{"id":1224,"date":"2015-06-16T11:49:36","date_gmt":"2015-06-16T10:49:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eyeplug.net\/magazine\/?p=1224"},"modified":"2011-03-01T13:40:13","modified_gmt":"2011-03-01T13:40:13","slug":"top-of-the-pops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/top-of-the-pops\/","title":{"rendered":"Top Of The Pops"},"content":{"rendered":"

Top Of The Pops: Mock Rock Going Cheap<\/strong><\/p>\n

I can still picture the tableau vivant<\/em>; it\u2019s around forty years ago, I\u2019m in Woolworths trying to decide which particular slice of pounding glam rock I\u2019m going to spend my ten bob on, when I spot an album, that not only features a bunch of tracks I like but is (just) within my meagre pre-teen budget. I seize the disc, there\u2019s a chick in a yellow leotard on the cover, but that\u2019s not going to do much for me for a couple of years yet. If I buy this, I can get \u2018Hell Raiser\u2019, \u2018Walk On The Wild Side\u2019 and \u2018Can The Can\u2019, plus a bunch of other stuff. I look at the back of the album and a dim bulb comes on somewhere in my young brain. Why is this so cheap? There has to be something fishy. A line of blurb about \u2018Britain\u2019s best session musicians playing the best current tunes\u2019 connects with my uncertainty. I have no idea what a \u2018session musician\u2019 is, but they make it sound like a good thing. It\u2019s probably the recordings from the Thursday night TV show or something. So I make the leap.<\/p>\n

Once I\u2019ve given the album a spin, it occurs to me that some of these songs sound a bit different to how they did on the radio. Still, \u2018Hell Raiser\u2019 rocked and whatever the hell \u2018Also Sprach Zarasthustra\u2019 is supposed to be, it\u2019s bloody funny. It\u2019s my first album, and it would soon be joined by others of its kind, plus such esoteric titles as Hot Hits.<\/em> All adorned by \u2013 for some reason<\/em> \u2013 girls on the cover. Why don\u2019t they have pictures of the bands like those K-Tel albums?<\/p>\n

Of course, I soon wised up to the fact that these were, well … knock offs. That was why the K-Tel\/Ronco albums cost more \u2013 they had the actual bands and for some reason that\u2019s why they\u2019re more expensive. I became more discerning, graduating to buying whole albums by the same band within a matter of months. Thus, the four or five Top of the Pops<\/em> albums began to gather dust, nestling at the back of my growing collection until they were conscripted into service as ad hoc<\/em> clay pigeons when someone obtained an air rifle around the middle of the decade.<\/p>\n

Of course, I wasn\u2019t the only one buying these albums \u2013 at the peak of their popularity they sold more than 250,000 copies per edition. Produced by Pickwick, who held weekly meetings to decide which rising singles were to be covered for the next album, the tracks were often recorded and mixed in under a week. Such alacrity meant that there wasn\u2019t always time to perfect every nuance of the material covered, \u2018There were varying degrees of success,\u2019 explained former Pickwick producer Bruce Baxter. \u2018Some were very close to the original \u2013 virtually indistinguishable, but some left a bit to be desired. We never had an awfully good Mick Jagger, though a few people had a go.\u2019<\/p>\n

Looking back, the Top of the Pops<\/em> albums were wholly consistent with the disposable nature of a lot of the glam rock and bubblegum pop that populated their grooves. Once punk kicked in the whole concept started to look decidedly creaky. Session man Tony Rivers was a Top of the Pops <\/em>regular, but by 1977 he found himself faced with the task of reproducing Johnny Rotten\u2019s seditionary sneer for Volume 60 of the series. \u2018I was sitting at the control desk, and suddenly I heard a voice,\u2019 he recalls. \u2018It was Paul McCartney. He said, \u201cIt sounds great \u2013 can I have a listen?\u201d He came back in with Chris Thomas, who produced the Sex Pistols. He was in stitches \u2013 I did it like Norman Wisdom.\u2019<\/p>\n

A further surreal attempt at recreating the Lydon tones on Volume 74, saw \u2018Death Disco\u2019 sung very much in the manner of Albert Steptoe, and marvellously ludicrous versions of tracks such as \u2018Wuthering Heights\u2019, \u2018Going Underground\u2019, and \u2018Say Hello, Wave Goodbye\u2019 eroded what tiny crumb of marketability the series maintained, and aside from a half-hearted mid-eighties resurrection that featured Page 3 model Linda Lusardi on the cover, the whole series was consigned to a bygone age of innocence by the end of 1982.<\/p>\n

Which is a shame, as like Aztec Bars, Cresta and Smith\u2019s Savoury Pickle crisps, the early 70s Top of the Pops <\/em>albums and their ilk were a slice of my childhood. Fortunately, in the digital age, nothing remains \u2018lost\u2019 for long and there are compilations out there available for anyone interested in sampling the Warholian delights of these reproduction hits.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I can still picture the tableau vivant; it\u2019s around forty years ago, I\u2019m in Woolworths trying to decide which particular slice of pounding glam rock I\u2019m going to spend my ten bob on,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1248,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,70,98,119],"tags":[151,121,154,153],"series":[],"class_list":["post-1224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-design","category-kitsch","category-nostalgia","tag-dick-porter","tag-eyeplug","tag-lp-sleeves","tag-top-of-the-pops"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1224"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eyeplug.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=1224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}