Topic: Chart Music Podcast

[buzby]

I think that 5-7 pre J Long/Kid Jenson show had an element of a kind of safe/commercial version of the more specialist evening shows. I think they may have had the odd session, and would play stuff like Love and Money or The Kane Gang.

Bruno Brookes was largely responsible for making Stakker Humanoid a hit, playlisting it on his show and promoting it in his column in Number One magazine after being given a white label copy (he played it twice in one show at one point). When it got into the Top 20 and Brian Dougans was asked to perform it on Top Of The Pops, Brookes was one of the presenters.

Before Brookes took over, Powell did have new bands in doing sessions (from the likes of The Alarm, Bauhaus, Black Roots and most famously Duran Duran and Culture Club just before they took off) and he was the first person after John Peel To play Teenage Kicks on Radio 1 (Peel had left him his copy of the EP with a note of which track to play). He also gave Pete Tong his break on Radio 1 in 1979 with a dance music mix slot. However, he seems to have had an aversion to hip-hop, and told Peel he shouldn't be playing it as it was 'the music of black criminals'.

[SteveDave]

Davies started out on Radio 1 doing a Saturday night slot in Autumn 1982, aged 24, which was where I first heard The Message by Grandmaster Flash, so he could certainly champion edgy stuff. Yet he signed off from his Radio 1 career in 1993, in the Saturday breakfast slot, playing Layla as a fuck you to the new broom policy.

"Gary Davies's last Radio One show preceded one of Baker's first. Gary bade tearjerking farewells to his colleagues and his listeners, recalled what a privilege it had been to serve them and then closed with the record that he considered appropriate to such a weighty moment, the full eight minutes of "Layla". Danny Baker waited until the very last chord had faded away and then came in. "And if you tune to Virgin 1215 you can hear that again and again and again and again…….." And he played The Beatles "Rain"."

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

As a card-carrying Baker apologist, I've always regarded that as really quite cunty and really quite amusing in roughly equal measure.

[DrGreggles]

Baker will never miss an opportunity to prick pomposity though.
Davies left an open goal there.

If only Dan had played Rusty Goff first instead.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

Oh, absolutely. It was funny.

I love the bit in that fantastic Blood on the Carpet documentary where the hopeless Adrian Juste recalls phoning DLT while listening to Baker's first Radio One show: "Are you hearing this?!"

The thought of those twats being utterly dismayed and confused by Baker's shtick is wonderful. Schadenfreude incarnate.

[DrGreggles]

Oh, absolutely. It was funny.

I love the bit in that fantastic Blood on the Carpet documentary where the hopeless Adrian Juste recalls phoning DLT while listening to Baker's first Radio One show: "Are you hearing this?!"

The thought of those twats being utterly dismayed and confused by Baker's shtick is wonderful. Schadenfreude incarnate.

Blood on the Carpet is up there with that Bucks Fizz documentary for me.

[Brundle-Fly]

I've had a brain freeze. Who was the 80s/90s(?) R1 DJ who tragically died young on the operating table. He was a rather hefty bloke and the surgeons struggled to save him because of his size. He championed dance music. Steve somebody? I've Googled but nothing came up. He had a nickname in the middle of his real name and a trademark chant.

[DrGreggles]

I've had a brain freeze. Who was the 80s/90s(?) R1 DJ who tragically died young on the operating table. He was a rather hefty bloke and the surgeons struggled to save him because of his size. He championed dance music. Steve somebody? I've Googled but nothing came up. He had a nickname in the middle of his real name and a trademark chant.

Steve 'Not The One Who Plays For Leicester' Walsh?

[Funcrusher]

You wot?

[daf]

The Fat Bloke Band on Top of the Pops

[buzby]

I've had a brain freeze. Who was the 80s/90s(?) R1 DJ who tragically died young on the operating table. He was a rather hefty bloke and the surgeons struggled to save him because of his size. He championed dance music. Steve somebody? I've Googled but nothing came up. He had a nickname in the middle of his real name and a trademark chant.

As the others have said, Steve 'You Wot' Walsh. He died on July 4th 1988 aged 29 of a heart attack while undergoing a leg operation. He had been injured in a car crash on Ibiza while filming the video for his second single Ain't No Stopping Us Now and had flown back to London for further surgery on his broken leg.

