NICOLE – "A Little Peace"

WELL DONE TOM.

(at least)

you must at least remember Tracy Ullman’s “Rissole” on Three of a Kind (nb, this maybe a false memory)

Well done from me, too, Tom, on reaching the halfway mark

But I really don’t mind this at all. I have the German language version – Ein bißchen Frieden – alongside the English version and I prefer that one. Partly that’s because I have very little German so I can more easily tune out the lyric (I sometimes think I’d like Wagner a lot less than I do if I could understand the libretti, which are less than towering poetry I understand). The other is that the song is clearly written around German sounds. Nicole embraces and kisses that sibilant in the contantly repeated “bißchen” in a way that is completely lost in the rendering “a leedle peas”

I’m going to go all Janice Nicholls on you and say oi’ll geev eet foive.

TOTP Watch: Nicole performed ‘A Little Peace’ on Top of the Pops twice;

29 April 1982. Also in the studio that week were; Hot Chocolate, Bardo, Yazoo and Monsoon. Richard Skinner was the host.

13 May 1982. Also in the studio that week were; Duran Duran, Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, The Fun Boy 3 and The Associates (yes!), plus Zoo’s interpretation of ‘Girl Crazy’. Dave Lee Travis was the host.

Tip of the hat to Tom for getting this far. Is there a stopping point or are you just going to keep pushing that rock up the hill until the day comes when you catch up to the latest #1, I’m not good at maths but I guess that would be years down the line.

Anything to avoid talking about this record.

And I can’t name that typeface but it looks several years behind the times, like it’s wearing flares or something.

Edit: Well done Steve. That yellow background on the page makes it look like an old Letraset catalogue, the one with the “fancy” typefaces in it.

A landmark for you, Tom – yes, congrats on getting halfway to where we were about four years ago!! – and even more of a landmark for me. Having just discovered how to place the stork symbol on this forum (on “Wonderful Land”) now would be the time for me to place the exploding cherry symbol.

For yes, that particular life experience – slightly late in life at 19, perhaps, but there you go – is associated with this record. Not because “it” happened while the record was number one, but because it happened during the Eurovision Song Contest! Yes, my first time happened on ESC night – in a tent in a field just outside Edale, at the southern end of the Pennine Way, with Eurovision playing on a transistor radio. Happy days. I do remember thinking that “One Step Further” (hey, what an appropriate title for what we were doing!) wasn’t robbed because the performance sounded like the worst screech-fest for a UK Euro entry this side of Jemini.

It was quite a year for the Germans, with this and Kraftwerk going all the way (stop it!) and do you remember Trio stopping at 2 with “Da Da Da (Ich Lieb Dich Nicht)”, which was irresistible or irritating depending on your viewpoint? Trio appeared on TOTP a few days after West Germany reached the World Cup semi-final because England failed to beat Spain in the group stage – the band placed a football with the words “Thank You” on a table in front of them. Cheers guys.

I later learned that on the German TV show “Wetten, Dass?” (the original of “You Bet” which ran for a few series in the UK) Trio had failed a challenge and their forfeit was to make a record with Nicole. I’d love to have heard that.

lonepilgrim @ 24: There seems to be far less focus on the image of the artist and more on melody and lyrics – although that is probably a gross generalisation

That seems like the right way round to me. Perhaps I’m a German changeling.

Re #24: Can performed ‘I Want More’ on the Top of the Pops transmitted on August the 26th, 1976. Also in the studio that week were; Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, Robin Sarstedt, Acker Bilk, Cliff Richrd and Gallagher & Lyle, plus no less than three appearances by Ruby Flipper, interpreting ‘You Should Be Dancing’, ‘Morning Glory’ and ‘Don’t Go Breaking My Heart’. Noel Edmonds was the host, presenting Can with the immortal words “This band are a wow in their native Germany!”

Re 28: Eurovision should all be mimed. Enough of this rockist ‘chops’ nonsense. And then we can retrospectively award the ’82 trophy to Bardo.

Nicole was a sweetie, this is no better or worse than All Kinds Of Everything, and I’d give it an extra point for “leedle”. Maybe that’s how the supermarket chain’s name should be pronounced.

Well done Tom, this is a mighty achievement.

I tell you who would have definitely given Nicole 1 out of 10 – Kojo. Representing Finland in the same year’s contest with Bomb Out, Kojo’s lyrics railed against the proliferation of “nuclear shit” on the global political agenda. I seem to remember that when Nicole won and Kojo didn’t, he called her a “stupid virgin.” Not to her face, thankfully.

Re 29: It might be better if Eurovision vocals were mimed, but the Contest has really gone downhill since they did away with the orchestra. Even the crap songs used to have arrangements that made them sound as good as they could possibly be, and it was a nice throwback to the 60s when anyone making a pop record could whistle up an orchestra to play on it, presumably because in a post-Beatles age, there were still loads of bandleaders kicking around, gifted enough to bolt a big arrangement onto a tune at short notice.

While I’m gassing, heartening to see so much love for Bardo out there. There really is nothing wrong with that song, is there? It’s a miniature pop masterclass, complete with weird not-quite-where-you’d-expect-it-to-go key change. You can tell that everyone who worked on that song felt really, really excited about it – enough for Neil Tennant, reviewing in Smash Hits, to exclaim, “That’s definitely not the last we’ve heard of Bardo.”
Ahem…

Did somebody call ?

I always liked this. It has the same rhythm as the goosestep

An interesting comment happened during the voting that year when Austria proceeded to vote. Up to that point Germany had got a least 8 from every country except Luxembourg who gave them nothing. Austria started with “Germany 1 point” and Wogan remarked “They’ll invade Austria tomorrow”

here’s the link to that Can TOTP performance
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0nfjguTclg
and no, they don’t look like ‘a bunch of professors moonlighting as second-hand car salesmen’ – I don’t know where that idea came from

the song sounds peculiarly timeless – I can imagine it fiiting in with todays charts and not sounding like a 70s tune – it sounds ripe for use in a movie soundtrack Tarantino style

Bat in the air, Tom. Well done.

I have to admit to have had a crush on Fraulein Nicole, although I think in retrospect that she certainly had not yet indulged in the activities enjoyed on a maiden voyage by Popular’s very own Kentish Manc during the night of her triumph. This seemed to have been confirmed by her follow-up, “Give Me More Time”, although this might, of course, referred to a lad who was a little too quick off the mark for her liking. She looked like the girl next door, but they’re usually the worst (or the best, depending on how you look at it!)

I have to say that, for what it’s worth, the Nicole on this sleeve looks quite a stunner to me and what’s more, the stunningness isn’t liable to be washed off.

She looks like she’s lived and loved. A touch of the Bonnie Tylers as well as Celine

My recollection is that this was the last Eurovision winner to be a big UK hit.

DV #45 – I was just thinking about that this morning – no subsequent Eurovision winner has reached number 1, and the only UK Eurovision entry to do so was [muffled by bunny] who was Australian anyway.

Nicole did a French version of this which was a big hit in, well, France (“La paix sur terre, c’est ma prière…” see http://en.lyrics-copy.com/nicole/la-paix-sur-terre.htm ) – although she wasn’t anything to do with the Nicole in the Renault Clio ads… the one who bizarrely finished up with Bob Mortimer.

The French version was a huge hit in Quebec. I remember my 5th grade teacher praising it. I had no idea until now that there was an English-language version, much less that it had hit #1 in the UK.