Top 10 Top Of The Pops Disasters
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- Опубліковано 23 гру 2021
- Not everything about this show was a song and dance! For this list, WatchMojo UK counts down the most awkward and infamous disasters on the British popular music show, "Top of the Pops". Featuring the likes of Nirvana, Oasis, New Order, Dexy's Midnight Runners, Travis, and more!
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Top 10 WTF Top Of The Pops Performances
ua-cam.com/video/SRCf0mS6GWo/v-deo.html
Absolute missing the point with the protest performances, crap desperate content mojo.
1. Jimmy Saville
Yes, he DEFINITELY hasn't aged well!
2. Jimmy Saville
3. Jimmy Saville
.....
Now then now then!
The band was... Showaddeh, waddeh
14. Jimmy Saville
The Nirvana one was definitely not a disaster! I can remember being a teenager in the UK at the time, and we all loved them for what they did; taking the absolute piss and just being defiant. That was part of the whole grunge shtick. It added to how much we loved them
Same with Oasis, except for the grunge part. It wasn't their only time doing it either.
I was going to say it wasnt a disaster... it was genuine Genius
@@abenaadu-offeh2355 Yeah but it was a disaster for the BBC, which is a caveat they state at the start of the video.
They were a pop band so they should of played the game they signed up for. Not appearing would have been better but they wanted to shift 'product' sooooooo.... Don't buy into the hype.
@@jeperstone "They were a pop band.."
Troll, troll, troll, troll, troll......
Top 10 Top of the Pops Disasters
1. Jimmy Savile
2. Jimmy Savile
3. Jimmy Savile
4. Gary Glitter
5. Gary Glitter
6. Gary Glitter
7. Rolf Harris
8. Rolf Harris
9. Rolf Harris
10. Dave Lee Travis
You got here 23 hours before I was going to say this.
And Mike Smith and Adrian Rose though not for the same reasons :-)
You forgot Ian Watkins
@@gordonjamescowiest I don’t think Lostprophets performed on Top of the Pops though.
@Myammi Rose Yes, BBC
Oasis swapping over, absolutely brilliant.
Nirvana was funny AF too.
In the time when musicians actually had opinions snd personalities.
Hugh and JJ from the Stranglers swapped places on TOTPs long before Oasis did that...
It's easy to have opinions when you have 20 million dollars in the bank.
Frankie Goes to Hollywood also did that 10 years before
So did Squeeze.
Oasis just copied the Stranglers.
If you think *these* were TOTP disasters, just wait until you hear about the bloke who used to present it...
My favourite moment was when Chris Eubank (a man with a lisp) was invited to present and was given the line “a special song for a special singer, it’s Suggs singing Cecilia”.
Lol 😆
And in the chart run down he had to say "and in at six, it's Suggs with Cecilia"
@@dafyddwilliams5223 😂
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂the way I’m laughing at this so much!
Yes but he did it !
Holding the record for most complaints is the ultimate punk rock achievement. SO glad you included Manic Street Preachers on the list!!!
Even though he called him James Bradford lol
How stupid about the colour green...
RIP Kirsty still missed.
I love watching old French and Saunders episodes with her. Fun times.
She remains, a gem.
Killed making sure her kids survived.
A real gem with the voice of an angel.
So glad to see the Manics on here, especially with Richey but the singer is James Dean Bradfield, not Bradford.
Failure of basic research by WatchMojoUK - not surprising
Lennon was definitely NOT singing live in that performance.
Kevin Rowland was behind the 'Jocky Wilson' pic. He wanted it done 'for a laugh'.
Shane McGowan was always drunk, or smacked out his skull.
Nirvana's performance was legendary. Showing their contempt for the show in fantastic style.
Shane was at his best when he was like that
Right? That is totally Lennon’s track playing over the band. I’ve heard the song a million times, I’d recognize it anywhere.
They held it in such contempt that they appeared on it anyway and accepted their fee.
@@zakmartin Yup, and performed live, as opposed to being forced to mime.
@@scottw.3258 You mean they made a token gesture of rebelliousness, but they still went on the show and got paid for their appearance.
