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Insane footage of The Clash, Joy Division, The Jam & The Specials on UK TV


An early shot of “the only band that matters,” The Clash.
 
According to what I was able to dig up about the footage you are about to see from UK television show Something Else, the performance by The Clash that was filmed in 1978 was allegedly their one and only live contribution to be televised by the BBC. Strummer and his bandmates never appeared on Top of the Pops because they refused to lip-synch their songs. In addition to that cool piece of punk history, Joy Division’s appearance on the show, during which they played “Transmission” and “She’s Lost Control” would be the last videotaped-for-TV footage of the band when it was shot in the studio for the show in 1979.

It’s important to clear up the possible misconception that all of the bands in the footage below appeared at the same time on Something Else, though The Jam and Joy Division performances were aired on the same show. It’s also safe to assume that appearances by all four of these bands on one singular TV show might have caused viewers to spontaneously combust into flames after witnessing the adrenalin charged performances by four of the greatest bands to ever come out of the UK. The program itself was a precursor to other notable shows like The Tube and Oxford Road Show which integrated the format used by Something Else. The show’s “vibe” was also famously parodied by the strangely ribald BBC comedy/music series The Young Ones. The dig was also said to be directed at the Oxford Road Show which as I mentioned borrowed heavily from Something Else.

The episode in question, Demolition, was the first show of season one which aired on November 9th, 1982. During the episode we see Rick, played by the late Rik Mayall, frantically “shushing” his roomies so he can watch the faux television show “Nosin’ Around” which later causes him to kick in the TV screen in frustration because someone purporting to “speak for the youth” was wearing “flared trousers.” I can’t say that I blame him for his reaction either as I feel the much the same way anytime I see someone wearing white shoes. While I’m sure the footage I’ve posted won’t make you want to stick your foot up your television’s “ass” so it shits size eights, it will make you want to smash something. So perhaps have an easily breakable item close by that you won’t miss just to be safe. Posers get LOST!
 
Watch after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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06.19.2017
03:32 pm
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Watch early footage of the Jam kicking ALL THE ASS, Manchester, 1977
06.21.2016
09:48 am
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Though due to to time, place, and sound, the Jam are closely associated with the London punk explosion of the late ‘70s, their musical and extra-musical ethos were often directly contrary to punk’s year-zero outlook, paying open obeisance to ‘60s groups that punk sought to outright reject. Though they shared punk’s focused anger and political engagement, the band embraced the posh fashions, R&B influence, and speed-freak energy of the mod movement which, having peaked and ebbed a dozen years earlier, was tremendously passé even to non-cognoscenti, and singer/guitarist Paul Weller’s schoolgirl crush on the Who couldn’t have been more blatant.
 

Case in point.

So unpunk were the Jam considered in some circles that no less a Godhead than Joe Strummer of the Clash called them out as frauds in one of his band’s greatest songs, “White Man in Hammersmith Palais.” In the song’s second half, Strummer addresses disillusionment with punk’s direction, and the verse

The new groups are not concerned
with what there is to be learned
They got Burton suits, you think it’s funny
turning rebellion into money

has long been considered a direct stab at the Jam, who at the time had recently made a point of proclaiming a baffling loyalty to the Tories. (In later years, Weller would refer to Margaret Thatcher as “absolute fucking scum” and “a traitor to the people,” so don’t hold that early Conservative support against him.) Strummer demurely claimed he was taking aim at power-pop more generally, but the “Burton suits” line seemed mighty specific.

Keep reading after the jump…

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Posted by Ron Kretsch
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06.21.2016
09:48 am
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Motörhead, The Cure, The Jam (+ a bizarre Adam Ant comic) from the pages of cool 80s mag Flexipop!
05.05.2016
12:15 pm
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Motörhead on the cover of Flexipop! magazine, June, 1981
Motörhead on the cover of Flexipop! magazine, June, 1981.
 
