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Independent article reflecting on the rise of the teenage consumer both at home and overseas with reference to the increase in British youth culture in the 1960s.

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Britain is facing a teen shortage. According to a recent Office for National Statistics survey, the number of teenagers - defined as the 15-24 age group - is set to decrease by 5 per cent during the next five years. This is one result of the mini "baby slump" that occurred towards the end of the Seventies - caused by more widespread family planning and poor economic conditions.

Born around the turn of the millennium, the children of the late 1970s slumpers are now entering adolescence. Although the likely impact on crime statistics and the educational system are noted, it is the effect on commerce that receives more attention: this is, according to some reports, "a demographic shift that carries huge implications for businesses and economic policy".

For this is the age group that, according to Maureen Hinton, a retail analyst at Verdict Research, is "most likely to be most influenced by fashion trends, are lovers of brands, and will buy across the price spectrum". Adding in other factors such as high youth unemployment and higher tuition fees, this cohort decrease could spell trouble for "teen magazines and clothing retailers".

This is a story that could have been written at any time during the last fifty years. The intimate yoking of adolescence with consumerism - marked by the creation of that now familiar figure, the teenager - has been a major part of the British economy since the late 1950s, when the market researcher Mark Abrams published his influential report, "The Teenage Consumer".

Abrams was responding to the first flush of the post-war baby boom: a period that saw high youth wages and the first wave of rock'n'roll. Itemising a range of products - including records, magazines, drinks, cosmetics and clothing - he concluded that "this is a distinctive teenage spending for distinctive teenage ends in a distinctive teenage world".

The teenager was the visible spearhead of the new, American-style consumerism that was beginning to pervade British life. But the term had already been in popular coinage in the US since the later Thirties, in a variety of forms: teener, teenster, teenager. This was a response to demographics - the baby boomers of the 1920s reaching adolescence - as well as developments in youth culture.

During the Thirties, young Americans were seen as a problem rather than a market. Mindful of the political polarisation caused by the Depression in Europe, Roosevelt's Democratic government instituted programs to keep adolescents in school or in federal projects. One result was the furtherance of a peer group culture that began to coalesce around the nation-wide popularity of swing.

A return to the excitement of 1920s hot jazz, swing came with its own negro-derived culture (as black Americans were then called): dances such as the lindy hop, the shag and the suzie Q; clothes, including variants on the zoot suit, and language - the jive talk popularised by musicians like Cab Calloway. It was what would now be called a complete lifestyle package.

Before the war, swing travelled to Europe, in particular France, England, even Nazi Germany, and was seen by its early adopters as a progressive American import. This new style of democratic consumerism, with its heightened emotions and exciting, visceral music, offered a third way for those caught between the polarisations of Fascism and Communism.

This American influence was given added weight by the mass influx of GI's on to European soil that happened from 1942 onwards. The image of war starved young Britons bowled over by American culture is almost over familiar, but nonetheless real: one young Londoner remembered how "they opened up (my) horizons. It was so exciting. I thought anything was possible".

War unleashes primal emotions, however, and back in the US the authorities found themselves facing a wave of juvenile delinquency during 1943: whether the zoot suit riots in Los Angeles, the Detroit race riots, or the activities of Victory Girls - "khaki-whacky" young women - street gangs or thrill killers, American youth seemed to be going crazy.

Some of this was a media hype, stoked by the opportunistic Edgar J Hoover, but it reflected a situation where many teenagers, below the call-up age of 18, were badly affected by the convulsive changes occurring within the US: after Pearl Harbour, well over 20 million people were either mobilised or emigrating to join the war industries.

Despite the FBI's dire warnings, a more enlightened solution was found in the shape of the Teen Canteen. The Teen Canteens were federally sponsored youth clubs, created in consultation with youth workers and the kids themselves. The war was being fought, after all, for Democracy, and there was enough idealism within the system to work with rather than against adolescents.

The longer-term solution was to bring the continent's adolescents firmly within the mainstream of consumerist American life. The idea of a nationwide, cross-class youth market had been floated as early as the 1920s - centred around the peppy, emancipated flapper: a recognisable media type with her bobbed hair and, as Zelda Fitzgerald put it, "audacity and rouge". It gathered pace after the later 1930's with the formation of strong high-school peer groups.

The key wartime events were the frenzied scenes at Frank Sinatra concerts and the instant success of an innovative young women's magazine, launched in September 1944. Edited by Helen Valentine, Seventeen talked directly, rather than down to, its target readership and carried a wide variety of adverts for teen products as well as articles about democracy and how to deal with parents.

It was at this point, in autumn 1944, that the term "teenager" became general currency. It was this model of youth - committed consumers who helped to dictate the market, pleasure seekers who lived in the moment - that travelled to a devastated Europe in the years immediately after 1945. For many young, it was the only thing that gave them hope for the future.

