robincarmody ([info]robincarmody) wrote,
@ 2004-12-03 21:01:00
Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
The UK Top 40, week ending 5th May 1979
(the first Thatcher election victory, obviously)

1 (1) Bright Eyes, Art Garfunkel
2 (2) Some Girls, Racey
3 (5) Pop Muzik, M
4 (19) Hooray Hooray It's A Holi-Holiday, Boney M
5 (9) Goodnight Tonight, Wings
6 (4) Shake Your Body (Down To The Ground), The Jacksons
7 (6) Hallelujah, Milk and Honey
8 (3) Cool For Cats, Squeeze
9 (7) The Logical Song, Supertramp
10 (20) Knock On Wood, Amii Stewart
11 (12) I Don't Wanna Lose You, Kandidate
12 (10) The Runner, The Three Degrees
13 (21) Love You Inside Out, The Bee Gees
14 (11) He's The Greatest Dancer, Sister Sledge
15 (25) Haven't Stopped Dancing Yet, Gonzalez
16 (8) Silly Thing, The Sex Pistols / Who Killed Bambi, Ten Pole Tudor
17 (14) Wow, Kate Bush
18 (16) Forever In Blue Jeans, Neil Diamond
19 (NE) Does Your Mother Know?, Abba
20 (28) One Way Ticket, Eruption
21 (29) Reunited, Peaches and Herb
22 (27) Banana Splits, The Dickies
23 (17) Remember Then, Showaddywaddy
24 (24) The Staircase, Siouxsie and the Banshees
25 (39) Parisienne Walkways, Gary Moore
26 (23) Valley Of The Dolls, Generation X
27 (NE) Roxanne, The Police
28 (NE) Jimmy Jimmy, The Undertones
29 (33) Love Ballad, George Benson
30 (40) Guilty, Mike Oldfield
31 (NE) Boys Keep Swingin', David Bowie
32 (NE) Nice Legs Shame About Her Face, The Monks
33 (34) Only You, Child
34 (NE) Dance Away, Roxy Music
35 (33) I'm An Upstart, Angelic Upstarts
36 (13) Sultans Of Swing, Dire Straits
37 (26) Something Else / Friggin' In The Riggin', The Sex Pistols
38 (18) Questions And Answers, Sham 69
39 (38) Feel The Need, Leif Garrett
40 (NE) The Number One Song In Heaven, Sparks

points of interest:

number 1 written by Mike Batt (who wrote the Tory party's song in 2001).

number 5 featuring Paul McCartney (one of the first four people in pop music to receive a British State honour, the first reasonably credible person in pop music to receive a knighthood - the only one previously had been Cliff Richard - and the first person in pop music to be listed in Who's Who).

number 13 - the Bee Gees all received CBEs under Blair.

number 17 - this particular song was surpassed by later glories - as the NME said in their review of her "Whole Story" compilation in '86, it had come to sound like a Spitting Image parody - but Kate Bush is one of the few people in pop music to have ever been listed in the Times Court and Social page, complete with the until-very-recently obligatory "Miss" styling (they allow "Ms" now), after she attended Michael Powell's memorial service in London. This appeared in the Times on 27th September 1990, and if you want Murdoch to take your money it can be found, with a subscription, on http://www.newsint-archive.co.uk (a gruesomely interesting site).

numbers 19 and 20 - an unusually mid-Atlantic-sounding Abba hit (especially considering that it was the follow-up to "Chiquitita", and that "I Have A Dream" came within the year - mind you, so did "Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight)") and a German-produced Eurodance cover of a 1959 Neil Sedaka B-side, of all things, masterminded by the man who'd give us Milli Vanilli a decade later (Frank Farian was also behind Boney M at number 4, of course). Both songs, therefore, expose the woman's claims that Britain only shares its culture with the US/Canada/Australia/NZ axis (still never worked out where Israel fitted in, however much its championing helped with the new middle classes of Golders Green) and that those nasty continentals are still all listening to the Obenkirchen Children's Choir.

number 27 - Sting's *first chart appearance*. Think about that, if you can bear it ...

