Top of the Pops, a BBC programme that has shown Top-40 pop acts since the days of the Beatles, has been axed by the BBC. I grew up in the late 70s and 80s watching the show, including favourite bands of mine like the Stranglers, Undertones, Madness, Ian Dury (RIP) and the rest. Now it is all gone. Some of this must have been driven by shifting demographics. When ToTP started, there were relatively more folk under the age of 20 versus the rest of the population than is the case now, and the music industry tended to chase after what was thought to be a large and expanding number of young people with money in their pockets.
The development of new musical techologies, CDs, downloading and the Internet has also affected, and is continuing to change, the way that people listen to music and the sort of styles that get played. This is also affecting how folk come across music for the first time and how a band or act can make a “breakthrough”. The old music labels, under threat as they must be from the changing music industry, are no longer able to support something like a “Top 40” on which something like the old BBC programme could be based. This is neither a good or bad development, in my view, just a change driven by shifting demographics and technology.
So making it to “Number One” no longer has quite the same resonance now that it may have done in the heyday of the Beatles or Duran Duran. Some may regret the passing of all this, but I am indifferent to it. I increasingly hope that new technologies will make it possible for talented artists to circumvent Big Music and push their own offerings on to the Net, using such avenues as the wildly successful GarageBand route. (Uber-blogger Glenn Reynolds has written about this recently in a book).
Anyway, the demise of Top of the Pops should not lead one to conclude that a supposedly vibrant era of great music is going to be replaced by something worse. It is the error of any age to assume that whatever went before is better than what is happening now (a sure sign that one is getting old. I have just passed 40 and intend to resist that trap). This book by Tyler Cowen points out, for example, how the often wildly controversial music of the R&R era in the 1950s has taken on the mantle of classic music in the ears and hearts of many people (including me):
“Musical pessimists also have claimed that contemporary music provides an aesthetic that is overly accessible and directed at the lowest possible denominator. They view rock and roll and other genres as a succession of pop songs, well suited to catch the ear of the casual listener but of little lasting value. We should keep in mind, however, that many western creations have stood a test of time, one of the most significant indicators of cultural quality and depth. It has now been more than forty years since the release of the early classic works of rock and roll, such as Chuck Berry and James Brown.” (page 179)
Or this, (page 178)::
“Contemporary music, for the most part, encourages freedom, nonconformism, and a skeptical attitude towards authority. The totalitarian states of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union did not hesitate to permit Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. Jazz, swing and blues were banned. The free and vital sense of joy communicated by these musical forms clashed too obviously with adherence to totalitarian ideals. Similarly, the communist and socialist leaders in the Eastern bloc saw rock and roll as a special threat to their authority, precisely because it was based on the personality of the individual performer.”
Rock on.
If their idea is not to inject new blood or ideas into a 42 year old icon but instead to decide that it is past it’s sell-by date and cancel it then I suppose that the BBC should start on all its other shows as well. Let’s see Desert Island Discs cancelled as well, Eastenders, The Archers (over 42 years old but the same unchanged formula thus boring as hell by their ‘standards’), Newsnight (same old stuff and getting stale now with that awfully flaccid Paxman vs Coulter interview) or how about the so awfully pretentious Newsnight Review?
If removing TOTP even saved the taxpayer some token sum then I might even be prepared to say that this is a good thing, but we all know that it doesn’t save us anything; the production staff don’t get laid off, just reassigned to another department and I daresay that the TOTP budget has probably been aready reallocated to some other dreary NuLabour-approved TV show.
A topic dear to my heart. From what I’ve seen, the majority of musicians that have embarked on their career in the years AN (After Napster) couldn’t give a fig whether or not the labels are interested in them. They know they can use the internet to get their music out, and view filesharing, podcasting etc as a positive boon. It’s not like album sales ever constituted a large fraction of their income anyways.
Personally, I haven’t bothered with radio or MTV since my first year of university. When I’m in the mood for new music, I do some websearching, find something interesting, and download it. If I like it, I keep it, and if the artist in question happens to come to wherever I am, and I happen to have free time and hear about their impending visit beforehand, I go to the show.
It is the error of any age to assume that whatever went before is better than what is happening now
And it would be an error to assume that what is going on now is better than….well, anything.
The music that I like seems to be clustered around certain years….1976, 1986, 1991….it comes in waves. Seems to be an economic phenomenon, really – opportunity cost and all that.
