Todays clip on RBFTP is another 1960s Top of the Pops apearance. Sandie Shaw was never the strongest of singers compared to contemporaries like Lulu, Dusty or Cilla, but she was probably the most quintessentially sixties pop dolly of the period, plucked for stardom from the assembly line at the Ford factory in Dagenham, after being spotted at a charity concert by Adam Faith. 'Long Live Love' was her second No. 1.
This clip hasn't been 'lost' for decades- it featured in the early 1990s BBC TV series 'Sounds of the Sixties', which rounded up a number of archive performances. It is however, a curious survivor. It isn't the originally televised performance, which like most 60s TOTP clips, was wiped many years ago. Rather, it's the filmed rehearsal which has inexplicably survived.
Being a rehearsal performance, Shaw performs the various stage moves and mimes along, but there's understandably little effort put in, and she looks bored witless. If you didn't bear in mind it was just a run through, you'd think Shaw was a rather more sultry and sullen performer than she normally was, and although the performance wasn't intended for broadcast it's quite interesting how it can distort one's perception of the artist.
Some shots are almost Pythonesque in their bizarreness - the ones of bare patches of studio floor (the non-existant audience 'dancing'), and DJ and presenter Pete Murray looking around the near deserted studio, seemingly baffled, but the set is exactly as you'd want a 60s TOTP set to be, with huge blown up photos of Sandie on the walls, and some light-up prop that looks like it was half-inched from the Blackpool Illuminations.
It's a great clip, but best approached with caution, as it gives a false impression of Ms Shaws real stage persona...
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