TV On The Radio #15: It's A Knockout

Even as a six year old, I found little point to It's A Knockout. Surely I was the ideal target audience for a ridiculous game show about people dressed in ridiculously over-sized costumes trying to race and falling in water? But no, even at that age, I found myself thinking, "This is stupid". I'm convinced that the only person who really enjoyed It's A Knockout was Stuart Hall, and the less said about him, the better.

Back in 1996 though, it was still OK to name-drop him in a tune...

Brotherhood is back from their sabbatical

Dramatical and hit, we're here to take it all

Three rounds of verse, it's a knockout, Stuart Hall

The Brotherhood - Mad Headz

The North Sea Scrolls was a 2011 collaboration between Luke Haines, Cathal Coughlan and Andrew Mueller. They only did one album, but if you like twisted 70s nostalgia or things that are mad as a fish driving a lorry, then it's a wonderful, wonderful record.

Blakey and Olive

Freaks and fascists

It's A Knockout

With tiny moustaches

The Mosley frontbench

Cheered on by the masses

Take on the cast of

'On the Buses'

A cry goes up

"I'll get you, Butler"

Mosley leers:

He's played his joker

The North Sea Scrolls - Enoch Powell Space Poet

It's A Knockout was, as I'm sure you all know, based on the French game-show Jeux Sans Frontières. I'd argue that the only decent thing to come out of the whole sorry affair was the tune below, in which Peter Gabriel uses the show's puerile farce as a metaphor for world politics. Games Without Frontiers, with Kate Bush on backing vocals (she's the one who sings 'Jeux sans frontières'), is another classic from Gabriel... from an era when his albums took a bit of work. You come to those albums wanting every track to sound like Solsbury Hill, and when they don't it can be a little disappointing. Persevere though, and after a while a world of riches opens up.

Games Without Frontiers comes from his third eponymous album, one the record company knocked back as "commercial suicide"... until today's song started picking up airplay, when suddenly they became interested. That's when Gabriel told them to bog off and took his master tapes elsewhere. Games Without Frontiers went on to become his highest charting single in the UK (tying with Sledgehammer), so nyah nyah nyah to you ignorant record company bigwigs.

If looks could kill, they probably will

In games without frontiers

War without tears

TV On The Radio #12: Metal Mickey

How do you get from Mickey Dolenz to Brett Anderson with only two degrees of separation?

Metal Mickey first appeared on The Saturday Banana, a 1978 kids TV show I don't remember... probably because I was watching Swap Shop at the time. By 1980 he had graduated into his own sitcom, which also featured Irene Handl, Gary Shail from Quadrophenia and Margaret Omolola Young, the future Baroness Young of Hornsey as Janey. The show was produced, and at times directed, by one Mickey Dolenz...

As research, I watched bits of the Metal Mickey pilot episode on youtube. I didn't enjoy it as much as I did when I was 8, but Mickey seems more sarkily benign that the artificial intelligence of today.

Between 1979 and 1983, Metal Mickey released 6 singles. None of them appear to have troubled the singles chart. Here's one, which will cost you £20 for an original copy on discogs...

The Firm had a couple of novelty hits in the 80s based on the popular TV shows, Minder (Arthur Daley E's Alright) and Star Trek (Star Trekkin'... which went to Number One, which I can only apologise for, as I did buy a copy myself). Here's something else they did...

All me mates are on a diet
And I think I'd like to try it
But they take the Metal Mickey out of me
I tried to lose weight from me hips
By cutting down on silicon chips
And just the one expansion module in me tea

The Firm - Heavy Metal Robot

In 1996, Mr Dexter, Shylock & Mr Spyce were The Brotherhood. Look what happened when they got a rhyming dictionary for Christmas...

Who be motormouth Metal Mickey
Audible barrage like Pat nagging Ricky
It's sticky

The Brotherhood - Alphabetical Response

All right. You all know why we're here. 

I always assumed that the title of Suede's first Top 20 hit was some kind of 90s drug culture reference. A rave culture equivalent of a Mickey Finn, perhaps, the knockout drug of choice in all the old detective films I loved. Turns out it's actually a reference to the TV show... but why, I've no idea, since the lyrics have nothing to do with a smart-mouthed boogieing robot, and were apparently written as an ode to KatieJane Garside, the lead singer of Daisy Chainsaw. 

She sells hearts
She sells meat
Oh, dad, she's driving me mad
Come see, ay-ay

I've no idea if KatieJane worked in Brett Anderson's local butcher's shop on a weekend (the video suggests she might have done) but I always thought "Oh, dad, she's driving me mad" was a great chorus line.

Boogie Boogie.