UK music magazine Flexipop! was only around from 1980 to1983, but in that time it managed to put out some pretty cool content within its pages, such as the sweet 7” colored flexi discs that featured music from bands featured in the mag like Motörhead, The Cure and The Jam. One flexi-disc from the February 1981 issue was a recording of Adam and the Ants riffing on the Village People anthem “Y.M.C.A.” called “A.N.T.S,” which you can listen to in all its early 80s glory (as I can’t embed it), here.
 
Adam Ant on the cover of Flexipop! #4
Adam Ant on the cover of Flexipop! #4.
 
Adam and the Ants Flexipop! flexidisc from Flexipop! #4
Adam and the Ants Flexipop! flexi disc from Flexipop! #4.
 
Another thing that Flexipop! featured were cool “live-action” storyboards as well illustrated strips that detailed the the fictional exploits of various bands and musicians. Starting with the September 1981 issue, there was a three-part-series about the career to date of Adam Ant drawn by Mark Manning. Manning—who would go on to assume the cool-as-fuck moniker “Zodiac Mindwarp” and form the biker sleaze band Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction in the mid-80s—was Flexipop!‘s acid-dropping art editor at the time. I’ve included Manning’s “Adam and the Ants” comic strip in its entirety, as well as some scans from the magazine’s inner-pages.

Surprisingly, given its short existence, you can find lots of issues of Flexipop! out there as well as flexi discs from the magazine’s colorful discography on auction sites like eBay and Etsy. Cooler still is the fact that you can look through even more pages from Flexipop! that have been scanned and uploaded at the blog Music Mags 1970s-1980s.
 
Flexipop! March, 1983
Siouxsie Sioux and Budgie (The Creatures) on the cover of Flexipop! March, 1983.
 
Much, much more after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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05.05.2016
12:15 pm
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Watch Joy Division live on 1979 BBC youth documentary ‘Something Else’


 
Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on May 4, 1979. The Manchester episode of Something Else, a youth program produced by the BBC with the mandate of offering teenagers “something else” to watch, was first broadcast on September 15, 1979, so it makes for a fascinating shapshot of the conditions that led to her becoming the head of state.

The program features live performances from Joy Division (“Transmisson” and “She’s Lost Control”) and the Jam (”Eton Rifles” and “When You’re Young”).

It might not need saying that it’s strange to have the Jam on the program, because Manchester was on the cusp of a truly singular wave of musical talent and the Jam were a London outfit—still, their bits are suitably vital. The clips of JD are top-notch, they’ve have been floating around the Internet for ages (there’s an excellent Playmobil stop-motion re-creation of “Transmission,” for instance), but the full program is encountered considerably less often.

The absolute best thing on this entire video, by far, are Ian Curtis’ dance moves during the guitar parts of “She’s Lost Control.”

Something Else was done in a magazine format with shorter segments. So there’s a brief documentary of an 18-year-old single parent in Salford as well as an interview with Cyril Smith, presented as “Rochdale’s only MP,” about underage drinking. (Smith is utterly indistinguishable from a Monty Python character, must be seen to be believed.) There’s also an awkward exchange with two uniformed police constables who must defend the premise that they hassle kids too much (which they deny).

There’s also a round table featuring Factory Records honcho Tony Wilson, Radio One DJ Paul Burnett, and Joy Division’s drummer Stephen Morris about why the radio never plays anything good. John Cooper Clarke is shown wandering around a shopping mall reciting his signature poem “Evidently Chickentown” and, late in the program, there’s a heavily censored reading of “Twat.”
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
The punk poetry of John Cooper Clarke
‘Here are the Young Men’: Classic Joy Division live footage, 1979-1980

Posted by Martin Schneider
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03.01.2016
09:02 am
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Old-school ads for albums from The Clash, Buzzcocks, Blondie, T.Rex, The Jam and more

Promo ad for Blondie's Plastic Records, 1978
Promo ad for Blondie’s ‘Plastic Letters,’ 1978. This might even be an in-store stand-up, hard to tell

If you are of a certain age, you will remember what it was like to get pretty much all your rock and roll knowledge from magazines. Wanted to become a part of the The Cramps Fan Club (and who didn’t), you filled out a request from a magazine or perhaps signed up for the band’s “mailing list” at a live show. If there was a new record on the way, you probably saw it on the pages of CREEM (my all-time favorite), Trouser Press or Billboard. If you were aspiring young punk in the UK, you learned likely learned about the latest record from The Jam by reading mags like Zig Zag, Sounds, and Smash Hits.
 
