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Post by Deleted on Nov 29, 2008 21:00:31 GMT
The saddest fact is between 1969 and 1973 - I've often read it being 1971 and 1972 - the BBC junked almost everything they had of TOTP, so by the time the 10th anniversary show was made all that was left from the 60s is pretty much all that the BBC have today. It seems the BBC treated pop shows very casually when it came to archiving, hence most of their music TV shows being gone such as "Gadzooks", "A Whole Scene Going", "The Beat Room", Scott Walker's own BBC show... what is left in the archive from the 60's is a mere fraction of what was broadcast. A terrible oversight and loss to not just us the fans, but pop and cultural history too. Indeed. To think I used to watch The Beat Room each week at the time as a kid! It never occurred to me once that i'd better take it all in there and then as there'd never be another chance! Very much a more RSG style show rather than TOTP (an observation though, rather than a criticism). Another show that has been virtually forgotten by history merely due to the fact that hardly anything exists of it. We do tend to get a simplistic view of '60s pop shows nowadays: TOTP, TYLS, RSG. But there was also Beat Room, Gadzooks, Whole Scene Going, Colour Me Pop, Discotheque etc. It isn't even "natural selection" of any kind either as human hands intervened in a big way. A tragedy no less.
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Post by Peter Elliott on Nov 29, 2008 21:34:29 GMT
Indeed. To think I used to watch The Beat Room each week at the time as a kid! It never occurred to me once that i'd better take it all in there and then as there'd never be another chance! Very much a more RSG style show rather than TOTP (an observation though, rather than a criticism). Another show that has been virtually forgotten by history merely due to the fact that hardly anything exists of it. We do tend to get a simplistic view of '60s pop shows nowadays: TOTP, TYLS, RSG. But there was also Beat Room, Gadzooks, Whole Scene Going, Colour Me Pop, Discotheque etc. It isn't even "natural selection" of any kind either as human hands intervened in a big way. A tragedy no less. It's one of the curses of being born in 1972 so I wasn't able to see all those great shows. Up till about 1989 I'd assumed the BBC and ITV companies had kept everything, but just as "Doctor Who" was ending on BBC1 in 1989, I got into the videos of the Pertwee era and soon learned the sad truth about archive TV shows. Pop music was given much more coverage in the 60s, 70s and even the 80s compared to today and they're the periods of music I love the most. I was stunned when I saw that episode of "The Beat Room". Judging from that example, I felt it was a rather stylish show and not having an onscreen host and each song going straight into the next one was refreshing and made me wish they could make shows like that today. At least we do have one example of that show... we can't say the same for "Gadzooks" and various other shows such as the 1964 series David Jacobs hosted which was set on an icerink and the first episode featured the Clapton era Yardbirds. Think it was called "The Cool Spot"... not too sure... either way there's nothing left of it. I think it was David Croft who said that in the mid 60s the BBC adopted a policy whereby they preserved the first and last episodes of series being made so they would have some examples for preservation, and how galling then that that was probably implemented only for most of it to get junked anyway a few years later. But, like your own attitude, hope springs eternal that we may recover some of these lost items sometime in the future. Looking at what's been recovered this year makes staggering reading and still gives one hope.
