Sunday, December 25, 2011

A Christmas Day treat: A full edition of Top of the Pops from 1970

I looked for a Blodwyn Pig track to share with you and found a whole edition of Top of the Pops. It comes from 29 January 1970 (when your humble blogger was nine years old) and was orginally broadcast in colour even thought all the videos below are in black in white.

And a very good edition it is too - complete with Jimmy Savile, as it happens. The sixties were over, but there were some really interesting bands in the singles chart and Glamrock had not yet been conceived.

Incidentally, as Digital Spy explains, few editons of TOTP this old survive.

Anyway, here goes.

Blodwyn Pig, formed by Jethro Tull founder Mick Abrahams, are first up...



Next it's Arrival with Friends...



Next is Sympathy by Rare Bird, a track so good that is has already featured here as a Sunday video...



Next up were Pan's People dancing to I'm a Man by Chicago - regular readers will not need to be told that this was written and first recorded by the Spencer Davis Group. The version of this on Youtube showing Pan's People has a very different soundtrack to it, but here are Chicago doing the song at around the same time:



After that it was Mick Abraham's old sparring partner Ian Anderson and Jethro Tull, with a bit of a classic:



Next it is Mary Hopkin's long-forgotten track Temma Harbour:



After that sources differ, but this video suggests that next come the Dutch Band Shocking Blue with Venus, followed by Bad Finger with Come and Get it from the film The Magic Christian:



Now Jonathan King with Let It All Hang Out. Awkward.



And now we have Brotherhood of Man, long before Eurovision, with United We Stand. I have written before about the way that the counterculture leached into mainstream pop in this era:



In penultimate track spot we have Canned Heat with Let's Work Together. Groovy:



And we end with Britain's number one. After such a good edition it is a little disappointing to find it is Edison Lighthouse with Love Grows as my Rosemary Goes:

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