New York Dolls ad for Too Much Too Soon, 1974
New York Dolls ad for their 1974 album, ‘Too Much Too Soon’
 
Mick Ronson Slaughter on 10th Avenue ad, 1974
An ad for Mick Ronson’s first solo record, ‘Slaughter on 10th Avenue,’ 1974
 
Japanese ad for T-Rex records, 1974
Japanese ad for T.Rex records, 1974
 
Check them all out after the jump!

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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02.18.2016
09:38 am
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The Jam deliver two scorching songs on ABC’s ‘Fridays,’ 1980
11.24.2014
09:05 pm
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From 1980 to 1982 ABC ran a live comedy show on Friday nights at 11:30 pm—live, just like Saturday Night Live; it had the appropriate (and similar) name of Fridays. As Dennis Perrin, author of Mr. Mike: The Life and Work of Michael O’Donoghue, the Man Who Made Comedy Dangerous, observed at the comedy blog Splitsider, Fridays was “the SNL ripoff that nearly surpassed the original,” given that the mix of comedy and pop music performances owed a hell of a lot to Saturday Night Live. Indeed, according to Wikipedia, the very first sketch of the very first episode tried to defuse that issue by joking about it: “Backstage, the producers remind the cast that the show will not be a clone of Saturday Night Live and the cast (dressed as SNL recurring characters) take off their costumes.”

Fridays two-year run was marked by some controversies. In an early episode, a sketch about a zombie diner cost them some much-needed affiliates. The most famous Fridays episode is likely the February 20, 1981, episode, for an incident involving Andy Kaufman, who was hosting that night. During a sketch about two couples at a restaurant who keep sneaking off to the bathroom to smoke pot, Kaufman seemed to break character, saying, “I can’t play stoned,” and there was an altercation with Michael Richards, who was also in the sketch. It turned out that the whole apparently authentic breakdown had been orchestrated by Kaufman and Richards and a couple others on the Fridays staff.

According to Perrin, for many years a DVD edition of Fridays was blocked by Larry David, but finally a 4-disc set was released in 2013. 
 

The cast of Fridays. Standing at upper right is Larry David; seated at lower left is Michael Richards.
 
Fridays benefited from SNL’s rocky 1980-1981 season, the one with Charles Rocket and Gilbert Gottfried and headed by Jean Doumanian. Suddenly the ripoff didn’t seem so derivative anymore. As Splitsider’s Perrin wrote, “If SNL was classic rock, then Fridays was decidedly punk.”

Ah, punk! That’s right, I remember now, punk rock on the tee-vee. SNL may have had Fear and Patti Smith and Elvis Costello, but only Fridays could boast an appearance by the Jam. Here we have Paul Weller and Co. playing “Start!” off of Sound Affects (1980) and “Private Hell” off of 1979’s Setting Sons.
 

 
After the jump, the Jam play “Private Hell”.....

