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Post by davemachin on Jan 10, 2010 16:48:25 GMT
I attended my first Missing Believed Wiped yesterday and wish I'd have got to them sooner! A great day out and even the transport was relatively trouble free.
Wonderfully atmospheric Top of the Pops sixties clips were a highlight for me. As Laurence states, these were far more exciting examples of the programme than anything found in the relatively dull programmes that survive whole. Live vocals on a couple of tracks including errors and improvised banter made it great to watch and a strong list of acts as well with Pink Floyd, Turtles, Procol Harum, Dave Davies, Alan Price Set. The playback stopped just as it came to Tom Jones! The recording quality was at times awful but these are priceless recordings however you look at it. The only disappointing thing for me at all was nothing was seen from the March 1969 edition that was found in Lulu's collection. I agree with Adrian that the lifeless 1976 show was far more dated and boring than the 1967 selection. A pity the Lulu recording wasn't shown instead of this one.
A shame I won't be making the Kaleidoscope gig in the summer but I look forward to next December's' event at the nft. Dick Fiddy half promised us something special uncovered by Paul Vanezis next time (I wonder if it is to do with the material he comments on uncovering in the Dr.Who thread here?) I will have to go just to see what it is!
Thank you to everybody for the hard work undertaken to find these rare gems for our viewing pleasure. I hope we get to see more of them and that they be made available to buy.
Dave
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Post by Deleted on Jan 10, 2010 20:20:14 GMT
Procol's Matthew Fisher was in attendance too (which I forgot to mention before) and stood up to take a round of applause. He seemed quite happy to chat in the bar afterwards.
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Post by Christopher.C on Jan 10, 2010 20:45:45 GMT
I would've loved to have been at this one for the Floyd and TOTP material but work called me too loudly. I have one question regarding the TOTP '67 shows: the 1" was badly damaged but what happened to the 2" master it was copied from? It must have survived until at least the '80s when 1" came about. There's no reason to assume it was dubbed due to damage (more than likely it was simply to transfer old 405 material to a modern format at the time). So does it still survive and where is it? It may even be in better condition than the 1".
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Post by markboulton on Jan 11, 2010 0:00:38 GMT
Chris, the TOTP material was from domestic 1", not broadcast 1", so the dub (if it is a dub and not a straight recording direct from the broadcast) would have been made somewhere around the time, not the early 80s. Notwithstanding this, 1" C was available at the BBC in 1978 and slowly infiltrated the broadcast industry over the next few years.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 11, 2010 10:05:32 GMT
It was reported elsewhere that 1" was an optical conversion from the 2", Mark. I'd never heard of any 1" format that wasn't broadcast myself either so you learn something new every day! When did this format come in? Whenever it was, i'm guessing it was much later than 1967 (?), which would mean that the 2" master survived for many years after transmission before the copy was made.