This is where the idea of youth culture - a term coined by the American sociologist Talcott Parsons in 1942 - began: in the New World Order. In the seven decades since, there has been an extraordinary flourishing of youth types and teenage creativity: an explosion of cultural products that now drive the global expansion of Western, consumerist democracy.

The teenager was once firmly defined by age - classically, 15-24 - as well as the favoured transient, quick turnover products aimed at youth. What has happened since the mid 1980s is the teenage mode of consumption has spread upwards, to the point now that it can encompass up to the 1960s (the age of the very first boomers) and down to early childhood.

To some extent, we are all teenagers now. Pop culture - once considered marginal - is now fully integrated into all levels of society. This has worked both for and against real-time teenagers: they may well have lost their exclusivity, but then the relationship between the generations is often easier than it was in the Sixties and Seventies.

Today's teens are treated by the media like they always have been: either idealised as exciting early adopters or demonised as homicidal nightmares. They have to suffer, if they ever think about it, from being compared to vital teenages past. There is a considerable amount of media space devoted to generational nostalgia: wait for the imminent return of rave.

Indeed, trying to isolate a golden age of teendom is almost pointless. The existential answer is that it's always now. Today's teens are simultaneously catered to like almost never before, and in some crucial ways, undervalued. But it was ever thus. They will deal with it, because that is the way of their world. Unlike adults, they don't know any better, and that is a source of strength.

There is always a distinction between the social construction and the biological state of adolescence. It is the time when the young break away from their family and begin to enter the world, which is not one that they made. They see its rights and wrongs very clearly, and some of them begin to form inventive solutions so that changes are made and their future assured.

In our society, the definition of adolescence is consumerist: the teenage. Originating in the terrible vacuum of 1945, it has proved a highly workable way to bridge the gap between childhood and adulthood. Whether or not it continues to be the adolescent ritual in the 21st century depends on the status of consumerism itself. If people can't shop, what are they going to do?

Teenage: The Creation of Youth - 1875-1945 by Jon Savage is published by Pimlico (£12.99). To order a copy for the special price of £11.69 (free P&P) call Independent Books Direct on 08430 600 030, or visit Independentbooksdirect.co.uk

Teenage kicks: the archive

The history of the hipster since 1945 has been recorded religiously by writers and photographers, and now there's an online destination for anyone interested in teen trend-setters from every decade since. The website PYMCA.com (Photographic Youth Music Culture Archive) recently launched a cultural research section, which contains a uniquely extensive collection of images of youth culture, categorised by decade, as well as research texts from experts such as Ted Polhemus, author of the seminal Streetstyle: From Sidewalk to Catwalk. "PYMCA putting this on to the internet offers worldwide reach at a time when street style and youth culture is going 100 per cent global," says Polhemus. "Youth culture is historically seen as British and American with the rest of the world catching up, but today there are fantastic street style blogs coming from places like Helsinki, Tehran, Jakarta. The site will reflect that." Ind.pn/cEDyLI

TIM WALKER

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When we were young: The milestones of youth and rebellion

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Britain is facing a teen shortage. According to a recent Office for National Statistics survey, the number of teenagers - defined as the 15-24 age group - is set to decrease by 5 per cent during the next five years.

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A site featuring anecdotes from TOTP staff and crew, detailing various technicalities and innovations used on the show over the years.

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Background

"Top of the Pops" began on New Year's Day 1964 in Studio A on Dickenson Road in Rusholme, Manchester, Jimmy Savile and Alan Freeman presented the first show.

"Top of the Pops" was created by BBC producer Johnnie Stewart. The show was originally based on the Top 20. By 1970 the Top 30 was being used and the show was extended from 30 to 45 minutes duration.

Initially acts performing on the show mimed to the commercially released record, but in 1966 after discussions with the Musicians' Union, miming was banned. After a few weeks during which some bands' attempts to play as well as on their records were somewhat lacking, a compromise was reached whereby a specially recorded backing track was permitted - as long as all the musicians on the track were present in the studio. The TOTP Orchestra, led by Johnny Pearson augmented the tracks when necessary

The first TOTP

The evening schedule for the day of the first ever TOTP:

16.45 - 17.10 The Pony
17.10 - 17.35 The Boss Cat (Top Cat)
17.35 - 18.00 Animal Magic
18.00 - 18.10 News
18.10 - 18.35 Town and Around
18.35 - 19.00 TOP OF THE POPS (Presented by Jimmy Savile)
19.00 - 19.35 Tonight
19.35 - 20.00 The Third Man
20.00 - 20.50 Z Cars
20.50 - 21.15 Sportsview
21.15 - 21.25 News
21.25 - 22.55 Festival: The Comedy of Errors
22.55 - 23.10 News Extra
23.10 - 23.15 Weather

Bill Jenkin

I think TOTP went to TC2 after Manchester. Then it went back to Manchester for a while and then to studio G Lime Grove Studios

Geoff Fletcher

The earliest mention of TOTP at TC in my diaries is Thursday 28 July 1965 if that's any clue. It was in TC2 on Thursday 20 January 1966

Alec Bray

When TOTP moved from Manchester it went first to TC2. This was quite a small studio for this sort of production.

