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Post by petercheck on Aug 3, 2020 6:48:45 GMT
The charts of 1969/1970 weren't greatly different from each other, the same with 1959/1960 and 1979/1980 (it has been said by many that the sixties didn't really start until 1963, very true in a way) and as for most records being melancholy in 1969, that simply isn't true: the best-selling record of the year was 'Sugar Sugar' by The Archies! What does annoy me of music post circa 1966 is that everything had to be categorized as either "pop" or "rock", when in reality many records by The Beatles, The Dave Clark Five, The Small Faces, The Kinks and countless others straddled that invisible boundary between the two. This would be even more so in the Glam Rock era with T-Rex, Slade, The Sweet, Suzi Quatro, etc.
The main feeling I personally get when watching 'Pop Goes The 60s' is how much things changed during that decade, far, far more than any other. Helen Shapiro, The Shadows, The Bachelors and even the mop-topped The Beatles seemed so very far away from 1969. If we had a similar retrospective for (say) 2010 to 2019 we'd be very hard pushed to notice any discernible changes!
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Post by williammcgregor on Aug 3, 2020 8:37:50 GMT
Look at how The Beatles changed between 1962 and 1969. 7 short years in which every year there was a change in both their music and their image.
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Post by Colin Anderton on Aug 3, 2020 8:44:54 GMT
Thanks for the responses.
To Steve: I felt at the time that I was fairly unique in my attitude. Everyone seemed to be looking forward to a new decade, and speculating what marvels it might bring. I enjoyed the first three years of the Seventies, because the Apollo missions were continuing, but my interest in the music disappeared pretty much as soon as the Beatles broke up in April 1970. In 1973 I went into a deep spiral downwards for a year or two. (Confession: booze!) O/T - but I do remember some psychiatrist many years later saying that many people start drinking heavily when they reach a point where they wish things would stay as they are at that point. That was certainly the case with me, but it was many years before I realised it. Anyway, confession time over!
To Peter S: I think the feeling of "You don't know what you've got till it's gone" is so very very true. I don't think there was too much nostalgia immediately the Sixties ended, but it didn't take more than a couple of years to regret the decade's passing. That's the feeling I detected at the time, anyway.
To Petercheck: "How much things changed in that decade." Boy, you can say that again! And how right you are about "progress" in subsequent decades.
To William: Absolutely! I was fortunate enough to have an older sister who started talking about the Beatles in early 1963, and I got into them as well. From their third single, From Me To You, I followed them all the way through. Pure magic! Beatles number 1 for me ever since!
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Post by Richard Marple on Aug 3, 2020 9:40:36 GMT
I was looking for clips of the Bee Gees performing I've Gonna Get A Message To you, I found two different clips, one is from a TV show, but the second could be a specially recorded promo.
Both seem to use the same backing track, which is different from the single, especially the last chorus.
I assume they used an alternative take or a specially recorded backing track to get around a no-miming rule.
