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Chart Music: the TOTP Podcast

The podcast that takes one random episode of Top Of The Pops - the greatest TV Pop show ever - and breaks it down to its very last compound. Created by Sarah Bee, Neil Kulkarni, Taylor Parkes, Simon Price and David Stubbs (who all wrote for Melody Maker) and hosted by Al Needham (who didn't), it's an unflinching gaze into the open wound of pop culture and a celebration of Thursday evenings past.
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Now displaying: March, 2018
Mar 30, 2018

The latest episode of the podcast which asks: have you got crabs?

In this edition, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, we decided to give you the opportunity to watch our selected episode of Pops along with us (providing you keep a finger on the pause button, as we're over five times longer). It's just come out on BBC4, giving you an invaluable opportunity to tut to yourself and say; "God, they didn't even mention that Richard Skinner keeps saying "It's the way you tell them" to Simon Bates, the thick twats."

Yes, we're smack in the middle of the Eighties, and a mere nine days away from Live Aid - and no-one realises yet what a massive fault-line it's going to create in Popland, when the dinosaurs come marching back and cram everything around them into their gaping maws. Least of all us, as we're too busy skulking around in a post sixth-form haze, sitting through a Saturday detention due to Tipp-Ex-related obscenities, and pitching a Pants Tent to George Michael in Barry Island Butlins. 

Musicwise, however, this episode veers all over the shop, from Pete Burns taking the last stand for Pop Weirdness to Tears For Fears poncing about in Montreux to Paul Weller in his Pants to Oompah Reggae to Mick Hucknall annoying people trying to play pool to Roland Gift singing like he's got a hot bit of potato in his mouth to Ian Astbury dressing up like someone who reads palms in a caravan off Blackpool Pier. It's actually better than expected, although the No.1 is depressingly rammel. And as luck would have it, one of us - who was a Hip Young Cockleslinger at the Barry and District Times - has pulled out his scrapbook and treats us to his original reviews. 

Neil Kulkarni and Simon Price join Al Needham for a solid pick at the scab of 1985, veering off on the usual tangents, which include having to go to school with the Topless Lovelies, the correct procedures of cock-drawing, trying to dress like Paul Weller and ending up looking like Eric Morecombe, Quincy Punks, and the Treacherous Steph of Basingstoke. Naturally, swearing is deployed. Often.

[audio http://traffic.libsyn.com/chartmusic/22_-_July_4th_1985_-_A_Horrible_Year_For_Crisps_And_Pop.mp3]

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Mar 20, 2018

The latest episode of the podcast which asks: er, can you spare us a few quid so we don't have to do these through shitty microphones any more? Please?

This episode, Pop-Crazed Youngsters, couldn't be more Nineties if it started off thinking England were a lock for the 1994 World Cup, and finished having a bit of a roar about Lady Di. We're smack in the middle of 1995, two-thirds of the panel were hammering out dispatches from the very frontline of Cool Britannia (while the other third was locked in a glass box, rummaging through bin bags filled with pictures of fannies), and one of us was actually in attendance when this very episode was filmed, sitting around with mopey young musos and slipping away for a crafty pull on a jazz fag when Celine Dion comes on.

Yes, there are a couple of Britpop acts on this episode, but it's a timely reminder that there was far more going on than that in '95, and most of it thick with of the tang of Hip-Hop. Montell Jordan rocks that urban Bully out of Bullseye look, Jonathan King introduces his latest proteges The Black Eyed Mushy Peas, some band we've never heard of drops an unexpected N-Bomb, Manchester United play Run-DMC to Status Quo's Aerosmith, and, er, Scatman John pitches up. And St Simon of Mayo emerges from the darkness every now and then like a Shakespearean ghost with some rib-tickling, cutting-edge 'burns' of the English Rugby Union and Bob Geldof's marital woes.

Naturally, because it's a Nineties episode, there's a chunk of blather about working in the music press, but the inevitable tangents include the death of the NME, the floppy-headed rubbishness of David Seaman, being sneered at by Menswe@r's roadie, an entire shopping centre being rammed out to see a radio presenter dressed up as a monk, Richard Desmond: Champion of Homosexual Media, and a plug or two for our new Patreon account. As always, there's swearing, swearing and more swearing.

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