Hitscene Totp inserts?

[Paul Watkins]

Just stumbled across an austrailian music tv show from the 60's called 'Hitscene.'
Most of the clips are from homegrown artists but there are some others on there aswell.
While watching one edition (8th November 1969), which has been re-broadcast over there on Rage recently they showed The Kinks - Wonderboy. This was from 'top of the pops'. Up till now afaik there was only one source for this clip which i believe was the Dutch tv archive.
My obvious question is how many of these shows are there and did they use any other totp inserts in their shows?

Any Austrailian members here that maybe can shine any light on this status of this archive or have any memories of this show?

[ajsmith]

Interesting! I wonder why they were showing an 18 month old Kinks song though?

[Sal Mohammed]

Jan 13, 2012 15:38:58 GMT ajsmith said:

Interesting! I wonder why they were showing an 18 month old Kinks song though?

Yeah, those convict ships that would ship the footage used to take a long time to reach down under!

[Paul Watkins]

It seems that most of this series survives in the archive except 2 or 3 editions. It ran from 1969-1972
Some more artists featured are:
Picketywitch, The Kinks, The Who, Slade, Peter Sarstedt, Christie, Blue Mink, Cliff Richard, Mungo Jerry, Shirley Bassey, The Carpenters, New Seekers, Bee Gees, Deep Purple, Gary Glitter, Michael Jackson......

[Deleted]

how can we find out what performances were made on this show?

[bleslie7]

Hi all

The databases with a full list of performances from Hitscene is published in the Australian Countdown show memories forum as per this link

pub24.bravenet.com/forum/static/show.php?usernum=2015862427&frmid=135&msgid=894263&cmd=show

Interest in this show has suddenly increased since 8 previously unrepeated 1969 Hitscene shows were screened last Saturday night on Rage as part of Week One of January Retro season. As some members here may be aware, Rage has for a long time screened back-to-back Countdown episodes (the Australian equivalent to Top Of The Pops) from the 70s and 80s in the January slot - a tradition now dating back to the early 90s.

While around a dozen early 70's Hitscenes were shown on Rage in the early 2000's, to see a whole bunch of 1969 shows last week plus some other fantastic 1960s footage made last weeks program a complete treat for everyone who was priveledged enough to see it.

It was also a complete surprise to me to see the TOTP performance of the Kinks Wonderboy in that Hitscene last week. The database above unfortunately does not mention the shows origin if the footage is not Australian - and all the other overseas clips shown last week were promotional clips - and some very rare ones at that including Barry Ryan "Love Is Love", Steppenwolf "Sookie Sookie", Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Bands "Urban Spaceman" amongst a number of others. I do not know of the existence of any of these overseas-made promo clips outside the Hitscene archive. I am positive that there will be other TOTP clips that may well be otherwise missing in both Hitscene and the other Australian show of the period GTK - here is the GTK database here in this link - loads of overseas clips in this show as well.

pub24.bravenet.com/forum/static/show.php?usernum=2015862427&frmid=135&msgid=895200&cmd=show

The databases come directly from ABC Australia archive print-outs - and while there is some detail concerning whether the clips are owned by record companies or the ABC (as the ABC also made up some of their own clips for songs where promo films were not available) I assumed that the Kinks Wonderboy must have been a promo film as well - so it was a definite surprise to see a somewhat grainy Top Of the Pops performance - so yes Sal - it has made it all the way to Australia back in 1969 - and given the slow speed of the convict ships back then, the 18-month time lag is definitely explainable!!

The existence of most of 170-odd Hitscene shows is due the fact they were telescined for 16mm film distribution and shown around the country on all ABC stations from Episode 2 when the show went national. Same as GTK for which a massive 700-odd episodes survive (the show only went 10 minutes but was shown 4 days a week, Hitscene was shown once a week on a Saturday afternoon originally) - although not all GTK films seemed to have been retained - there is some missing material. Sadly, that does not apply to our most iconic show of all - Countdown - which was taped on 2" videotape masters as it was on colour from the 1st episode of 1974, and most of the shows between 1974 and 1979 have been wiped - the 1st more or less completely surviving year for intact footage of Countdown episodes is not until 1980!!.

[Deleted]

Very interesting links Brett, thankyou.
Fantastic to see that some footage exists of these
Geordie - All Because Of You
Glitter Band - Angel Face
The Sweet - Peppermint Twist
Wow...I'd love to see these...

[Deleted]

Looks like this programme may turn out to be another (until now) untapped pop resource! I wonder how much of each show was comprising artist performances or promo clips and how much was just records played to other visuals?

[Deleted]

how can we found out more info on wher the clips are from?A fantastic find though wow.

[Paul Watkins]

Thanks Brett for those show listings.
I agree that there are problably more totp or other UK show clips in there to be discovered.

[Deleted]

Quite alot of the old GTK clips I've seen have been poor b&w copies of television appearances. I say poor, but if that's all that's left it would still be great to have a clip. But the old clip they use of 'Ben' by Michael Jackson is taken from American Bandstand, and the old clip they show of Wizzard doing 'See My Baby Jive' is from Russell Harty.

[Alan Turrell]

This looks very interesting when i first saw this on youtube i stupidly overlooked it thinking it was just australian acts how wrong could i be , looks like some very important clips on here .

[Ross Mann]

I watched a fair few of those "Rage goes Retro" editions, I laughed my head off watching Bon Scott (the BEST singer AC/DC had!!) in The Vallentines standing next to the drummer in his "sexy" too tight white bell bottomed trousers (no sock lol) not doing much at all! The song they did (which they hoped would be a hit, geez I don't know why it isn't so fondly remembered lol) was "This old Man" quite literally knick Knack Paddy Whack!! I'm in tears visualizing it now XD

[Ray Langstone (was saintsray)]

As we know, the David Cassidy performance on the Heathrow tarmac (5ooth TOTP) was exported by the BBC as a 'promo' to Australia and it turned up in 2010 - and still on youtube - albeit in grainy b/w - it's a 'kinescope of a kinescope'!!!!

Incidentally, Australia did not become fully colour in terms of TV transmission until 1975, before anyone snorts, remember parts of the UK did not get colour TV until around the same time! Channel TV were even later!

[Ross Mann]

Quote- Ray Langstone (was saintsray)Incidentally, Australia did not become fully colour in terms of TV transmission until 1975, before anyone snorts, remember parts of the UK did not get colour TV until around the same time! Channel TV were even later!

March of 75' if I remember correctly (not that I was around at the time) I've seen a clip from a comedy show called "Aunty Jack" (I'll rip your bloody arms off!!) where parts of the screen are colour and the performers are "ducking" in and out of colour, quite amusing not sure if it's on YouTube I saw it on a 50th anniversary of TV show a cpl of years back.