Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
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June 22, 2011

Where's The Music On The TV?



After happening upon the www.fromthebasement.tv website, during a little research about our Radiohead story today, it occurred to me how little live music there is on TV.
That being said, we're just about to see the BBC's usually fantastic coverage of the Glastonbury festival slosh onto our screen this weekend, so I can't complain too much.
But it is strange there are not more specialist music TV shows anymore. At the moment we've got Jools Holland's also usually fantastic Later show, although his line-ups have been pretty shocking in the last few weeks.
The Old Grey Whistle Test - Nice...
The field has had a long history, with probably the most vaunted show of the ilk, The Old Grey Whistle Test (here's the video of Hocus Pocus' famed performance) experiencing a nostalgic renaissance. But there have been many more.
Cult 80s music show The Tube was an influential and innovative if slightly inconsistent incarnation of the format. Introduced by Jools Holland and Paula Yates, the show was commendable for forcing all acts to perform live and featured some impressive talent of the day including Madonna, Judas Priest, The jam and Tom Waits.
The show was also notable for it's on edge feel where anything could happen, inspiring shows such as The Word and TFI Friday, where common on air swearing and catastrophe led to huge audience appeal.
Jimmy Saville. Still in full cammo after
operations in Oz - the land of.
The daddy of all UK music shows is undoubtedly Top of the Pops. Although generally sterilised, family friendly, and notorious for artists miming and cringe inducing presenters, the show was more or less at the mercy of the charts, leading to some interesting performances.
Greenday's first appearance on UK Television saw them forced to mime their instruments and sing live, leading to Billie Joe's T-shirt of protest that reads "Who am I fooling anyway".
Nirvana were also forced into the same predicament, but decided to make their legendary protest a bit more audible - that being, one octave lower.
Oasis did a similar trick in 1995, during their performance of Roll With It. The introduction by Robbie [bloody] Williams is also probably one of the reasons why no one ever took the show seriously.
In fact, Top of the Pops' audience size and side-stepping of the less commercial acts went as far as incensing some bands and even television producers. Producer Mickie Most decided his reaction would be to make an ITV music based series called Revolver. Irreverent and fearless, the 1978 show, which ran for only one series, took the rising punk scene to unsuspecting audiences. Giving an early platform to bands such as Ian Dury & The Blockheads, Elvis Costello and Siouxsie and the Banshees, the show also featured a slot by chaos inspiring comedian Peter Cook, who would ridicule the acts and the audience: "Don't touch the acts, you don't know where they've been", for example.
Here's an example of Peter Cook's typical anarchism on the show.
Among the other notable shows that never quite took off was a forerunner of Dermot O'Leary's Saturday sessions, Re:Covered. Bands were asked to come play live and also perform a cover version of whatever they wanted. Although the premise was good, for some reason the show didn't quite feel right. I hope it was nothing to do with our Dermot…
So what about today? Where are the Revolvers and Old Grey Whistle Tests of the 2010s?
Well, if Jools Holland isn't careful and keeps booking chumps like those towards the end of his last series, we may see a revival. R Kelly? …that's all I'm saying.

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