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Post by markdixon on Sept 8, 2014 7:55:55 GMT
The series was called ‘The Liverpool Scene’. There were 4 episodes broadcast in the Granada region only from 6.05-6.30 each Tuesday during February 1969. Each episode featured songs and poems based on a particular theme. The episodes titles were ‘The Liverpool Scene Look at the Seaside’, ‘The Liverpool Scene Look at Love’, ‘The Liverpool Scene Look at Liverpool’ and ‘The Liverpool Scene Look at the Future’.
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Post by markdixon on Sept 6, 2014 18:39:25 GMT
Thanks Rob. Another strange teatime programme from that era to add to your list is the series of performances by the Liverpool Scene which Granada broadcast in 1969. Some of the songs must have been unsettling to many viewers, especially 'We'll All Be Spacemen Before We Die'.
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Post by markdixon on Sept 6, 2014 16:21:13 GMT
I’ve got a few more observations and pieces of information that might help place ‘Octopus’ into some kind of context. It strikes me that ‘Octopus’ was a strange programme to put on in a teatime slot. It concerned ideas, arts and music and was co-presented by an editor of the underground magazine ‘OZ’. It sometimes featured controversial and unusual guests and it included the sort of bands that were more often heard on John Peel’s radio programmes. It occurred to me this week that there was an earlier teatime programme that contained those same ingredients. ‘How It Is’ was broadcast on BBC1 in 1968 and it included ‘OZ’ editor Richard Neville as one of the co-presenters. Neville returned for its sequel ‘How Late It Is’ in 1969. Perhaps Granada producers watched these BBC programmes and decided to make something similar.
We’ll never be able to compare ‘How It Is’ and ‘Octopus’ due to lack of archive material, but I suspect that the BBC programme was livelier. It included a studio audience and regular appearances by the light-entertainment folk group the Spinners. A regular theme of ‘Octopus’ was the connection between the arts and technology. Available evidence suggests that ‘How It Is’ and ‘How Late It Is’ didn’t cover technology in great detail.
As far as I know Andrew Fisher didn’t present any programmes apart from ‘Octopus’. The listings in the ‘TV Times’ indicate that he was replaced by Chris Kelly as the main presenter of the programme towards the end of its run. Kelly was an experienced Granada presenter so perhaps ‘Octopus’ became a more conventional programme when he took over. Did the later episodes feature bands?
Fisher was also a BBC script writer, probably during the late 1960s, but I haven’t been able to find out which programmes he worked on. I did discover that he acted in and directed a 15 minute avant-garde comedy film called ‘X Requests’ in 1974. It might be of interest to readers of this forum because it features a cameo appearance by John Peel. The film is so obscure that it doesn’t even feature on the John Peel Wiki site. It still exists and a synopsis is available on the Lux artists’ moving image website.
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Post by markdixon on Aug 29, 2014 14:21:34 GMT
Perhaps Canned Heat were unable to perform a song during their 'Top of the Pops' appearance recorded on 28th January 1970, because their instruments were already in Manchester. The band members could easily have travelled by plane from London to Manchester after giving out the awards and then they could have recorded a musical performance for 'Octopus' at the Granada Studios.
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Post by markdixon on Aug 29, 2014 10:53:02 GMT
Hi William, I suppose we might never know whether or not Canned Heat played in Manchester on the 29th January 1970. They were a very successful band at the time so it does seem odd that they would have agreed to do a gig at such a small venue. Perhaps they found it refreshing to play in front of a small audience every so often. If the gig was arranged at short notice then maybe it was never included in music press listings. That might explain why the gig isn’t included on websites that feature Canned Heat concert lists. It also seems odd how a low-budget show like ‘Octopus’ was able to secure such an excellent range of guests. I suspect that the presenter Andrew Fisher had something to do with the bookings. He led a very varied and interesting life so he probably had a wide range of contacts. Fisher died in Australia in 2008. His obituary on the ‘Sydney Morning Herald’ website is worth reading. It doesn’t mention ‘Octopus’ by name, but states that he was ‘a frontman for a weekly current affairs show on Granada TV in Manchester’.
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Post by markdixon on Aug 28, 2014 17:35:01 GMT
This week I viewed copies of the Mancunian underground/alternative press newspaper ‘Grass Eye’ at Manchester Central Library. I knew early issues included a lot of music coverage so I hoped there might be some mention of ‘Octopus’ in general or the Nick Drake appearance in particular. It turned out that the archives don’t hold many editions of ‘Grass Eye’ from the first half of 1970. However I did find this snippet of info from Vol. 2 No. 1 (1 May 1970): ‘Granada TV’s Octopus programme brought Greasy Bear, Spirogyra and Sleep to a mass audience for the first time –which would have been nice except that the sound system in their studios is really bad and all three groups complained of not being able to hear each other’s harmonies. Still, it’s a step towards a regular music programme on TV.’
