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Post by o on Feb 10, 2012 9:53:51 GMT 1
We did get Thin Lizzy at least, but I do wonder when the style of music will change.
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Post by Chris on Feb 10, 2012 10:57:21 GMT 1
Blooming awful song as well! They should have got Thelma Houston on instead! Gary's song isn't one of his best. Yep I prefer Thelma's version of Don't Leave Me... to Harold Melvin's tbh.
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Post by Sm1ffj on Feb 10, 2012 11:28:00 GMT 1
Blooming awful song as well! They should have got Thelma Houston on instead! Gary's song isn't one of his best. Yep I prefer Thelma's version of Don't Leave Me... to Harold Melvin's tbh. I Agree that Gary Glitter song was awful, how could a lot people trudge down to WH Smith, Woolworth's, Boots etc to buy that song to get it to a Peak of #25(it wasn't the easy download age we have now), and someone had kept the record to upload the cover on to Chart Stats. It was quite a boring show last night.
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Post by suedehead on Feb 10, 2012 15:21:22 GMT 1
Blooming awful song as well! They should have got Thelma Houston on instead! Gary's song isn't one of his best. Yep I prefer Thelma's version of Don't Leave Me... to Harold Melvin's tbh. The later Communards version was far better then both Melvin and Houston versions.
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Post by Chris on Feb 11, 2012 1:12:12 GMT 1
Gary's song isn't one of his best. Yep I prefer Thelma's version of Don't Leave Me... to Harold Melvin's tbh. The later Communards version was far better then both Melvin and Houston versions. I'd rate that version third actually.
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Post by suedehead on Feb 11, 2012 1:33:19 GMT 1
The later Communards version was far better than both Melvin and Houston versions. I'd rate that version third actually. Ah well, you're used to being wrong
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Post by Chris on Feb 11, 2012 12:54:44 GMT 1
I'd rate that version third actually. Ah well, you're used to being wrong It's not right or wrong. Everyone likes different stuff.
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Post by Earl Purple on Mar 16, 2012 9:53:37 GMT 1
These are being shown regularly now on BBC4, the ones that weren't wiped, that is.
I have been enjoying these of course, partly because it was the first year of my chart and I particularly remember some of them, having recorded them, and also because we get to hear the oldie songs that you don't normally get to hear.
For example, in the last couple of months we have heard "Baby I Know" by the Rubettes and "You'll Never Know What You're Missing" by the Real Thing 3 times each. Those are rarely played songs by those two artists.
Yesterday's episode included Smokie doing "Lay Back In The Arms Of Someone", one of their most underrated songs, and Elton John had the closing sequence song with "Crazy Water", a lesser-known song of his.
We also heard "Rock Bottom" by Lynsey De Paul & Mike Moran (only shown on the midnight episode). Quite interesting to see that shown again. Better than the kind of thing we submit to Eurovision nowadays, I don't know exactly who Mike Moran is but Lynsey De Paul was a fairly major artist at the time, and this was the last year for a long time we actually entered an established act. (The next time was sort-of 1988 as Scott Fitzgerald had had that hit with Yvonne Keeley but in reality was 1992 with Michael Ball). (By the way, in my opinion that song is better than the French entry but my favourite of the contest was "Swiss Lady" by Pepe Rienhard).
We also heard the previous year's winner Brotherhood Of Man doing "Oh Boy (The Mood I'm In)". Sandwiched in the middle of 3 #1s by them but actually quite good. (A bit like Bucks Fizz's "Piece Of The Action - a good song that wasn't a huge hit in the middle of their run of #1s. "One Of Those Nights" wasn't that good but I did like POTA).
The other songs we heard were: Graham Parker - Hold Back The Night ELO - Rockaria Barbara Dickson - Another Suitcase In Another Hall Mary McGregor - Torn Between Two Lovers (with Legs & Co dancing) Brendon - Gimme Some Manhattan Transfer - Chanson D'Amour (the #1 that week)
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Post by o on Mar 16, 2012 11:20:31 GMT 1
Generally it reminds me of how bad the 70s were! I enjoy watching it though for the memories, like last night with Chanson d'amour, because I know that's a song my parents liked and was played on the jukebox in my grandma's pub.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Mar 16, 2012 11:29:24 GMT 1
Manhattan Transfer. Dear sweet God. In fact you look at the top fives when MT were number one - Leo Sayer, McGregor, Heatwave, David Soul - and you wonder whether MI5 was putting something in the reservoirs. More gash than the Rift Valley.
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Post by Earl Purple on Mar 16, 2012 11:45:47 GMT 1
Heatwave's song was good, and we had Mr Big at #5, David Bowie at #6 and Abba at #7 that week, so not a totally dreadful chart.
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Post by suedehead on Mar 16, 2012 13:27:55 GMT 1
Manhattan Transfer. Dear sweet God. In fact you look at the top fives when MT were number one - Leo Sayer, McGregor, Heatwave, David Soul - and you wonder whether MI5 was putting something in the reservoirs. More gash than the Rift Valley. Thankfully punk was about to change things. I didn't recognise that Brotherhood Of Man song at all but all the rest were familiar. Brendon's miming was spectacularly bad.