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Post by Paul Vanezis on Jan 11, 2010 11:57:40 GMT
The Look Hear material was very interesting too. This looked more like broadcast masters though, rather than domestic quality (what format were they on? Does anyone know?) Hi Laurence, There was a slight cheat with the 'Look! Hear!' material, although John Holmes did allude to this in his intro. The 'Black Sabbath' has never been technically missing from the BBC in that it was left on a shelf in a basement along with all the other surviving 'Look! Hear!' tapes. The problem with BBC regional programmes up until the mid 1990's was that the main archive refused to keep any of them, so local broadcast centres had to find a way of storing them. If tapes were sent to London they were usually wiped because that's why tapes from the regions were sent there. As 'Look! Hear!' was my favourite programme when I was a teenager, I was keen to see what was left. Mercifully all but 3 editions from 1980. So the first clip, 'Black Sabbath' performing 'War Pigs' (truncated from the original recording but presented as transmitted) and 'Juniors Eyes' was from the original Quad recording, January 1978. The very brief clip of Toyah was from 1981, again from the original Quad, but the rest came from a single VHS tape belonging to John Holmes. Several people commented to me on the night that it looked like broadcast material to them. There are two reasons for this. The tapes were probably dubbed off in 1980 onto one of the first or second generation VHS recorders which doesn't have any 'enhancement' circuitry. So what you get is a nice clean recording direct from the original transmission master to a machine making a recording which exceeds the specification of the format. John had also only played the tape once or twice in the past 30 years, so there was very little dropout. The sound quality on episode #4, (Selecter & Diamondhead) was ok. The sound on #5 (The Beat) and #7 (The Swinging Cats & Magnum) was very poor with very high levels of hiss. The tape was played back initially to DVCam on an industrial Sony machine with an in built timebase corrector and comb filter. This was mainly for the sound and those tapes were sent to Mark Ayres. The replay for the mastering of the pictures was done at SVS in London on the same model Sony player, but this time one with a built in component video output. This was then recorded directly to digi-beta and captured into a restoration tool by Peter Crocker. He then painted out the dropouts and applied a very light video noise reduction to it. The results speak for themselves with the images looking superior to some broadcast material originated on one inch. The sound was a much more difficult issue; I'm sure Mark Ayres may wish to say something about that himself, but the very high levels of hiss and lack of bass presence in the recording was difficult to eliminate entirely, so there is still some evidence of it. However, in my view the track that sounded the worst before he started (The Beat - Big Shot) was the one that sounded the very best in the end. It was all good though and I should point out that everyone involved in the restoration of the three programmes did it all for no recompense. I'd just like to add as well how important these recordings are. Regional programmes in general tend not to fare well in archives of major broadcasters. They are often quite newsy or too niche local for those in charge of archiving to be interested in the content. It's also a miracle that 'Look! Hear!' as a whole now survives intact and as a historical record of a 4 year period of music from the Midlands at a terribly important time, it's a demonstrably influential time capsule of musical talent. Just to give you some other highlights, there's a fantastic set from Ruby Turner from 1978, a more refined and less 2-Tone performance from 'The Selecter' in 1981, 'The Specials' from 1980 doing a riotous (and uncensored) version of 'Too Much Too Young', the first TV appearences of Duran, Duran and Dexy's Midnight Runners and the bands that were either semi-successful or who also made it and those that didn't, such as 'The Lazers', whose lead singer gave a performance which has to be seen to be believed. They never went anywhere apart from the singer, whose name was Carol Decker. So if you want to see Judas Priest performing 'Singing in the Rain' or Steel Pulse just getting on with it then it's all in the four series of 'Look! Hear!'. Regards, Paul
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Post by Geoff Sear on Jan 11, 2010 13:34:16 GMT
It was a great event.Particularly wonderful to see the '67 TOTP material, even in it's damaged state it had so much atmosphere..a real thrill. Just wondering about the 'Time For Blackburn' episode: I had some of the Who clip on an edition of Southern Gold, the Fred Dinenage hosted Meridian show that delved into the Southern archives. Can't recall when it was on, some time in the early '90s I think. That would have been from the same copy, would it, and just gone astray at some point? Maybe it did a double somersault and disappeared up itself for a while Just curious.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 11, 2010 15:42:54 GMT
Several people commented to me on the night that it looked like broadcast material to them. There are two reasons for this. The tapes were probably dubbed off in 1980 onto one of the first or second generation VHS recorders which doesn't have any 'enhancement' circuitry. So what you get is a nice clean recording direct from the original transmission master to a machine making a recording which exceeds the specification of the format. Many thanks for the detailed explanation, Paul. It answered a lot of my questions! I would never have known they were VHS tapes as the quality was so high (even blown up on a huge screen) and I can't recall seeing a single dropout or defect! So, to recap, you say there were four series of Look Hear in all (1977-1981? How many editions were there in total?) and most of them exist on broadcast master, with the other four now also surviving as superior VHS recordings? That is, the whole run in total? Definitely a great archive of music TV of it's period with a pleasing format and lots of atmosphere, allowing a chance to see those bands at close quarters in front of an audience.