It seems that ‘Octopus’ wasn’t the only Granada programme from that period that had technical problems when it came to recording live bands. Issue No. 7 of ‘Grass Eye’ (Aug/Sept 1969) contains an interview with Humble Pie. The introduction states that the band had recently recorded a session for an unidentified Granada programme but it was unlikely to be broadcast because of technical difficulties with the sound. Perhaps the problem with the sound system only affected the tiny Studio 4. I’ve seen several larger scale Granada music programmes from that era and the performances don’t seem hampered by technical difficulties at all.
I imagine that Nick Drake’s ‘Octopus’ performance was not hindered by the limitations of the sound system because he was a solo artist. It was probably straightforward to record him completely live or to synch his live vocal with a pre-recorded backing track. On a separate note I found out that the November 2010 issue of ‘Record Collector’ contains a letter from Stephen Diggle in which he wrote: ‘I have checked with purchasers of Nick Drake’s Five Leaves Left (first pressings) who are certain they bought the album after seeing him play live on a TV show aired in the North West. Could it have been a Granada TV show? Do any readers have the same recollection?’
I’m assuming that if several people bought Drake’s debut album on the strength of his ‘Octopus’ appearance then he must have played one of his more immediately accessible songs. I’ve got zero proof, but I’d hazard a guess that he played ‘River Man’.
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Post by markdixon on Aug 22, 2014 10:54:24 GMT
I haven’t been able to find out anything else about the Nick Drake appearance, but I’ve got some more snippets of information about other editions of ‘Octopus’. I found out that Love played at Manchester Polytechnic on Tuesday 24 February 1970. Therefore there’s a strong chance that their ‘Octopus’ performance was broadcast the next day.
According to ‘the Manchester Evening News’ (23 Jan 1970) Canned Heat were booked to play at the Manchester College of Commerce on Jan 29 1970. This fits in with the information William uncovered about their proposed recording session for ‘Octopus’ on Jan 28. I couldn’t find any reference to this gig online. Was it cancelled? If so, maybe the Granada appearance never took place either. ‘The Manchester Evening News’ (22 April 1970) ran a short item about that night’s edition of ‘Octopus’. It was a showcase of North West bands. About 20 bands had been auditioned, but only 3 appeared on the show. They were Greasy Bear, Sleep and Spirogyra. During the programme Jimmy Miller (producer of the Rolling Stones and Traffic) and Tony Secunda (manager of the Move and Procol Harum) were interviewed by presenter Sue Woodford.
There were only 24 editions of the show, not 25 as I stated in an earlier post. The proposed show for 4 March 1970 was replaced by a programme about the closure of Astley Green Colliery in Lancashire.
I found this quote from ‘Octopus’ presenter Jim Walker in a book titled ‘Granada Television: The First Generation’:
‘Nick Elliot made me a presenter of a programme called Octopus, a sort of budget-free Tomorrow’s World made in Studio 4, which was so small that it later became a store room. After three weeks the rumour was that Octopus was on its last leg’.
Therefore ‘Octopus’ was a very small-scale, low-budget show that was sometimes dropped from the schedules without much warning. It doesn’t sound to me like the sort of programme that would have been preserved in full in the archives.
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Post by markdixon on Aug 16, 2014 19:31:52 GMT
I managed to view Granada editions of the ‘TV Times’ from 1970. Sadly they don’t list the names of any guests who appeared on ‘Octopus’ and there is no indication of the exact content of individual shows. I can tell you that the programme ran from 7 January 1970-29 July 1970 and that there were 25 episodes. There weren’t any editions broadcast on 29 April and 6 May. The show also took a break for the first 3 weeks of June because ‘World Cup ‘70’ was broadcast instead. Here’s the listing for the first show:
‘Andrew Fisher introduces a new programme in which the accent is on ideas. It deals with ideas about traffic, architecture, science – and even ideas about ideas. Get the idea! Look in –you will!’
Only a few of the listings mention that music was a part of the programme. Here’s one from 18 March:
‘What is happening in the worlds of art and music? Octopus keeps abreast of the trends and looks at forecasts for the future’.
The presenters were Andrew Fisher, Sue Woodford, Jim Walker and Chris Kelly. Directors included John Downie. Producers were Nick Elliot and Brian Winston. Executive producer was Mike Scott. I mention these names because they show that the programme was part of Granada’s news/current affairs output. Woodford and Kelly were also presenters on Granada’s regional news programme ‘Newsview’ during 1970 and Walker was a researcher on the current affairs show ‘On Site’ (which featured Ray Gosling). The musical performances on ‘Octopus’ were probably regarded as just one aspect of the show by its producers.
This link with news/current affairs makes me think that the show might have been produced in the same manner as a regional news programme. I suspect it was broadcast live each week and maybe recordings were only made of a few representative editions. The programme makers probably videotaped musical performances in the studio in advance whenever performers were unable to appear on the live transmission (e.g. Nick Drake). It might not have been common practice to keep these VT inserts after they had been transmitted. The show was low budget so maybe they couldn’t afford to film many location reports. It could be the case that the film inserts listed on ‘ITN Source’ are the only ones that were filmed for the programme.
I think therefore that the Drake performance from ‘Octopus’ will have survived if the VT insert is still around somewhere in the archives or if that edition was lucky enough to be recorded as a representative example of the programme. There is also the possibility that Drake’s management requested a telerecording to be made of the performance.