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Post by Mike Goldwater on Aug 3, 2020 11:02:21 GMT
I was looking through Global Image Works which is a website that specialises in licencing archive footage, and through searching for Early Music Videos I found around over a dozen results: www.globalimageworks.com/stock?text=Early%20Music%20Video&textMode=phrase. These were mainly promo films done during the 60's and most of them were complete clips, some of which I had never heard of before, here are some highlights: 'You Keep Me Hangin' On' - The Supremes (1966) - B&W Film 'Living For You' - Sonny & Cher (1966) - B&W Film 'There Won't Be Many Comin' Home' Roy Orbision (1966) - B&W Film 'Groovin' - The Young Rascals (1967) - Colour Film 'I Was Made to Love Her' - Stevie Wonder (1967) - Colour Film 'Seven Rooms of Gloom' - The Four Tops (1967) - Colour Film There was also one fragment of a clip that particuarly interested me, it was a rare promo for 'God Only Knows' by the Beach Boys, it's only a 28 second excerpt but it does prove that the music video does exist: www.globalimageworks.com/stock/clip/1994_011/1994_011It was through a search through TV Pop Diaries that first alerted me to it's potential existence, when I found an detailed entry for an edition of TOTP from the 4/8/1966 when the film clip for this song was first aired describing it as a promo featuring the band members wandering around the woods wearing masks, it was repeated once more a few weeks later on the 1/9/1966 edition. Since it was a US produced promo I thourght it would have a better chance of survival, so I dug in and researched to see what I could find. I intially managed to find some behind the scenes the photos and a few screengrabs, but eventually I managed to find exceprts of footage from different sources including a higher quality source titled 'Pet Sounds Promo' which was edited together recently to support the remastered re-release of the iconic album, not all the footage dates from 1966 which is a telling sign it wasn't produced at the time of it's initial release, but anyway it includes some recording studio footage, performance material from 1969 and excerpts from their promos for 'God Only Knows' and 'Sloop John B' which were produced at the time to promote the album's release in 1966. Hopefully one day a complete print of the promo for 'God Only Knows' will be made available for public viewing. Coincidentally on the same TOTP edition this promo was first aired, there was also a promo for 'Summer In the City' by the Lovin Spoonful, describing it as a montage of slow and speeded up film footage. I did a search on Youtube for a potential lead, and hey presto I managed to find a promo clip that fit the description perfectly. It also contains no lip syncing similar the Beach Boys promo, so both these two promos would have been the very first film clips aired following the instigation of the miming ban on TOTP by the Musicians Union that came into effect from the 1st August 1966, which lasted until the early 70's, when film clips with mimed vocals were finally permitted for transmission on the program.
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Post by petercheck on Aug 3, 2020 11:08:01 GMT
'Living For You' - Sonny & Cher (1966) - B&W Film
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Post by Alan Turrell on Aug 3, 2020 18:44:44 GMT
I definitely remember seeing the promo for "Summer in the City" on TOTP the part that's always stuck in my mind is where the chap is riding the motorbike through the city with the high rise buildings that is the only bit I remember of it. The Eleanor Rigby and Yellow Submarine songs both from the same episode are etched in my mind along with the Beach Boys God Only Knows It's strange these fragments from the 2 episodes dating 25/8/66 and 1/9/66 are the only songs I can remember.I know I watched these 2 episodes as at the time I was mad on Adam Adamant Lives also shown on a Thursday night and the 2 episodes I saw " Sing a Song of Murder" and " The Doomsday Plan" were also shown on 25/8/66 and 1/9/66 although I cannot remember anything else from these 2 episodes of TOTP these few songs have always stuck with me there has always been the connection between these 2 TOTP shows and the 2 Adam adamant shows.
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Post by Thomas Walsh on Aug 4, 2020 0:58:51 GMT
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Post by Mike Goldwater on Aug 5, 2020 8:30:21 GMT
Here's an alternative promo for 'Arnold Layne' by Pink Floyd, filmed for French television. I had to admit, it's less surreal that the earlier promo film they shot at the beginning of 1967.
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Post by Colin Anderton on Aug 5, 2020 8:49:28 GMT
Having just taken another look at the Glen Campbell video, it's noticeable that the shots in the studio demonstrate that this is a video, not a film. Although it is, of course, a film of Campbell that they're running to accompany the music.
If I was to see just the promo, I would think the film had been badly stored, and had aged terribly. But by including TOTP studio shots, you can see that this crap quality was evident at the time of broadcast. Did we really find this poor image acceptable? I guess we did!
