The Toppermost of the Poppermost

How much do I love these Top of the Pops opening sequences from the late Sixties and early Seventies? 

Quite often they are the high point of the show and it's downhill all the way when we get to the actual music! 

What is surprising is how frequently they changed up the intro sequence, which generally looks distinctly more expensive and edited-with-flair than the main body of the programme. 

That whole episode is actually worth watching but primarily I commend to your eyeballs this edition of TOTP and the many others below for the opening sequences with the run down of the chart - although they varied them up often, these intro bits all generally put across a POP SCENE / SWINGING ENGLAND / GROOVY CHICKS vibe. Like the Carnaby Street thing lingering into the 1970s.

Then there's the theme tune, a sort of library-music remake of Led Zep's "Whole Lotta Love" with added horns - unfeasibly thrilling, rather too often the best music in any given show.

Before the Led Zep remake, the theme was a punchy movie-thriller / action-series type theme, quite redolent of The Prisoner's intro sequence. In fact, given that it soundtracks a chart run-down, you could imagine a pop star, or a pop single, defiantly shouting: "I AM NOT A NUMBER, I AM A FREE SOUND".

The still image press photos of the bands and singers in the chart are often bathos-drenched and sometimes hideously unflattering - you think, 'what were the record company, the publicist, thinking, providing that to the Beeb?!"

Although the stylized black and white photos of artists in the chart in this episode above are unusually artistic and striking-looking.

So many artists that you've never heard, or even heard of!

Another thing about these TOTPs I find endearing is how bad most of the dancing is. It really does start to seem like there's an English disease of Chronic Arrythmia.  Young people lurching about, determinedly off the beat. Boogieing in invisible deep sea diver boots. Office party twirls and dips. 

But in their own stilted way, the girls are really getting down and grooving, in an oh-so-English way.

Tremendous levels of enthusiasm and excitement  - like the line of girls brocking out to "I Want You Back" by The Jackson Five in the Tony Blackburn presented TOTP above....

Or the girls in the background of this classic T.Rex "Get It On" rendition from above

Or the sweet girl in the white frock really getting into it in back of The Strawbs in this one.