1,000th Top of the Pops

ChrisMusic

1983, the pound coin is introduced, 3.5 million unemployed (until they rewrote the rules on gathering the numbers), and the 1,000th edition of TotP...


! hour program, available on iPlayer until 4th Feb (I think)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b087lmbd/top-of-the-pops-the-story-of-1983


Should we file this under social comment ?

I would be interested to hear views, comments, and retrospectively how this time is viewed by our younger members who were not around at this time when the social fabric of Britain was re-written.

axisus

I might take a look later, but I wasn't keen on 83 chart music if I remember correctly.

richardhomer

83 had some good stuff - pinnacle of The Police's career, SRV playing with Bowie - but (as always) lots of rubbish too.

I'm a big fan of early-mid 80s electronica - OMD, Depeche Mode, Human League, etc. Love the way technology made it possible to make 'different' sounding music. Though some of it was informed by social/political issues - it was the sonics which I found interesting.

In terms of political records - it never got better than 'Ghost Town' for me ('81 iirc).

vale

my schooldays mainstream scene was the death throes of the shitesville that was britpop (didn't get invoved). so i hold what i understand of a time like 1983 as magical. & i am basically a goth so 1980to83 totally ground zero for that.
but what i love about those times is that scenes seemed to move so fast. 76 punk, 78 postpunk, 80 electro & new romantic, 82 jangle indie, 84 fuzz indie, 86 c86, 88 baggy, 90 shoegaze, 92 britpop. every couple of years a completely new scene.
but since about 2000 there's been fuck all really that isn't a pale imitation of something that happened earlier better. libertines, strokes, amy winehouse, all ipod retro. generation shuffle.

simon reynolds wrote about it in retromania saying that instead of linear progression, consecutive progressive movements ordered in time, the internet (past 50 years music available at press of button) has turned music into a nodal thing. new development is about creating different relationships between everything that already exists. he calls the bands that come from this record collection bands, since their output is never greater than the sum of their influences. recycling to diminishing returns, as original source material is ever diluted or aped to the verge of parody.
it's a pessimistic take in some aspects but positive in others. google 'super-hybridity simon reynolds retromania' if you want to know more. but it's an interesting theory. but am clearly going off on one.

but 1983 is mystical & mythical & bathed in wonderment to me. probably because i get to weed out the shit that people who lived it had to put up with in clubs & on the radio 24/7.

apparently this performance went down like a fart at a funeral, but it stands up for me as a time traveller. 31st march 1983.

mudslide73

I was 10 in 83 so this was essentially "my music". I was listening to and taping the top 40 and I thought that was the beginning and end of all music really. My memory of 80/81/82 was of a darker monochrome scene and 83/84 was like someone turned the colour knob all the way up. Looking at it now it seems like you needed to know more about clothes than music. I'm reading Johnny Marr's book at the moment and even he talks more about the fashion industry than anything else in the build up to meeting Morrissey. The whole John Peel and Tommy Vance situation was hidden from me until I heard a mate's sister was listening to Peel one night in the summer of 86. 

I don't pay any attention to the charts now and only get to hear new stuff by chance. I stopped listening to Radio 1 in 2000 approximately when Mayo gave way to Jo Whiley in the mornings.  

photek

vale said:

my schooldays mainstream scene was the death throes of the shitesville that was britpop (didn't get invoved). so i hold what i understand of a time like 1983 as magical. & i am basically a goth so 1980to83 totally ground zero for that.
but what i love about those times is that scenes seemed to move so fast. 76 punk, 78 postpunk, 80 electro & new romantic, 82 jangle indie, 84 fuzz indie, 86 c86, 88 baggy, 90 shoegaze, 92 britpop. every couple of years a completely new scene.
but since about 2000 there's been fuck all really that isn't a pale imitation of something that happened earlier better.

Music was churning just as quickly post 92, it just wasn't the guitar scene. Acid, Ambient, Breakbeat, Dub, Dance, Jungle, Drum & Bass, Acid Jazz, House, Garage, Shed (?), Intelligent D&B (!), Crunk (wtf).

Most of the britpoo stuff passed me by at the time as grunge had taken over in my school. Quite fond of britpop in retrospect.

Thinking about it, you are right about the post 2000 comment, even dance seems to have flattened out.

