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Post by Superclassic on Nov 12, 2017 20:09:50 GMT
I'm still watching these but the performances I enjoy are few and far between but I did enjoy seeing Paul McCartney and No More Lonely Nights followed by Julian Lennon. I was reminded how much he resembled his dad in sound an in vision. Too Late For Goodbye's was a good song in my opinion and it must have taken some nerve to follow in his dad's footsteps, bearing in mind the obvious comparisons critics would have made. Another standout for me was Depeche Mode and Blasphemous Rumours. Not usual TOTP fare but well done to both the production team and the band for performing as it's not played much at all and does not lend itself to live performances due to they way in which it was recorded. Not long now until the might juggernaut that is Band Aid!! I always liked Too Late For Goodbyes,years later Julian did a bit of a comeback with the single 'Saltwater'.....he sounded just like his old feller singing that.A bit of trivia for you too....appearing with Julian Lennon on TOTP in 1984 was Steve Holley on drums,who was in the last line up of Wings and doing very nicely until his boss got himself slung in jail in Japan. I always felt a bit sorry for Julian Lennon.You could just hear people saying "Not as good as his Dad".
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Post by Frank Spencer on Nov 17, 2017 20:15:18 GMT
Evening folks ! For those of you with these episodes still intact on your Sky Planner, here are some highlights to pick out in between the FFWD pressing ! ... 18/10/84 Martin Kemp appears to be wearing a picnic blanket whilst performing "Highly Strung" with Spandau Ballet ... Meat Loaf looks surprisingly slim singing "Modern Girl" from how I remember the classic images of him in my head, but he's still a tad chunky even so ! ... But the most notable thing visually about this show is ... Gary Davies' scary stary eyes !!! We miss out on 25/10/84 and 1/11/84 due to DLT & Mike Smith involvement but if you look on You Tube you can at least see the one appearance on TOTP by Feargal Sharkey singing "Listen To Your Father" ... with Madness as the backing band !! 8/11/84 ... It's all about Simon Bates (wasn't it always ...) - he was in top form with quotes like "The lady joining Limahl here is called Mandy and she's a Spurs supporter, but she sings quite well" ... "We've been behind the scenes her at TOTP and discovered that Martin of Depeche Mode sung the B-side of this hit in the nude" ... and (far more interesting actually than the dirge "Berserker" that they were performing) Simes unleashes the news that Gary Numan's band "have just one white suit each for a 20 date tour - they do have some really good soap powder though" ... and of course he gave a timecheck or two as it was "live" ... TOTP Presenter comedy gold ... !! 15/11/84 ... Bruno Brookes & Mike Read fail spectacularly to be the new Peel & Jensen ... and two large slices of the show are inexplicably edited out, meaning the late Jim Diamond's family miss out on seeing him at his peak for the second time in a month on the show ... Also, a word for Duran Duran - good big production videos have become the norm by now and it is really only the really poor ones that catch the eye now (Hello Pointer Sisters !! ) but the promo for "WIld Boys" was epic and still looks fantastic even after all these years ... 22/11/84 ... There are plenty of songs in these current episodes that are very well known to me (I had become a fully fledged mobile DJ by now !) and that have stood the test of time, still getting played on the radio today, but this was a bit of an iffy show to be honest ... except for the video for "Louise" by Human League, all in arty black & white, but as clever as it is surreal, well worth watching again ... 29/11/84 ... Finally, bringing us up to date before tonight's repeat show, here we had the "Feed The World" episode with Peter Powell proudly sporting his T-shirt (Janis Long passed - I guess she was more interested in looking "trendy" on the telly than blagging a free t-shirt !) and just about everyone who appeared in the studio performing wearing one over, under or instead of their intended outfits. So that meant Nik Kershaw, Slade, Kool & The Gang, Jim Diamond (first time I'd seen him mentioned on TOTP when he got to No:1 !) Alvin Stardust & Black Lace all getting in the spirit - except one person in that list didn't play ball and wasn't sporting one. Who do you think it was ? Answer next week ...
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Post by Frank Spencer on Dec 22, 2017 21:15:52 GMT
First of all for those of you still waiting with baited breath since my last post over a month ago ... the answer was Dave Hill of Slade !!
It's all gone very quiet over the last few weeks as BBC4 clearly stopped showing the repeats when they got too far ahead of themselves and we had the pre-Xmas edition in mid-November ! However, my "series link" recently picked up the Xmas Day edition so I decided to watch it this evening as it is actually now proper Xmas time and really quite enjoyed it. A stellar line-up of names doing lots of really big hits from the year and the particularly refreshing thing about it was each time one of the previous acts announced the next song - admittedly with varying degrees of professionalism, but it was a breath of fresh air from the usual "Smashy & Nicey DJ-isms" of the Radio 1 crew, amusing as they are ! Howard Jones sang live and worked in "Merry Xmas" to the lyrics of "What Is Love", but we had to see the videos for "Wake Me Up Before You Go Go" and "Careless Whisper" as Jim Diamond informed us George was " held up somewhere ... or possibly sick ". In hindsight you can only imagine why he didn't make it, especially if he was driving to the studio !! The Thompson Twins & Duran Duran performed twice, while Frankie Goes To Hollywood did all three of their Number Ones, although Paul Rutherford gave "The Power Of Love" a swerve, I guess even the most creative TOTP director couldn't think of anything for the backing-singer / dancer to do during four minutes plus of that hit !! And of course we had the hilarious miming to "Do They Know It's Xmas" at the end, which started off well with a good number of the cast present in the studio to do their lines, but Sting seemed a little uncomfortable covering for George Michael , whilst in complete contrast Paul Weller had no qualms in pretending to be Bono for the famous line in the middle !!
