Sunday 20 January 2008

YouTube League Treat!

Every now and again, YouTube comes into its own as a channel for fans and obsessives to reach out to their fellow fans and obsessives. And below is the perfect example. Capturing the Human League on their march, march, march to world domination, these clips from Ozzie pop show Countdown are a rare treat in having the whole band together in one shot - even if they lark around and don't actually reveal anything.

Adrian Wright and Jo Callis on being at number seven (!) in the Billboard Hot 100

18 year olds, Susanne Sulley and Joanne Catherall, doing girl power long before the Spice Girls. But notice how old-sounding their accents are. Really broad northern tones always come across as pensionable!

Susanne and Jo on the now well-worn tale of how Phil Oakey picked them up in the Crazy Daisy club in Sheffield. And I love Jo's blunt northerner description of Grace Jones: "OK for the first half hour and then boring".

The whole band together where Phil Oakey doesn't get one word in.

Love Action, Countdown 1982. I love this voiceover on this, full of showbiz! And the girls! They really can't dance...

Don't You Want Me, Countdown, 1982. Love Jo's very literal interpretation of the lyrics in dance at 0:50.

Is there a girl being attacked in the audience during the first verse? Those screams are blood curdling! And what's with the screams on the chorus? Is it an Ozzie thing?


Thanks to Crowbaby 5 and Noveauxromo

3 comments:

Adem With An E said...

The screams during the chorus were definitely a 'Countdown' thing, so I guess at the time it was the Ozzie thing to do? I certainly miss watching Countdown, though I couldn't imagine a show of its kind working at all in Australia now.

D'luv said...

Hey you, maybe just a request to go easy on the YouTube videos. Your site loaded really slow on my laptop and almost crashed the internet. At first I thought maybe it was just my computer, but I'm on a different one now and it's the same.

Just FYI :)

Phil said...

Adem! I knew it would be an ozzie thang. Aw.

~And mr D'Luv, duly noted! I reduced the number of posts per page so hopefully it won't go spazzy again. ta!