EricTheWeary

richardhomer said:

83 had some good stuff - pinnacle of The Police's career, SRV playing with Bowie - but (as always) lots of rubbish too.

I'm a big fan of early-mid 80s electronica - OMD, Depeche Mode, Human League, etc. Love the way technology made it possible to make 'different' sounding music. Though some of it was informed by social/political issues - it was the sonics which I found interesting.

In terms of political records - it never got better than 'Ghost Town' for me ('81 iirc).

http://www.soundonsound.com/people/specials-ghost-town

Long Sound on Sound article about the recording of Ghost Town, seems amazing that it ever got recorded. 

Just looking at the top 100 singles for 1983, some classic stuff although it's not always how you remember it - Rod Stewart was 7th with Baby Jane for example, I had no idea that was such a big hit.

ChuckManual

1983 was the starting pistol for an era of exceptionally cynical manufactured Pop shite (PWL, etc) that wasn't really swept away for five long and interminably hateful years, until the dance music scene really found it's mainstream feet and Indie made a proper comeback in the shape of the pre-Britpop Baggy/Madchester revolution.

I was working for all manner of record shops, distributors, promoters and labels in the 80's - and that middle stretch was bloody purgatory, let me tell you...

Motorhate

Believe me mate, the early 80s were a grim time for a hell of a lot of people. My abiding memory of it is everyone being skint and unemployed, endless days spent around mate’s council houses and flats on rough London estates, smoking cheap cigarettes, drinking cheap lager from cans and listening to records. There was no romance or glamour as the BBC would like to have you think about the 80s, it was a grim time for most.

I was into punk / Oi! and some metal at the time and there was virtually nothing on mainstream media to satisfy your taste for this music. The constant barrage of shite pop on the radio (Radio 1 was really the only station that played anything like “modern” new music) and TOTP. That was it. There was the odd gem on the radio like The Friday Rock Show with Tommy Vance or John Peel’s evening show (which really was like mining for diamonds in a sea of dog shit) were the only chances you had to listen to the latest rock and punk stuff. More often than not, it was trial and error in the local record shop, or word of mouth. Home taping was rife and if someone bought a decent album, it was immediately taped by everyone else.

There was no such thing as “post-punk”. That to me a later phrase that was coined by the media and despite what they’ll tell you to this day, punk didn’t die in 1977, it was alive and well and produced some of it’s finest offerings in the late 70s and early 80s. Musical styles were evolving but there wasn’t all the labelling and genres that you see now. It appears that everything nowadays has to fit into a little box and be labeled to an extreme extent compared to the 80s. A lot of good bands just didn’t get the exposure they deserved and all bands were under the control of the record companies and some were forced to release some absolute crap because of this. It was a great decade to grow up in for music, whatever your taste but there were some absolute shite released too, the whole Stock Aitken and Waterman stuff was just cringeworthy as was 99% of the stuff in the charts.

I was just getting into metal in the very early 80s. I’d heard Motorhead’s early offerings round a mate’s house and was immediately hooked. They were massive on the punk scene and everyone I knew was already into them. I remember when Kill ‘em All came out by Metallica and it was like a revelation in the metal world. Metal with heavy thrash punk overtones was just the ticket for me. Also when Venom’s Welcome To Hell album came out, a mate told me how shit it was so I immediately had a listen down the “Small Wonder” record shop in Walthamstow and loved every minute of it. Compared to what it is now, Kerrang wasn’t the steaming pile of cow shit that it is now and featured many iconic bands in their early stages.

Sassafras

Nothing of significance happened to music until the birth of the X Factor.

RandallFlagg

In '83 I had left school (June 1982) was still trying to get over The Jam splitting, trying to convince myself that the first Style Council record was great (it isn't) and towards the end of the year was put onto The Smiths, which helped me get over the Jam enormously. Johnny Marr played a Ric 330 so they were bound to be good.

mudslide73

Great thread, lads. 

guitars4you

Any era has its bad points - be it 'how much is that doggie in the window' or the Birdie Song so there will always be highs and lows within a chart show like TOTP - Yes it has its fault, but a damn sight better than where we are today with effectively no chart based show on main stream TV channels

To me it helped to bring to a larger public audience artists like The jam, Dire Straits, Police, Oasis etc etc - With viewing figures of 5-10 million it was influential - I always quote the first outing on TOTP about Culture Club in that the following morning it was such a big talking point, albeit divided opinion, between wasn't it fresh and different or who is that effing puff - The point was that TOTP created an impact with one single event