number 30 - Mike Oldfield was the second person in pop music to be listed in Who's Who after McCartney, although this was a curious cod-disco offering, seemingly an attempt to step back from the cultural concerns and contexts of his earlier work. Fell between two stools but probably gave him the rough idea for his huge-everywhere-else-in-Europe-but-only-one-hit-here run of AOR/pop singles in the 80s, one of which - "To France" - is actually bloody good, like Sandy Denny's emasculated ghost produced by OMD.

number 31 - "Pop has informed our culture now. Tony Blair is closer to what David Bowie was in 1974 than he is to Churchill". - The Drummer Out Of Gay Dad, late 1990s. If we had known ...

number 34 - falconry, foxhunting, the miners' strike, the end of the Falklands War, a society wedding in Sussex on the last Saturday of June 1982, Malcolm Saville finally giving out. Never more profound.

number 36 - the last week for Mark Knopfler's first hit. See number 27, essentially.

number 40 - Americans whose cultural loyalty lay in Europe. That woman would *really* have hated them, then.

(Post a new comment)


[info]tom_may
2004-12-05 02:56 pm UTC (link)
No comments about #32...? ;)

Agree v. much with the points about Knopfler and Sting; they were to go on to greater musical folly, clearly, but this is so symbolic. Both of north-east roots, but deliberately getting as far away as possible from them... less fascinating careers to follow than Ferry's, admittedly. The thing I like most from Knopfler is his soundtrack work for Bill Forsyth's "Local Hero", a touching last-gasp allusion both to the Hollywood golden era (Burt Lancaster enabled the project to go ahead, and provides the deus ex machina final compromise in the narrative...), and to Ealing, of course... the trans-atlantic Knopfler only adds another layer.

#3 and #5 are great records; "Goodnight Tonight" a McCartney defiantly, forlornly shorn of the thumbs-up. As I think Marcello Carlin reflected, it is indeed a curiously avant-garde (avant-disco pop?) final single from Wings; points the way to "McCartney II", a quite startling record from 1980. After that, he reclined back into musical conservatism, however great much of "Tug of War" is.

The Supertramp seems sadly apposite for this very week, from a few possible standpoints.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]robincarmody
2004-12-05 03:14 pm UTC (link)
"Agree v. much with the points about Knopfler and Sting; they were to go on to greater musical folly, clearly, but this is so symbolic. Both of north-east roots, but deliberately getting away as far as possible for them ..." - the point is that they are both now defined for all time by their place at the heart of the CD collections of those who, had we been ruled by a Macmillanite / Heathite Tory government in the 1980s, would have listened almost exclusively to classical music. Is the Knopfler piece called "On The Road" from "Local Hero"? Because I'm sure I heard it the other night being used in a 1987 Channel 4 trailer for a "Film on Four" whose title escapes me, although I know it was set in Northern Ireland ...

When you mention "The Logical Song" is the Scooter version one of your "standpoints"? Because that too undermines the Thatcher lie that everyone in continental Europe ignores all things Anglo-American and therefore they can never be our true allies (I don't actually believe that pop-cultural allegiances are *anywhere near* the most important factor in defining whether or not countries can be political allies, but the point is that the Thatcher argument isn't even true if you *do* believe that pop-cultural allegiances are important in this context, and it's undermined by the huge German popularity of Racey, Showaddywaddy, even bloody Neil Diamond who, on that particular record, sounds so lecherous that he almost sounds like a paedophile ...)

I'm sure you remember the importance for me of Supertramp's "Give A Little Bit" (easily their best single, incidentally).

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]robincarmody
2004-12-05 03:18 pm UTC (link)
"for them" (in the quote) = "from them"

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]tom_may
2004-12-05 07:44 pm UTC (link)
I do... part of that 1976-79 corridor of pop songs that seem to ruefully reflect upon the shift in political climate. "Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats & Dogs" is another; I think as you said that that is emblematic of Jim Callaghan's swansong period, before the autumn and that fateful sequence of events...? More straightforwardly 'poignant' and nostalgic than "Jarrow Song", it sounds to me a rather plaintive cry, rather than a conflicted 'call to arms', such as Price's song is.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]mippy
2004-12-05 08:12 pm UTC (link)
It came three years later, but what are your opinions on Shipbuilding?

