What Might Have Been

It's February 1979, and Punk is moribund enough for Legs & Co to get involved and start clod hopping about in plastic sandals and party wigs. If they'd only flipped the record over they would have encountered 'Frigging in the Rigging', a puerile chant full of explicit sexual imagery that is crying out for literal interpretation in dance by five ditzy dancers. Can you imagine the hand gestures?

I Had No Luck With Her

To kick off, here's a screenshot from a recently repeated episode of 'Top of The Pops' originally broadcast in 1980. It features the backing singers for a performance of Jona Lewie's quirky electro pop hit 'You'll Always Find Me In The Kitchen At Parties'. 

Left hand lady is the much missed Kirsty MacColl, of course, but I have been unable to identify her co-worker. This task has been made harder by the fact that neither of them actually sang on the record, they were just in the vicinity when needed for the telly. They really remind me of the girls I used to like as a young man: attractive, feisty, not interested.  

Mike Read, Mike Read, 275-285

Mike Read introduces 

The Village People.

The Golden Age Of Top Of The Pops

003: The Pointer Sisters

The Golden Age Of Top Of The Pops

002: The Olympic Runners

Gawpers

Aliens could land in Trafalgar Square and exit their flying saucer on the backs of unicorns while a 78 year old Elvis sings ‘The Wonder Of You’ and, you can bet, if the media are present, some gormless British person will  ignore what’s happening right in front of them to turn around and gawp at the camera.

Example 1: this fellow is not interested in Jimmy Pursey and Sham 69’s request for their friend Harry to get a move on: he just wants to look questioningly into the camera and get his slightly defiant face into ten million homes. Well done, Sir, mission accomplished.

The Golden Age Of Top Of The Pops

001: Dandy

Feeling The Love

Britain is not a nation of dancers, a statement borne out by forty odd years of watching young people mill about and bump into each other to music every week on pervert’s playground ‘Top Of The Pops’. Even the dancers on the programme couldn’t dance or, at least, despite having some individual skills, found themselves trotting around and doing half-hearted high kicks in whatever piss poor routine Pan’s People, Ruby Flipper or Legs & Co were scheduled to do that week. 

In 1978, however, for a few minutes at least, everything changed. The catalyst was Donna Summer, and the soundtrack was her phenomenal hit record ‘I Feel Love’. Faced with the relentless propulsive energy (literally, the sequencer sounds like an outboard motor) of this superlative track, even the British could dance. Ignore Legs & Co, by the way, they’re just getting in the way (if you’re wondering, they are sat in a plywood car because they have just ‘interpreted’ Jonathan Richman’s ‘Roadrunner’). 

Look at the audience, though, the poor, lumpy proletariat who have been pushed around and out of the way all day and ran the risk of being groped by The Hairy Fuckflake or worse: they are energised, invigorated, alive. This isn’t just disco, this is a primal force and, somewhere deep in the collective consciousness, there is a memory of how to rhythmically and vigorously move to music. How much more fun is that than shifting your weight from foot to foot and hoping for the best?

Severed Legs & Co

It's 1976, it's 'Top Of the Pops'. The as yet unnamed 'Legs & Co' are called upon to interpret a disco version of the 'Jaws' theme by this man --

The routine, choreographed by the notorious Flick Colby, boggles the mind and bends the parameters of reality. Six pretty girls, wearing only skin tight rubber wet suit tops, high kick and pirouette around, occasionally pausing to mime shock and horror at an imaginary shark attack.

Now and again, dangling bare legs are superimposed at the top of the screen and, all the while, a pathetic balsa wood panto backdrop of a seascape has a number of cut out cardboard fins pulled jerkily across it. The girls glow, then perspire, then sweat like dray horses. Later on, no doubt, they are admitted to hospital, as the Lalo Schifrin record (not one of his best) slides further and further down the charts.

Here it is in all its murky glory.

It makes you proud to be British.

Flipping Awful

One of the things I've really enjoyed in 2011 has been the weekly repeats of every 1976 Top Of The Pops. It's not always easy to watch (how many weeks were Brotherhood of Man number one? A thousand?), but watch it we do - the rules in our house being no whizzing forward, and get up and dance if you want to. Simple pleasures.

Ruby Flipper were the multracial, mixed gender dance troupe replacement to the hugely popular Pan's People. They only lasted for five months. Why? Well, Ruby Flipper were perhaps a little too, um, experimental for prime time telly. Take their routine for Bowie's 'TVC15', for example. Any ideas?

Roll on Legs & Co. Now there's a vivid image.