I recall within 5 days after first seeing The Jam on TOTP I sold 3 Ricky 330's at work - never done that again since

Me personally I learnt to play guitar around 1974 after watching Slade and T-Rex on TOTP

I have not really listened to a chart show for years, so easy to become distanced to the charts and maybe the charts don't reflect my style/ or interest in music - But I still believe there should be a main stream music show each week that touches on current singles, best selling albums, bands on tour and even an archive section - I'm sure some one like Jo Whiley could do a good show with a wider enough scope to cover dance to rock

Motorhate

RandallFlagg said:

In '83 I had left school (June 1982) was still trying to get over The Jam splitting, trying to convince myself that the first Style Council record was great (it isn't) and towards the end of the year was put onto The Smiths, which helped me get over the Jam enormously. Johnny Marr played a Ric 330 so they were bound to be good.

You would not believe how much I hated The Smiths when they first came out, as did all my mates. To a man, each one of them wanted to inflict severe pain on Morrisey (that's what it was like back then, very violent times) and the sight of him dancing with flowers on TOTP to "This Charming Man" just rubber-stamped this hatred. The same went for Paul Weller (probably because we assumed they were Mods).

I don’t mind admitting that  I quite like The Smiths now and even some of Morrisey’s solo stuff. Still hate Paul Weller.

olafgarten

In 1983 I was -15 years old. My dad was in his 20s and just graduated from Cambridge, he listened to a lot of crap music then and still does now. But there are a few good songs that I listen to occasionally. 

This is the top 100 of 1983 
www.uk-charts.top-source.info/top-100-1983.shtml

Octafish

Kind of lucky for the BBC the 1000th episode doesn't have Jimmy the ped in it !

I was just 7/8 in 83, but already quite into music and used to watch Top of the Pops every week, had red plastic toy electric guitar and had drawn a keyboard onto a sheet of card that I pretended to play. I remember liking New Order's Blue Monday, The Police, David Bowie, Japan... I was lucky enough to have a dad who was into some good music.

I also remember it seemed a bit of a shit time to be around..., miners strikes, cold war and nuclear weapons, IRA bombings, unemployment, industry closing down, everything being sold off, that shit stain Thacher! I was pretty young, but remember being aware of this stuff, my parents were quite political so I picked on that I guess, but also there was no internet/mobile phones and we didn't have a home computer or VHS to get lost in.

I distinctly remember a friend at school telling me that in 20 years time there will be a nuclear weapon big enough to blow the whole world up in one go and me thinking 'oh well at least I'll get to my late 20s before i die'

57Deluxe

most of the later 1970s and 80s TOTP was for girls...

ChuckManual

Motorhate said:

You would not believe how much I hated The Smiths when they first came out, as did all my mates. To a man, each one of them wanted to inflict severe pain on Morrisey (that's what it was like back then, very violent times) and the sight of him dancing with flowers on TOTP to "This Charming Man" just rubber-stamped this hatred. 

Whereas... I think The Smiths (and Public Enemy) were probably almost entirely responsible for my psychological and emotional survival in the mid-80's.

...them and Frank Miller's work on Daredevil and The Dark Knight.

Oh - and girls, obviously...

(cough)

Sassafras

olafgarten said:

In 1983 I was -15 years old. My dad was in his 20s and just graduated from Cambridge, he listened to a lot of crap music then and still does now. But there are a few good songs that I listen to occasionally. 

This is the top 100 of 1983 
www.uk-charts.top-source.info/top-100-1983.shtml

Even assuming your dad was in his late twenties, he must've fathered you at a very young age.
  

axisus

Sassafras said:

Nothing of significance happened to music until the birth of the X Factor.

Dr Who should go back and drown it in a bucket. It's about as good a storyline as we have come to expect from Steven Moffat.

olafgarten

Sassafras said:

olafgarten said:

In 1983 I was -15 years old. My dad was in his 20s and just graduated from Cambridge, he listened to a lot of crap music then and still does now. But there are a few good songs that I listen to occasionally. 

This is the top 100 of 1983 
www.uk-charts.top-source.info/top-100-1983.shtml

Even assuming your dad was in his late twenties, he must've fathered you at a very young age.
  

No, I was negative 15 years old, so he was at least 35