The best line ever about the Dexty's performance was on Never Mind The Buzzcocks where Phil Jupitus said 'lucky they weren't singing Come On Eileen'
😂 excellent.
All About Eve to their credit came back the following week and absolutely nailed it with the live version. Julianne Regan has a beautiful voice.
He JUST said that
To be fair tho, Nirvana hit out of the park with that performance, ridiculous tho it may be to most. But damnit, Kurt Cobain's impression of Morrissey was the icing on the cake! ✌🏾
Morrissey could have made it onto this list himself; when The Smiths performed ‘This Charming Man’ on Top of the Pops in 1983, Morrissey figured that, as he’d be mining, he didn’t need a microphone, so he sang into a bunch of flowers instead!
I had no idea that he was doing an impression of Morrissey until now. I just assumed he was pretending to be on tranquilizers or something. I really enjoyed it.
@@CoffeeConnected Kurt was a fan of the Smiths and other alternative British stuff.
His impression of a junkie was even better.
@@andyrob3259 still achieved more than you ever will 🤷♂️
As several people have already said, Dexy's Midnight Runners have themselves explained the Jocky Wilson situation many times but, of course, "To this day, nobody knows why this happened" and "They've never explained". Who researches this? Anyone?
Lol, I empathise. WhatCulture is exactly the same. I like to call them WhatResearch. I also like to call them lazy muppets. 😾
@@blackpeter70 And it wasn't an ordinary blindfold Yoko Oh No was wearing, it was a feminine hygiene product.
That was what made everyone say WTF.
"No one knows" means "Our thirty second google search didn't give us anything"
@@SLagonia Thirty seconds? I'm not sure they spend that long!
They pretend they don't know what happened to justify its inclusion in a list of gaffs.
Someone's missed the point(s)
Nirvana and Oasis were being typically and subversively obnoxious in protest at being expected to mime.
Shane MacGowan was never anything but plastered.
These aren't disasters.
These are classic moments where alt rock gave the finger to commercialism.
disasters for the show and the bbc, you clearly didn't get the video
Oasis just copied the Stranglers. A protest would have been not turning up.
What Oasis did, the Communards did much better! Imagine the guy with the falsetto and the girl with the basso profundo lip synching each other's lyrics. 🤣
Best of all was that no-one at the BBC noticed. 🤩
Wtf
Boomtown Rats did that, too. Bob Geldof "played" the candelabra on a rendition of Rat Trap and nobody played their instruments. Great protests against miming.
I'll never forget the infamous cacophony that was New Order trying and failing to perform "Blue Monday live. That's PRECISELY why you should mime along to a Pre recorded backing track.
Me too
@Louis Kirkwood Any day of the week!! (even Thursday)
Well, I can tell Nirvana definitely made it clear THEY were not happy with being forced to use a pre-recorded backing track.
Forced? No one made them do the show.
@@glenhenderson3429 try not to think so much.
@@sandydancer187 Clown.
Should've mentioned Faith No More in 1990. Mike refusing the play along and making it a point to show he was lip syncing is both an underrated and iconic moment.
Surely looking back the biggest mistake top of the pops ever made was jimmy saville.
Maybe the number 1 disaster should have been Jimmy Saville being given access to victims for years.
... and everyone at the BBC enabling him by covering it up. TOTP was the soundtrack to my teenage years but I always thought he was creepy.
Such a shame that arguably the greatest Top of the Pops cock up of all time no longer exists in the BBC archives. 30th March 1967, Jimi Hendrix was to perform Purple Haze with a backing track, however the backing track was to Alan Price's Simon Smith and his Amazing Bear, Hendrix stopped and said ''Man he has a great voice''. He then had to do a second take of the song.
I might be wrong, but I think that happened on Ready Steady Go with Cathy mcGowan putting on the records at the side.
@I love music - You're missing a "Dancing" in there!
@@bobinscotland - only if Cathy was a time traveller. Ready Steady Go finished in 1966.
