My aintín Joan Uí Scanláin (Ní Chíobháin) very suddenly passed in August 2022. There are many stories I could share with you about this modest and much-adored lady, but I’ll leave you with this tribute I first wrote in 2018 about how she introduced me to the musical thrills of Top Of The Pops.

I can’t recall the exact moment that I fell in love with pop music, but I do remember the very first time I saw Top Of The Pops. It was November 1982 (I can confidently confirm this because I checked online to see when that evenings edition's Number One topped the charts ) and I was instantly smitten.

Back in late seventies and early eighties Ireland, there were very few outlets to hear pop music. If you didn’t possess a pop-song song you loved on cassette or on vinyl, you had to hope a DJ might play it on the radio. You would hope you might hear a DJ play it on RTÉ Radio 2 (now 2FM), someone like Larry Gogan, or perhaps Vincent Hanly, who would soon become a heroic figure to Ireland’s pop-starved youth, through hosting the sensational, Sunday-gloom-dispersing, escapist pop-utopia that was MT USA. Or, you could tune into Radio Luxembourg on AM radio as I used to do on my walkman at night. The music on AM radio sounded very faraway, as did the DJs, as if they inhabited another planet and, in many ways - in contrast to my life in west Kerry as a pre-teen - they most certainly did.

So, Top Of The Pops.

It was my Auntie Joan (I have - had - two Auntie Joans, two beautiful ladies, on both sides of the family, but I’m referring to Joan from An Ghráig, the little hamlet we grew up in in west Kerry) who switched me on to it one night in her mother’s - my grandmother’s - house. Joan had quite the influence on my music taste through the eighties. Some years later, I recall her being one of the only people I knew who had the live album of Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band Live 1975-85 — on vinyl - and I have fond memories of Saturday afternoons spent in blissful solitude, recording the album onto three C-90 cassettes, in her sitting room, listening intently to every note while carefully inscribing the sleeve notes (the live version of 'The River' was one of my favourites). I lost most of my cassettes over the decades, but I still have these three tapes. Paul Simon’s Graceland was also recorded to fill up the final 45 minutes on the third cassette. Graceland was one of those albums that I can recall seeing in almost every Irish household I visited in the eighties.

The very first time I watched Top Of The Pops, I had no notion that such a show existed. When Joan switched on the TV that night, she explained the basic premise to me of how the charts worked. As Gaeilge of course, but I’ll paraphrase in English.

- OK Cian, these 40 songs are the best songs out right now.

- How do you know?

- Well, the chart is based on a countdown from Number 40 up to Number 1. It all depends on how many records have been sold in the past week. The record at Number 1 will be the one that has sold the most copies.

- Wow, does this mean that Number 1 will be the best song?

- I should certainly hope so.

Talk about a revelation: this was EXACTLY what I had been looking for all my short life … only I didn’t realise it until then! The show was only 30 minutes long, snappily presented each week by BBC stalwarts such as David Jensen or Janice Long or, indeed, John Peel. As there were so many songs to get through and such a short duration, more often than not you only caught a snippet of particular tunes, punctuated by an occasional ‘live’ performance, where actual, real life pop-stars lit up the stage, becoming even more impossibly otherworldly, through the dazzle of flashing lights, dry ice and - to my mind - the coolest and luckiest boys & girls in the world, cheering and bopping to their tunes.

What I wouldn’t give to be there!

Instantly, I wanted to be part of this phantasmagorical pop Narnia.

Between the sounds and visuals, there was also the mounting anticipation as we sped inexorably towards the Top 10. The tension was almost too much to bear. As the presenter counted down the final few records, those elite records that had outsold all the previous ones featured on the show that week, I thought I might just explode with the excitement.

‘And now… to this week’s number 1… yes, it’s Eddy Grant’s I Don’t Wanna Dance’.

And - lo! - here it was, the ne plus ultra of that week’s record-buying frenzy; my first introduction to (synth-based) reggae, to the full-on, neo-drug-rush of the Top Of The Pops experience and I’ll never forget the feeling the song evoked and continues to evoke (even more so, now that my aunt had passed) to this day. At that moment in time, Eddy's song sounded like the most heartfelt, lovelorn sound my ears had ever heard.

Here was Eddy, on a balmy Caribbean island serenading his lover, but his every word dripping with a strange poignancy, that caused my skin to break out in goosebumps.

“I don't want to dance,
Dance with you baby no more,
I'll never do something to hurt you, though
Oh but the feeling is bad,
The feeling is bad”

Gut-wrenchingly, due to the show’s time-limit, they only played a snippet of the song and abruptly this ephemeral pop paradise was cruelly whisked away from me.

I had instant withdrawal systems as my first ever serotonin-high of experiencing Top Of The Pops came crashing down at the sight of an ad for Irish peat briquettes. I was crestfallen.

- Is that it Joan? Where can I hear this song again? I’m lost without it.

- Well, a chroí, Top Of The Pops will be back at the same time next week, so hopefully it’ll still be at number one so you will hear it again then. Otherwise, the radio I suppose. They should be playing it all this week. Listen out for it.

I hardly missed an episode of Top Of The Pops after that, all through the eighties and up to the mid-nineties. It’s where I heard ‘I Think We’re Alone Now’ by Tiffany and ‘Heaven Is A Place On Earth’ by Belinda Carlisle and ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ by Rick Astley for the first time. And Madonna of course, the queen of everything, don’t get me started on that particular infatuation!

Later, I remember Nirvana *performing* ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, with a deadpan Kurt Cobain doing his best Ian Curtis impression as he practically devoured the mic in 1991. Halcyon nights.

Top Of The Pops was the reason why Thursday evenings was the most important day of my childhood week for me.

It was my gateway into the world of music.

It's also probably one of the earliest influences on why I do what I do for a living.

Bhior tú mo chluasa an oíche san ar an nGráig fadó, a Joan.

Níl dabht ach gur spreagais chun ceoil mé, i dtreo na hallaí rince ina bhfuil oícheanta gan chomparáid caite agam iontu agus táim ar an taobh tuathail - an taobh milis, mealltach tuathail - ó shin.

Coladh sámh a stór mo chroí X

M’aintín Joan agus Top Of The Pops