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Post by Earl Purple on Mar 16, 2012 13:35:31 GMT 1
Punk never really changed the top of the chart. Aside from one #2 hit famously denied, there was little presence at the very top end of the chart. The Boomtown Rats got to #1 in 1978 but, at least by this point, they certainly weren't punk.
Really it was disco that changed it. The early number ones in 1977 had far too many slowies. Abba medium paced, the rest all ballads until the Jacksons got their week on top, and then Donna Summer's disco summer smash a few weeks later.
I do quite like Chanson D'Amour though, albeit that it's a bit dated. Well actually it was a 20-year-old song at the time.
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Post by raliverpool on Mar 16, 2012 22:02:07 GMT 1
I do quite like Chanson D'Amour though, albeit that it's a bit dated. Well actually it was a 20-year-old song at the time. I take it you were not scarred by the 69th and final episode of Are You Being Served? (The Pop Star) which allowed former 1960s pop star Mike Berry (Mr. Spooner) to showcase his talents as the singing junior salesman is discovered after a performance in the London Department Stores' annual concert (where various cast members perform acts of GBH to some pop/show tune standards) Sadly (or should that be thankfully) it is no longer on youtube.
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Post by smokeyb on Mar 16, 2012 22:22:16 GMT 1
Having lived through the 70's I remember watching most TOTP back then, as there was little alternative on TV. It was fine listening to the radio, but you wanted to see the faces behind the music (mind you you wished you hadn't with most artists). Although 1977 was a poor year musically, at the time you didn't think it was that bad. With the knowledge of hindsight you can put 1974-1977 into a bad period for music, but things were about to improve and to me 1978 - 1983 were some of the best years musically in the last 40 years.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Mar 16, 2012 22:58:52 GMT 1
I take it you were not scarred by the 69th and final episode of Are You Being Served? (The Pop Star) which allowed former 1960s pop star Mike Berry (Mr. Spooner) to showcase his talents as the singing junior salesman is discovered after a performance in the London Department Stores' annual concert (where various cast members perform acts of GBH to some pop/show tune standards) And indeed Berry was a 1970s pop star as well, his MORonic "Sunshine Of Your Smile" giving him 17 years between successive top tens. Berry's backing vocalists on his fictional chart run both had chart hits, of course; Wendy Richard with a chart-topper, John Inman less so.
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Post by Earl Purple on Mar 20, 2012 12:53:24 GMT 1
I don't see any issues with a TV show where one of the characters, as part of the script, gets up and sings rather badly, as long as they don't endure members of the public with it by releasing it as a single (especially since such songs have a habit of getting to number one, and I have a different Berry in mind, as well as Messrs Green and Flynn)
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Mar 20, 2012 19:44:06 GMT 1
In the AYBS? episode Berry didn't sing badly - the shtick was *SPOILER ALERT* he had intermittent laryngitis, so they got backing tapes ready to assist if his voice went, and when it did they played it at the wrong speed. *END SPOILER*
I think by then the shark had not only been jumped, it had been caught, filleted, digested and defecated.
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Post by Earl Purple on Mar 23, 2012 9:37:14 GMT 1
Last night's edition, from 17th March 1977 was for me the most memorable ever as at the time I recorded it and played it back (on audio tape) again and again.
It was good to finally identify "Rock N Roll Star" by Barclay James Harvest. I never knew what that was at the time. It peaked at #49. Tony Blackburn does say "Barclay James Harvest" on the intro to it but I didn't remember and that song had remained a bit of a mystery to me until this week.
We had a sequence before that with Abba to Cliff Richard to Elvis Presley, Cliff Richard doing "My Kinda Life", a somewhat under-rated song of his in my opinion. This was his good era, only one year after Devil Woman, and it's a pretty good track. Elvis Presley's "Moody Blue" just 5 months before his death. Had he died a bit sooner this and not "Way Down" would have been the #1 but it still reached #6 purely on merit whereas "Way Down" was stuck at #42 at the time of his death and probably wouldn't have been a major hit.
Towards the end of the show Billy Ocean was on wearing a purple suit singing "Red Light Spells Danger".
There were talent shows back then too, and Berni Flint who had recently won a lot of consecutive episodes of Opportunity Knocks was on doing his self-penned song "I Don't Want To Put A Hold On You". Showaddywaddy had also won a talent show, "New Faces" a few years earlier and were on doing their cover version of "When". Yes a cover (The Kalin Twins were one-hit wonders with the original), but they played the instruments on it and did have a lot of charisma.
Other songs featured were Suzi Quatro opening the show yet again with "Tear Me Apart", Maxine Nightingale doing her second hit "Love Hit Me" and of course the number one "Chanson D'Amour" performed by Manhattan Transfer. "Sunny" by Boney M was the closing sequence song, actually the highest peaking version of that song in the UK which was a hit for Bobby Hebb in the 1960s as well as having been recorded by many other artists. Chanson D'Amour was a cover too, of course, Art & Dotty Todd recording the original in the 1950s.
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Post by suedehead on Mar 23, 2012 16:23:13 GMT 1
Bearing in mind that Julie Covington was still in the chart covered by last night's repeat, is it worth mentioning that there is no truth in the rumours that her fellow Rock Follies star Rula Lenska will be doing a cover of Love Hit Me?
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