I worked on a number of TOTPs when we had the first appearance of a number of famous artists. One of the most notable was Sonny and Cher's first appearance (12 th August 1965) with their record "You got me Babe". We did the stagger through with the artists in the planned position on the set, but after this there was an altercation between the artistes (Sonny and Cher) and the production staff. Eventually Johnny Stewart came down from the Gallery and spoke to Sonny and Cher - the "discussion" lasted some half-hour. The final words were Johnny Stewert's: " You are in England now, and in England the Director calls the shots,." as he turned and went back up to the gallery.

Peter Neill

The move from TC2 to Studio G was occasioned by the move to live musicians and the need for space for the orchestra. It moved back to TC when it went colour.

John Henshall

The last time we (Crew 7) did Top of the Pops in TC2 was 23 June 1966. The next time we worked on it, 14 July 1966 - three weeks later - it was in G.

The move to G was good for me. I had designed a Fisheye attachment which had been rejected as a technical suggestion. Johnnie Stewart loved it. It bayonet fitted in place of the lens hood on 2-inch lenses but only worked on the EMI 203 cameras (in G) (due to their extended focus rack) and not Marconi Mk IVs (TC2) (until I later fitted an additional element).

Haven't yet found my 1964 diary so I can't check the Christmas edition but I THINK the 24 December 1964 edition was pre-recorded at Television Centre with Crew 7.

Alec Bray

After TOTP had moved to Lime Grove (where there was the TOTP orchestra - usually in the middle of the studio), we had the first appearance of Jimi Hendrix - who turned up over half an hour late for the session.

At another Jimi Hendix session. I was on a camera with a 12" lens on it (this was after Lime Grove had been updated to Image Orthicon cameras!) right in front of the drum kit (which was at the front of the rostrum). I had to crane up on the pedestal to take the shot, then quickly crane down so as to be out of shot of the other cameras - and I am sure I must have hit the cymbals on the way up and down!

Rex Palmer

TOTP was in Lime Grove Studio G for a year or two before eventually moving to TVC. One of my memories of those days was a lovely Irish production assistant (according to John Henshall, she was Ann(e) Doonican (Val's niece)) counting down to the opening titles (they stopped at 3 which is another thing they got wrong in that Time and Space program!), everybody on the crew joined in when she got there, chorusing "Tree!".

John Wardle

TOTP was in LG G in 1969 when I became a studio engineer and moved to TC8 in colour about a year later with me following it. Cameras in TC8 were EMI 2001s and we had the dreaded Combined Video Apparatus Room shared with TC6 and 7.

In this picture, the cameras are EMI 2001 (which I probably did acceptance tests on) and Studio is almost certainly TC8.

David Brunt

The artists are the Radha Krishna Temple performing "Govinda" on the 19th March 1970 show. They were in studio twice, on 19th March and again on 9th April 1970.

Bernard Newnham

Maybe the man operating the camera with the John Henshall lens on the front is Peter Leverick.

Alec Bray

It was my last day at work for the BBC - before heading off for a "Vacation Job" and then off to college (and Uni).

"Top of the Pops" Lime Grove - and the last act - now number one in the charts - was the Tremolos with "Silence Is Golden" (probably on Thursday 25 May 1967: this was their second week at number one and it stayed at the top for a further week).

I was on a camera (camera 4) with a 12" lens on the turret. And the next to last shot was on me, an MCU on guitarist Rick West using the 12" lens. I had to pull well back for this shot and use the long focus lens, as the very last shot was on the Mole (by this time to my right) which had a wide shot of the group (and part of the dancing audience) and on the last rising note the Mole craned up to its full height. All fine and dandy.

Except the Mole spent most of the song on my LEFT side, crossing across to my right for this last shot.

On the (final) rehearsal everything went OK. On transmission everything was going well, and the Mole tracked across in front of me to get to its position. But the cable-bashers were not doing their job (for some reason) and as the Mole tracked back to get the wide shot, it pulled its camera cable tight round the front of my Ped. By this time I was on shot - on the long focus lens - and as the ped shuddered with the tightening cable, the shudder passed up the pan head and shuddered the lens. Of course, on a long focus lens the movement is magnified (however steady I tried to keep the camera. SO instead of finishing on a "high", my last shot as a BBC Technical Operator (and Cameraman) was a decidedly shaky MCU on a 12" lens.

Background

David Bowie recorded "The Jean Genie" for Top of the Pops, the performance being broadcast on 4 January 1973. Unusually for the era, the four-piece band performed live, and included an extended guitar solo by Mick Ronson. Tapes of this edition of Top of the Pops were subsequently wiped, but a copy was made by BBC cameraman John Henshall, who had utilised the then new fisheye lens camera techniques for the performance.