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Post by David Saunders on Nov 30, 2008 9:08:40 GMT
The male group playing saxophones is Sounds Incorporated... and that was actually filmed at Tiles Club in London... brilliant raw live footage which also featured The Moody Blues and Cliff Bennett... an edition I look most forward to seeing in full. The Stateside record song is "Little Girl" by The Syndicate Of Sound, a garage classic from the States. uk.youtube.com/watch?v=3dEP1lAO-68 - Excellent music choices. Sounds Incorporated disbanded in 1971 but Cliff Bennett and the Moody Blues are still touring, all brilliant performers, as were Mood Mosaic, who did an instrumental in the Pirate Radio era, called A Touch of Brass, A Touch of Velvet, A Sting of Brass. uk.youtube.com/watch?v=QvlM-MMyF0s - Sounds Incorporated Rinky Dink (0:00-1:55) - I first heard this on a Radio documentary rebroadcast of a 1960s Pirate radio broadcast William Tell (1:55-3:55) - This sounds like a different version of a Piltdown Men instrumental, I think Piltdown Rides Again uk.youtube.com/watch?v=h72XEbjRqUA - Syndicate of Sound-Little Girl (0:21-2:47) - This reminds me of Bob Dylan, but Don Baskin was the lead singer, whose group broke up in 1970 and reformed, touring since 1990
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Post by Deleted on Nov 30, 2008 10:43:47 GMT
It's one of the curses of being born in 1972 so I wasn't able to see all those great shows. Up till about 1989 I'd assumed the BBC and ITV companies had kept everything, but just as "Doctor Who" was ending on BBC1 in 1989, I got into the videos of the Pertwee era and soon learned the sad truth about archive TV shows. Pop music was given much more coverage in the 60s, 70s and even the 80s compared to today and they're the periods of music I love the most. I was stunned when I saw that episode of "The Beat Room". Judging from that example, I felt it was a rather stylish show and not having an onscreen host and each song going straight into the next one was refreshing and made me wish they could make shows like that today. Actually, from memory, The Beat Room did have a presenter (at least some of the time - I haven't seen that complete episode all the way through to know that he didn't appear in it). Not someone i'd seen elsewhere, I seem to recall he may have been Canadian or something as he had a slight accent (no idea who he was now though). Clean-cut looking guy in a suit. There was a balcony looking down on the dancefloor and I remember him to stand there looking down on everything as he presnted with a mike in his hand. More low-key presentation than other music shows of the time though. At other times, just a voiceover was heard (come to think of it, he may have possibly only appeared in vision at the start and end of shows, with voiceover in-between). It was a good show. One existing live PasB of the time has a tiny fragment of the end of one programme (before the programme the recording was made of began) with The Graham Bond Organisation performing over the end credits. Arghhhhhhhhhhhhh! Pop was definitely given more coverage back then. As it was at the forefront of everything by this time, it was a crazy thing to do to wipe it all (which only happened in the main a few years after anyway, by which time much of it was a part of our cultural history already!) I also imagined that everything (bar the odd accident etc.) survived in the archives right up till 1983, when I was truly shocked to learn from Patrick Troughton's own mouth at the Longleat Dr.Who event that most of his stories had been destroyed (and soon found out that the same policy affected so much other TV as well). I do still live in hope though because - as you say - the list of recovered stuff over the years has been truly awesome. I've no doubt that it will continue either as there do seem to have been a phenomenal amount of t/rs made; it's just a shame that a bit more '60s pop music TV specifically doesn't turn up as we need to have more of a representative selection from that era.
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Post by David Saunders on Nov 30, 2008 12:07:33 GMT
Although I don't think the forthcoming return of Top of the Pops will gain the same popularity as the pre-1990s format, due to big music changes, I hope the show will become and remain a new success to represent at least new artists, and that this or TOTP 2 will broadcast TOTP archive clips, including ones that never been repeated or not repeated for a long time, as it would be fantastic to see the promo films of Jo Jo Gunne-Run Run Run, Chicago-25 or 6 to 4, Herman's Hermits-Bet Yer Life I Do, and other performances/promos and Pan's People performances in time.
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Post by Chris Barratt on Nov 30, 2008 16:20:09 GMT
It's obvious from watching the 10th Anivarsary Show that Sav had no idea at all what the BBC did with the old shows - he's positively crowing about the 'marvellous archive' the BBC had, which of course was practically non-existance with another 4/5 years of seemingly random wiping lying ahead. It was a miracle that show got preserved itself, but it gives an interesting window into what the situation was like back then. Does anybody know the story behind the survival of the 3 1967/68 shows, they were heavily plundered for that 10th Aniversary show so they were obviously archived by late '73... Regarding the 1st show, the database suggests that the Swinging Blue Jeans performance was repeated on the 100th Show in late 65, but it wouldn't suprise me if the actual footage had been from a subsequent performance As for Dave Clark, it is nigh on impossible to seperate fact from fiction with anything he says and if he really does have such a rich archive in his collection then he's madder than we thought. Having said that, judging from his recent activity he's trying to bury most post-67 DC5 output in order to portray the band as rock'n'roll greats and forget the latter-day bubblegum bandwaggoning. I'm suprised he's even mentioned The Red Balloon in any interview as that was one of his rare lead vocals - it's ommitance from the current DC5 Hits compilation despite being one of their biggest UK hits and the lack of any footage of that song suggests he'd rather it was forgotten about