Ah yes, ToTP, the boring programme that came on just before either Tomorrow’s World or Dr Who, I forget which. It played crap mainstream pop music that I didn’t like in front of a self-conscious audience of teenagers who couldn’t dance.
And now it’s gone. Yay! ToTP has been replaced by allofmp3.com. The world is better off.
That’s complete gibberish.
Amen!
Take the year music died for you, subtract 19 and for quite a few of us – lo and behold, the year of ones birth!
Could we simply cancel the BBC?
When it comes down to it the product of Top of the Pops is the music on display. In general, the “music” on display in the Top 40 in recent times has been pretty damn bad, so it’s no wonder that people stopped watching it.
(I also wonder how much the prevailance of 24 hr music channels on digital / freeview / satellite / cable has affected it.
What? No more Pan’s People? Oh, the humanity . . . . .!
llater,
llamas
Music is in a pretty good state right now, with the web offering outlets for the enterprising and the original. The music biz in the US in years past has been exceptionally corrupt and with rare exceptions favored the marketable product over the true artist. I have never seen the program in question (TOTP), but I think I can safely assume it was littered with marketable products rather than artists. If so, no loss.
Ian Dury is dead? What happened and when?
Ian Dury died a few years ago. He was disabled (had polio) and was a one-off. Billericay Dickie is truly a magnificent song. I dare folk to play it to their girlfriends/wives
Ian Dury passed away in 2000 of liver cancer. He had been diagnosed in 1995 or thereabouts with colon cancer, and obviously, it spread.
I met him several times in the mid-70’s, in the period between Kilburn & the High Roads and The Blockheads. He was a rivetting stage performer – I still recall him on the Stiff tour (1977) roaming the stage with that strange, hunched-over dragged-leg gait. He looked always ready to explode.
He was an odd duck – he seemed wracked by internal demons, tied up with his disabilities, issues of class struggle and differences (his powerful Cockney accent and mannerisms were, as best as I could tell, a learned affectation rather than a product of his upbringing), and the significant age divide between himself and the punk rockers that he was often aligned with. He was old enough to be the father of most of them, and I think he felt torn between the raw spittle-drenched vibrancy of what they were doing and the altogether-more-insightful work that he was trying to do.
But he made some pretty excellent music, especially in his associations with Chazz Jankel and Jools Holland. Rude, crude, bawdy, wonderful. If you crave the musical equivalent of being smacked upside your head with a Watney’s Red Barrel bar tray, get a copy of ‘New Boots and Panties!’ and put it on – loud.
llater,
llamas
Just because the rulers of totalitarian societies have preferred classical music does not mean that the music itself has some sort of totalitarian character. The genius of Beethoven and other classical composers should not be diminished simply because totalitarian leaders stupidly thought that their music was better suited to their society. Beethoven was a fierce champion of the individual and his music was innovative and ground breaking in his time. Just because it has become standard today does not mean that in its day it wasn’t nonconformist. It was and many of his contemporaries hated, for example, his late string quartets which were and are still some of the most unconventional pieces of music ever created. Since these composers have become standard in our time it is easy to forget that in their time their genius led them to break convention and defy the norm. Even Mozart, whom most people think of as the essence of the classical standard, was an extreme rule breaker and his compositional techniques defied almost every convention of the day.
Glitches chaps?
All I get when I click on the comments
is the comments box and no posts.
The BBC says that TOTP cannot compete with the 24/7 availability of pop music programming from many sources. Why then does the BBC continue to broadcast endless hours of soap operas, quiz shows, house decorating programmes, gardening programmes, cookery programmes and programmes about the fictional adventures of doctors, nurses, cops and robbers? These too are available on many channels at all times of day.
Good riddance it has been rubbish for quite a while.
JB:
Didn’t Beethoven dedicate one of his symphonies to Napoleon?
Didn’t Beethoven dedicate one of his symphonies to Napoleon?
Yes, No. 3, the Eroica. But that’s only half the story. It was originally dedicated to Napolean, but when Beethoven heard that Boney had betrayed the ideals of the revolution by declaring himself emperor, he vigorously un-dedicated it.
Worrierking: Actually TOTP consisted mainly of artists performing in in the studio (OK, “performing” is stretching it a bit as initially they used to mime to a prerecorded track. In later years however, the performances became live). As far as I can remember there was little, if any, “marketable product.”
Just because the rulers of totalitarian societies have preferred classical music does not mean that the music itself has some sort of totalitarian character.