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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11.24.2014
09:05 pm
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Joan Jett and The Jam’s Paul Weller talk New Wave on ‘The Tomorrow Show,’ 1977
11.18.2014
09:58 am
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In October of 1977, Tom Snyder’s Tomorrow Show hosted one of US media’s early attempts at a thoughtful discussion of the then-new phenomena of punk and New Wave. Disappointingly, but still understandably, the discussion mostly features establishment figures, whose basic understanding of what was actually even happening varied wildly. Legendary concert promoter Bill Graham, perhaps unsurprisingly, doesn’t get it at all. He’s here representing the old guard, and all his knowledge of the new noise appears to derive from sensationalistic rumor, though at least he admits to limited first-hand knowledge. (At one point he talks about bands burning Stars of David and wearing KKK uniforms. Wuuuuuuuut?) Also unsurprisingly, LA Times music writer Robert Hilburn offers some of the most thoughtful and informed comments. The Runaways’ producer Kim Fowley is obviously approaching the discussion from a knowledgeable position, but he clowns around and snarks incessantly—he claims to see the trend-orientation of the discussion as a farce that diverts attention from the artistry of the bands and their music, but he’s hardly one to talk about that, now, is he? Though his remarks are often too insidery to actually be informative to the civilians watching this, at least he knows what makes for good TV.

B+ for effort, seriously, but it’s all pretty dry and speculative until the real marquee names arrive. You can see the beginnings of the discussion on YouTube in three parts (1) (2) (3), but it was really only once the RunawaysJoan Jett and the Jam’s Paul Weller joined the conversation that things got significantly more interesting and relevant. It’s one thing to hear oldsters blather on about music they’d never even heard (to his credit, Snyder came around to a deeper understanding of the stuff), and another to hear about the music from the people making it. And amusingly, after Jett and Weller started talking, everyone else’s comments improved. It’s a good deal harder to throw around bullshit about swastikas and self-mutilation when you’re talking face-to-face with thoughtful artists who defy the stereotypes you’ve been fed. Watch it here, it’s good stuff.
 

 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Ron Kretsch
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11.18.2014
09:58 am
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‘The Kids are United’: Footage from Reading Festival 1978 featuring The Jam, Sham 69, Ultravox

Reading Festival 1978
 
1978 was the year that punk invaded the Reading Festival. The first day of the event, Friday, August 25, featured the likes of The Jam, Sham 69, Penetration, as well as The Pirates and Ultravox, and the day was scintillating enough that two different VHS videos were produced of it, The Kids Are United and Kids Like Me + You. (These seem to be the same movie; both were directed by Peter MacDonald, anyway.) The videos are only available in VHS format, but wonder of wonders, the entirety of the Kids Like Me + You video has been uploaded to YouTube, and it’s a treat. In addition to lots of galvanizing live footage (which looks pretty darn good in the transfer, considering it’s from a VHS tape), there’s also a bunch of interview footage with Paul Weller from The Jam, Jimmy Pursey of Sham 69, and so forth.

The Jam are excellent as always (although Paul Weller was unhappy with the sound and was aloof towards his punker fans), but the revelations in this footage are Penetration with Pauline Murray and Sham 69 with Jimmy Pursey. The Sham 69 rendition of “The Kids Are United” is so intense that you could practically put it in a time capsule to represent punk. Whereas in the nocturnal Ultravox and Jam footage there’s some distance between audience and performer, when Sham 69 plays it’s still daylight and everyone’s on top of each other, the stage is jammed with people and the intense, pogoing audience is right there.

Of course, nothing is as simple as that. The intensity of the performance and the audience reaction led to some scuffles and then some between the “punkers” and the “longhairs,” and Jimmy Pursey of Sham 69 became incredibly frustrated at the violence—see more on that below.
 
Reading Festival 1978
 
This page has incredibly exhaustive information about Reading 1978, including audience testimonials, pictures, and information about the VHS releases. Here’s some audience reaction, with emphasis on the out-of-control Sham 69 set:
 

Pursey was totally hacked off with the aggro and it must have been overwhelming performing in front of around 15,000 people on the Friday.

It was my first proper gig, me and a mate camping, aged fifteen, miles away from parental control.  It was magical, I had already fallen in love with Sham 69 and found it amazing that Jimmy Pursey would spend most of the day hanging around with us idiots.  He was, and remains, a really genuine bloke, always accessible.

