BBCFour repeat here
Chart here.
Liquid Gold - Dance Yourself Dizzy
Charts: Dexy's and Selecter just manage to creep into the Top 30 after last week's performances, although it's giant leaps for The Pretenders and Madness after theirs. Blondie are back big time, as is, surprisingly, Mr David Essex. Messrs. Doctor Hook and UB40 both make Top 5 and there's a new No. 1 ...
Undertones - My Perfect Cousin
Surprisingly (The) Undertones had only made the Top 30 once in the one and a half years since their debut, the seminal Teenage Kicks, being perhaps too strongly linked to their champion John Peel to be accepted into the mainstream. Five singles later however and here is what would become their biggest hit, and quite rightly so. Notable for its witty lyric which name-checks Sheffield synths-only band The Human League, cleverly rhyming 'advise her' with 'synthesiser'. As a homage, the NME ran the feature "The Human League's Guide to Synthesisers" later in the year. Fact.
David Essex - Silver Dream Machine
Wow! He's back! Looking at David's wiki page, he seems to go back further than we'd like to think. He did of course reach his peak around 1973-75, when he was endowed the enviable mélange of 'dishy' looks (or so my sister used to tell me) and some damn fine songs to make into hit singles. Later in the seventies he'd had to rely on the Evita musical to get another top-5 single (namely with Oh What A Circus in 1978) but since then ..naffink. This one put him back on, er, track for a few weeks though and was taken from/made for the feature film Silver Dream Racer, starring Essex himself. Apparently it was a complete flop although the single would do better.
Dr. Hook - Sexy Eyes (Legs & Co.)
Uh-oh, it's getting complicated again. The girls form a circle and so a kind of folk dance round thing, although "special effects" has to quadruple up the screen for some reason, they we get a close up of each dancer in turn, each doing more or less the same things over and over, with the occasional flash of knicker, and then we get some silk scarf slow motion pseudo-ballet dancing too. Hmmm. Last week's thing is going to be very hard to beat.
Saxon - Wheels of Steel
..and following on from David Essex and his motor-cycling saga, here's Barnsley band Saxon, originally named 'Son of a Bitch', fact fans with their new offering. While the rest of the country was getting excited and hot under the collar about punk rock, new wave and all that, these lads were waving the 'heavy metal' flag and indeed continued to do so through much the eighties, bless 'em. Rousing stuff.
Sky - Toccata
It's about time we had a novelty instrumental band/single back in the charts after The Shadows let us down a bit earlier in the year. Emerging from the classical-cum-progressive scene in the early seventies, this mixed Ossie-UK outfit (guitarist John Williams their most famous member) had enjoyed a big success with their debut eponymous album in '79 and were now ready to for the Pops with this adaptation of Bach's "Toccata and fugue in D minor", as a preview of their second album, adventurously named Sky2. Great stuff.
Judas Priest - Living After Midnight
More rock/heavy metal à la Saxon, and those tight trousers are now up to no.12
Siouxsie & the Banshees - Happy House
Another slow mover and another repeat although we're obviously a bit short of material this week to be able to show anything better and more exciting. Except for David Essex.
Sad Café - My Oh My
Somebody obviously thought this one needed a push too. Strangely it went up one place the week after this but then up seven more places the week after, which probably means we'll be seeing them again. Groan.
Bodysnatchers - Do Rocksteady
It's the ska band slot and the all-female Bodysnatchers are slowing climbing up so it's their turn. They won't get any higher though, not with this or anything else. Ever.
The Buggles - Clean Clean
Well after a run of four slow movers, it's about time for something new! With scary intro (see above)! The Buggles hardly seem to have been away two minutes but they're back with another single, lifted from their Age of Plastic album. Hardly sound of the eighties material this one though. Since Video Killed, chart performances are getting progressively worse and this, I fear, is the last we'll ever see of them on the Pops.
Detroit Spinners - Working My Way Back To You
..and they've worked their way up to the no. 1 spot, knocking The Jam down two places. A good song but hardly no. 1 material, one thinks. Not really what the kids want.
Secret Affair - My World
Quite frankly I'd have expected Blondie and their new smash Call Me to me to have been played here, Secret Affair having climbed just one place after last week. But no matter.
See you next week!
No comments:
Post a Comment