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Post by David Saunders on Nov 30, 2008 16:40:09 GMT
It's obvious from watching the 10th Anivarsary Show that Sav had no idea at all what the BBC did with the old shows - he's positively crowing about the 'marvellous archive' the BBC had, which of course was practically non-existance with another 4/5 years of seemingly random wiping lying ahead. It was a miracle that show got preserved itself, but it gives an interesting window into what the situation was like back then. Does anybody know the story behind the survival of the 3 1967/68 shows, they were heavily plundered for that 10th Aniversary show so they were obviously archived by late '73... Regarding the 1st show, the database suggests that the Swinging Blue Jeans performance was repeated on the 100th Show in late 65, but it wouldn't suprise me if the actual footage had been from a subsequent performance As for Dave Clark, it is nigh on impossible to seperate fact from fiction with anything he says and if he really does have such a rich archive in his collection then he's madder than we thought. Having said that, judging from his recent activity he's trying to bury most post-67 DC5 output in order to portray the band as rock'n'roll greats and forget the latter-day bubblegum bandwaggoning. I'm suprised he's even mentioned The Red Balloon in any interview as that was one of his rare lead vocals - it's ommitance from the current DC5 Hits compilation despite being one of their biggest UK hits and the lack of any footage of that song suggests he'd rather it was forgotten about I’m not sure when Jimmy became aware of the Archive status of Top of the Pops, but I recall him saying on the final edition that The Rolling Stones-I Wanna Be Your Man was wiped. No reflection on Jimmy, it’s said that the song was never recorded, at least not at the BBC (if anyone has it outside, more likely on audio tape), but I get the impression that he’s also very saddened about how much got junked. Looking through the Database at the 27/12/73 show, I see what you mean about the choice of archive clips. They’re almost identical to what has been repeated on several later archive editions. From what I gather, it was 1972 when the main bulk of the archive – 1964-1972 was junked, then the rest was wiped over another 5 years, so if there’d been an equivalent of the 10th anniversary show in December 1972, or December 1971 (depending on the exact date the archives started to be junked), there would have been a lot more scope for variation in the performance selections. I so hope more will turn up in time, and indeed that at least a certain amount of what I and others have found that I’ve uploaded (with links, where found) over my “Top of the Pops” threads, and what owners have whose music I’m unaware of, can be sent (or at least a copy sent) to the BFI or Christopher Perry (of Kaleidoscope/Raiders of the Lost Archives), to ensure that the recordings safely reach their destinations to ensure they’re preserved and not lost. If I owned any wiped TOTP recordings, I would certainly send them to the BBC, but I’ve never come into receipt of any, and the outcomes depend on how willing the owners are to part with, or even copy their recordings, some wanting huge amounts of money before they’d be willing to part with the archive they own. I see what you mean about the Swinging Blue Jeans performance on the 25/11/65 show. The Searchers’ version of When You Walk in the Room also originates from 1964. As some editions that were eventually junked were kept longer than others, I’m not sure of the status of those two performances, as to whether they were repeated from 1964 editions. The only one I’m aware of, highlighted at one point, was Elton John’s The Bitch is Back. This exists outside the BBC in b/w, but apparently the original colour broadcast master tape that the BBC owned, ended up being wiped just two weeks after its broadcast! I agree about the miracle of the Ten Years Special surviving. If it wasn’t for these special archive shows, there’d be even less archive to show today. Thankfully, Cherry and her Pan’s People colleagues exist dancing to Norman Greenbaum’s Spirit in the Sky from that show (sadly the 1970 original performances were wiped), and having one or more Christmas shows from 1971 onwards, all from 1973 onwards, reduces the gap a bit. I just wish one or both of the 1970 Christmas shows could be located. 1970 is the only Seventies years that has no Christmas shows and it seems they’re gone forever. It would be nice if what Dave Clark said could be confirmed as fact, but from what you’ve said, you’ve made a good point. Even if Dave isn’t keen on the group’s post-67 music, he ought to let it be released for those who want to hear/see it. There might possibly be overseas recordings of Red Balloon from other television shows, but there’s a Dave Clark Five compilation out, released in the 1990s which includes Red Balloon. It must have been decided to drop it from subsequent releases. Hopefully the early compilation is still available, but I’m not sure.
