Annie once again displays her love of wigs in this inventive video, and makes for quite a convincing bloke when she dons leathers and quiff. I definitely spotted the Nanas and Marilyn, and I think Cheryl and Jay were there too - I agree with Wilberforce that Kiki Dee also made a very fleeting appearance.
Shaky returns to TOTP after a quiet spell, but this rather anaemic cover of an old classic was hardly worth the wait. Roman Holliday then put on another show of rather forced jollity and matiness - I like to think that they started punching each other's lights out when they got back to the dressing room! It's not impossible that The Police may have indulged in such behaviour, given the clashing egos within the band, and the end was now very much nigh. This is a worthy follow up to Every Breath You Take, full of atmosphere but spoilt slightly by a grating vocal from Sting. You can tell from their clothes that this performance was recorded during the show when Bates interviewed them - it was also done at the same time as the rendition of the previous single. As THX points out, the pillar next to Sting looks very wobbly - was one of the set men trying to take him out?
Freeez give Roman Holliday an object lesson in how to convey enjoyment on stage without overdoing it, and then Zoo (choreographed by Eddie Kemp rather than Flick Colby this week, I notice), get down to Gary Byrd. I agree with Dory that the costumes are nothing special, but at least this week we get some actual dancing rather than circus acrobatics. This is another early rap single that I can tolerate, no doubt in part because of the blatant lifting from Chic. New performances follow from The Cure and Paul Young, who unfortunately chooses to celebrate hitting the top by putting that shiny grey suit on again, and then Zoo dance us out to an early mash-up which does demonstrate the similarity between Do it Again and Billie Jean, but not in a very effective or memorable manner...
i think there was particular antipathy within the police between sting and stewart copeland, which may even have become physical at times. and as such the comparatively less egomaniacal (and mature member by far) andy summers had to act as the middle-man/peacemaker - thus being their equivalent of the spinal tap bassist's "lukewarm water"!
Deletei played in a band many years ago where some argy-bargy once kicked-off between the bassist and the drummer - the latter leaping out from behind his kit and attacking the other guy before he even had a chance to down his instrument! the guitarist just turned away in embarrassment and allowed them to get on with it, but i rushed across to the other side of the room to break it up! the irony of that is that many years on i have effectively fallen out with both of them now, whilst they have rekindled their acquaintance to the point where they are actually seeing each other again socially...
wasn't it stevie wonder who was responsible for the (chic rip-off) music track in "the crown"?
DeleteQuite likely, as he is clearly singing on it. Stevie shows up as a guest on a whole host of records around this time, either singing or harmonica playing.
DeleteSpeaking of violent acrimony in bands, I love the story of The Eagles' performance at a Democrat benefit gig in 1980, when Glenn Frey and Don Felder exchanged threats and insults right through the performance, before having it out backstage. That was the end of the band, until "hell froze over" in the 90s, of course...
ReplyDeletesam & dave allegedly ended up hating the sight of each other. but neither was prepared to strike out as a solo act (presumably in the interests of financial security), so they continued to work together for many years aftwerwards despite that. part of the deal for doing so was that they always entered and left the performance area via opposite sides of the stage!
DeleteThis has to go down as one of the worst editions of the year so far with little, if anything, to commend it.
ReplyDeleteJimmy The Hoover, a drum-driven African beat with playground lyrics over it. Really disliked this in 83; really REALLY dislike it now.
Eurythmics - no. Shaky - no no.
Roman Holliday. Another song without which I have gotten along admirably well. Quite clear to see why these lot had only this brief moment in the sun.
Ah, at last, something fairly notable. The Police. "Wrapped Around..." has a faintly Japanese vibe to it and even Sting's annoying lyrics can't undo some fine musical twinklings.
Freeez with that bloke off of Magpie on vocals and keyboard-played-like-a-guitar-for-some-bloody-reason thing. It's not baaaad, but there are a couple of things that grate on the Shaky nerves. 1 - the spoken bit. 2- the vocoderised piano solo. Without them, this would have been a distant effort.
Some Zooologists jig about to Gary Byrd's Chic-based Wonder-helped piece of dance. Not a song that is played much these days, but it's not bad at all.
The Cure still haven't realised the importance of a having a bit of a tune in their songs, Paul Young lays his hat down on the top spot, and out we go with a Steely Dan/Jacko mash-up
Scores. Oh, what the hell - 4. The Police were decent, Gary Byrd and Freeez ok, but the rest. . . nah.
Our mismatched hosts? 3. Just very poor all round. So poor that I can't be arsed to write down exactly why they are so poor. You all know anyway, right?
Whoosh! I fairly whizzed through this one and I’m definitely in Shakey’s camp here (Shakerson not Stevens!) so for me not one that BBC4 have missed much on.
ReplyDeleteJS does his usual ‘artist only’ chart rundowns bar a couple in the Top10 where his co-presenters good habit rubs off.
I missed seeing the Police as ‘Wrapped around your finger’ was part of the excellent side 2 of the ‘Synchronicity’ album. Interestingly, in the States ‘King of Pain’ was the second single and ‘Warpped’ the fourth whereas here they were flipped.
Shaky uses a title made famous by Queen on the ‘News of the World’ album and its trite in comparison. Other artists featured here made no impression on me with the exception of Freez and, strangely; Jimmy the Hoover who are now growing on me. Paul Young’s hit remains a worthy no1 too.
Short review!
We weren't missing much with this one, what with JS's vest that must date back to the 60s and seemingly a world record attempt at most utterances of the word 'Hey' in a single show.
ReplyDeleteI'll mostly tackle the 'new' stuff...
Shakin' Stevens - Spectacularly average fare.
The Police - Well, OK, we didn't see this but still....it's one of those that I have to be in the right mood to listen to but it's nice to hear from time to time.
Freeez - A much better performance this time!
Gary Byrd - I have never got the vast outpourings of love for this extremely dull song. I was particularly annoyed that they stuck it on Chart Hits 83 when, given its duration, they could have put 2 or possibly 3 better songs on instead!
Clubhouse - Whereas this really IS a good club track. It's well done and Clubhouse would do more medleys later in the decade, albeit none of those reached the Top 40.
Jimmy the Hoover -knew the name. Expected something more 'punk'
ReplyDeleteEurythmics - Who's that girl - wiki says Cheryl Baker, Jay Aston, Kiki Dee, Hazel O'Connor, Kate Garner, bananarama, Marilyn... Anyone else? I thought I saw KD Lang.
Shakin Stevens - more of the same
Roman holiday - catchy enough - another rent-a-bop boy band
Freeez - remember this from the clubs. Is it really 83???
Gary Byrd - knew the track but not the performer. Thought I recognised Stevie Wonder on vocal so checked on ski - it was (stevie's label)
For my sins, I bought the Clubhouse single in the States...
Sad that I've missed the WeTransfer :(
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone know how long the WeTransfer videos are available before they are deleted?
Delete