On this date 45 years ago, 2tone greats The Specials appeared on the British music program Top of the Pops, wearing holiday sweaters and turning in this great performance! (Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's mimed; I still won't call it anything but great...!)
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LATE EDIT: It isn't sitting well with me that I didn't tie this into gaming and the slowly growing list of material meant for the Monstrous Heartbreaker and its related games.
SO...here's a link- and callback when I turned to these fellows from Coventry for help in shaping a sound to be cast by classes capable of wielding rude magic...
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Blank Expression
1st-level Sound
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 30 feet
Duration: 8 hours
Attack/Save: WIS save
You choose one target creature within range. If that creature is familiar with you, they forget who you are and their history with you for the duration of the sound. The creature may still be aware that someone of your name and description exists, but they are unable to make that connection to you. A successful save negates the effect.
TOTP was almost always mimed at that point. There's a fun bit here, including some notable performances that exposed the "deception". I also recall Orbital standing still at keyboards during one of their performances, and Eels "playing" on toy instruments.
ReplyDeleteThat's good stuff, thanks for the insight! I wonder if that's why Terry Hall is chewing gum in this performance...?
DeleteSide note(s): I didn't realize TOTP had such a long and illustrious history(!)...AND I apparently need to track down the performance where Kurt Cobain alleges that he wanted to sound like Morrissey...😂
Kelvin's nailed it. I'm pretty sure as kids it took us a while to realise it was mimed, but really we didn't care - it was a chance to see our favourite bands playing on TV.
ReplyDeleteThe show was a staple of my youth and deserves a prime time BBC One revival.
Since it's only relatively recently that EVERYTHING has started to be recorded, I think it's awesome that there's this 40+ year collection of bands performing live, even if they aren't actually playing.
DeleteAnd now that I think about it, I don't know that we have anything that's reached the same heights here in the States. I guess American Bandstand is the obvious comparison...and maybe I'm just slightly too young to have viewed it as an American institution, but by the time I was really paying attention, MTV had definitely overtaken it in influence (I'm not even sure when American Bandstand ended). MAYBE musical performances on Saturday Night Live have had a similar cultural cachet...?