The Runaways on The Old Grey Whistle Test



YEAH! Eat this Bob Harris, you boring folkie git!

...

(Proper posts coming soon, honest!)

Labels: 1970s, JOAN JETT IS GOD, lameness, The Runaways, TV, videos

Alex Chilton & The Box Tops on "Disc-o-Teen Halloween Special", 1967.



What can I say; I wish TV was like this 24 hours a day.

Labels: 1960s, Alex Chilton, halloween, the Box Tops, TV, videos, weirdness

Rough Trade at the BBC

I made use of the BBC's popular and remarkably easy/free/useful iplayer service for the first time this weekend. It's the first time in ages that they've made any original programming that I can be bothered to go out of my way to see.

The programming in question was a compilation of TV performances by bands associated with the Rough Trade label, shown on BBC4 on Friday night. At the time of writing, you can still go and watch it for another five days or so, and hell, perhaps you should: the first five performances are by Young Marble Giants, The Raincoats, Delta 5, Alison Statton's Weekend and Robert Wyatt!

Nice to know the BBC have had all that in the can the whole time whilst they've been boring us senseless with Whistle Test DVDs full of Rory Gallagher and Simply Red.

No Swell Maps in evidence sadly, but other highlights include Violent Femmes, Camper Van Beethoven (doing "..skinheads"), and the exceptionally strange Cathal O'Coughlan fronting Microdisney.

The first half of the accompanying Rough Trade documentary is well worth watching too, although it's hard not to read the story's conclusion ("from DIY post-punk defiance to making a packet managing an MOR coffee table soul singer? = um... yay for us!") as a colossal downer, despite the applaudable quantity of good stuff the resurrected RT still puts out (which goes unmentioned, natch).

No other point to this post really - just thought I'd tip you off in case yr interested.

Labels: BBC, Rough Trade, TV

Deathblog: Patrick McGoohan 1928 - 2009

I’m sure I don’t have to remind anyone reading this what a landmark of uncompromising, freethinking strangeness ‘The Prisoner’ was, and what a rare and unprecedented event it’s incursion into the sphere of mainstream British TV represented. Even if you’ve not actually watched the show (I made my way through the complete run a couple of years ago), its reputation, imagery and ideas have left an impression that extends across the whole spectrum of weird popular culture.

It’s worth remembering that as well as staring in the show (his piercing eyes, flying fists and single facial expression surely winning the nation's heart), McGoohan also devised the premise and complete plot outline for The Prisoner, scripted and directed several episodes and – allegedly – took the helm on many more via the use of pseudonyms.

I seem to remember reading some recollections somewhere of McGoohan sitting for days in his favourite pub, making voluminous notes charting out every conceivable idea he wanted to fit into The Prisoner, right down to details such as the invented martial art of Kosho.

Nothing before or since has beaten the explosion of hilarity and confusion in my household when, during a sombre viewing of the Prisoner episode ‘It’s Your Funeral’, there’s a scene in which a supporting character who’s having a disagreement with Number 6 shouts “I challenge you to a duel!” McGoohan barks “I accept!”, and then, with no explanation offered, we cut to this:



To this day, words fail me.

Sadly it seems that after the masterpiece of The Prisoner, McGoohan never again succeeded in bringing his clearly pretty unique take on things to public at large, spending the rest of his life working through a comfortable schedule of TV roles and movie bit-parts, although my brother, who takes rather more pleasure in daytime TV than I, has spoken in glowing terms of a few gloriously surreal episodes of ‘Columbo’ that McGoohan directed. You’ll have to ask him about them some time.

In the meantime, a spot-on and to the point obit from John Coulthart is can be found here.

And so, as all McGoohan obituaries are duty-bound to end: be seeing you.

Labels: 1960s, deathblog, Patrick McGoohan, The Prisoner, TV, videos, weirdness