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Post by Chris Barratt on Nov 30, 2008 17:28:42 GMT
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Post by David Saunders on Dec 1, 2008 15:22:13 GMT
www.amazon.co.uk/Glad-Over-Again-Dave-Clark/dp/tracks/B000007Y0H/ref=dp_tracks_all_1/276-6978594-2901401#disc_1"The Dave Clark Five - Glad All Over Again": Released in 1993, it has 25 tracks including Red Balloon, and what might be the original version? of a song that charted for Steam in 1970 then Bananarama in 1983 - Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye, which they've entitled "Sha Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye" If the link becomes broken, just type in "Dave Clark Five" under www.amazon.co.uk, currently the third album down the list. Thanks for the link to the Dave Clark interview, which I agree is very interesting. It's not very often you hear Dave being interviewed on the radio, and among his comments, he's referred to songs and releases that I'd never heard of, as well as the famous songs he and his group brought out. Also, it's only a matter of time before Dave releases DVDs of the Ready Steady Go he saved from junking! I never saw them first time around, but enjoyed the Channel 4 repeats in the 1980s.
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Post by Peter Elliott on Dec 1, 2008 15:48:44 GMT
Also, it's only a matter of time before Dave releases DVDs of the Ready Steady Go he saved from junking! I never saw them first time around, but enjoyed the Channel 4 repeats in the 1980s. If Dave Clark delivers what he has promised - a full reissue of the DC5's catalogue spread across 2009 - then I think it's likely RSG DVD's won't appear until 2010 at the earliest. He has also promised an "official" video history of the DC5 so would assume all this DC5 activity - which is way overdue - will assume priority meaning RSG will have to wait. I'm most intrigued to see how Clark deals with all the DC5 material... a great amount of it was never issued in Britain. What one is hoping for is each album on each CD containing the original mono mix, a new stereo mix or stereo mixes from the archives along with rare unreleased material. Of course whether we'll actually get that remains to be seen. One fears DC may simply do straightforward mono reissues with no bonuses which would be a disaster. When he gets to RSG, how will he tackle it? He cannot surely simply re-release the 80s video compilations which were cobbled together from what he had. He even claimed the TV compilations were what were originally broadcast back in the 60's when the reality was far from the case!
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Post by David Saunders on Dec 1, 2008 16:23:38 GMT
Also, it's only a matter of time before Dave releases DVDs of the Ready Steady Go he saved from junking! I never saw them first time around, but enjoyed the Channel 4 repeats in the 1980s. If Dave Clark delivers what he has promised - a full reissue of the DC5's catalogue spread across 2009 - then I think it's likely RSG DVD's won't appear until 2010 at the earliest. He has also promised an "official" video history of the DC5 so would assume all this DC5 activity - which is way overdue - will assume priority meaning RSG will have to wait. I'm most intrigued to see how Clark deals with all the DC5 material... a great amount of it was never issued in Britain. What one is hoping for is each album on each CD containing the original mono mix, a new stereo mix or stereo mixes from the archives along with rare unreleased material. Of course whether we'll actually get that remains to be seen. One fears DC may simply do straightforward mono reissues with no bonuses which would be a disaster. When he gets to RSG, how will he tackle it? He cannot surely simply re-release the 80s video compilations which were cobbled together from what he had. He even claimed the TV compilations were what were originally broadcast back in the 60's when the reality was far from the case! I hope that more of the group's catalogue, both sound and video will be released on CDs and DVDs in the future. I hadn't realized that the transmissions of Ready Steady Go had been edited. Dave said in an interview that, for family reasons and the death of one of his band colleagues and the injury (later death) of the other, the lead singer and management record company dilemmas had put him off releasing more of their music. It's puzzling that a UK group's material hasn't all been available in this country. The compilation I have is mono versions of songs that in some cases were stereo (like Glad All Over) and stereo versions of their late 1960s/early 1970s period. As I have the main bulk of their chart hits, I wouldn't mind hearing the "Dave Clark and Friends" releases, which appeared on Top of the Pops, later subsequently wiped and songs that charted in other countries. Dave was to do some bonus tracks, but management problems held him back, but it looks as though these will be in the pipeline. I'm not sure how Dave will tackle RSG, as I thought that music clearance was required before anything could be issued on CD and DVD, but it sounds promising. However Dave compiles the RSG releases, I hope he'll either compile them in their original form or pick some of the best performances from the bunch.
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Post by Peter Chadwick on Dec 1, 2008 16:39:22 GMT
I'd take whatever DC says with a VERY large pinch of salt, particularly when it comes to 'RSG!'. He's going to find that releasing material in the eighties on video is one thing, but trying to renegotiate the rights for a DVD release will be next to impossible, particularly where The Beatles are concerned. It doesn't help that when he IS interviewed, it's usually by someone who doesn't have the knowledge to pick him up on certain things. I think he's only put out DC5 collections for very good reasons. They'd sell much better in the States than here (where they've always been among the third tier of sixties pop acts); there's a LOT of filler on DC5 lps, which is why he's only concerned with compilations. He's had 25 years to put out DC5 CDs. When he feels like telling us what 'RSG!' he actually has, I'd be all ears. Not literally, or course, that would be hideous.