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Post by Peter Stirling on Aug 5, 2020 10:06:09 GMT
Having just taken another look at the Glen Campbell video, it's noticeable that the shots in the studio demonstrate that this is a video, not a film. Although it is, of course, a film of Campbell that they're running to accompany the music. If I was to see just the promo, I would think the film had been badly stored, and had aged terribly. But by including TOTP studio shots, you can see that this crap quality was evident at the time of broadcast. Did we really find this poor image acceptable? I guess we did! I would suggest its a generational thing, every time you copied in the analogue world you lost something. The original studio recording was presumably originally a 405 VTR, it now I think survives as a film copy of that. The Glen Campbell piece was probably a copy of something sent over from the US, which may have been a film copy of a film...or an NTSC tape copy of a film etc etc So it would have looked crisp enough on the day, but NTSC inserts always did look a bit fuzzy in those days as they were often converted by filming off a screen as well this time with a video camera of its time, which could smear and lag on fast scenes and lack contrast...as it got copied even more...more artifacts would be added. Just an idea not saying it was actually the case here.
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Post by Mike Goldwater on Aug 5, 2020 20:35:20 GMT
The resason why the recording looks poor is because this edition survives as a 16mm telerecording, that also happens to be a viewing print (as opposed to a higher quality negative) which would explain for it's rough appearance. The original source would have been B&W 625 line videotape, as BBC1 was already recording all their shows in this standard from the 1st January 1968, in preparation for colour transmissions. The film clip would have been on 16mm film as it was shot and edited entirely on film, then telecined live during the studio recording/ live broadcast. The fact that the song on the original film clip is completely different, shows that they received the film clip at some point in 1967 when 'By the Time I get To Phoenix' was already in the charts. The reason for the poor contrast is that is down to either the quality of the print, or the telecine. I've seen the original film clip with the correct song, and it happens to be in great quality and in glorious colour.
Coincidentally Glen Campbell did film a music video for 'Witchita Lineman' in 1968, but since it may have contained lip-syncing, it was not shown on TOTP. I have not seen the film clip personally so I'm only speculating, as it's one of the few music videos he did that is currently out of circulation.
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Post by Colin Anderton on Aug 6, 2020 15:38:19 GMT
With respect, folks, I'm not sure you follow me. Perhaps I've expressed myself poorly. Whatever the material now exists on - it's probably a telecine from the original videotape - I'm pointing out that the TOTP studio shots are the best quality recording that remains of that TOTP broadcast. As a video editor myself, I know all about loss of quality between generations of copies. but that's not what I'm referring to. When comparing the images from the studio, and the images from the Campbell film, it still demonstrates the relative difference in quality visible at the time. In other words, the part of the recording with the film would not have deteriorated more than the part with the studio shots. Therefore, the film must have looked pretty crappy at the time.
I do have some TV programmes from America in the Sixties, on colour VT, and it's noticeable sometimes how they show film of a very poor quality that's only a couple of years old. The video still looks wonderful, so it's clear the film looked like that at the time. A good example I can think of is the CBS coverage of the Apollo fire in 1967, if you find that online, it demonstrates my point perfectly.
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Post by robertreinstein on Aug 7, 2020 17:04:28 GMT
I do have some TV programmes from America in the Sixties, on colour VT, and it's noticeable sometimes how they show film of a very poor quality that's only a couple of years old. The video still looks wonderful, so it's clear the film looked like that at the time. A good example I can think of is the CBS coverage of the Apollo fire in 1967, if you find that online, it demonstrates my point perfectly. I fully agree. When The Ed Sullivan Show showed the promotional films for The Beatles "Two of Us" and "Let It Be" in 1970, the films looked so dirty, while the rest of the broadcast is pristine.
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Post by Mike Goldwater on Aug 7, 2020 22:45:04 GMT
Check out this rather trippy promo for 'Hole in My Shoe' (1967) by Traffic, it will either pop your eyes out of it's sockets or leave you in a higher state of mind by the end of it, essentially it's psychedelia on a plate. I've seen other 'trippy' promos for similar songs from this period, but this one certainly tops it. They also did a monochrome film insert for Belgian television, it's nowhere near as trippy than it's more colourful counterpart and at times a bit dull and lifeless: www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SsROjSmu2U. It's not the official promo, but filmed in the style of a promo film.
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