That was not top of the pops, it was a special by the British artist Lulu
@@bobinscotland It happened on a BBC special that starred Lulu
Not into Nirvana but their TOTP performance was not a disaster, it was pure genius!
Same goes for Dexy's
And ironically, he actually sounds pretty good singing down the octave.
They played like this because the song sucks
They did something similar for the mtv music awards performance. Told they had to play a certain song, when the cameras went to them to perform they played the first few bars of their song Rape Me lol then back into what they were supposed to. MTV folk probably had heart attacks! I’ll find a link.
Nirvana on TOTP was not a disaster. It was legendary!
No nirvana was terrible and not good at all..
@@amandabooth7399 still they were legendary.
@@peterho4954 you are right they were legendary but I just didn't care for them I also didn't care much for the 90s music to much but that's just all opinions of others.
@@amandabooth7399 That's fine, but thats just personal music taste. Nirvana was one of those bands that have a very bad show on one night and on another night they can perform the greatest gig ever. Were they perfect? No. Were they good? No, they were great.
They should have let them play live.
As for the New Order performance of Blue Monday, keyboardist Gillian Gilbert had also made a slight error in programming the synths, so that the rhythm was out of sync with the rest of the band playing. :)
The Faith No More performance of "From Out Of Nowhere" is worth a mention where Mike Patton makes it totally obvious he was asked to mime. He doesn't even attempt to sing the lyrics at times and just goofs about with his mouth. 😂
Came here to comment this, you beat me to it.
Yes, I thought of this one too 😊
"For a laugh, we told the producer to put a picture of Jocky Wilson up behind us" - Kevin Rowland 2002
The BBC “Apolitical “ that’s the funniest thing I think I’ve ever heard !!!
Nirvana were absolutely hilarious here. Kurt was so eccentric lol / love him still - and his bandmates lol 😂 love them - glad I saw them in 93 in Montreal ❤️
The drummers now the frontman of the foo fighters, do you really now know their names lol.
Nobody cares
The Manics performance was iconic (also his name is James Bradfield not Bradford)
My favorite is Iron Maiden messing around and swapping instruments over and over during the song
No mystery about Dexys - Kevin Rowland has long since admitted that they requested the picture of Jocky Wilson as the band used to refer to the song as Jocky Wilson Said in rehearsals. They then kept quiet about it for years afterwards and let people think t was a cock up by the TOTP crew. What a wag.
Manics were not a disaster! They were pure genius!
i haven’t even watched the video all the way and this comment made me stop it. that performance was legendary!
bad acoustics is the shittiest excuse i've ever heard for a tv show that is known for featuring music "performances" from popular artists. i mean like c'mon, it's not rocket science to get a sound-engineer to setup a live stage properly, plus if the studio's design is at fault, then the solution is simple, if the show is popular enough, get a new studio or renovate the current one. considering that Top of The Pops has been going since 1964, i'd say it's popular enough to warrant a new studio with better acoustics for live sets. like for Pete's sake, if they can manage to get the likes of Queen, Nirvanna and The Beatles (three of the biggest rock bands of all time) to appear on the show, then it's safe to say they should be able to afford a new studio.
Part of the Blue Monday intro riff is actually a timing/sequencing error and became _better_ as a result.
And glad to see someone made the correct distinction between the original Blue Monday (1983) vs Blue Monday '88 which is a totally different track. They're not the same but people think they are.
When Oasis did Whatever on TOTP they swapped one of the cellists for Bonehead the rhythm guitarist. Slightly more subtle than Roll With It!
Poor Dexys Midnight Runners ! The same thing happened to Spinal Tap with their Stonehenge piece. 🤪
My favourite was when Don Powell of Slade fell and disappeared backwards off the drum riser, but they carried on without him. The look on his face as he was disappearing was very funny 😁
A foodfight on stage. xD Excellent.
Maybe not the best idea ever had, but it looks like everyone's having a ton of fun!
The deal with Nirvana was because they didn't want to hear Kurt's band members. It made Kurt mad, so yeah, it was intentional. I read about that not to long ago.
Happy holidays Watchmojo UK
Kevin Rowlands did an interview on the radio a couple of years ago and said the photo was planned as a joke by the band. When people said how stupid it was the band just kept quiet about it.