The Jam didn’t get a fair deal on the sound front but they just drove straight past their supporters into the back-stage enclosure, no talking, no autographs, good socialism comrade Paul.  They were always better suited to small halls anyway, that type of band.

The Pirates were brilliant, Penetration were superb (Pauline was gorgeous) but the Friday belonged to Sham.  One Reading newspaper described it as a “Punk Invasion”.  I will try to scan the damned thing and get it to you when I can afford a scanner.

That day it seemed like punk rock was going to change the world.  Is every generation so stupid?

We flogged out tickets on the third day cos we’d run out of money, fags and booze but, after the first day and Sham dominating proceedings, everything was going to be anticlimactic anyway.

Reading ‘78 was one of the best experiences in my life, mainly because of the great performance of Sham 69 a brilliant live band who always gave 100%

-snip-

Just to answer a point on your website Jimmy Pursey broke down in tears during his performance out of sheer frustration at certain sections of the crowd. He brought Steve Hillage on during the Kids are United to try and unify the Punk/Old Guard audiences. (this was the first time reading had embraced punk)

There was a group of skins who didn’t take much to this and were attacking any long-hairs down at the front. I know , as I was one of them – the longhair not the skin! It deeply upset Jimmy to have to watch this going on and be helpless to stop it.

-snip-

I was at Reading 78 as a 15 year old.

My recollections of the Sham escapade:

The mood was ugly before Sham arrived. There was much discontent from the biker and metal fraternity regarding the “New Wave” acts.

Sham 69 were on stage and were useless - out of tune, out of time and out of their depth playing such a large venue.

Various objects were thrown at the band, who in fairness were determined to play on regardless.

Eventually, a well-aimed can hit the bass player on the head and he stopped playing, bringing the rest of the band to a halt.

Jimmy Pursey had already made several comments, but finally shouted “If you don’t like it you can **** off home”, to which the crowd responded with a barrage of beer-cans and other objects. The stage invasion then happened as documented by other reports.

I left the arena at that point.

 
The violence between the punkers and the longhairs made the news: On that exhaustive Reading 1978 page there is a news clipping with the headline “Punks in pop fight.”
 
Kids Like Me + You
 

Track listing:
Sham 69, “Borstal Breakout”
Penetration, “Life’s a Gamble”
Ultravox, “Quiet Man”
The Jam, “In the City”
The Pirates, “Johnny B. Goode’s Good”
Sham 69, “Angels with Dirty Faces”
The Jam, “Mr. Clean”
The Jam, “‘A’ Bomb in Wardour Street”
Penetration, “Lovers of Outrage”
Ultravox, “Slow Motion”
The Pirates, “Shakin’ All Over”
Sham 69, “The Kids Are United”

 

 
Thank you Gordon Reichert!

Posted by Martin Schneider
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07.10.2014
11:45 am
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The Jam: Perform A Powerful Showcase in Paris 1981

image
 
A powerful performance from The Jam, recorded in Paris in 1981, and originally shown as part of the French TV series Chorus (presented by Antoine de Caunes, no less). Here The Jam thunder through:

01. “David Watts”
02. “Private Hell”
03. “Butterfly Collector”
04. “But I’m Different Now”
05. “When You’re Young”
06. “Eton Rifles”

It’s a fine selection of songs, which highlights The Jam’s musical progression from the influence of sixties Mods, through Punk to New Wave and onto Paul Weller’s distinct political commentary with “Eton Rifles”.  Excellent stuff. Mind you, it’s still hard to believe Tory PM and professional nincompoop, David Cameron was naive enough to claim he had a great liking for “Eton Rifles”, during a radio interview in 2008. However, the Eton-educated Cameron’s admiration for the song did not impact on his politics, something Paul Weller picked up on:

“Which part of it didn’t he get? It wasn’t intended as a jolly drinking song for the cadet corps.”

The song reached number 3 in the U.K. in November 1979, and was the beginning of The Jam’s dominance over the charts until 1982, when guitar bands were replaced by Blitz Kids, and synthesizers.

