Thursday 20 December 2012

Top of the Pops


Author's Notes: I have two sets of Story Cubes, the original ones and 'actions'. For this story I have combined them. I also refered to a website while writing this story. The link is at the end. 

Fancy listening to the story rather than reading it?



Every now and again my mum would come home from her weekly shop with a special treat for us kids - the latest 'Top of the Pops' album. For those of you who didn't live in the UK in the 70's let me explain what that was. The TOTP albums were compilations of all the latest hits but unlike the 'Now That's What I Call Music' series which came later, they were not by the original stars. The songs were rerecorded by session artists that sounded almost but not exactly like the original . Anyway my sisters were always excited at the arrival of these new discs. They could devise new dance moves and learn the lyrics of their favourite songs. But for me these albums meant so so much more. You see the Top of the Pops album covers always featured young women in various stages of undress. So, as my sisters tried to decipher the words to ‘Car 67’ by Driver 67 (Vol.68) or worked out intricate hand jive moves to ‘Under the Moon of Love’ (vol 56), I could stare at a blonde or brunette pouting seductively on the album cover. These days I would no doubt tut at the sight of a scantily clad woman on an album cover and mumble something about how disgraceful it was that sex sells. But back as a ten-year-old boy it was a sexual awakening. I was captivated. Their eyes seemed to pull me in like magnets. I remember Volume 64, the lady in the green dress, Volume 71 with the girl in the blue leotard but Volume 67 was my favourite. A sky blue background and next to the track listings a girl wearing silver hot pants, turning up the collar on a matching jacket. One day when I was alone in my sister's bedroom listening to Substitute by that well-known band ‘People pretending to Clout', that curly haired brunette became the first woman I ever kissed. 





oh and here's the song Substitute by Clout

1 comment:

  1. Ah - memories of Pan's People... Similarly politically incorrect titillation for a young lad :)

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