John Henshall

The Fisheye lens used on the David Bowie "The Jean Genie" was my designed Telefex Fisheye 3 - much smaller and quicker to bayonet fit to the Angenieux 'K' lens than Keith's fisheye(see below), which, along with his other effects, he sold to Telefex when he moved to Pebble Mill. (Telefex was my sister's company).

I was the cameraman who shot "The Jean Genie" using the lens I designed on the EMI 2001 camera I was operating. I am even in shot in the background of one of the shots.

montage of fisheye shots ...

Keith Salmon

.... had also designed a fisheye lens.

The fisheye lens designed and made by me can be seen on my knee in the picture below.

I had a company called VISUAL IDEAS which hired out optical effect to television; all my effects were designed and made by me.

My effects were used many times on TOTP, as I am sure TOTP crews will remember, and on other light entertainment shows. Rex Palmer was a great help to my wife when fitting effects on cameras during live TOTPs.

Dick Hibberd may remember them being used at Thames TV, and Mike Solomons at London Weekend.

When I moved from White City to Pebble Mill Birmingham in 1973 I sold all my optical effects to John Henshall.

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"Top of the Pops" began on New Year's Day 1964 in Studio A on Dickenson Road in Rusholme, Manchester, Jimmy Savile and Alan Freeman presented the first show. "Top of the Pops" was created by BBC producer Johnnie Stewart. The show was originally based on the Top 20.

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A guardian article interviewing producers Kate Greer and Stanley Appel, highlighting the shows immense popularity and what went on behind the scenes.

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I applied for a secretarial job at the BBC, but when I said I was interested in theatre, music and entertainment, they said I'd be useful in TV production. I was gobsmacked. I started off on Grandstand then, in 1965, was seconded to Top of the Pops, which had been launched to rival ITV's already successful Ready, Steady, Go!

The hit parade, as the charts were called then, had always been dominated by US acts. But suddenly we had the Beatles, the Stones - and swinging London. Although our office was there, the first shows were filmed in Dickenson Road, Manchester, in an old church with a spire We'd scour the city's clubs looking for kids to be in the audience.

To get on the show, bands had to be in the top 30 and rising up the charts. Pluggers would bug me like crazy to get their acts on. It was like a big party sometimes, with so many people crammed into the control room that the caption scanner, which rolled the opening credits, would get stuck.

At first, stars mimed along to their own songs, but then the Musicians' Union objected, saying this was doing people out of a job. So the BBC struck a deal whereby acts could mime over a new backing track, recorded with the cream of London session musicians or an orchestra. That aside, the first shows were live. If there was a mistake, the whole country saw it. For one act - I think it was Wilson Pickett - the lights didn't come on, and he was left standing there miming in the dark.

One of my jobs was to write out lyrics and work out who was singing, so the camera could zoom in on them. When Sonny & Cher did I Got You Babe, I'd got them the wrong way round. I hadn't realised the higher voice was Sonny's.

I loved the job so much I used to pinch myself and think: "God, I'm getting paid for this." I remember watching David Bowie miming along to Space Oddity in a silver catsuit behind a big plate of glass. And when John Lennon and Yoko Ono did Instant Karma, everyone thought Yoko was wearing a napkin over her eyes as a blindfold. It was actually a sanitary towel.

Stanley Appel, producer, 1990s

By the early 1990s, Top of the Pops was losing ratings so I was brought in for what became known as The Year Zero Revamp. I'd started on the show as a cameraman in 1966. In those days, the Musicians' Union rep was known as Doctor Death, but I was against the miming, too. I thought it was cheating. So I decided people had to sing live, meaning you got a performance without all the studio gloss. One person who really didn't like the change was Pete Waterman, whose acts, shall we say, benefited more than most from studio enhancement.

We moved into a larger permanent studio. It had a specialist rock area with its own lighting rig, which meant you got some great performances, visually. Audience research suggested people were fed up with Radio 1 DJs, so we got rid of them, held auditions and recruited a team of young, vibrant unknowns, including Femi Oke and Mark Franklin. It seemed to work. They were exciting because they were so keen. I'm not sure viewers were ever that bothered, though. They just wanted to see the bands.

Kids would write in and happily wait months for tickets to a single show. We'd hold dancing competitions among them and put the winners in prominent positions. One time, we were offered a world exclusive: the video to Michael Jackson's Black or White. However, it was 11 minutes long - and our programme was just 30. The BBC initially said we couldn't possibly show it, but they eventually relented. I got the impression my boss had mentioned it to his kids, and they'd said: "You can't say no to Michael Jackson!"

I was sent over to LA to view the video. One scene had Michael smashing a car to pieces with a baseball bat. I said: "This is gratuitous violence. We can't show that on the BBC!" He was the biggest pop star in the world. Top of the Pops was probably the only show allowed to edit Michael Jackson.

