The Saturday Sunday Rock Show

[Daniel E]

Does anyone know anything about a Radio 1 show presented by Alan"Fluff"Freeman in the early hours, called The Saturday Sunday Rock Show ?

It may have been in the mid 1980s ?

I understand he once did a special dedicated to YES BBC Sessions from the late 60s and early 70s, but I'd like to know more about the show in general ? (But any info about the YES show would be much appreciated too !)

Thanks in advance....

[robincarmody]

This show started in January 1989, when Fluff came back to Radio 1 after a decade.

It ran at that time until the autumn of 1990, but continued earlier on Saturday evenings until 23rd October 1993.

The music was a combination of the rock he had played on his Saturday afternoon show in the 1970s (with, indeed, some archive BBC sessions included) and the metal of the mid-late 80s / early 90s. I have a few shows on CD.

[Matthew North]

i think i got the yes one on cassette somewhere,

[Peter Chadwick]

Before the Saturday Rock Show, it ran on Friday nights (also presented by Fluff); indeed, that's where most of my off-air sessions come from; The Who, Cream, The Nice, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, Zeppelin, Roxy Music, Elton John, Nazareth, Genesis, Yes, The Rolling Stones, Yardbirds, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Joe Cocker, Jeff Beck Group (with Rod Stewart) etc. It was thanks to the original Friday Rock Show (hosted by Tommy Vance) that the Beeb finally started getting their archives back into shape, with producers donating session material they'd kept instead of it being wiped. I think I still have Fluff's final Saturday Rock Show on videotape. BTW, the original Friday Rock Show started in late 1979 with two Beatles sets in the 'Archive session' sections.

[jimsieroto]

The Friday Rock Show first broadcast on November 15th 1978. It had been featured in the Radio Times as a show that would feature recordings from the BBC archives, although the first show was a 2 hour Yes at Wembley special from the previous month which has been repeated several times since. The first archive session was on the following show which featured Elvis Costello. It didn't hit its stride until Feb 2nd 1979 when it repeated the 2 Top Gear sessions by Led Zeppelin. These were played back uninterrupted with no annoying DJ noises or jingles (6Music take note). From then on every Friday featured approx 30 mins of archive classics and were a revelation to me and I'm sure many others. It was John Peel who started this habit of archive sessions in the summer of 1977. In amongst the punk stuff he found time to play sessions by Robin Trower, the Faces, Steeleye Span, and more, as well as featuring a classic In Concert every Friday night during August. The first major archive session broadcast was John Peel again in April 76 when he devoted the whole of his show (1 hour in those days) to Hendrix's BBC recordings. He'd written about in his column in Sounds the previous week. Alan Freeman's Saturday (1973-1978) would feature Tony Wilson recreations which were isolated session tracks not the whole thing.