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]tom_may
2004-12-05 08:29 pm UTC (link)
I presume you mean Robert Wyatt's version? Costello's is very good too. The best sort of protest song; oblique and extremely moving. And by implication questioning rather more than just the Falklands War. Wyatt's particular delivery is, as you might expect, entirely appropriate.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]mippy
2004-12-05 08:08 pm UTC (link)
"but Kate Bush is one of the few people in pop music to have ever been listed in the Times Court and Social page, complete with the until-very-recently obligatory "Miss" styling (they allow "Ms" now)"

Tell that to [insert LJ tag] dickon_edwards.

:)

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]robincarmody
2004-12-05 09:43 pm UTC (link)
What do you mean? This I must hear.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]mippy
2004-12-05 09:51 pm UTC (link)
Oh...dickon_edwards, professional fop and Man About Town, refers to every 'character' in his journal as Miss Rowan Pelling, or Mr Rhodri Marsden. It does bring to mind The Times' Court and Social page.

:)

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]robincarmody
2004-12-05 10:30 pm UTC (link)
Ah ... if anyone his age is going to do that it would be him. I think my fixation on that page began when I used to buy the Telegraph, despite disagreeing with the vast majority of its content, purely so I could read Auberon Waugh's column which happened to appear on the same page as the 'Graph's court and social listings (Tom would probably be able to say what I'm almost too embarrassed to say here).

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]mippy
2004-12-05 10:52 pm UTC (link)
My dad buys it...I started reading it at about nine, finding it really amusing. Around that time they featured an article on Neil Tennant in which I learned he was gay, and Trinny and Susannah telling me what the best outfit to wear to Ascot was. Vague memories of Bron but it was the 'school agony uncle' that I remember most from the non-Young Telegraph bits of the paper.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]robincarmody
2004-12-06 12:21 am UTC (link)
Do you remember how Bron's views on European issues would always be closer to the Guardian editoral line than the Telegraph's?

It wasn't always like that, though - in the Macmillan and Heath eras the Telegraph editorial line was generally pro-European, like that of the Tory leadership. Bron was the only decent thing in the rag by the mid-1990s because the editorial line was hideously (and hypocritically, from a cultural perspective) crawling up the USA's rectum. Under Bush it has obviously been even worse, and hasn't improved that much since Conrad Black's departure, despite the obvious demand for an earlier school of Conservative politics and thought - the only way they can provide a meaningful opposition now that NuLab has stolen all their Thatcherite clothes. Since Bron's death the only real link with the paper's eccentric, civilised, essentially neo-feudalist and borderline anti-Semitic but still perversely endearing lesser-of-two-evils past has been Michael Wharton aka Peter Simple ("the downfall of the twin towers that symbolised the worldwide empire of imaginary money is not in itself a cause of grief" - Wharton's positively Pilgerite comments in September 2001). It'll be all over when he croaks, and he's 91 (actually he may have already stopped writing for the 'Graph, but I think I'd have heard about it if he had - he's definitely still alive).

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]mippy
2004-12-06 12:35 am UTC (link)
No, I don't. I was only nine at the time, and the implications would have really been lost on me. I do remember thinking Auberon was a silly name, though. I was convinced he died recently, actually.

To me it's always seemed quite Establishment, rather than pro-US. Regular features on Oxford college league tables on page 3, editorials about the silly women suing for sexual harrassment in the City who, if they don't put up and shut up, will make them stop employing women altogether. Haven't read it for a while, or with much of a critical eye rather than out of boredom (I prefer the Graun) but to me it was very white/male/upper-middle-to-upper-class. Of course this may have changed in the past few years, post-Black.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]robincarmody
2004-12-06 12:47 am UTC (link)
If you're 22 that would be a few years before my Waugh-reading period (sporadically through 1994 and then consistently January-October 1995).