Had I collected autographs, I'd have the most amazing collection ever, but we were just there to do our jobs. I don't know if it was the right decision to end the show in 2006 after 42 years. It's sad that there's so little pop on TV today. On a Thursday night, Top of the Pops night, I still get that tingle.
Topics

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I applied for a secretarial job at the BBC, but when I said I was interested in theatre, music and entertainment, they said I'd be useful in TV production. I was gobsmacked. I started off on Grandstand then, in 1965, was seconded to Top of the Pops, which had been launched to rival ITV's already successful Ready, Steady, Go!

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A guardian article reflecting on THAT Top of the Pops performance and the impact this had on Bowie's career.

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I went to YouTube just now to see if the memory I've kept in my head for more than 43 years is correct. When David Bowie appeared on Top of the Pops on 6 July 1972 performing Starman, did he really point at the camera on the line "I had to phone someone so I picked on you-hoo-oo"?

In the glory days of Top of the Pops you couldn't watch things again. You retained them in the archive of your memory. People watched hungrily, believing it would be their only chance. It's only slowly, in the years since 1972, that I realised that I wasn't the only one for whom this was a key moment. The way Bowie pointed that finger, smilingly draped an arm around Mick Ronson, and looked beyond the camera to engage the audience sitting at home, stickily hemmed in by disapproving members of their immediate family, seemed of a piece with the new Ziggy Stardust persona we'd been reading about. It felt like an arrival long delayed.

People had been tipping Bowie for much of the previous year. His album Hunky Dory had come out just before Christmas 1971, with glowing reviews and a big marketing push from his new record company, but it hadn't really taken. The New York Times called him "the most intellectually brilliant man yet to choose the long-playing album as his medium of expression". In truth, Bowie was like everybody else, just trying to get a hit. The last time he'd been on Top of the Pops was playing piano behind Peter Noone on the latter's hit version of his own Oh! You Pretty Things. Bowie's people were furiously working the machine. His first release of 1972, Changes, was not a hit, despite being single of the week on Tony Blackburn's Radio 1 show.

When Bowie first came up with the Ziggy Stardust material, during a three-week trip to the US in February 1971, his idea had been to have it fronted by Fred Burrett, a young clothes designer he and his wife Angie had met at a gay club called El Sombrero and decided to rechristen Freddie Burretti. Bowie saw himself as the behind-the-scenes puppetmaster in that setup. Maybe he worried that his teeth disqualified him from frontman duties. Bowie at the time was an ideas man, pitching songs to everyone, including the horror actor Christopher Lee. His publisher was one of the many people in the business who were backing Bowie, but it wasn't clear that his future was as a performer.

Whereas Hunky Dory had been extravagantly melodic, like the Beatles album that everybody was trying to make now there was a gap in the market, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars was influenced by the Stooges and Velvet Underground records Bowie had been impressed by on his visit to the States. It also owed a lot to the hit singles with which Marc Bolan, a fellow refugee from the obscurity of late night radio and the Arts Lab circuit, was tearing up the singles charts in 1971. "It's going to be lots of guitars," Bowie told his producer Ken Scott. "You probably won't like it."

Bowie had already recorded and sequenced Ziggy Stardust before Hunky Dory was released. Such was the speed people moved at in those days of two albums a year. "There was no time for second guessing yourself," Scott recalled. The only change made to the album was the replacement of a cover of Chuck Berry's Around and Around with Starman, a radio-friendly single made at the request of the boss of Bowie's new record company, RCA. Bowie had no problem doing him this favour, once he had finished the heavy lifting involved in recording the album.

In the early months of 1972, before Ziggy Stardust came out, he and his new band were starting to appear on stage wearing the clinging space suits they had cribbed from Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, which had opened in cinemas in January. On 8 February, they played the BBC's Old Grey Whistle Test, the albums-centred programme that had been launched late the previous year. Bowie stirred the pot further by turning up to an interview with Michael Watts from the Melody Maker in a camp playsuit and announcing that he was bisexual. Everything was primed so that when Ziggy Stardust appeared in June 1972, the market would be ready.

All of that investment in outrage and edginess paid off when Bowie appeared on Top of the Pops singing Starman. That was the moment Bowie went above ground and nationwide. The hype may have led us to expect something edgy and challenging. The record was as simple and hummable a radio hit as you could possibly desire. For the post-Beatles generation coming into their albums-buying majority, the record wasn't really the point. The point was the way he looked at them.

Never a Dull Moment, David Hepworth's book about music in 1971, is published in April

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How performing Starman on Top of the Pops sent Bowie into the stratosphere

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I went to YouTube just now to see if the memory I've kept in my head for more than 43 years is correct. When David Bowie appeared on Top of the Pops on 6 July 1972 performing Starman, did he really point at the camera on the line "I had to phone someone so I picked on you-hoo-oo"?

