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TOP OF THE POPS Monday 25/12/84, BBC1 reviewed by Cameron Borland |
February 2004
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| At the risk of upsetting that awfully nice chap who writes the fabulously dull Botswanan detective novels, there's not half been a lot of gash written about the 1980s. Apparently it was the decade that taste, fashion and time itself forgot - or so the carpers, the critics and the detractors in our midst would have us believe. Well yah boo sucks to the doomsayers and scaremongers, I say. Man alive, I loved every single minute and second of them and wouldn't trade my memories for a lifetime of golden tomorrows if offered. No, not even the orchidectomy - go on, Google that and try not to cross your legs boys after reading what it means. After all, if I didn't have that then I wouldn't have had the opportunity to go for a J Arthur in a maternity hospital. And, good people, believe me, it's incredibly difficult to knock one off with six floors of pregnant women below you. No, I cherish the 1980s - time does indeed play funny tricks with your memory - even the radiotherapy doesn't seem half as hellish now. Whether it was waffle trousers, the smell of Boots Country Born Gel or my constant inability to get past Eugene's Lair on Manic Miner, there is not one single strand of the '80s that does not stand up to the sternest scrutiny by the retro-police. But if I were to be forced to make a case for the greatest decade of the last millennium on one subject alone, then undoubtedly it would have to be the music. I may still be drawn to the last, precious few, glorious, still-performing acts of that age like a moth to a midnight flame but the sounds still carry me away to the youth I had and still have. Whether it's Wylie kicking up a storm in King Tut's and proving himself to be, truly, one of England's greatest neglected talents or Martin Fry, at the same venue, holding an audience of entranced, salivating women in the palm of his hand as his voice peeled away the years and revealed itself to be the voice of an angel, it's still the sounds that reel me in and keep me hooked. As I ploughed my lonely furrow through a box of musty, oft-forgotten video tapes, I was in raptures as an unending cascade of greatness filled my television screen. On they trotted one after another - Dame David Bowie introducing the world premiere of the Band Aid video, the Icicle Works at the height of their considerable live powers on The Tube, Smiley Culture, Big Country (God rest, Stuart), Paul Young (great voice, appalling suits), a rather chunky Madonna on TOTP complete with pink wig dreadfully miming to Like A Virgin - this was manna from heaven. The degree of musical consistency was comfortingly familiar for me and, suddenly, I felt a quite sadness for the manner in which Top of the Pops has so alarmingly declined. Perhaps my affection for TOTP was at its acme around Christmas 1984 but the editions that I had taped around November/December of that year seem so much more professional and visually enjoyable than their modern day counterpart. To underline this and, in fact, to prove it beyond all reasonable doubt the glorious sight of the Christmas '84 edition sailed serenely into view. This was, for me, the best Christmas TOTP ever, the one where the acts introduced each other. I'll bet that pissed Dixie Peach right off. I'm sure there was a reason for the no DJ policy but, thankfully, I don't remember it nor care to. Kicking off we had Frankie belting out Two Tribes with much gusto. Holly Johnston clearly had had a medicinal sherry or two prior to taking the stage as he had trouble working out which camera was on him. But the beauty of this performance lay in marveling at the indisputable fact that Paul Rutherford was the only man to wear a moustache in the 1980s and, ironically, not look like a second-rate Freddie wannabe. As Holly linked to Howard Jones, I sighed deeply and fondly recalled that the first thing I ever taped on our rented Granada recorder was Howard debuting on Swap Shop with New Song. Today, however he was without the manic, be-chained Jez but with his oddly angular bass-playing brother as he sung What Is Love? live - complete with Happy New Year improv. Most impressive. As was the next act - Duran Duran at the very apex of their lovable, impish, buffoonish self-indulgent best before they crossed the line into the land of wank where they would, sadly, remain for a considerable period of time. The Reflex is a bloody great pop song (c'mon - remember the ground-breaking video?) and one that has aged remarkably well. As a pin-up boy for the Huguenot massive, Le Bon imperiously strutted his stuff as Messrs Taylor (John and Andy) clearly scanned the bouncing crowd for groupie material. Nick Rhodes looked, or tried to look, as enigmatic as a man can with such scandalously sharp cheekbones and the drummer looked out of his depth - a typical Duran performance in other words. Kershaw of the parish was up next with the damned catchy I Won't Let the Sun Go Down On Me - thankfully without the snood and matching fingerless gloves. How could it be that a man who gave such classics as this and Wouldn't it be Good could end up writing utter pap for the cursed trio of Scouse soap dodgers, Atomic Kitten? Ah, the god of pop can be a vengeful and spiteful bastard at times. Ask Boy George. Jesus may love them, but how bad is the War Song? Such noble sentiments married to such awful words and music. Why can I sing it word for word? Still, at least I had the marvel of George's make-up to take my mind from the dire dirge they were playing. From the ridiculous to the sublime majesty of Doctor! Doctor! by the Thompson Twins. Now I have to front up here, I once won a poetry competition in a Haight-Ashbury coffee house by reciting the words of the Twins' Into The Gap album. What makes this confession even sadder is that I did it from memory. As the great Mason