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Post by richardmarson on Oct 4, 2018 8:49:16 GMT
Sounds like Biddy liked the idea of watching herself in the future. There's an hour at most over the entire history of that show worth watching. Well, in your opinion maybe. Plenty would disagree! And she hardly ever featured in 26 years of running the show so your theory is unlikely! However, she did enjoy frustrating internal BBC bureaucracy so that was almost certainly another motivation.
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Post by petercheck on Oct 4, 2018 9:42:05 GMT
We should all be very grateful to her. Even if the "an hour" claim is true (and it's not), amongst the gems we have are:
* The only surviving UK performance of the Tony Jackson-era The Searchers performing 'Needles and Pins'.
* The last surviving performance of Brian Poole and The Tremeloes prior to their split.
* The earliest known surviving footage of Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich.
* The only known surviving '60s footage of Pinkerton's Assorted Colours performing their big hit 'Mirror Mirror'.
* The earliest known footage of The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band.
There are plenty of other examples.
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Post by garygraham on Oct 4, 2018 18:39:56 GMT
The BBC don't have every episode of Blue Peter. That was a fallacy from an appallingly written press release (a sign of the times!). The first five years are missing and 1963-1965 have gaps. But pretty much everything after that exists, not just the main programmes but also the film inserts. From 1970 when colour arrived, most of the shows exist on their master videotapes too and where they don't, there is a black and white film recording. Every BP holding (and the contents of each edition) are detailed in my book Blue Peter: Inside the Archives Biddy did indeed meet a lot of resistance to keeping everything but she insisted; she wanted to be able to use the library for review of the years, compilation specials (for instance when a presenter left) and thought it madness to throw material away. She had the clout within the BBC to get her way; a real pity no one running Top of the Pops or Doctot Who or many other shows either felt or acted the same way. This is why I felt the original article was being very unfair to her. Yes a sign of the times. I believe 1965 was the year Biddy Baxter became editor, so it looks like she implemented that policy immediately? Very forward thinking. These days film seems rather clunky. But in the past telerecordings were convenient as they could be viewed and edited on cheap equipment. I bet some production offices had a 16mm flatbed editor in the corner?
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Post by Thomas Walsh on Oct 13, 2018 17:49:13 GMT
I must ask a quite obvious question but maybe it's time it was simply explained to dimwits like myself. I know the BBC has always been the licence payers property and not independent of that, so it had stricter budgetary constraints all through its lifetime but how could German TV (Beat Club, Musikladen etc) and Australia keep their entire music archives so beautifully and easily through all them years yet the Beeb simply had to rape and pillage theirs? I still wake up at night in a cold sweat thinking that the only surviving clip of The Kinks performing 'Waterloo Sunset' in 1967 is from Beat Club!!!!!
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Post by Kev Mulrenan on Oct 14, 2018 7:44:46 GMT
I must ask a quite obvious question but maybe it's time it was simply explained to dimwits like myself. I know the BBC has always been the licence payers property and not independent of that, so it had stricter budgetary constraints all through its lifetime but how could German TV (Beat Club, Musikladen etc) and Australia keep their entire music archives so beautifully and easily through all them years yet the Beeb simply had to rape and pillage theirs? I still wake up at night in a cold sweat thinking that the only surviving clip of The Kinks performing 'Waterloo Sunset' in 1967 is from Beat Club!!!!! Fings ain't quite that simple! Did you know the Gernmans keep none of the show 4 3 2 1 Hot n Sweet? Only a Doors insert exists. Same with Ausralia. Tons of pop shows missing. The Beat Club archive is magnificent. Must have been down to the producer, Mike Leckebusch. It was a monthly show remember, not weekly like totp. The Germans just were better at keeping stiff pop wise. They were getting people on Musikladen in the 70's to phone in and choose their best bits from Beat Club, clips which in some cases were just 5 years old. That Beat Club clip is my all time fave archive music clip.
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Post by petercheck on Oct 14, 2018 8:45:08 GMT
I must ask a quite obvious question but maybe it's time it was simply explained to dimwits like myself. I know the BBC has always been the licence payers property and not independent of that, so it had stricter budgetary constraints all through its lifetime but how could German TV (Beat Club, Musikladen etc) and Australia keep their entire music archives so beautifully and easily through all them years yet the Beeb simply had to rape and pillage theirs? I still wake up at night in a cold sweat thinking that the only surviving clip of The Kinks performing 'Waterloo Sunset' in 1967 is from Beat Club!!!!! Fings ain't quite that simple! Did you know the Germans keep none of the show 4 3 2 1 Hot n Sweet? Only a Doors insert exists. Actually, there is at least one other clip (this video was partly filmed in London's Trafalgar Square, and broadcast on German TV's '4-3-2-1, Hot and Sweet' on 22nd November 1969):
We're extremely lucky that the German TV archives are so complete though. As well as 'Beat Club', all episodes of 'Beat! Beat! Beat!', 'Disco' and 'Musikladen' survive intact. I don't know of any other countries where so much survives, though some US shows ('Shindig!', 'Hullabaloo' and 'The Music Scene' spring to mind) also survive intact, albeit not always in pristine quality; for example, all episodes of 'Hullabaloo' were originally broadcast in colour, yet all but three episodes only exist in black & white.