I appreciate that there must be little turnaround time between producing these videos so research cannot be 'tooth and comb', but Kevin Rowland (Dexy's) has confirmed it was a prank to display Jocky Wilson's picture. And as a huge fan of old TOTP, I can probably add another 100 disasters to this list ahaha. You're not kidding when you say it was difficult to reproduce decent live vocals.
How can I put this politely: Having built BBC studios and other TV studios as well, its utter tosh about "the studio being poorly designed that it couldn't really support live sound" and New Order's, by their own admission, less-than-great rendition of Blue Monday had nothing to do with the BBC studio. It's a bloody TV studio! TV has sound! That studio was one of the biggest in the UK at the time and could easily support live sound if it wished too. The reason for acts miming is two-fold: One of the audience profile being a general one, not one that tunes into Whistle Test, Later with Jules Holland, The Tube etc musio gig-going . Such an audience want to hear the record, not a live version. There is also the production aspects of staging 10 or so acts live with the logistics of the attendant kit to stage them. John Lennon probably had the clout to insist on singing live and as you say New Order were insistent they wanted to play live to be in keeping with their ethos, but they later admitted that, being Blue Monday still remains a less than easy track to perform live, it was an unwise choice to make. They did a live version of the track for Radio 1 at Maida Vale and that was , shall we say, also a departure from the record everyone knows.
Oasis swapping around was nothing new, The Stranglers did this in 1977 and the BBC didn't spot it then.
Also, remember Jean-Jacques Burnel "singing" what should have been "Boogieee!" but mouthing what distinctly looked like "Bollocks?"
Also during the New Order performance, the the male keyboard player loaded the wrong sound into Emulator II during the percussion break so instead of playing a crashing sound it played the Mellotron sample.
The “Jocky Wilson” bit with Dexys Midnight Runners, it was explained that the band did it for a joke and that it was Kevin Rowland’s (lead vocalist of the band) idea. Edit: Some people ask why they did this. Well, for years people have said that Dexys never had a sense of humor and that they were seen as a serious band only. So before they went on, Kevin went up to someone at Top Of The Pops (I’m assuming someone who worked offscreen) and asked that person to put up a picture of the Scottish darts player, Jocky Wilson, instead of the 60s singer, Jackie Wilson (who is known for a few hits. The only Jackie Wilson song I actually know is “Lonely Teardrops”). The person then replied “But, Kevin. Someone will think we made a mistake!” Rowland then responded with “Only an idiot will think that.” Some people say that Dexys got banned from TOTP because of this joke, but that’s not the case since Dexys went on TOTP five more times. They performed “Let’s Get This Straight From The Start” in December 1982, along with “Come On Eileen” during the Christmas special. Then they went on again in April 1983 with “The Celtic Soul Brothers”, then they went on in December 1986 with “Because Of You” and then one last time in September 2003 with “Manhood”.
And they were fully expecting the people responsible for the set design to realise it was a joke and not go ahead, but they did. But, of course "to this day, nobody knows why this happened"... ;P
@@GreyHulk2156 The reason why they did this was because people kept saying that Dexys never had a sense of humor and that they were always serious, so they decided to do that.
Theres another good Oasis one when they performed Lyla. Liam went for a stroll while the vocal was still being played.
You missed Status Quo falling all over the drum kit and not having any strings on guitars
That should have probably been at number 1.
...and Alan Lancaster replaced by a full-size puppet on strings...
David Bowie was on in early 2000's and during the song started playing their guitars with sandwich rolls🤣🤣
Nirvana's performance was the best top of the pops performance ever
Those of us who have been watching the recent '91 repeats will have noted that some of the live vocals on some of the rave tracks are... I cannot sing a note myself, so will be mindful throwing the stones from my glass house, but, woah.
Speaking of rave/dance, that Orbital song is such a classic! Almost 32 years old and it still sounds as fresh as can be.
Shane McGowan being drunk wasn't a disaster at all. In fact nobody thought anything of it at the time and if anything it added to the performance and the authenticity of the song.