Of course. But there is no doubt that totalitarians laboured under the delusion that classical music was somehow okay by them but rock and roll, jazz etc was subversive. Of course, being the numbskulls that totalitarians are, they overlooked what is obvious to us.
Steve, go and buy an Ian Dury CD and then you will know who he was and why he was so great. Or download a track or two from the net. Enjoy!
The BBC is passionate about music is it? What a surprise. Everyone seems to be passionate about everything these days, especially in the workplace. It seems to be the business equivalent of the footballer who gives 110%.
Ah TOTP!!!
It was always cheesy but it was all there was.
I was 12 when it first appeared. Before that there was 6 five special, with Pete Murrey looking out of place even then. Thank your lucky stars and Juke Box Jury. That was it folks.
Oh and on the radio 4 hours of pop a week. Saturday Club and Easy Beat. Youngsters of today dont know their born!…. Cue shoebox gravel sketch.
We had Dansettes, big boxy crappy things with auto changers. These were spindle things that let you stack six singles (at the max) or a couple of albums, though they inevitably used to slip and cause your records and your ears damage.
We had tape recorders too. Oh they were portable, but only in the sense that two adolecents could carry a Grundig two track reel to reel recorder to the next room.
Now we are about to live in our seperate ipodiverses.
I now have about a weeks worth downloaded on mine and I’m barely started yet.
Totp was watched by one in four people in Britain in that previous age of covergance. Now we have the age of divergance. I miss the sense of focus that limitation nessessarly had , perhaps because I am of that generation. Total freedom may mean total dissipation.We will have to see.
As to Ian Dury, I too met him a few times.
The first was that very Stiff 77 tour. I’d not come across him before, I’d come for Costello.
Anyway I’m backstage after he comes off and I see him off to his cubby hole pretending to be a dressing room, so I followed him to have a chat.
I’ll never forget the first words he said to me
Fuck off you Cunt!!!!
Well he was ajusting his calipers at the time, and was very concious of his disability.
He picked the wrong guy though.
Look you wanker, said I, Our gang taught Simon Jenkins to climb trees when he was 10 and he had 2 calipers not one. Do you think I’ve never seen one before?
Well we seemed to get along fine after that.
He was a difficult but very rewarding man. It’s all there in the music. He was in the best tradition of British Music Hall pitched for a different age. Raunchy raucus music with sweet, then sharp, then pure sentimental, but always with the humour bubbling out.
Bless.
As music ages it loses cultural relevance. Music that breaks new ground and gains wide acceptance creates a new standard and becomes that standard. I doubt, for example, that anyone will still think of the Sex Pistols as subversive in 100 years. Thus it was easier for cruel tyrants to promote an art form that had no immediate relation to or comment upon the state of affairs in their society.
I don’t think TOTP ever was involved at all in marketing of product – musical or otherwise – since the trouble with TOTP is that selection for the show is based upon too many possibilities. To attain interest from TOTP producers/researchers it was always necessary for your track to either have a high UK chart entry point (and that still had no guarantee of a play) or to be right on money as far as the current music fad goes, or simply to have taken the producers out for a beer the night before. Having directed at least 20 onstage (i.e. ‘live’) performances on TOTP over the years and having been berated more times than I can recall for failing to strike the right selection note on a music video which has just failed to make the TOTP playlist I’m pretty sure that all it ever really took to ‘market’ anything on that show was repeated shots up the dancers’ short skirts which is something that I know once certain longtime TOTP producer always wanted to see.
As it happens I far prefer TOTP’s formula to that of Blaze’s CD:UK (the main competition) At It’s Popworld or just about any of the other commercial TV mainstream popshows.
Jonothan: Thanks for the advice but I can assure you I’m well acquainted with the musical excellence of the late Ian. One thing that doesn’t get remarked upon so much though is what a proficient bunch of musicians his band were.
Chacun, as they say……….listenable popular music disappeared during the late 80s & hasn’t been heard of since. This (personal) truth prompted me do do Tuscan Tony’s arithmetic to confirm the year of my birth. That was a real hoot and, were I not a little wiser I might have mused that I wished it were so. Today’s ‘popular’ music reflects our society: Loud, brutish, raucous, antisocial & inciting to violence. It would have had its aficionados in Napoleonic times.
Steve, it appears someone called Steve asked who the heck Ian Dury was, I assumed it was you. His comment appears to have vanished. Odd.
Yes, he had a first-class band to back him up and that explains much of his appeal.