Reviewing Every(-ish) TOTP Episode Ever #3 - 18th December 1980
Chart #1: (Just Like) Starting Over - John Lennon
Welcome to Reviewing Every(-ish) Top of the Pops Episode Ever. As the title states, I will be analysing and critiquing as many assemblages of chart occupiers from across TOTP’s broadcast range. To follow the series, and more of my writing, subscribe below.
Set your clocks back to 1980, it’s time to watch Top of the Pops again. I’ve decided to stop uploading the video of the wheel spin and simply press on with the episode at hand, and also embed the tracks as they’re reviewed. Don’t say I don’t look after you by enhancing your reading and music listening experience, you lucky pigs.
Without further ado (and with an imaginary spin of my episode wheel…)
18th December 1980
Featuring: The Beat, The Specials, Gary Numan, Chas and Dave, The Nolans, Jona Lewie, John Lennon
Okay. Now we’re talking. There is pure delight in store. A couple of unknowns too. Could we have an all-timer here?
0:00 - The Beat - Too Nice To Talk To
3:22 - The Specials - Do Nothing
7:30 - Gary Numan - Wreckage
12:48 - Chas & Dave - Rabbit
15:42 - The Nolans - Who’s Gonna Rock You
20:37 - Jona Lewie - Stop The Cavalry
23:36 - John Lennon - (Just Like) Starting Over
0:00 | The Beat - Too Nice To Talk To (Studio) - #31
No where near The Beat’s best song, but it’s still so good. I’m really glad they got to perform on a big stage; every musician has space to bounce around and have their little on-camera moment. Lovely start.
3:22 | The Specials - Do Nothing (Studio) - #34
Yes. The singles from More Specials and beyond are my favourite Specials songs going. The disillusionment of the album’s content is best characterised by this, an absolute stunner of a song.
It’s so lyrically bleak, but still maintaining a reluctant urgency that eventually gave up with ‘Friday Night, Saturday Morning’ a year later. In opposition to the song’s mood, the band look like they’re having a great time on the TOTP stage, and check out Jerry Dammer’s toothless smile at 5:39! A boy can only dream of such televisual presence.
7:30 | Gary Numan - This Wreckage
I am an arch-defender of Gary Numan. I was utterly, utterly obsessed with Replicas as a 15 year-old. Its follow-up Telekon has largely passed me by. Persuade me to invest in its promotional releases, Gary!
‘This Wreckage’ is fine. I think the worst thing you can say about this track is that it is quite harmless. I experimented with the YouTube playback speed and have concluded that this would have easily reached #1 if it was at 1.25x speed. Why didn’t Gary and his Tubeway Army not think to do this!?
Take nothing away from Gary’s look, though. He remains a beautiful, weird-face-pulling space alien with good effect.
12:48 | Chas & Dave - Rabbit (Studio) #18
COME ON NOW!
I swear you’ll never see anything like this again. So watch it. Drink it in. This is one of the best songs ever, and look at how hard TOTP set-folk have worked to make the spectacle as chaotic as possible. And the flashing across the screen during the repeated refrain of ‘Rabbit’ in the chorus? Simply incredible editing.
I love how out of place their drummer looks too. He looks a bit lost amongst the various rabbit heads and what I imagine is a camera-surrounded performance area. Put him back in a dimly-lit East London jazz pub where he belongs!
A real treat all-round.
15:42 | The Nolans - Who’s Gonna Rock You (Studio) #39
Hmm. I feel like this is mass-produced churn sort of stuff, but that riff and synth sound is so ahead of its time. It lives in 1985. I’m impressed.
Am I nodding my head? It appears so.
The fascinating thing about this song (and maybe even The Nolans, if I knew more of their discography) is that their dynamic is so 1970s choreographed girl-group, be it because of their pastel colours or the gently arranged dancing. But the music is funky, with a clear vision of what dancy pop music would look like a few years later.
This track would later rise to #14 in the charts, and d’ya know what? I’m glad. My most emphatic salutes to whoever produced this time travelling beat.
A cursory look at their discography shows they released ‘I’m In The Mood For Dancing’, and now I feel a bit silly for not knowing who they were…
(annoyingly, this version doesn’t use the synth - I recommend the TOTP version for optimum listening!)
20:47 | Jona Lewie - Stop The Cavalry (Studio) #3
Much like ‘More More More’ and ‘Let Your Love Flow’ from previous editions, this song is one I’ve only ever involuntarily heard through TV or film and only had a hook to go off it. In this case, the hook is one of the most memorable ever, but this is not something I would ever stick on.
It’s an anti-war song, and from what I can gather from some gentle research Jona Lewie did not intend it to be a Christmas song. Someone from his label heard a line that mentioned Christmas and then added in some Christmassy horns to the song. And that was that.
The performance from Jona is a bit restrained, almost… uncomfortable? I don’t know what to make of it. It’s not exactly a song to lose yourself to.
Plus, song has also been utterly ruined for me and I cannot take it seriously as a result of this.
The mockumentary Brian Pern: A Life In Rock had a Christmas special that documented fictional musician Brian Pern’s flirtation with a Christmas number one in both his solo career and his time as frontman of a band called ‘Thotch’.
The episode is one of the greatest bits of TV ever. But hearing ‘Stop The Cavalry’ in full after seeing Brian Pern’s parody version ‘How I Wish I Was At Home With Me Missus’ sullies this experience immensely.
How I didn’t clock that Brian Pern was essentially covering Jona Lewie is beyond me. So, as a treat, please indulge in Brian Pern’s ‘How I Wish I Was At Home With Me Missus’ below.
23:36 | John Lennon - (Just Like) Starting Over (Dance) #1
Good grief. Legs & Co. have been appointed to give a respectful, sombre, and Christmassy dance to mark both John Lennon’s ascent to the top of the charts and his untimely death two weeks earlier. It is an absolute shambles.
I think interspersing the dance with still images of John Lennon is just… I don’t want to say funny. But it sort of is - it’s such an awful viewing experience. Pick still images of John or a dance in solitude, don’t try and work solemnity into a Legs & Co. performance by combining the two.
I’m not a Beatles-head by any means, so the song isn’t really doing anything for me. And watching Legs and Co. do this ill-fitting dance in front of a snowy Christmas tree is really not helping my appreciation of it.
This is a week preceding the battle between John Lennon and St Winnifred’s School Choir for Christmas number one. My theory is that Legs & Co. played a huge part in affecting the sales for Lennon’s single, ultimately providing the foundations for one of the greatest crimes in British musical history. But that’s just me.
A strange ending to proceedings.
Summary
A really enjoyable and diverse episode. There’s something for everyone despite the very short setlist, and it turns out who I thought were unknowns were subconsciously familiar.
Highlights
The Specials and Chas & Dave. You can’t go wrong with these goliaths.
Lowlights
Don’t enlist Legs & Co. to dance to a love song by a Beatle who was shot and killed two weeks prior.
Rating and Ranking
This will go straight to number one and by some distance. I would happily sit at home and watch this episode because inside me there is a sad boomer frantically trying to break free. As if that wasn’t obvious by this series.
18/12/1980 - 9/10
13/05/1976 - 6.5/10
12/03/1987 - 6/10
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Legs and Co, the real assassins of John Lennon