The irony is that people might have thought something was wrong if he was completely sober.
Everyone loves that TOTP performance of Fairytale of New York and it's the version of the song that's been shown more than any other over the years.
No one has ever said it was a disaster up until this video.
I AGREE BECAUSE THIS VIDEO IS SHITE. SHANE WAS COOL AS FUCK
Shane's never anything else 🤮
The biggest disaster is actually having the pogues on in the first place. Shite.
I hate that ruddy song. One of the worst Christmas songs in my opinion.
@@borleyboo5613 Absolutely right. Cannot stand it.
My favorite top of the pops episodes were live performances of Abba who usually lip-synched on television but from 74 to 76 performed completely live most of the time
What? They only appeared on film or video.
@@joeking5310 No, from 1974 to '76 Abba made live TOTP appearances and of course sang live.
@@paulsheridan543 seems like sources are needed here, otherwise it's just yes they did, no they didn't (which I guess is also fun)
Amazing how a 30 minute music show was on tv each week. You'd be hard pushed to make one episode each year these days.
Except, y’know…That blatantly isn’t true?!
Soap operas air several times a week, reality shows run daily, shows like The One Show run every weeknight…
You literally have no clue pal.
@@andyc6542 You are the one who are clueless pal. Do you understand top of the pops was a 30 minute music show on most weeks in a year? You are compairing two completely different types of program. Clueless doesn't even cover the nonsense you are talking about. 30 minutes of top pop music every week compaired to the fucking one show or reality tv. LOL Y'know you are either stupid or sarcastic. Can't decide which.
@@andyc6542 I think he means you could do it but it wouldn’t be any good. Having said that l remember watching TOTP religiously for years while disliking most things on it.
Can’t believe they didn’t include the clip of Cobain eating the microphone 😢😢
You missed out Hilda Baker & Arthur Mullard singing 'You're the One that I Want' Top of the Pops 1979. It was the worst performance ever. They fumbled their way through the rendition with no prior rehearsal. Check it out
Did anyone expect MacGowan not to be drunk?
I remember after about a year’s absence from TOTP, Bucks Fizz’s performance of their Talking in your sleep single was rudely interrupted to show footage of a train arriving at its destination, some record attempt I think, like we all tuned in for that! They were invited back the following week. John Peel introduced them, explaining what happened and rudely telling Janice Long to shut up before she cut him off and simply said to cut a long story short…Bucks Fizz. Owen Paul and his band had a similar experience to All About Eve on Pebble Mill performing My favourite waste of time! 🤦♂️ This might have already been commented on, but they left in the scumbag line when Fairytale made its debut, then the line was changed to you’re cheap and you’re haggard during a live performance when I think it was reissued a few years later 🙄 The Travis Sing performance was just silly Tiswas style fun, not exactly a disaster lol.
Don't forget "The Wedding Present, Flying Saucer" where they were obviously miming in crime scene tec gear before just stopping midway through the song, and "Faith No More, From out of nowhere" is hilarious
Jocky Wilson. Has to be a great moment on television 🤣
I think just having Gary glitter or jimmy Saville there is a disaster every time
It would be a matter of time if this music show gets brought back for BBC Three, when it returns as a linear TV channel in February, and a perfect fit.
BBC had no idea what “Frankie goes to Hollywood “ we’re singing about, even the B job signs. Very surprising as they knew about savile
Mud singing tiger feet - choreography at its very best
What about the legendary Status Quo performance in the 80s when Rick Parfitt was so drunk he fell into the drums while the cameras were rolling?
The KLF were always good fun/ bonkers. My fave ToTP performance is them (as the JAMMS) doing 'It's grim up north'
The North Will Rise Again...
"Trooble a'mill.."
as a nirvana fan “smells like teen spirit” was not a disaster
it was hilarious 🤣🤣🤣
Did he say the BBC is "apolitical" ?!! 😂🤣
James's Tim Booth claimed, around the time of the TotP show, that the problem was that Kurt was so nervous about performing that his voice was constricted. He was playing on the same show and had offered him some sort of vocal massage but Kurt had declined politely... that said, it was around the same time that Nirvana also played that incendiary version of Territorial Pissings on The Last Resort, so it could be that Nirvana were just looking to carve their mark on telly. Great stuff, no matter what.