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Post by Richard Marple on Oct 14, 2018 9:29:54 GMT
What's the survival rate for American Bandstand?
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Post by Peter Stirling on Oct 14, 2018 10:14:22 GMT
I must ask a quite obvious question but maybe it's time it was simply explained to dimwits like myself. I know the BBC has always been the licence payers property and not independent of that, so it had stricter budgetary constraints all through its lifetime but how could German TV (Beat Club, Musikladen etc) and Australia keep their entire music archives so beautifully and easily through all them years yet the Beeb simply had to rape and pillage theirs? I still wake up at night in a cold sweat thinking that the only surviving clip of The Kinks performing 'Waterloo Sunset' in 1967 is from Beat Club!!!!! You have to think in the context of the time,nobody was interested in what happened yesterday it was 'yesterday's papers' and good stuff was coming along all the time, so yes Waterloo Sunset great! but we had heard that what were the Kinks bringing out tomorrow? To quote this fantastic production.
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Post by ajsmith on Oct 14, 2018 10:35:26 GMT
What's the survival rate for American Bandstand? Someone else will be able to answer this better than me but as far as I recall it’s not great for the early years, consisting of a scattered selection of b/w kinescopes (inc the famous Pink Floyd clip fortunately).
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Post by petercheck on Oct 14, 2018 10:53:35 GMT
What's the survival rate for American Bandstand? Someone else will be able to answer this better than me but as far as I recall it’s not great for the early years, consisting of a scattered selection of b/w kinescopes (inc the famous Pink Floyd clip fortunately). I'm no expert on this show either, but I do know that almost all clips from the pre British Invasion era purporting to be from AB are in fact from Dick Clark's Saturday night show 'Beechnut'. I believe the survival rate for Dick Clark's mid-'60s show 'Where The Action Is' is also very much hit-and-miss.
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Post by ajsmith on Oct 14, 2018 11:10:48 GMT
Interesting. I assumed that most of Where The Action is exists as there seems to be tons of material from it out there.
I find it a very frustrating show, as it’s the only place to see contempary footage of a lot of the obscurer mid 60s US acts, for example The 13th Floor Elevators and The Sopwith Camel, but due to the Outside Broadcast nature of the show the clips tend to look terrible (imo) compared to other pop shows of the time; bands filmed undynamically in mid and long shot, few close ups, glacial edits, low res picture quality.
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Post by robertreinstein on Oct 14, 2018 14:08:38 GMT
The Dick Clark archives are phenomenal. That guy saved everything, though it is unknown about the retention of the original Philly shows, but I believe he has 100% of the national shows. There's an official YouTube channel where his archives posted many interviews from AB, but no music. www.youtube.com/results?search_query=american+band+stand+interviewAmerican Bandstand and the Beechnut shows are totally different, and ran at the same time, so the only way to really identify AB is from the set, which clearly identified the show. There were many one-offs from Dick Clark Productions too. it may very well be possible that DC has all of the Where The Action Is and Happening shows, but that vault is so tight......
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Post by petercheck on Oct 14, 2018 15:23:03 GMT
The Dick Clark archives are phenomenal. That guy saved everything, though it is unknown about the retention of the original Philly shows, but I believe he has 100% of the national shows. Unfortunately Robert, this isn't true. There were a couple of official VHS tapes of AB highlights issued in the '80s/90s, and this clip is from the first volume; listen to Dick Clark's own explanation at the beginning:
Other archivists (and by this I mean official documentary makers with big budgets) have investigated things like Jerry Lee Lewis' 6 appearances on AB during 1957-1964, and the only one that survives is his 6th and last appearance (frustratingly, the only appearance where he mimed). The only earlier appearance that survives is from 'Beechnut'.
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Post by robertreinstein on Oct 14, 2018 16:27:19 GMT
The Dick Clark archives are phenomenal. That guy saved everything, though it is unknown about the retention of the original Philly shows, but I believe he has 100% of the national shows. Unfortunately Robert, this isn't true. There were a couple of official VHS tapes of AB highlights issued in the '80s/90s, and this clip is from the first volume; listen to Dick Clark's own explanation at the beginning:
Other archivists (and by this I mean official documentary makers with big budgets) have investigated things like Jerry Lee Lewis' 6 appearances on AB during 1957-1964, and the only one that survives is his 6th and last appearance (frustratingly, the only appearance where he mimed). The only earlier appearance that survives is from 'Beechnut'.
Agreed Peter. I didn't realize they went national as early as 1957. I believe they have most of everything 1964 and onwards.
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Post by ajsmith on Oct 14, 2018 16:43:51 GMT
I was under the impression that there was a lot missing from AB from 1964 onwards, but I could be wrong. I know that Sparks first TV performance (when they were still called Halfnelson) from 1972 is AWOL!
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