During their 5 years of recordings, The Jam brought an edge to pop music by fusing musical ambition to strong Left-wing conviction, which wouldn’t happen on such a similar scale until Pulp in the 1990s, and the likes of which are very much required today.
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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04.10.2012
03:27 pm
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The Best of ‘So It Goes’: Clash, Sex Pistols, Iggy, The Fall, Joy Division and more


 
This Channel 4 UK program from the mid-80s compiles some incredible performances culled from Tony Wilson’s late 70s Granada TV series, So It Goes. Includes the Sex Pistols, The Clash, Buzzcocks, Iggy Pop (with horsetail sticking out of his ass and saying “fucking” on 70s TV), The Fall, The Jam, Elvis Costello, Blondie, Penetration, Wreckless Eric, Ian Dury, Tom Robinson, Magazine, John Cooper Clarke, XTC, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Sham 69 and ending with the classic clip of Joy Division performing “Shadow Play.” Many of the groups represented here were making their TV debuts on So It Goes, a regional tea-time program.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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07.01.2011
01:09 pm
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‘Punk In England’: 1980 documentary with The Clash, The Jam, The Pretenders and more
03.25.2011
06:28 pm
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image
 
Previously only available in battered VHS versions and shitty looking DVD transfers, Wolfgang Buld’s Punk In England (originally titled Punk and Its Aftershocks) has been remastered and made available for viewing thanks to the generous folks at See Of Sound.

Filmed in 1980 as punk was fading, Punk In England captures the scene at a point of transition from a revolution to the pop mainstream. With dynamite performances by The Jam, Ian Dury, The Clash, The Specials, Madness, The Pretenders and many more. Enjoy.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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03.25.2011
06:28 pm
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Peter Cook Hosts TV’s Punk ‘Revolver’

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In the late 1970s, while Dudley Moore was off starting his career in Hollywood, Peter Cook entertained himself and a new generation of fans by hosting one of British TV’s first Punk Rock music shows, Revolver.

Produced for ATV by famed impresario, Mickey Most (best known for producing Herman’s Hermits, Suzi Quatro and Jeff Beck) Revolver had Cook introducing acts like Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Buzzcocks, The Jam, Ian Dury and the Blockheads, who all played live in front of a studio audience. There was also a twat of an in-house DJ, but the less said about him the better. Of course, there was the occasional roster of crap record company acts, but this was the 1970s, when there were only three TV channels in the UK, and the national anthem ended proceedings every night on two of them. It was a new style of program-making, chaotic, rude, funny and at times required viewing - as the BFI explains:

Revolver‘s most innovative element was designed to evoke the confrontational atmosphere associated with punk gigs. Peter Cook was invited to guest on the programme on the strength of the notorious Derek and Clive recordings, which shared with punk a kind of adolescent, deliberately puerile nihilism. In the guise of the seedy manager of the rundown nightclub rented out to the TV company, Cook would appear on a video screen, sneering at the acts and antagonising the studio audience. One guest, Buzzcocks’ Pete Shelley, recalled Cook distributing porn magazines, which he encouraged audience members to hold up during sets to put off the bands. Not surprisingly, Cook’s contribution is better remembered than that of nominal host Les Ross.

For all its punk credentials, the show’s music policy was often bewildering - appearing alongside the likes of X-Ray Spex, Ian Dury and Siouxsie and the Banshees were Kate Bush, Lindisfarne, Bonnie Tyler and the avowedly anti-punk Dire Straits.

Revolver‘s engagingly chaotic presentation makes it perhaps an ancestor of Channel 4’s controversial The Word (1990-95), but in 1978 it drew critical derision and failed to impress ITV managers. Unpromoted and buried in a late night Friday slot (ironically the exact post-pub slot in which The Word thrived), the series was starved of an audience and was pulled after just seven editions.

 

 
Bonus clips of Siouxsie and the Banshess, The Jam, and more, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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10.23.2010
07:08 pm
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