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David Bowie's famous starman performance on Top of the Pops in 1972.

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A 1993 independent article citing loud calls from industry professionals to re-introduce miming, something the BBC had axed in 1991. This was due to a correlation between bad live performances and poor record sales and was aided by the recent upsurge in dance tracks which could not easily be replicated in a studio environment.

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IT HAS at least the virtue of being commendably honest. In one of the more shameless pieces of lobbying, the music industry is trying to persuade the BBC to end the practice of artists singing live on Top Of The Pops, and go back to the good old days of out-of-synch miming, writes David Lister.

This is because some of the performances have been so dismal that as a result, teenagers don't want to buy the records.

Or as Robert Lemon, director of one of the companies that plugs new singles, put it: 'Top Of The Pops is a visual programme, not an audio programme, and in some cases it doesn't do the artist any good to sing live.'

The industry's views were canvassed by the record companies' trade paper Music Week, as the BBC considers whether to revamp the 30-year-old show. The industry wants a overhaul of the programme, with a repeat on a Friday night and the abandonment of live vocals.

Nearly all the pluggers - employed by record companies to promote their artists to broadcasters - polled by Music Week suggest scrapping live vocals since the public expects to hear what is on the record, and too often the sound of the singer on the record and the sound of the singer on the television seem only distantly related.

Mr Lemon, whose company promotes Kylie Minogue, said last night: 'We have made our thoughts known to the BBC. A potentially disastrous sounding performance can stop people buying the record, and there is evidence that this has been happening.'

The BBC, which replaced miming with live vocals in 1991, said last night the present intention was to keep the format as it is.

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Loud call for miming to return to 'Top of the Pops'

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IT HAS at least the virtue of being commendably honest. In one of the more shameless pieces of lobbying, the music industry is trying to persuade the BBC to end the practice of artists singing live on Top Of The Pops, and go back to the good old days of out-of-synch miming, writes David Lister.

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New Order performing Blue Monday live on TOTP in 1983. The song actually dropped ten places after this rendition, highlighting the issue TOTP had with adapting to the increase in dance tracks in the 80's.

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New Order - Blue Monday (TOTP Performance)

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Bold, innovative, and somewhat accidental, New Order's 1983 hit single was a crucial link between 70's disco and the dance music boom of the late 80's, cementing the groups transition from post-punk to alternative dance.

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The 30th anniversary of the release of New Order's 'Blue Monday' passed with an odd absence of fanfare last Thursday (7 March). Maybe no one could believe it was quite so ancient because, whether you first heard it last week or in 1983, it has the whiff of The Future about it. That makes sense - The Future is precisely what it created.

A little bit of this, a little bit of that
Let's be honest - 'Blue Monday' wasn't made in a vacuum. It might've influenced decades of dance and rock music, but it scavenged the archives for plenty of 'inspiration' itself. That drilling bass drum sound, for a start, was an attempt to emulate Giorgio Moroder's pulsations on Donna Summer's 'Our Love'. Great job, it's indistinguishable. The rhythm track as well - that's a ringer for Italian post-disco dons Klein+MBO's 'Dirty Talk', a record that caught New Order's collective ear when they heard Hewan Clarke playing it at the Haçienda, and the monks' chorus is a straight swipe from Kraftwerk's 'Uranium'.

But the genius is in taking filched elements and other tricks learned by osmosis and turning them into something that feels new. When people heard 'Blue Monday' they weren't snottily saying, "Well, that bit's Klein+MBO and that bit's pure Bobby O" - they were going, "What the hell is THIS?" It fed right back into the scenes it plundered, borrowing from the electro movement that gave us Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson and becoming an essential building block of the Detroit Techno that trio would go on to pioneer. Even now, Saunderson still finds space for 'Blue Monday' in his DJ sets.

Techno tipping point
It might just be the happy conjunction of timing and opportunity, but Blue Monday' feels like a fulcrum. Take that 'Our Love' loan - the last days of disco are fading into this dour, rainy Manchester funk and what's emerging on the other side is something entirely alien. Bernard Sumner cites Sylvester's immense disco classic 'You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)' as a touchstone too, another slice of joy going into the machine and coming out blank. Blankness is 'Blue Monday"s overwhelming quality, from Sumner's pale, robotic vocal to Peter Hook's desolate bass melody, and it's the merest flick of the pencil to draw a line from this to forbidding early techno, or Phuture's 'Acid Tracks'. The disco loop keeps going around too - five years later Quincy Jones was releasing the 'Blue Monday' reissue on his own Qwest label.