Cappella - Move On Baby. It couldn't be more painfully obvious that their 'singer' was not the same one that recorded the vocals in the studio. Legend has it that it was this performance that lead to TOTP lifting the obligation for vocals to be performed live.
That was the one. The woman used as the stage presence probably never sang on the recorded version of Move On Baby, although the rapper was probably the same person. Actually quite liked Capella at the time, but this probably made people realise dance music was faceless stuff that couldn't be done live.
That one of those gypsies singing about the darts player was the funniest.
The biggest gaff was designing a studio for a music show that couldn't cope with music being played in it.
All the rave acts that were told they had to sing live in the early nineties and sounded absolutely awful as they couldn't perform their studio generated songs live. I can remember some act called Capella where the woman singer, who probably didn't even sing on the record, struggling to remember the song and looking confused.
You missed the one where the camera scoots along the floor and discovers a female crown member is going commando also Sabrino's waps falling out. Iron Maiden did a great performance on a european show where they swapped instruments mid song and the roadies came on and dismantled the drum kit and took it off stage while the song was still going.
Sabrino?
@@AtheistOrphan sabrina sang boys boys boys
@@moxy666 - Ah Sabrina! (With an ‘A’) I wondered what ‘Sabrino’ was! Thank you.
Waps?
That Iron Maiden performace was hilarious. They took the full piss
You missed the little fact that all the plugs on Orbital’s equipment were intentionally plugged off and neatly put on top of the equipment 😄
Saw Nirvana that night at the hummingbird in Birmingham they were an hour late coming back to the gig from top studio...great gig
Oasis were hardly the first to engage in instrument-swapping in order to make fun of miming. There’s a Squeeze appearance from the ‘80s where the entire band switches instruments. Wish I could remember which song it was. And there’s also Tracey Ullman‘s brilliant appearance doing “Breakaway” in ‘83, where she and her two back-up singers are singing into hairbrushes rather than microphones. Presumably in both of those cases the TOTP crew was well aware of what was going on.
Frankie goes to Hollywood did it 10 years before this also
Radiohead too
@@copbabycombo1311oasis did it before radiohead👍
The Dexy’s thing was the band themselves trolling the audience and the viewing audience. It was not accidental it was a joke the band played on the people watching
Exactly
Was the Manics usual lead singer not available so they brought in James Bradford for this one off appearance? I guess that explains the balaclava.
They really need someone to proofread these scripts or even double check the videos before posting.
James was the actual lead singer
@@ethanprince356 @Simon S was making a joke, pointing out that the lead singer is called James Dean Bradfield as opposed to James BRADFORD, which is what the narrator said.
@@millerhxc thanks
. . . . to think people were unkind to Linda McCartney 🤪
@Joe the Lion ... Ha ha. Yoko was a fruit loop and not in a good way! I feel bad about how mean we all were about Linda, especially us teenage "Paul girls". She wasn't really a musician but she was a fantastic photographer, a lovely person (unlike Yoko) and she and Paul successfully raised four grounded, stable kids in what by all accounts was a happy marriage. Yoko, on the other hand ...
@@SuzyQ334 Yeah Yoko was something else. I was never mean to Linda 😊 I've been veggie for 40 years. First woman who created something decent to eat 😆
@@SuzyQ334Yoko came between John and his eldest son, Julian also they were hypocrites . You don’t go spouting about peace and stuff and wear real fur, he didn’t deserve his fate but John wasn’t a nice man, talented but not very nice and she is and was a horrible person.
I can confirm that the photo of Jockey Wilson behind the DMR performance of "Jackie Wilson Said" was a prank by the band.
Yeah I'm going to need confirmation of that.
I have heard that too
I can confirm that the late Mr Wilson's first name is Jocky.
