1974 - Bilk

So, here’s the question: What is the measure of a man? Eh? What? Come on, you thickos. Hurry up. What is it? Too late! I’ll tell you what it is.

In a working mens’ club called The Blue Pig up in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, there’s a bloke called Dennis. Dennis is normally to be found asleep beside the fireplace, his jowls crumpled into a boozy snooze, a half pint of Timothy Taylor’s ‘Landlord’ on the table next to him. You might not think to look at the old geezer, but Dennis is, in fact, The Oracle. Dennis can look deep into your past and tell you something even you probably don’t know about yourself. For in his pocket, Dennis has a little red book filled with dense pages of lists, and he can ascertain (after much harrumphing and flicking back and forth) exactly what was Number One in The Charts on the day you were born.

As we all know - and as Astrology has proven beyond doubt - our lives are governed and guidable by what seems like so much banal universal ephemera. Something as notable as the song at the top of the hit parade on your birthday is a portentious, auspicious sign, laden with import... a sort of catchment area for the soul, or like a, umm, a council tax band for your chakra, whatever.

It is, therefore, with no faint pride that I tell you that which Dennis the Oracle has imparted unto me: that I came into this world under the aegis of When Will I See You Again by the Three Degrees. What characterises us as a subset of humanity? Well, think about it: "Three degrees." "See you again." That’s right. We have Third Sight. Third sight is like second sight, only +1 better.

I mention this because all the tapes in my Top Of The Pops odyssey have been chosen at random, with the selfish exception of the episode from 1974… because I want to watch the rundown from the week I was born. The question is, was pop music “better when I were a lad, not like all this modern nonsense with its short skirts, baggy jeans and oral sex”? Was it a golden age of song, a paradise of poem, metre and melody? Well, I can now answer once and for all: No. No it fucking wasn’t.

Mud are up first, they of Tiger Feet fame. “Our name is Mud.” Geddit? An inspired choice of band name right up there with “TBA”, “Free Beer” and “Good Question Derek.” Lads, no amount of side-splitting nomenclatures will change the fact that you dance as if choreographed by Vic Reeves and your song sounds like it was recorded inside a cardboard box full of dead pigeons.

And then things take a turn for the worse, as 1974 brings with it a cavalcade of names that even chart-farting pop fact bore Paul Gambaccini (the HAL 9000 of popular music) would have to scratch his head at: Ladies and gentlemen, Bobby Goldsborough! Ladeezangenulmen, David Stafford! Laysnjunlmn, Paul Da Vinci!

The latter, in particular, is a terrifying proposition. Da Vinci looks like Andrew Lloyd Webber and sings like the eighth circle of Hell. The Americans could have won Vietnam, I find myself thinking… All the Pentagon needed to do was to catapult this spangly-suited, big-haired monster into the heart of the jungle, have him wander the territory singing in his strangulated high pitched whine, then sit back and watch as the Vietcong ran from the trees like rabbits.

But mental images like this are in the nursery compared to some of the stuff that’s playing out on the screen tonight: a lack of BBC policy concerning the acceptable levels of psychoactive drugs ingested by TOTP directors seems to have resulted in some of the weirdest, most disconcerting pop videos I’ve ever seen. In particular, a piece filmed for an innocent but dull song by Perry Como stands out. In summary: We see a young woman dressed up as a crap fancy-dress tramp. He/she writes a letter from where he/she lives, which is – naturally - inside a very large post office pillar box. The letter is then read by a pretty blonde girl on the Brighton seafront. Suddenly, the tramp is with her, and they play a slow-motion game of ‘catch’ with a huge blow-up model of the Earth. Unfortunately, whilst tramp and girl are making merry, random people are stealing stuff from the postbox: Specifically, they steal a six-foot long bright red plastic lobster, a violin, and a stuffed eagle. Apropos of nothing the tramp attempts to commit suicide by climbing a lamppost. The tramp falls, but the girl catches her/him before he/she jellies up the pavement.

For a while my brain tries to find gainful employment in linking the disconnected images. But after a while it simply gives up, deciding instead to hide in my neck for a bit.

Even the Rolling Stones get in on the general oddness, performing the lacklustre It’s Only Rock And Roll wearing matching US Navy sailor suits inside what seems to be a hot air balloon. Keith Richards looks like the sort of sailor who might sell you a couple of decommissioned anti-aircraft guns... or at least a dirty knife just before a knife fight. Charlie Watts simply looks bored, as usual. That is until the entire balloon begins to fill up with foam, gradually swamping the drum kit, and after a while you just don’t see Charlie at all. He’s probably wandered off to label his collection of rare bird eggs or whatever it is that Charlie actually enjoys doing.

No matter, I await the Number One spot content in the knowledge that I was born within sound of the safe, saccharine strings of When Will I See You Again.

But then the knife in my heart: DENNIS THE ORACLE WAS WRONG. According to TOTP’s historical document, I was actually born to the limpid disco shuffle of Rock Your Baby by George McRae. Look, there he is, jiggling around! The horror, the horror! I fall to my knees and curse Dennis’ little red book. I thought I was a Three Degree-er, I thought I had the third sight, but no. No, actually, looking at McRae, what I have is a pronounced paunch, too-tight clothes and the fundamental yet hopeless desire to be Marvin Gaye.

Which, truth be told, I knew all along.

I’m sad now.
Nevermind, here’s Johnny Mathis to cheer me up! It’s a filmed insert, but the TOTP team have obviously forgot to bring along the sound-synch equipment so rather than mime, Johnny instead wanders around the grounds of a stately home with no apparent purpose, and looks at some peacocks. The peacocks look back at him, as if to say: “Why aren’t you singing, dickwad?”

So I’m still sad, but wait a minute! Did Noel Edmonds just say “Pete Shelley?” Yes he did. My girlfriend and I look at each other. Pete Shelley? Buzzcocks? I glance at the VHS box. Nope, it’s definitely 1975. We then cut to a middle-aged man sitting on a gantry with an old English sheepdog. Peter Shelley (for it is he) is performing a country-tinged lament called Love Me, Love My Dog which is not, despite the evidence, an invitation towards acts condemned by the RSPCA. Apparently, if you don’t like dogs, then as far as Mister Shelley is concerned you can go dangle.

It’s stuff like Shelley - alongside the Goldsboroughs, Staffords, Donald Peers, Pickety Witches and countless other names famous for 1.5 minutes at best - that leaves you asking: Where did these songs go when they died? What stone did each one crawl under in order to quietly expire and be so comprehensively lost for so long afterwards? Now don't get me wrong... I adore pop music, but its hit / miss ratio - even here at the top of the charts - is no different to any other art form, and its contemporary popularity means nothing in the long run. Love Me, Love My Dog was was on TOTP, for fuck’s sake. My Girl Bill was spun upon dansettes the length and breadth of the country...

As if to prove the point, the Bay City Rollers crop up next, one of the most popular bands of the time, and we all know where they went when they died: into a thousand bargain bins in a thousand charity shops, slowly dissipating into the ether as their fans grew up and lost interest, nowadays only to be found in any concentration on Channel 4 nostalgia programmes and in Paul Gambaccini’s latest big book of lists.

Anyway, where was I?
Oh, look… it’s Acker Bilk.

Next: Dave Lee Travis wears a sunflower costume and ends up looking like something out of The Wicker Man.