Fantasy "Top of the Pops" albums from Down Under

As everyone knows, Top of the Pops didn't just release records in the UK. They stretched their tentacles right around the world, reaching as far as Australia, where a substantial number of albums was released on the Summit label. Naturally, there are Australian collectors too, and one of them is Frank McDonald, who very kindly sent me a load of info and sleeve scans from his collection, which has helped us to map out virtually the whole of the Australian discography. (For a look at our database as it now stands, see here.)

Frank has also been busy putting together some of his own fantasy compilation albums from the series, and has sent in some images of the artwork he has created for them. Just to be clear - these are not commercially available and are just for fun. You can't buy them, although if you wanted to visit iTunes or Amazon, you could buy the relevant sound files and make your own versions.

Top of the Poppers Sing & Play The Bee Gees' Greatest Hits: 

Top of the Poppers Sing & Play Hot Chocolate's Greatest Hits: 

Top of the Poppers Sing & Play Abba's Greatest Hits: 

As you can see, Frank has put in plenty of effort not just in the cover art but also the track selections. The Hot Chocolate CD borrows "Brother Louie", and the Bee Gees CD a few more tracks, which were never covered by Top of the Pops, but which did feature on other album series on rival labels. Abba on the other hand, contains 17 of the 18 tracks which graced the Top of the Pops series (just "Voulez-Vous" is absent, from volume 74), which is two more than Pickwick themselves managed when they released an official Top of the Pops CD collection along the same lines in 1999...

In case you're tempted to make your own physical CDs from Frank's templates, here is the full artwork for the three collections above. Click to enlarge.

There are more to follow, so watch this space...