In the pop world, the 12″ single was all about zero imagination. The average extended mix consisted of the 7″ with an extra minute of drum fills stuffed in the middle or the intro played twice over or - if the boat was really being pushed out - a spoken-word interlude. 'Blue Monday' realised the possibilities of the form: you could bankrupt yourself with a die-cut sleeve! But you could also write a song fit for purpose, a sprawling monster that could only be accommodated on a massive slab of vinyl. Yep, Flowered Up's 'Weekender' could never have existed without 'Blue Monday'. New Order took a practical clubber's format and turned it into an artistic statement.

It wasn't meant to be this pivotal. It was supposed to be an entirely automated excuse to hit the bar early. One of the four would press the button and the track would take care of itself, allowing the band to leave the audience to it and get a swift half. That was before they realised how complicated it was to try and get all these mad sequencers and drum machines to actually talk to one another.

There were dry runs in 'Everything's Gone Green' - a rougher, grainier epic along similar lines - and '586' - a slower, sweeter cousin that turned up on 'Power, Corruption And Lies' later that summer in 'Blue Monday"s unlikely absence, but nothing would have the same stark attack.

They'd vanquished their own ghost, shaken off any lasting memories of Joy Division and obliterated all preconceptions of what a rock band could do.

Dance music for rock people

Even the gloomiest overcoat-sporting rockist could cut a rug to 'Blue Monday' without risking indie points - and that might be its greatest achievement. It took one hell of a long time to filter through though.

Indie-dance, baggy, whatever, it's entirely in hock to New Order's game-changer. 'Blue Monday' set the parameters and its Manchester scions filled the space, welcoming sequenced beats into their repertoire and getting sexy. As sexy as the Happy Mondays could ever be, that is. Spreading further afield, crossover artists Primal Scream, The Prodigy, LCD Soundsystem and The Chemical Brothers all benefit from 'Blue Monday"s visionary fusion as its tendrils continue to spider across the pop landscape.

Getting rock kids to dance. There's no cause more noble than that.

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How 'Blue Monday' Changed Music Forever - NME

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The 30th anniversary of the release of New Order's 'Blue Monday' passed with an odd absence of fanfare last Thursday (7 March). Maybe no one could believe it was quite so ancient because, whether you first heard it last week or in 1983, it has the whiff of The Future about it.

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An article from the BBC in 2006 announcing their decision to end the show. In a rapidly changing music environment, facing increased competition from multi-media outlets, the BBC was unable to maintain the show's quality and distinctiveness.

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, the world's longest running weekly music show, will end its run on 30 July 2006, Top of the Pops Jana Bennett, BBC Director of Television, announced today.

The decision to bring the show to an end after 42 years has not been taken lightly and over the past few years every effort has been made to maintain the quality and distinctiveness of the show.

However the BBC's Creative Future Music Strategy has concluded that in a rapidly changing musical landscape Top of the Pops no longer occupies the central role it once did.

Over recent years the show has faced ever increasing competition from multi-media and niche musical outlets which enable viewers to consume music of their choice any time night or day in a way that Top of the Pops simply cannot deliver in its current weekly format.

At the same time, the breadth and diversity of music programming across the BBC's television portfolio has dramatically increased, reflecting the increasingly diverse landscape of audiences' taste in music.

New forthcoming programmes include:

a new series of contemporary music sessions on BBC ONE;

a new series on the history of rock called The Seven Ages of Rock for BBC TWO;

extended coverage of the Reading/Leeds Festival on BBC THREE;

and a long-running series that goes back to the roots of soul music called Soul Britainnia on BBC FOUR.

There will also be a renewed commitment to established brands such as Later. with Jools Holland on BBC TWO and the BBC FOUR Sessions.

Jana Bennett said: "We're very proud of a show which has survived 42 years in the UK and gone on to become a worldwide brand but the time has come to bring the show to its natural conclusion.

"Although we bid a fond farewell to Top of the Pops we remain as passionate as ever about reflecting the vitality of contemporary music across all our channels."

Roly Keating, Controller, BBC TWO added: "I've really enjoyed the last year that Top of the Pops has transmitted on BBC TWO and the team did a stirling job in revitalising the format for our audience, but we all recognise that the time has come to move on."

Mark Cooper, BBC Head of Entertainment Group, said: "It's not easy bidding farewell to such a treasured, favoured friend.

"Although the time has come to say goodbye to the show, we're absolutely committed to creating music television on the BBC and we'll value working with the music industry in shaping our coverage."

The end of the weekly show does not mark the total disappearance of the Top of the Pops brand from British television screens.

It will continue to feature in programmes such as TOTP2 - BBC TWO's archive show based on the Top of the Pops back-catalogue - which will sometimes incorporate new performance as well as one-off specials.
Top of the Pops Top 20 Countdown Facts & Figures
20

Top of the Pops first transmitted live from a converted church in Dickinson Road, Manchester at 6.35pm on BBC ONE, New Year's Day 1964. It was presented by Jimmy Savile who opened the show with the immortal line: "It's Number One, it's Top of the Pops".

