Show Notes
The latest episode of the podcast which asks; has Rock Expert David Stubbs come from The Sky?
After all the lovely Pop trifle we’ve had in recent episodes, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, it’s time for some necessary roughage, as we take a tentative walk down Nineteen Eighty Six Street once more. And yes, it’s stillone of the most rammel years for 20th Century Pop, but somehow we managed to find one which doesn’t have the whiff of the dog's arse about it.
It’s only four months into ’86, but our Favourite Thursday Evening Pop Treat is having another of its regular crises, this time brought on by the after effects of Michael Grade taking over at BBC1 and pissing about with the scheduling, meaning that ten whole minutes have been lopped off, and the results are not pretty; everything has been crammed in like a Japanese tube train at knocking-off time, videos have been cut off at the knees, there’s a neon set better suited for a Miss Wet T-Shirt competition in Romeo & Juliet’s Doncaster and the chart rundown – the whole point of the show, mark you – has been utterly defiled.
Musicwise, it’s better than it has any right to be. Gary Davies – a man bursting with so much sexual potency in 1986 that the sex workers of Amsterdam are pitching themselves through windows to get at him – has been given the chance to run the show solo for the first time in years, but we don’t see that much of him, because there's no time. Big Country pitch up in Success Coats. Michael Hurll practically rips the wig off Falco’s head and wipes his arse with it. A-Ha continue their spell as the premier teeny band and get creative with a bit of masking tape. Suzanne Vega gets judged by a poster of a German sex-colossus. And then, oh God, it’s the longest examination of a single EVER on Chart Music. Janet Jackson stares her ponce of a boyfriend out. It’s Immaterial look absolutely knackered and wonder why their label didn’t make a video. George Michael drops the weirdest Number One of the decade, and Whitney Houston spoils everything with a huge dollop of mawk.
Sarah Bee and Neil Kulkarni join Al Needham to gingerly pick through the wreckage of 1986, veering off on such tangents as Nick Ross’ Drug Buffet, Neil’s Gin and Vomit Shame, being mistaken for Pete Docherty’s stalker, the best way to tell an interview subject that their new album stinks of unwashed cock, how the Ukraine War would have shagged up TOTP if it was still going, an appreciation of Euro-Ponces, how the BBC thought Bob Monkhouse, Barry Cryer and Nigel Havers could stop youths on dingy estates from taking heroin, and a huge Birmingham Piss Troll update. You know the swearing is going to be intense on this one…
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More from Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast
The latest episode of the podcast which asks; Emu versus Bernie Clifton’s ostrich – who wins in a fight?
Simon Price, David Stubbs and Al Needham finish off a classic episode of TOTP by strutting through New York with a paint pot in hand, being delighted to learn that Sweep is a Punk Rocker now, contemplating the Agnetharse, and being repulsed at the thought of Rod Stewart doing it with a head on legs. BRING YOUR MOTHER TOO, POP-CRAZED YOUNGSTERS!
David Stubbs, Simon Price and Al Needham plunge the critical fist even deeper into this episode of TOTP, and the big names keep coming. Darts begin their biggest year by not doing The Wank! Legs & Co are finally granted full ramp access to one of the greatest tunes ever! Billy Joel gets a sweat on! The Sweet are back! And Elkie Brooks And All Her Looks show poor Kate how to ignore the snot-nosed urchins and put a single over to the nation!
Simon Price, David Stubbs and Al Needham begin their odyssey through this episode of The Pops, and what a opening! We get a blast of a tune none of us have heard before, followed by Tom Robinson not being allowed to self-admit his Gayness upon the nation, and then we get the British television debut of Kate Bush, trying to beguile the surly youth of Albion as the TOTP Orchestra demonstrate they’re more than a red-hot Reggae band...
The return of the podcast that gets it’s hand right down the back of the settee of an episode of Top Of The Pops. Al Needham has a theory that, like World Cups, the TOTPs nearest to your tenth birthday are the sweetest, which is an excuse for him, David Stubbs and Simon Price to burrow into early ‘78. But before that, a leaf through that week’s NME, a look at what else was on telly, Any Other Business, and an argument about Emu…