Oh, the Telegraph *is* an Establishment paper, essentially, and Black (who bought it at an auspicious moment, Big Bang and all that) knew he had to retain the outward trappings of which you speak to retain his older readers, but it has become simultaneously ultra-Atlanticist since Black took over and thus far has generally remained so under the Barclays. In fact, so devoted is it to the US military-industrial complex has it become that it is prepared to run editorials criticising the cultural tendencies most closely associated with its notional perceived readership, notably the awful, awful, awful one in which those who criticised US tactics in Fallujah were referred to as "snobbish" as though it disapproved of those tendencies - and this, of course, was only last month, well after Black was out of the picture. Only the New Right can tie itself up in such absurd and hideous knots.

Ultra-conservative Establishment papers like the Telegraph could only play it in the two-handed, double-talking way Black loves - having their British aristocratic, sexist, covertly racist cake and still eating it in the White House - for as long as the Right was unified and British Establishment institutions had little argument with their notional US equivalents. But now vast numbers of British ambassadors, diplomats, senior civil servants &c. - historically far closer, culturally, to the Telegraph than the Guardian for the most part - have made it publicly clear how much they oppose the Blair/Bush foreign policy that the 'Graph worships, and we've got an old hippie peacenik as leader of the established church in England. Oops. This is the context in which Waugh would have come into his own had he accepted that smoking is actually bad for you.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]mippy
2004-12-06 12:55 am UTC (link)
He was something of a subversive as far as the old-right of the Telegraph went, as I remember. Yes, I am 22, and read it sporadically from 1990 onwards.

I can't say more because I'm about to fall asleep, but interesting comment above. Who will it be for, in the future? Haven;t commentators been saying for a while that falling circulation is due to their core readership dying off? In which case looking to America is a logical move. I'm not sure how much ground the New Right is gaining amongst younger people in this country, although it might well be the opposite end of the social spectrum that the BNP go for. Of course the Old Right ie. Daily Mail are starting to look increasingly irrelevant and incomprehensible to the under-40s. And yes, the amount of public scorn in this country for Bush is overwhelming, so the Telegraph are going to find it hard to succeed were they to continue down this ideological line.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]tom_may
2004-12-07 12:57 am UTC (link)
There can surely be little room for an openly Tory New Right paper, as Blair has so successfully stolen those clothes. Admittedly, in certain areas, Labour aren't hardcore Thatcherite, but New Labour is effectively the (arguably far more 'effective'... stable economy, et al) continuation of that project. And much more socially palatable to the younger people than the Tories would be. A recent Guardian poll showed Labour at close to 50% with upcoming first-time voters; the Tories on about 22, the LDs at towards 20.

Young people would probably not claim themselves to be new right at all, but they are endorsing a pragmatically new-right, if relatively statist, party in New Labout...

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]tom_may
2004-12-07 12:58 am UTC (link)
There can surely be little room for an openly Tory New Right paper, as Blair has so successfully stolen those clothes. Admittedly, in certain areas, Labour aren't hardcore Thatcherite, but New Labour is effectively the (arguably far more 'effective'... stable economy, et al) continuation of that project. And much more socially palatable to the younger people than the Tories would be. A recent Guardian poll showed Labour at close to 50% with upcoming first-time voters; the Tories on about 22, the LDs at towards 20.

Young people would probably not claim themselves to be new right at all, but they are endorsing a pragmatically new-right, if relatively statist, party in New Labour...

(Reply to this) (Parent)

(Anonymous)
2004-12-06 10:30 am UTC (link)
did bush have any personal connexion with michael powell? 1990 was pre-her 'red shoes'.

HKM

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]mippy
2004-12-06 12:36 am UTC (link)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/1121961.stm

I'm right even at 00.37am.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]mippy
2004-12-06 12:38 am UTC (link)
Bollocks...no, I misread that completely and thought you were referring to Bron still being alive there.

Belm.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]robincarmody
2004-12-06 12:48 am UTC (link)
No need to apologise. Easy to read things wrongly at this time of night. I should be off.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]mippy
2004-12-06 12:59 am UTC (link)
I get more uncouth the later it gets, really.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

Create an Account
Forgot your login or password?
Login w/ OpenID
English • Español • Deutsch • Русский…