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Post by Mark Tinkler on Jan 11, 2010 16:30:35 GMT
Paul, You probably know this but the "Look Hear" of Duran Duran which was filmed at the old Opposite Lock club in Brum (old Brummie myself so I remember it!) has a track AFTER the end titles of the programme. I've used it on TV shows a couple of times myself (on "Pop Quiz" & ITV's "Screen Tests of the Stars") though I can't remember whether it's "Planet Earth" or "Girls on Film" - but I have a feeling it was the latter. Also a story I'd heard is that after the show, a BBC sound guy said to the band, "You know that that track needs, the sound of a camera winding on" and he lent them the BBC tape of the effect which they then used as the opening of "Girls on Film"...
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Post by Simon Winters on Jan 11, 2010 16:36:24 GMT
The Time for Blackburn episode was returned as a CV2000 transfer to ITV for the Southern Gold series in the early nineties. After that, it was never catalogued on the ITV databases and so disappeared off the radar, until 2009.
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Post by Christopher.C on Jan 11, 2010 16:55:02 GMT
What sort of quality was the Time For Blackburn, Simon? Old Sony reels are notoriously variable although sharp results are sometimes possible. I wish I could have made the event myself. So I suppose I'm really saying what are the chances of this and other material getting an airing anywhere else or even as a dvd extra?
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Post by cperry on Jan 11, 2010 19:18:57 GMT
The Time for Blackburn will be shown at our June event, complete with the LWT continuity that was cut out on Saturday.
It's an excellent recording.
c
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Post by Deleted on Jan 11, 2010 19:40:20 GMT
Ah, so it WAS an off-air recording, Chris! I was having this discussion with someone after the screening on Saturday evening. Pity they didn't show the continuity too but it was a very good recording all the same!
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Post by Paul Vanezis on Jan 11, 2010 19:53:21 GMT
Paul, You probably know this but the "Look Hear" of Duran Duran which was filmed at the old Opposite Lock club in Brum (old Brummie myself so I remember it!) has a track AFTER the end titles of the programme. Yeah. Although you do know that there are two different edits of Duran Duran? The first edit of the programme was cancelled due to the announcement of the engagement of Charles & Diana. Their performance was eventually shown in programme 2 of 1981. They did 'Planet Earth', 'Girls on Film' and another track I can't recall, one of which was after the closing credits, which was quite usual for 'Look! Hear!'. It meant they could run the show a little longer if they didn't like the trail pres was offering them. I think Duran Duran also appeared in that set with Bruce Woolley and the Camera Club, Thomas Dolby on keyboards... Also a story I'd heard is that after the show, a BBC sound guy said to the band, "You know that that track needs, the sound of a camera winding on" and he lent them the BBC tape of the effect which they then used as the opening of "Girls on Film"... The story about the sound effect is almost true; the band appeared on a Radio WM programme and asked the sound supervisor Nick Johnson if he had a camera motorwind sound effect they could use on a track, so yes the camera clicks are indeed a BBC sound effect. I don't think we've ever charged them for using it though! Cheers, Paul
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Post by Paul Vanezis on Jan 11, 2010 19:58:02 GMT
How many editions were there in total?) and most of them exist on broadcast master, with the other four now also surviving as superior VHS recordings? That is, the whole run in total? Definitely a great archive of music TV of it's period with a pleasing format and lots of atmosphere, allowing a chance to see those bands at close quarters in front of an audience. Hi Laurence, The slots changed over the years, but the first series was monthly and I think there were 5 programmes, the first in late 1977. I think the very first one was live. It got more organised later with 7 editions weekly per year. There was also an all film special which also exists and the regular 'College rags spin off which was music and a student fashion show from the region. Finally there was a Rock Opera: Frank - The making of a Saint. All editions exist in the original broadcast technical format apart from the three recently recovered ones from VHS. I'll post a more definitive list of artists later. Cheers, Paul
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