I often watch various episodes of 'Top of the pops' from the late 60s and early 70s that have been uploaded to YouTube as these take me back to when I was a youngster who would religiously watch this programme. It's interesting historically to see the different instruments that were used and to watch the groups as they were then: who have survived and who never made it past their first charting single.
Not expecting very much, I started watching the episode from 29 January 1970; the chart positions were very similar to another episode that I had watched a few days previously, with Edison Lighthouse at number 1 with 'Love grows where my Rosemary goes'. This was a fictional group if ever there was one, fronted by Bristolian Tony Burrows (actually born in Exeter), who was a very much in demand session singer at the time and appeared several times with different 'groups' around this time.
When this was first broadcast, it didn't exactly 'blow my mind' as I had seen the Pig a few times on television, but to get on TOTP was quite a feat and I was probably quite surprised. As I recall, the show had started an 'album spot' featuring artists who otherwise would never have got within a hundred miles of the show. The only other appearance in this short-lived spot that I recall was King Crimson miming 'Cat food'. Now that I think about this, BP and KC weren't part of the 'album spot' but were instead promoting singles that had no chance of reaching the charts (I bought both).
The 'album spot' came a bit later and featured groups playing more than one song. The only appearance that I remember was Fairport who played two songs from 'Angel Delight', including an instrumental. Dave Mattacks wore a tee shirt with the legend 'miming'. If they were promoting AD, then this would have been 1971 after Richard Thompson had left, and so there is no connection between this and the early 1970 appearances of BP and KC.
Continuing the video: Rare Bird appear, promoting their sensitive single, 'Sympathy'. I had always thought that this song was sung by two people, where the first, soft, voice sings the first two verses, then a harsher voice belonging to someone else sings the next verse. But the performance had only the bassist singing, joined by the drummer for the final chorus.
But wait - there are more surprises: Jethro Tull appear, promoting "The witch's promise"! I wonder what went on in the green room between Mick Abrahams and Ian Anderson, considering that Abrahams had left/been forced to leave Jethro Tull slightly over a year previously. I bought this single too, as well as the sheet music, as in those days I didn't have the ability to learn a song by ear. I learnt this skill by playing a record and following the chord changes in the sheet music, learning what was causing what I was hearing. Funnily enough, this episode of TOTP also features "I'm a man" by Chicago (who did not appear); this is another song whose sheet music I bought.
| Title | Tags | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 851 | Florence log 4 - ICSE 2015 | DBA, Holiday, Florence, Italy | |
| 1134 | A long term mystery solved | Computer | |
| 1218 | Batsi (Greece 2) | Holiday, Andros, Greece | |
| 1219 | Chora (Greece 3) | Holiday, Andros, Greece | |
| 1618 | Headphones sorted! | Headphones | |
| 1762 | 75 years (2) | Kibbutz |
No comments:
Post a Comment