And so that was 1984. I see from the Popscene site there was another year end episode on the 27/12/84, hosted by Lenny Henry, but unless he's done something terrible that I was unaware of the Beeb have chosen not to share that show with us ... unless it's still to come over the holiday weekend of course ! I must check my planner ....
Have a great Xmas everyone, I am sure there will be plenty of classic repeats of Festive Specials and vintage comedy on the box to keep us Old Gits entertained - hope to see you in 1985 soon !!!
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Post by Arthur Pringle on Dec 23, 2017 23:09:05 GMT
Have a good one Frank
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Post by Arthur Pringle on Dec 24, 2017 21:00:57 GMT
Watching the TOTP Christmas edition from 1973 tonight it occured to me that 'Daydreamer' by David Cassidy is practically the same as 'Last Christmas' by Wham.
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Post by Frank Spencer on Jan 5, 2018 13:45:19 GMT
"I see from the Popscene site there was another year end episode on the 27/12/84, hosted by Lenny Henry, but unless he's done something terrible that I was unaware of the Beeb have chosen not to share that show with us ... unless it's still to come over the holiday weekend of course ! I must check my planner ..." Read more: 43tv.proboards.com/thread/1025/top-pops-1984?page=11&scrollTo=36664#ixzz53Jl9Jqeb...and indeed there it was tucked away in the corner ! I checked it out briefly (yes, I did FFWD through the videos we've all seen several times this year now and peformances by the usual suspects doing their usual thing in the studio, but with tinsel on...) and it was more like the Lenny Henry show with all his famous characters appearing in between numerous pop guests ! Now for 1985 and I see that "The Story Of 1985" is scheduled over the weekend on BBC4 at 9pm tonight (Friday) and repeated at 1am on Saturday morning - always enjoy these "sneak preview" documentaries ...
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Del Boy
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Post by Del Boy on Jan 9, 2018 22:18:05 GMT
Yes indeed they did show it Frank and thought Lenny wasn't too bad. I've just caught up with most of decembers episodes and the Christmas special. Who thought that the 84 crimbo edition was very strange with no DJ presenters. The bands introducing themselves added a dynamic that didn't work as well, and the whole show felt a bit flat. Ironic really that I/we've often commented on how cheesy, embarrassing, fake etc etc the Radios 1 jocks can be but take them out of the equation and it changed the show a whole lot. It was an experiment that didn't work. Wonder what the story was behind that idea ? As musical years viewed on these TOTP repeats go 1984 was about on par with 1983 for quality musical output. From memory 1985 was similar before the decade changed rapidly with impending SAW domination Got a feeling 1985 might be the last one i really bother with. Anyway goodbye 1984, Thanks for the hits
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Batgirl
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Post by Batgirl on Jan 20, 2018 13:59:53 GMT
I thought it might be interesting to compare what was happening on the Australian 'Countdown' music show at the end of 1984. Countdown was our only music show on tv for years ! So here are the songs featured on 'Countdown' on 23/12/1984. Apologies for the Caps Lock (copied from 'Welcome to the CountDown Archives) I have put a next to my favourites. This show on 23.12.1984 was hosted by Johnny Rotten, 'Greedy' from Mental As Anything, Los Trios Ringbarkus (Aussie comedy duo) and Molly Meldrum. VIDEO CLIPS:MENTAL AS ANYTHING 'APOCALYPSO' WHAM 'LAST CHRISTMAS' (Well back in 1984 I loved it) HALL & OATES 'JINGLE BELL ROCK' GOANNA 'COMMON GROUND' HUEY LEWIS 'IF THIS IS IT' BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN 'BORN IN THE USA' PAT BENATAR 'WE BELONG' BRONSKI BEAT 'IT AIN'T NECESSARILY SO' NIK KERSHAW 'THE RIDDLE' CYNDI LAUPER 'MONEY CHANGES EVERYTHING' 1984 TOP TEN OF NO 1'S:12TH MAN 'IT'S JUST NOT CRICKET' MADONNA 'LIKE A VIRGIN' KENNY LOGGINS 'FOOTLOOSE' LIONEL RITCHIE 'ALL NIGHT LONG' LIONEL RITCHIE 'HELLO' GEORGE MICHAEL 'CARELESS WHISPER' PAT BENATAR 'WE BELONG' NENA '99 LUFT BALOONS' WHAM 'WAKE ME UP BEFORE YOU GO GO' STEVE WONDER 'I JUST CALLED TO SAY I LOVE YOU' BAND AID PROJECT 'DO THEY KNOW IT'S XMAS'
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Del Boy
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Post by Del Boy on Jan 20, 2018 21:17:06 GMT
Interesting hosts on that show Batgirl Notice Nik Kershaw makes it but Frankie gets the old elbow
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