Entertainment For Lively Minds
TOTP albums are on Spotify
Posted by Mr Fade on 17 November 2010 - 12:51pm.
This morning I made the wonderful discovery that the original, no-original TOTP albums are on Spotify.
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Oops! I pressed submit
when I just wanted to preview...
Anyway, the cover above was the Top Of The Pops album I owned and meant a great deal to me as I became more familiar with it than some of the originals.
Their artwork was fantastic, and listening to them again on Spotify is great fun. The more individual singers like Ferry, Rod The Mod, the bopping elf and Nod all come off terribly. As do great singers like the girls from Abba.
The other thing that comes across is how many classic, great songs were being released in the past compared to now. The albums worked because the songs were so strong.
My first ever record buy...
In Woolworths was the one with a girl in a string dress playing tennis on the cover.
Had a cover of Lulu's cover of Bowie's "man who sold the world" if memory serves.
Didn't Elton John
Get his start singing covers on some of those albums? I never bought any but I always made time to look at the girls on the sleeves!
I think he played
On those knock-off albums they used to sell in Woolies. Danny Baker used to play them occasionally.
I remember him playing Elton's rendition of Young, Gifted & Black and commenting: "No Elton, you're white, bald, fat and from Pinner."
2 out of three ain't bad!
he was young then, and pretty gifted. (not pretty, just gifted.)
Yes indeed, pop pickers!
A bunch of Elt's TOTP covers were compiled in the 90's and released as "Reg Dwight's Piano Goes Pop", but tends these days to be called "The Legendary Covers", which is how it appeared in the Sunday Mail (or similar) a few years ago.
His publisher demo versions of tunes by Nick Drake & John Martyn are also widely available on the interweb, usually called the "Saturday Sun Sessions."
Not the TOTP series.
Elton's covers were for several rival series of low-budget covers. Some appeared on Music For Pleasure's Hot Hits series, but I can't remember where the rest ended up.
How much time
he spent looking at the girls on the covers is not a matter of public record.
http://open.spotify.com/album/7uESOaDqEaDOSZMPAPGMBp
David Byron
..later of Uriah Heep (be still my beating heart) also sang on those albums, along with well known session singers of the era.
(cough) Some less well-known session drummers
also played on them. :-)
Planet Mondo
one of the blogs to the right under 'sites we like' has recently done a couple of features on this series.
Top of the Punks
Bless you Simon - yes two features in fact covering when TOTP comps began to accomodate punk into their pop playlists: Pretty Vacant, Jilted John and Gary Gilmour's Eyes all get the Top of the Poppers treatment here...
http://planetmondo.blogspot.com/2010/10/when-pop-cultures-collide-top-of...
http://planetmondo.blogspot.com/2010/11/top-of-punks-part-2.html
Cover Girls
See the following 'Fan Site' for in depth analysis of the cover girls for the Pickwick releases:
http://www.easyontheeye.net/albums/totp/index.html
The Definitive TOTP website
Fill yer booties here....
http://www.freewebs.com/toppopper/
Not just Top of the Pops.
They've also got the Top Of The Tots series of children's EPs that were released on the Mr Pickwick sister label.
I'm currently spinning Top Of The Tots Pop Party Vol. 3, which I played to death on a battered old Dansette back in the mid 1970s. Of course it's all rubbish, with the rendition of Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep obviously tossed off in just a few minutes.
Mentioned before
but have you found the ones with the hiss, crackle & jumps yet? Copied from original vinyl in an age of digital delights.
Indeed.
It seems like all of Top Of The Tots EPs are taken from original vinyl, and all cared for about as well as the one I had when about 6 years old.
I remember my parents got these
My Dad taped tracks for parties. The first ones were called 'Chartbusters Today'. I had heard about Hendrix's recent supposed drugs related demise and I heard the TOTP 'Voodoo Chile' and, as a child, found it quite disturbing and weird to listen to. Seems bizarre and hard to believe now that they attempted a copy but they did and here's the proof:
http://open.spotify.com/track/7100C9SqN162gjr416IgI9
Couple of crackers from the back catalogue
TOTP - I Feel Love
TOTP - Bo' Rap'