Robbie

Good news house.martin - Top Of The Pops 1979 starts on Thursday 9 January 2014 at 7.30pm with the episode originally broadcast on 4 January 1979. It is preceded by 1979 - Big Hits next Friday (03/01/14) at 10pm. The Specials, Ian Dury, Blondie, Squeeze, Gary Numan, Elvis Costello... need I say more, they'll all be there next Friday! http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00704hg/broadcasts/2014/01

I was listening to the Barron Knights song earlier this morning! :lol: My mum took my two sisters to see Grease, she was going to take me too but I refused to go so she gave me a pound and I bought 'Rat Trap' by the Boomtown Rats instead! This was back during the school half term holidays in October 1978. I've watched Grease on TV and do quite like it but I still think I got the better bargain by buying 'Rat Trap'! And when 'Rat Trap' reached number 1 and the record was on TOTP Bob Geldof tore up a picture of John Travolta, which was a brilliant moment :D

Many thanks for this fchd, most appreciated.

I quite enjoyed the TOTP from this year but we could have done without Boyzone - why on earth were they on, the single flopped? - and James Blunt. At least the latter reached number 4 but he was still out of place for what should be a round up of the year. Christmas Day TOTP should be about number 1s and the biggest sellers. Some of the biggest hits of the year were just played in passing, which was wrong. But on the whole it wasn't too bad.

I'm trying to guess the couple of songs from 1978 you didn't enjoy - Brian & Michael and The Smurfs by any chance?!

Someone at another forum commented upon this and the general conclusion was that it may be that most of his returns were from distributors for Brunswick releases. I do know that many record stores back then were provided with stock from only one record label so I assume his sources for sales information were mainly distributing Brunswick releases.

It's the same with 'Into The Groove' back in 1985 though. Had the record been released a couple of years earlier it would have easily passed a million sales. 1985, like 2005, was a poor year for sales.

The song was originally on Abba's 'The Album' album which had been released back in December 1976 with the album selling over a million copies. Its 1983 release as a single was to promote a compilation album of the same name ('Thank You For The Music'), a collection of tracks which had been omitted from the 1982 best of album 'The Singles: The First Ten Years'. Also by late 1983 the group had ceased to exist in all but name so a number 33 placing was a good achievement. The compilation album of the same name only reached number 17.

'White Rabbit' by Jefferson Airplane - an excellent track that was first released as a single in 1967 and then re-issued a few times over the years but which was never a hit. It almost did chart, making number 5 on the Record Retailer Breakers Chart on 18 October 1967 but sadly Guinness ignored the Breakers Chart when compiling the British Hit Singles.

It could even be there now, or at least it should pass a million sales sometime today. The 994.5k sale posted in the tweet will be sales to Tuesday night.

Not back in 1979. It was released as a single in the US but in the UK the label went for 'Sunday Girl' as the follow up to 'Heart Of Glass'.

'Driver's Seat sadly failed to make the top 40 when re-issued in June 1979 (it had originally flopped a few months earlier) due to a strike at the EMI pressing plant in Hayes, Middlesex which limited the amount of stock there was available in the shops. The band appeared on Top Of The Pops but with no more stock available to buy the record soon dropped off the charts. A third release of the song later in 1979 following it reaching the US top 20 flopped too. At least that record made it out of EMI's pressing plant. Kirsty MacColl's debut single, 'They Don't Know' was pressed up but the stock was stuck in the pressing plant due to the strike and by the time the record did make it into the shops the record has peaked on radio and the single sadly flopped. Strangely the strike ended just in time for the release of 'We Don't Talk Anymore' by Cliff Richard. Perhaps the staff in the pressing plant preferred him to the other acts!

Goodness, that's the first time I've heard that song. Yikes! It's hypnotically awful! But also good at the same time... the graphics in the video remind me of the video for 'Move Your Feet' by Junior Senior, very clunky and most definitely retro.

Same here, but they tend not to do it these days.

Could it be a joint top 40 of the year / new chart, as that has been done before?

A few weeks ago I did post that I thought the first number one of 2014 would be 'Sail' by AWOLNATION but it seems to keep faltering - I expect it to stall in the new chart announced this afternoon then it will probably climb back up again next week. But while it may eventually still go top 10 it seems to have a lot to do to be number 1 in 4 weeks time.

I agree with you about the Christmas story being referenced in WACIB but Fred Jay has gone on record as saying he wrote the lyrics as a general reference to the hope that is realised when a child is born rather than a specific reference to the birth of Jesus. Perhaps he was just being very circumspect. WACIB certainly fails the test of a being a non Christmas song in that it sounds out of place when played at any other time in the year other than in December... 'The Power Of Love' passes the test though it does invoke the spirit of Christmas whenever it is played, at least to me.

What about 'When A Child Is Born', the Christmas number 1 in 1976 in a version sung by Johnny Mathis? It isn't a Christmas song though the lyrics do scream Christmas and the song is generally seen as a Christmas song. Johnny Mathis's version was released in August 1976, slap bang in the middle of a heatwave and just as 'Dancing Queen' by Abba was about to reach number 1. It was re-promoted in late October 1976 and at first slowly crawled up the charts before eventually reaching number 1 on the chart announced on 21 December 1976. Its lyrics are more suited to a Christmas song than 'The Power Of Love' but it was never written about the birth of Jesus or indeed with any Christmas connection and when it was first recorded by Gladys Knight and then Johnny Mathis it was never recorded with the intention of being a Christmas song. Incidentally it was written by the same guy from Boney M (Fred Jay) that wrote the 'Oh My Lord' segment of 'Mary's Boy Child - Oh My Lord'...

Same here! Though it is a song I can listen to at any other time of the year but whenever I hear it I do think of Christmas...

Island did release the Ze catalogue in 1981. There was a fair bit of stock of the single available to buy in 1981, I had a Christmas job working in a branch of HMV that December (which is where I first heard the single) and we had quite a few copies of the single but next to no-one ever bought it :(

I think the song just didn't catch on with the UK public at the time. I bought it when it was first released in 1981 but I don't recall it getting played that much that year though it did get a fair amount of Radio 1 airplay the following year. It's one of those songs that seems to have grown in popularity over the years but that may be more down to it being included on one of the 1990s re-issues / revamps of the Now Christmas album.

It completely missed the top 75 when first released in December 1981 and reached number 45 when re-released a year later. A cover version of the song by the Spice Girls did reach number 1 in 1998, albeit as the B side of 'Goodbye'!

If I recall the original version was still widely available for the two sales weeks that contributed to the first two weeks the single was at number 1. And even after that I think (though I'm not 100% certain) that on the top 40 Radio 1 continued to play the original version rather than the re-recorded version.

I can still remember the Top 40 that Mark Goodier presented on Sunday 27 August 1989. He got his timings for the records so wrong that he had to omit playing the number 2, 'Ride On Time' by Black Box as it was 6.55pm by the time the number 3 single had finished playing. It was a rather unfortunate but gigantic error by him!

I do. And once New Year is out of the way I delete them until 11 months later!