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Post by Peter Elliott on Dec 1, 2008 16:42:44 GMT
I hadn't realized that the transmissions of Ready Steady Go had been edited... ...I'm not sure how Dave will tackle RSG, as I thought that music clearance was required before anything could be issued on CD and DVD, but it sounds promising. However Dave compiles the RSG releases, I hope he'll either compile them in their original form or pick some of the best performances from the bunch. Though welcome back in 1984 when Dave Clark did a deal with Channel 4 to broadcast RSG, those shows and the repeats a decade later were heavily hacked compilations. The Beatles appeared on the show three times performing several songs on each occasion, but Clark hacked them up so The Beatles got to appear in each of these "new" shows. He did the same thing with the Rolling Stones. There has been much debate over just what Dave Clark actually has of RSG. He simply bought a whole load of tins stashed in some cupboard sometime in the 70's. He did the repeats and VHS compilations without undertaking any clearances if Sandie Shaw is to be believed. She was annoyed to discover one of her performances was on one of the VHS tapes and confronted Clark about this and negotiated a deal whereby the artistes on the tapes got some kind of payment. This means that Dave Clark did NOT bother to negotiate any kind of licensing fees until he was confronted. He wouldn't get away with that today. It makes his business seem all the more questionable. Judging from what we have seen of Clark's RSG archive, he doesn't have as much as he has claimed... in 1992 he said the cache he bought contained "all" the specials... if that was the case then why have we never seen the James Brown special from 1966 or the infamous Paris live broadcast featuring The Yardbirds and The Who... or "Ready Steady Who" for that matter? It's believed his RSG archive is pretty much a rag bag of inserts and partial episodes as opposed to a whole load of complete shows. Apart from the 1965 Motown special and the 1966 Otis Redding special, we have not seen any complete unedited episodes from Dave Clark. Even stranger is we've never actually seen any footage of the DC5 themselves on RSG. They definitely appeared several times on that show - there are photos proving this - but it makes one question what Clark has said about the DC5 on TV... that each time they did a show, Clark made it a condition that he would get a copy of it for his archive. If that was the case then why was all the DC5 footage that was shown on the RSG repeats (in their own section) taken from US TV appearances?
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Post by Chris Barratt on Dec 1, 2008 17:52:03 GMT
Whilst it would seem to one degree or another Mr Clark has got some perspective back re: the DC5 back catalogue (perhaps due to growing old) we can only wait and see what transpires. Music-wise they were actually better than I thought they were having played the 2 1993 compilations which I didn't expect at all - which goes to show all this keeping his music off the shelves hasn't done their legacy any favours at all
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Post by Deleted on Dec 2, 2008 10:35:20 GMT
When he gets to RSG, how will he tackle it? He cannot surely simply re-release the 80s video compilations which were cobbled together from what he had. He even claimed the TV compilations were what were originally broadcast back in the 60's when the reality was far from the case! Yes. Given that we know there isn't a full RSG archive by any means (i'd be surprised - pleasantly so - if there was much more than has been seen in the compilations), the best way of approaching the material would be standalone compilations on each disc (i.e. a 90 compilation on each dvd, topped and tailed by an original title / end sequence, as there do seem to be quite a few of these surviving). And NO inserted non-RSG clips (particularly VT clips inserted into t/r!) The oddments that don't fit easily anywhere else (e.g. leftover title sequences etc.) would do nicely as extras. It's hard to know exactly what DC inherited of RSG. Going by the varying picture quality and what we've seen in the compilations, it seems there are quite a few "chunks" of original editions with opening titles intact (presumably not whole shows though) and an assortment of other isolated clips plus a couple of specials (Motown and Otis Redding). Of course, there are three (?) whole shows surviving at the BFI, which i'm not sure if DC has access to (the same goes for the handful of clips that seem to exist in other archives such as The Zombies and Walker Bros performances). The original shows - being in a 50 minute slot - were a lot different in feel and pace to what he passed off as representing the series in those compilations. Even though they were "best of"s, they could have been much better than they were. I can't imagine that DC would ever consider Vidfiring either (probably hasn't even heard of the process!) but the existing material is generally pretty good quality and could look really excellent if proper restoration and care was applied to it!
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