You could also argue Technotronic inspired Mr Blobby in 1993.
There's still no word yet on a scheduled date for the Story of/Big Hits 1991; I'm starting to think both may coincide with the Christmas show now, rather than the first 'Year Zero' edition in, at the earliest, four Fridays' time.
The final two pre-revamp episodes scheduled for the 8th October... brace yourselves, it's not going to be pretty.
What is largely perceived to be a pretty poor era of TOTP doesn't exactly mean the same for pop music - which a few people unfortunately seem to associate and confuse - but you'd be forgiven for thinking the late 1991-1993 era was a dire time, considering Stanley Appel's favour of flop hits/album tracks by Neil Sedaka, Cilla Black, David Essex, etc over stuff that people cared about actually in the charts. Even the likes of David Hasselhoff and The Chippendales got on under him as exclusives (!).
Even though it's not a bad era for music, it was presented horrendously on this era of the show.
ITV Chart Show repeats would probably be better, no poor live renditions of songs for a start!
When you see that the first revamp edition has a Status Quo album track and a Stevie Wonder video that didn't even reach the top 60, it makes you wonder what the hell Stan Appel was thinking.
It also probably would've been wise of Appel to get rid of the Breakers before 1994, due to new chart/sales dynamics essentially defeating its point and preventing songs from being shown again the following week, but he seems to have soldiered on with the feature and ignored the way things were changing all the way through his tenure - in fact, there's an edition with no less than eight clips during December 1993. Generally a strange month for TOTP, with another being a part of the 3DTV week in aid of Children in Need:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeLJJkTf8UE
I feel that the current TOTP repeats on BBC4 is really starting to wane very badly. By the time 2022 arrives, I think shows like the Old Grey Whistle Test and Sight and Sound in Concert should be rerun to appease some hardcore classic music fans of the 70s and 80s.
BBC Four are airing at least three Old Grey Whistle Test concerts:
Friday 24th September : Blondie 1979: 11pm
Friday 1st October: Billy Joel 1978: 11:30pm
Friday 8th October: Dr Hook 1975: 11:30pm
Colm post_id=40592 time= user_id=975 Wrote:You could also argue Technotronic inspired Mr Blobby in 1993.
How exactly did Technotronic inspire Mr Blobby in 1993? Unless Noel Edmonds was a massive fan of Pump Up The Jam!
InsideUlster post_id=41493 time= user_id=1927 Wrote:I feel that the current TOTP repeats on BBC4 is really starting to wane very badly. By the time 2022 arrives, I think shows like the Old Grey Whistle Test and Sight and Sound in Concert should be rerun to appease some hardcore classic music fans of the 70s and 80s.
yes the repeats are starting to hit a difficult era I do wonder if it might be better to go nightly with the repeats to get this and the guest presenter era out of the way and get to the Chris Cowie era when it became a popular chart based music show without any gimmicks such as guest presenters again. I also wonder how possible it would be to repeat TOTP Saturday/ Reloaded.
Another music show that could possibly see a repeat run from it early years is later with Jools Holland. Maybe something to consider.
DJGM1974 post_id=41509 time= user_id=1069 Wrote:Colm post_id=40592 time= user_id=975 Wrote:You could also argue Technotronic inspired Mr Blobby in 1993.
How exactly did Technotronic inspire Mr Blobby in 1993? Unless Noel Edmonds was a massive fan of Pump Up The Jam!
The factory/warehouse setting with pistons in motion, like that Technotronic video and the TOTP titles, features in the Mr Blobby video.
https://youtu.be/rNkgDJpcuwU
However, Pan's People did it first...
https://youtu.be/wTVJvistQQU
Col87 post_id=41704 time= user_id=1400 Wrote:yes the repeats are starting to hit a difficult era I do wonder if it might be better to go nightly with the repeats to get this and the guest presenter era out of the way and get to the Chris Cowie era when it became a popular chart based music show without any gimmicks such as guest presenters again.=
The Chris Cowie era was actually worse than the Blaxill era in my opinion. Due to things such as re-using the same performances over and over (like when Believe was Number 1- in the pre-Cowie eras you'd have got the video for a long running number 1 some weeks to mix things up) and all but refusing to show videos- which partly led to said re-using of performances and many songs not appearing on the show that really should have because the artist couldn't or wouldn't appear in the studio, and so much of it was pre-recorded that the show often felt pieced together rather than a continuous flow.
