1968 - 1973

1968
Things begin as they intend to continue: Ridiculously. As it’s the days before mass-produced promo films, Dionne Warwick’s Do You Know The Way To San Jose? is accompanied by a crap film of a small donkey wandering about. The donkey hangs around on a nondescript stretch of road, and looks understandably confused as to why it’s being asked to represent a Bacharach and David classic concerning the fickle nature of fame. At one point the donkey is framed to make it look as though it’s driving a car, presumably in a vague attempt to link the action to the song lyrics. “Quick!” you imagine the producer hissing, “Whilst it’s not looking, push the donkey into the car!” They then film the donkey trying to get out of the car.

1969
Already the playlist is giving the lie to the idea that “pop music were better in them days”. Cilla Black, Sandie Shaw, The Hollies and the foul murderer Cliff Richard all appear… but to be honest they might as well be reciting till receipts from Sainsburys for all the excitement they inspire. The only interest is provided by the studio background projections that look unnervingly like the oscillating hypno-chamber in The Ipcress File. Clearly the TOTP production designers have started taking acid, but the artists haven’t.

1970 - 73
What you have to remember is that we’re still well within the era when the BBC had to pay for videotape by sending sacks full of gold doubloons to Japan. The stuff was so expensive that once broadcast, staff would simply wipe programmes from the spools using great big buzzing magnets. As a result, very little remains of late 60s and early 70s TOTP. We find ourselves watching a bunch of fragmentary, jumbled tapes.

So here, we have a short clip of Jimmy Saville saying “As it 'appens, as it 'appens, now that we have 45 minutes of airtime to fill, we can show you some different stuff, some avant-garde stuff…” Followed immediately by lots of TERRIFYING PROG ROCK, and the studio director grabbing hold of the vision mixer controls and going WHHHOOOAAAAHHHRG!!! like a fighter pilot avoiding a missile. Crash zooms! Video feedback! The studio is full of men with beards, huge pulsating lights and huge, pulsating Hammond organs. Jethro Tull! Rare Bird! Blodwyn Pig! “Widdly widdly widdly” goes the show for several hours, and you suspect that in order for so much Progressive Rock to have survived from TOTP’s wilderness years there must have been some serious mixolydian-mode anoraks working in the BBC tape stores. I notice that the studio audience are standing stock still. “Look,” I say to my girlfriend, “They’re not dancing.” “That,” she replies, “Is because they’ve all died.”

Pish, I think, I’m made of sterner stuff. I’ve been to a Porcupine Tree gig and everything. But my first moment of uncontrollable terror occurs as Noel Edmonds, with a completely straight face, introduces Sylvia by Focus. It’s appallingly jaunty Dutch Folk/Prog, and sounds like the theme from EastEnders being played slightly too fast by hippies who don’t know how to stop. Just when you think it’s over… rinky dinky dinky weebly wobbly, off it goes again… ten minutes in, I’m reduced to a gibbering wreck on the floor. And it’s not even 1974. I’m not even born yet.

Next post: The mid to late Seventies. TOTP discovers interpretive dance, and shows someone stealing a giant plastic lobster from a tramp. Plus: Acker Bilk.