He was a Radio London and Capital DJ though, so meant nothing to those of us in the provinces.

[Brundle-Fly]

Ah, thanks, everybody. Steve Walsh and not Radio 1. It did make me wonder what happened to the other roly-poly DJ, Jonathan 'Jonno' Coleman.

I've just learnt he is now sixty-three, slimmed right down and that he moved to Sydney thirteen years ago with his wife and kids.

[Satchmo Distel]

The Fat Bloke Band on Top of the Pops

Davies feigns surprise that a song is at #9 in both the UK and US.

[Funcrusher]

The Fat Bloke Band on Top of the Pops

He certainly was a big lad. I'm guessing the food options at 80s soul weekenders weren't very healthy.

[famethrowa]

Ah, thanks, everybody. Steve Walsh and not Radio 1. It did make me wonder what happened to the other roly-poly DJ, Jonathan 'Jonno' Coleman.

I've just learnt he is now sixty-three, slimmed right down and that he moved to Sydney thirteen years ago with his wife and kids.

Jono Coleman update: I saw him just a couple of years ago at a They Might Be Giants show in Sydney. Maybe he got free tickets or something

[Funcrusher]

This just appeared on my YouTube feed. The big fella advertising Streetsounds comps:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPs9ACcChQg

[famethrowa]

Arrgh I'm still ragin' about the old episode I just listened to, Pricey describing Prince as undoubtedly the most important musical figure of the last 100 years. What awful journo hype bs. Why would someone supposedly knowledgeable say something so wrong? I'm as wicked as a wasp, me

[DrGreggles]

Pricey is a HUGE Prince fan though, so he probably genuinely believes it.
Music journos often like to be contrarians*, but I don't think it's the case there.

For what it's worth, I don't think it's that bad a shout.
Prince was fucking amazing.


*"I prefer Dollar's version of 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' to the original" - Simon Price

[An Actual Propeller]

You could argue that Prince was the most talented.  Important though?  Above Elvis?

[SteveDave]

Arrgh I'm still ragin' about the old episode I just listened to, Pricey describing Prince as undoubtedly the most important musical figure of the last 100 years. What awful journo hype bs. Why would someone supposedly knowledgeable say something so wrong? I'm as wicked as a wasp, me

He also said that The Beat were one of the greatest bands ever when one of the died recently. Emoji of raised eyebrows.

[DrGreggles]

You could argue that Prince was the most talented.  Important though?  Above Elvis?

You're asking the wrong person here. Apart from a handful of songs, I don't really like Elvis.
I'd say Prince was far more important, but then I suppose it depends on your definition of 'important'.

[DrGreggles]

He also said that The Beat were one of the greatest bands ever when one of the died recently. Emoji of raised eyebrows.

Eye of the beholder stuff, surely.
"One of the greatest bands ever" = One of my favourite bands.

[Nice Relaxing Poo]

I remember him declaring that Tricky's Pre Millennium Tension was one of the great album's of the century back when it was released. I suppose he's inclined to a bit of hyperbole as it was his job for a long time.

[Johnboy]

I'm generally on board with his taste apart from him not liking the Beatles

[SteveDave]

Eye of the beholder stuff, surely.
"One of the greatest bands ever" = One of my favourite bands.

I can say objectively that there are 50 "greater" bands than the Beat.

[DrGreggles]

I can say objectively that there are 50 "greater" bands than the Beat.

But he wasn't speaking objectively; he was speaking as a massive fan of The Beat.
To him they are one of the greatest bands of all time.

We could all do that with our favourite band.

[Schnapple]

I love Pricey, but I think he's still got a very teenage streak of contrarianism in him. I'm not saying he doesn't hold the opinions he espouses, but he definitely loves having hot takes that go against the grain. But this can be refreshing and entertaining.

[Satchmo Distel]

I'm not sure how Prince is more talented than Stevie Wonder or Brian Wilson, and I'm sure he's not more talented than Duke Ellington.

[Golden E. Pump]

I would say that he matches all of those in terms of talent, as fans of them all.

Where he becomes important is his ability to master the studio and be in the hat for best live performer of all time too.

[kidsick5000]