I see no issues with either of the top 2. The Nirvana one is hilarious, and Travis was a genius
I agree that the Nirvana performance was very enjoyable. Even with normal live performances he'd sometimes mix things up a bit.
As for the Travis performance there's absolutely no way that the BBC weren't aware in advance of the plan, what with all the custard pies and silly string which just happened to be conveniently at hand.
Apart from Saville - the BBC wiping most of the tapes from the 1960s is pretty bad
Apparently Red Hot Chili Peppers did a almost identical performance of Nirvana’s back in the day. The Peppers were also pissed that they had to mime so they put on a hilarious performance and even played their shoes as instruments. I believe the BBC pulled the performance off of UA-cam unfortunately
The jockie wilson gag was deliberate it was the bands idea
A couple of points, the reason bands didn’t perform live had nothing to do with poor studio acoustics, the clip of John Lennon with Yoko - no mention of the fact Yoko is wearing a sanitary towel as a blind fold, The New Order clip vocal blamed on poor studio, simply not true.
Band Aid performed Do They Know It's Christmas only once on TOTP and Paul Weller mimed Bono's famous "tonight thank god it's them instead of you" Like we didn't notice! Bet people were like "....... you're not Bono,?"
And absolutely no mention of the abysmal performance by 2 Unlimited in 1992 which was so bad that it trumps all of these. In fact it was so bad that Dave Lee Travis was talking about it on his Radio 1 show the following weekend.
The worst TOTP disaster lasted for years - it was the decision to just about smother every song on the show with an additional effects track of audience whoops, cheers and handclaps. Sometimes you could hear almost nothing of the original song but the rhythm track and (very faintly) the vocal. It was the reason I lost interest in TOTP.
Um. Yoko was imitating the very very famous Bob Dylan “protesting” with a series of signs film footage - it is a reference to that plus it was deliberate so how was it a “disaster” exactly?
Top Of The Pops. My very favourite show in the late 60s as a kid the throughout the 70s in my teens & into my 20s. After which it was "downhill all the way". They had brilliant performers such as Deep Purple (Black Night), Free (Wishing Well), Badfinger (No Matter What), Steely Dan (Reeling In The Years), Boston (More Than A Feeling), etc, etc!
I can remember TOTP in the 1960s when the DJs would actually play the record that the band mimed to. No attempt at pretence in those days.
No the 80s was good. Can't remember the 60s.
When artists played live you could see why TOTP preferred them to mime.
Not only that but an appearance on the show helped to sell records, and very few artists could ever do justice to the studio version by playing it live. It would simply be a misrepresentation of the song.
NB I saw New Order perform Blue Monday live on The Tube the same year and I don't remember it being much better.
It's not a blindfold on Yoko. It's a sanitary towel
Never missed a TOTP show growing up, all we had so made the most of it. Miming or no miming I still enjoyed seeing the bands I love in person, not just on radio or record.
Barney has always been known not to have the greatest voice but New Order have performed some great concerts plus highlighted festivals like Glastonbury with top tunes & they played live every time they went on TOTP but probably did the Sound check themselves after that
Lol, Jockey Wilson had me spilling 😂😂😂😂
Martha's Harbour only reached no. 10 on the singles charts in mid-August '88 - it's parent album "All About Eve"' debuted and peaked no. 7 on the album charts in February '88
My uncle's got the single (b-side was called Another Door) and the album. I've got the album and another - "Scarlet and other stories"
I absolutely love when bands are forced to mime and hate miming so much, the deliberately set out to ruin their segment. Classics for me is definitely Nirvana on TOTP in the early 90s and The Stranglers from the 70s on a Dutch pop show. Brilliantly messed up, creativity at it's best.
Orbital deliberately left the plugs for their kit resting on top as their protest against miming.
Are you still in love
Fairground Attraction, too
Really? The first to do it MAY have deserved kudos, but such behaviour just became tiresome and twee.
_The Stranglers from the 70s on a Dutch pop show._
The one where they all played each others instruments? 😂
The best ever TOTP moment was Marillion when Fish had a sore throat and help up cards with the lyrics on - including a very obvious jibe when he held up one reading "I'm miming...." !