TOP OF THE POPS

Here I am, sat in the early hours of Sunday morning, watching an old version of 'Top of the Pops' 1964 - 1976. I remember it as though it was yesterday.

I remember all the songs, I recognise all the bands, I know all the words.

Is that sad - or is it just reminiscent of an age past?

When I was a teenager in the 1970's, watching 'Top of the Pops' was a ritual. Whatever else happened during the week TOTPs had to be watched? If you didn't watch TOTPs, and couldn't discuss at school the next day, what the No.1 band were wearing, if you couldn't recite who was in the 'top ten', if you didn't know which DJ had presented TOTPs the night before, and if you couldn't recall who was wearing what ........................ well you might as well have been dead!

I can't remember whether TOTPs went out live - but in the early to mid 1970's it was definitely before the age of any sort of technology. Even the most 'gadget' conscious people didn't have video recorders until the late 1970's/80's.

TOTPs were watched by every teenager in the land. And everyone's parents didn't understand the music or 'disco' dancing. Everyone's parents had come from an era where they met at 'proper dances' post war. Everyone's parents just thought TOTPs was, a 'bad example of the youth of today'?.

Pop groups, long hair, strange fashions, - it was all totally alien to parents of teenage kids being brought up in the 1970?s.

Us kids wanted freedom. Our parents wanted control.

As I sit here watching the 'Eagles' singing 'Baby Come Back', it seems like only yesterday that I was watching TOTPs and telling my parents they didn't understand me.

I watched TOTPs in the days when 'Jimmy Saville, Tony Blackburn & Noel Edmunds' presented it. It was the highlight of my week. What simple pleasures we had back then.

Am I really this old?

I think it's so fantastic that in today's age of 'hitec' we can just click a button on a computer and watch whatever we want.

OK - so now I'm watching the 'Kinks'. I actually think I saw them performing somewhere in Edinburgh about 15 years ago. Can't remember exactly where, so they couldn't have made that much of an impression?

But to get back to 'TOP OF THE POPS' - it was my favourite programme for at least 5 years.

And now 'David Bowie' is on my screen. And to think I used to have my hair cut like that???

I wonder if the kids of today, with their iphones, MP3 players and all other technology, etc etc will remember all the words of the songs that have been in the top ten for weeks on end.

I think not.

PS: Susie Quarto is on screen now. Saw her for real a few years back. To quote my friend; 'she's well into her 50's and every guy in the audience still wants to shag her'. Lucky Susie?????????????

To be honest at this time of night I'd rather just go to bed - alone.