The Rolling Stones were the first band to perform singing I Wanna Be Your Man and the full line also included Dusty Springfield, The Dave Clark Five, The Hollies, The Swinging Blue Jeans, Cliff Richard & The Shadows and Freddie & The Dreamers.

The first Number One on Top of the Pops was The Beatles with I Wanna Hold Your Hand.
19
There have been a total of 10 different theme tunes, the latest being Tony Gibber's Get Out Of That (& this) 2003 remix.
18
There have been 13 different Top of the Pops logos and opening sequences over the show's 42 year history.

17

The record for the most number of appearances on Top of the Pops is held by Cliff Richard - almost 160 times.
16
More than 150 people have presented the show from Sir Jimmy Savile to Robbie Williams.
15
In October 1982 Dexy's Midnight Runners appeared on Top of the Pops to perform Jackie Wilson Said - their tribute to the soul legend. Appearing on the screen behind them, however, was a giant picture of Jocky Wilson, the darts player, a deliberate joke as requested by the band.
14
Status Quo have made 87 appearances on Top of the Pops and have performed over the five decades of the show's history in the Sixties, Seventies, Eighties, Nineties and the 2000s.

Their first performance was on 8 February 1968 singing Pictures of Matchstick Men and they last appeared on 18 September 2005 performing The Party Ain't Over Yet.
13
The great miming disaster of 1988 occurred during All About Eve's live performance of Martha's Harbour. A crew member tripped over the power switch in the studio leaving the singer, Julianne Regan, without her cue for the backing track.

Her song was being broadcast live to the nation while Julianne sat on a stool in a pool of dry ice wondering what on earth was going on.
12
In 2001 Travis decided to bring chaos to Top of the Pops and re-enact their video for their single Sing by starting a custard pie fight on the show.
11
In 1967 Jimi Hendrix was seen attempting to mime Purple Haze while an Alan Price record was being inadvertently played as the backing track.
10
During the 500th edition of Top of the Pops in October 1973, Cliff Richard's performance was interrupted when the stage was showered by wigs. The culprits were The Who's roadies who had become bored and raided the props department.
9
Before the dawn of the video age, dance troupes were employed to entertain the audience on the occasions when a band were unable to appear on the show themselves.

The first was a group of three girls called The Go-Jo's who were replaced by dance sirens Pan's People in 1968.

In 1976 Ruby Flipper took over that mantle only to be replaced later that year by Legs & Co who remained until 1981 when the reign of lovely long legged ladies was brought to an end by the debut of a troupe of 20 interchangeable male and female dancers named Zoo.
8
On 24 July 1975, the former Prime Minister Edward Heath arrived unannounced at the Top of the Pops studio to hear Bing Crosby perform That's What Life Is All About.
7
The respected folk-rock group Steeleye Span once doubled as Wombles to perform Superwomble because Mike Batt (Womble-in-chief) was short of musicians for the show.
6
In 1991 Nirvana performed Smells Like Teen Spirit live with lead singer Kurt Cobain singing the entire song an octave lower than normal and without the famous screams in the chorus due to problems with his voice.

The performance ended with what was officially the first spontaneous stage invasion. There have been four other since during appearances by Backstreet Boys, Symposium, Oasis and Limp Bizkit.
5
Madonna left a gap of nearly 11 years between performing Like A Virgin on 13 December 1984 and You'll See on 2 November 1995.
4
The record for having the most people on stage at Top of the Pops was held by Sting, who performed Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot with a nine-piece band and 43 gospel singers.

This was broken by Fat Les singing Jerusalem to celebrate England's Euro 2000 effort, they managed to squeeze more than 70 people on stage.
3
On 24 January 2003, Flaming Lips made their Top of the Pops debut singing Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots but unbeknown to the audience they were harbouring a very special guest guitarist who performed cunningly disguised head to toe in a dolphin costume.

At the end of the song the mystery guest pulled off his dolphin head to be revealed as Justin Timberlake.
2
Top of the Pops is a global brand which has transmitted in more than 120 countries.
1
The final episode of Top of the Pops on 30 July will be number 2,204.

Further information about Top of the Pops can be found at bbc.co.uk/totp and bbc.co.uk/totp2.
HT

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BBC - Press Office - BBC says fond farewell to Top of the Pops

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the world's longest running weekly music show, will end its run on 30 July 2006, Top of the Pops Jana Bennett, BBC Director of Television, announced today. The decision to bring the show to an end after 42 years has not been taken lightly and over the past few years every effort has been made to maintain the quality and distinctiveness of the show.

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Nirvana's infamous 1991 performance on TOTP, ridiculing the shows insistence on miming.

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Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit (Top Of The Pops 1991) HD

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A brief overview of the shows history and format, from the first episode in 1964 to the last in 2006. Provides an insight into how the show changed and adapted over the years and describes its importance within pop music.

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TOP OF THE POPS | A TELEVISION HEAVEN REVIEW