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Post by markdixon on Aug 14, 2014 17:35:52 GMT
Two interesting bits of information regarding the Drake ‘Octopus’ appearance have been posted on the NickDrake.com forum. The ‘Time Out’ article from 1970 that I included in my original post here also appears in a photograph in the new book compiled by the Estate of Nick Drake titled ‘Remembered for a While’. Maybe they’ve taken steps to acquire the clip (if it still exists). One forum member heard Drake’s producer Joe Boyd state that he has a memory of seeing the Drake clip, but not in the Granada area. Perhaps a telerecording or a recording made on an early domestic video recorder may exist. The programme wasn’t networked. I’ve checked ‘TV Times’ listings from March 1970 for almost all of the ITV regions and I couldn’t find any evidence that ‘Octopus’ was shown by any company other than Granada. Unfortunately I haven’t got access to any 1970 editions of ‘TV Times’ from the Granada region itself. They probably contain some interesting further information about ‘Octopus’.
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Post by markdixon on Aug 12, 2014 11:55:38 GMT
ITN Source contains an entry for the 'Octopus' footage listed by the Benyon Archive. The clip ID is 242106. It's a 4 minute clip about experiments with holograms by Margaret Benyon of the Fine Arts Department at Nottingham University. There are about 8 other 'Octopus' clips relating to science on ITN Source. Sadly there's no evidence that any of the musical performances featured on the show have survived.
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Post by markdixon on Aug 11, 2014 15:50:30 GMT
Thanks Laurence. As far as I know he didn't appear on any programmes other than 'Octopus'.
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Post by markdixon on Aug 11, 2014 14:59:32 GMT
Hello, this is the first time I’ve posted on the forum. I thought some of you might be interested in the following item I found in the 11th-25th April 1970 edition of the North West version of ‘Time Out’ magazine:
“Octopus. A programme on Granada TV about new developments, be they in music and the arts, scientific research or literally anything that’s happening today. Octopus goes out at 6.05 every Wednesday and is presented by Andrew Fisher, who used to co-edit OZ magazine amongst many other things. The programme has been running since January and Granada say that it might be extended. Considering that the show is relatively new and that its length is only 25 minutes some really nice people have been on – Bruce Beresford (of the British Film Institute), Harvey Matusow (large musician and computer-abolitionist), Buckminster Fuller, Nick Drake, Angelo Quatrocchi and groups like Love, Taste, and Quintessence to name a few. All this plus synthesisers, mobiles, inflatables and a galaxy of other wonders. Ron Geesin appears on 15 April while on the 22nd April that excellent rock group Mighty Baby. Future plans include John and Yoko, Caroline Coon, Bridget St John and a feature on communes in Britain. All the credit for these goodies must go to the Octopus team of Andrew Fisher and Sue Woodford, who have demonstrated that TV can be used as a communicator of ideas and energy and not just as a means of selling detergents. He is also fortunate in having aware producers and directors around him. With the exception of World in Action (which has a lot more money to spend) Octopus is certainly the best programme on Granada. The day might come when we see Granada do a midnight show as John Peel did so effectively on radio. As a way of helping to promote the North West, on 29 April, Andrew will be presenting several local groups on Octopus. He hasn’t heard them all and so if you play in/manage a group and would like to be considered for this programme, then write (don’t telephone) giving full details to Andrew Fisher, Octopus, Granada TV, Manchester 3. “ I’d like to see footage of any of the guests mentioned in the article, but I’m particularly intrigued by the Nick Drake appearance, because no performance footage of him is known to exist. It’s possible that Nick Drake experts know all about his ‘Octopus’ appearance already, but I did an internet search and came to the conclusion that this information isn’t widely known about. I think that the only person who has written online about a Nick Drake TV performance is Steve Diggle (presumably not the Buzzcocks guitarist) on the NickDrake.com forum in 2005. A friend of his remembered seeing Nick Drake on Granada’s ‘Scene at 6.30’ in March 1970, about the time Drake supported Fotheringay at the Manchester Free Trade Hall. However the recollection was proved to be faulty because ‘Scene at 6.30’ finished in 1966. It’s possible that Steve Diggle’s friend saw Drake on ‘Octopus’ which had a similar time slot (6.05). Drake appeared at the Free Trade Hall on 20 March 1970, so the clip could have been aired on ‘Octopus’ the following Wednesday (25 March).
Does any ‘Octopus’ footage survive? ITN Source lists a few film inserts from the show dating from January to June 1970, but they are not music-related. There are clips featuring holograms, robots, steam engines and other things. Could it be the case that ITN Source haven’t listed all the Granada holdings? It would be nice to think there could be other segments or even complete editions of ‘Octopus’ hidden in the Granada vaults. I suspect the Drake performance doesn’t exist anymore. If he was filmed at the Free Trade Hall then there might be a film insert in existence somewhere. If he performed in the studio, then I’m guessing it’s likely that Granada wiped the tapes shortly after transmission without making a telerecording.
I’d be pleased to know if anyone has further information about ‘Octopus’ .
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