I've pointed out several times how in 1999 they shows the same Whitney Houston performance 5 times, each time lower down the charts than the last (was at number 19 the last time they showed it)- surely that space could better have been used by showing a video of a higher charting song, or at least trying to get someone else in the studio? I know that's a single extreme example, but there were far too many cases where performances got shown several times (or they had artists back to perform something again) when there surely must have been something fresh they could have shown. Pre-cowie it was uncommon to see something more than twice unless it had a run at number one which meant it had to be shown more times or was a slow climber, in the Cowie era it was common to get the same songs 3 or 4 times even if they weren't at number one and were falling.
At least the Blaxill era had a decent mix of performances and videos and didn't keep showing the same performances repeatedly, even if some of the guest presenters were quite poor.
And the last few months of Cowie's rein where he started running "behind the scenes" footage over the top of performances...
The Cowey era focused on the Top 20; when a song between 21 and 40 featured, it was generally an indie or rock band - who, it was speculated, were favoured for studio bookings over pop and dance acts; Cowey gaining his experience on shows like The Tube and The White Room which were live-performance-driven is, likely, an influence behind this suggestion.
Recording sessions at the time saw every performance (or set if an act was pre-recording for future TOTP/TOTP2 shows) recorded separately, supplemented with intro/outro links where scripted.
Indeed, the opening presenter(s) link into the titles was usually one of the last items to be filmed; two versions were recorded, one for the UK audience, and another for a global audience via BBC Prime etc.
Cowey's preference of a non-linear recording set-up meant sessions took up to three hours to complete - if retakes were required, this left some folk in the studio feeling tired and fed-up as the night carried on.
In the two instances when I was part of the TOTP studio audience (both in 2003, including the last edition Cowey was in charge of), all retakes were required for technical, as opposed to artistic, reasons - no mess-ups by the hosts or the acts involved.
I think all but one performance from both those recording sessions were shown eventually on TOTP UK/worldwide or TOTP2; one act even played an extra track while they were remounting the set for a retake.
For all the frustrations we feel about the Cowey era, at least it had a greater proportion of chart songs in every edition than the Peters era which followed.
The bias towards indie was another of the issues of the Cowie era in my opinion. TOTP really shouldn't have been showing bias towards any kinds of music in my opinion. Though admittedly I am one of those people who could never understand why so many people treated indie as some sort of second coming in the mid-late 90s. This idea some people have of what's "real music" and what isn't and is somehow more credible and worthy has always infuriated me.
Of course nobody's trying to claim that his era was worse than Andi Peters' (though the aformentioned last few months, where he somehow thought people were more interested in seeing artists messing around backstage than actually seeing them perform comes close), that would take some doing.
James2001 post_id=42042 time= user_id=956 Wrote:The bias towards indie was another of the issues of the Cowie era in my opinion. TOTP really shouldn't have been showing bias towards any kinds of music in my opinion. Though admittedly I am one of those people who could never understand why so many people treated indie as some sort of second coming in the mid-late 90s. This idea some people have of what's "real music" and what isn't and is somehow more credible and worthy has always infuriated me.
Blaxill had it too - see his pushing of the likes of These Animal Men, S*M*A*S*H, and Bis as exclusives when they weren't in the charts or signed to a major label - although the more fast-paced nature of his shows meant that more genres did get on. Often heavily truncated, mind; on one of the weeks Firestarter was #1 they just ran it under the credits for less than one minute.
Funnily enough, most of the indie acts given the leg-up by Blaxill aren't exactly highly thought of or even remembered at all by most people now, so if little else it will be interesting to see the reactions to them if/when they turn up on the repeats. And I suppose a bias towards indie is at least better than one for legacy acts, as we'll see in the Appel era...
mumu03 post_id=42082 time=1632583926 user_id=2102 Wrote:James2001 post_id=42042 time= user_id=956 Wrote:The bias towards indie was another of the issues of the Cowie era in my opinion. TOTP really shouldn't have been showing bias towards any kinds of music in my opinion. Though admittedly I am one of those people who could never understand why so many people treated indie as some sort of second coming in the mid-late 90s. This idea some people have of what's "real music" and what isn't and is somehow more credible and worthy has always infuriated me.
Blaxill had it too - see his pushing of the likes of These Animal Men, S*M*A*S*H, and Bis as exclusives when they weren't in the charts or signed to a major label - although the more fast-paced nature of his shows meant that more genres did get on. Often heavily truncated, mind; on one of the weeks Firestarter was #1 they just ran it under the credits for less than one minute.
Funnily enough, most of the indie acts given the leg-up by Blaxill aren't exactly highly thought of or even remembered at all by most people now, so if little else it will be interesting to see the reactions to them if/when they turn up on the repeats. And I suppose a bias towards indie is at least better than one for legacy acts, as we'll see in the Appel era...
Menswear were one of the acts promoted by Blaxill on TOTP, and although they are not exactly remembered now, their drummer Matt Everitt did well for himself.