Boyne once said, you've just go to jumble the words up a bit. Oh, how the assembled verse freaks, literati and potheads lapped it up, the words of Hold Me Now in a deep, Scottish burr. Still, the finest afternoon I ever did spend in San Francisco was on the Marin Headlands looking down onto the city below, spread like a canvas behind the Golden Gate bridge as the High Plains Drifter Mix of You Take Me Up played on a looped tape that balmy day. As the Samuel Adams flowed and the, ahem, delicately flavoured cigarettes altered my perception of reality, I knew then - just like Cope did as he tripped on TOTP and knew that to be in Bucks Fizz was the very apogee of coolness - this was the finest slice of paperweight pop ever created and that this moment in my life was utterly and incandescently perfect. So, kudos to the Twins. But not to Jim Diamond. Sorry to OTT's own nephew-of, Chris, but the whole aye-aye-aye-aye chorus coupled with the proto Miami Vice rolled up suit sleeves still leaves me cold. The laddie can sing (as evinced by the excellent Little Suzie's On The Up) and I'm sure my condescension to this track is more than outweighed by Jim's royalty checks. Another chap whose royalties can soothe away all criticism heaped upon his fabulously waxed shoulders is George Michael. Now, one question that must be asked firmly fixed itself in my mind as the Wham! video of Wake Me Up Before You Go Go inveigled its shimmering, subterranean way into my subconscious and it was this; are you seriously trying to tell me that people still thought George was straight as late as 1984? Camper than the clichéd row of pink tents, George minced his way through this slice of summery silkiness whilst Andrew hovered as only the Son of Fred can. But at least one mystery was revealed during this video - we now know where Nik's fluorescent fingerless gloves went! Following up was one of the great cover versions of the early '80s - Paul Young's Love Of The Common People - a wonderfully atmospheric version delivered with a beautiful sense of passion and a profound sense of earnest, eternal hope and his pitch here is the quintessential TOTP performance. The great joy of this particular edition is that most acts performed two songs - indeed, Frankie performed three tracks culminating in Mike Read's old favourite, Relax which remains a classic moment in pop history that still sounds so assiduously sharp. By allowing the majority of the acts two tracks, this gave the show a certain depth and also allows the viewer to evaluate the relative merits of popular music then and now. In 1984, there was a rich diversity in terms of the top pop bands. The Duranies, the Spands, the Twins, Culture Club, Frankie and Tears For Fears were the masters of the pop universe then and their collective cannon is infinitely superior to the chart-topping trendy monsters of the minute. They had a distinct individuality about them that is rendered more noticeable by the blandness and inter-changeability of today's heroes and heroines. I mean, Westlife and Girls Aloud can have all the fashion stylists that they can afford but not one of them can wear a silk suit like Tony Hadley. TOTP 1984 climaxed gloriously, obviously and rightly, with Do They Know It's Christmas? with an assembled mob of talent on stage. It is easily forgotten in the maelstrom of Sir Bob's and plain old Midge Ure's masterwork that Midge had to put together the track, literally, overnight. The frantic, slapdash reality is neatly underscored here by a number of factors evident in this performance; Sting caught reading the lyrics from a hand-held sheet of paper, Simon Le Bon counting in way too early and starting the chorus in entirely the wrong place and Paul Weller miming the wrong line are the highlights of this piece. And we forgive them unerringly as Band Aid remains such - sorry to go all Michael Winner here - a truly historic moment in our personal and collective histories. I have a myriad of memories spawned by this one single and all of them good. From the bucket loads of money collected in Sylvester's that December evening to running the world in '85, I feel proud to have been a part of a generation that actually did something, part of a group of people who gave not just money but time, sweat and precious hope. So, as the always ethereal voice of Paul Young chimed in with the opening line, I sat transfixed at the screen as the song played. The background was chock full of the great and the good who popped in to fill up the stage. The usual suspects in their number included Marilyn, Jody Whatley, Heaven 17, Bananarama, Slade, Rossi & Parfitt, Bronski Beat - Christ on a bike, even Black Lace were there! Those who weren't on the record such as Frankie and the Thompson Twins gamely joined in a rousing, if somewhat error-strewn, rendition of the greatest Christmas Number One. Marilyn cheekily blew a kiss to the camera, Holly and Paul waltzed decorously as Bob, god bless him, wiped away a tear from his eye -a sight we would become, wonderfully, all too familiar with. This was, quite simply, a beautiful way to end the show. And that was Top of the Pops Christmas 1984. As a television programme and a slice of the past, it remains a wonderful musical, fashion and visual document that deserves to be treasured and handed down from generation to generation. It should be spoken of in tones of awe and wonderment as no other Christmas edition has come close to matching it since. The tracks played included some of the finest pop songs ever written. The clothes worn were damned hot and the hairstyles displayed were, well, beyond words. And parody, if truth be told. Not that I am without blame here. I'll draw a line there, dear reader, at my youthful, damson coloured, back-combed madness and leave by paraphrasing Simon Le Bon here; uncovering the tape containing this show was, undoubtedly, like finding a treasure in the dark - I'll try not to lose it. |
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