Later With Jools Holland - your favourite memories

Hmmmm...

First one that comes to mind is At The Drive In being a shambles, sounding shit and throwing some stuff around. I think Robbie Williams was on after them. I remember being disappointed cos I liked the band and wanted to see them do their thing. I had tickets to see them in Nottingham but they split up before the UK tour, so that performance on Later... was as close as I got.

I can also remember Erykah Badu singing "I think I need a cup of tea" and then pretending to take a sip from a cup of tea. Crazy name, crazy girl.

It's one of those shows that I always watch, but find frustrating. The format has become too streamlined

- largeish US band currently touring Europe with their second album,
- hyped UK band with a couple of singles out and album out in the next couple of weeks,
- "world music" act,
- old timer either churning through the hits or performing new material that isn't good enough to get airplay anywhere else,
- awkward interview with an actor or comedian in the audience, drinking Becks, who's keen to plug latest project (usually affiliated with the BBC)...

Why Jools Holland is presenting it still, I have no idea. I find it perverse that no other music show has started up on any of the channels to rival it. Simply having a similar format but without the mind-numbing interviews from Jools would be an immediate improvement.

"institution" is right. i hate the righteous 'quality' rockness of Later, the applause, those awful opening jam sessions, dreary chats over the piano...

so, favourite memories:

Orbital playing 'Satan', which was like an alien craft landing in the studio, causing rock wrinklies to scatter in confusion for 6 minutes.

very recently, The Fall's performance. Mark E Smith's contractual instruction that Holland should NOT play any boogie woogie piano over their tracks... the bizarre segue out of Robert 'handclaps' Plant... the snarling, ripped, pissed-off noise of it all... the buzzing keyboard note they held down as they left the stage, for the 'hapless' host to talk over... and best of all, when the camera panned round at the end to 'thank' all the groups, instead of posing on stage as per show rules, the Fall were all bunched together in a schoolboyish huddle sarcastically smiling and waving in a 'hello mum i'm on TV ' sort of way. i wish i'd kept the video running for that bit.

Don't know if this counts, but I was at the taping (or partial live broadcast, I guess it was) of Radiohead in 2001, just before the release of 'Amnesiac'. I'm not a huge fan of what they've been doing the last few years, but it was a genuinely fun show. Usually I'm turned off by joiners and uber-fans--but the enthusiasm of some in the crowd around me rubbed off in a positive way (didn't even really notice the corporate attendees, for example). I'd never want to see Radiohead in a different context, but amongst ~300 people in a small room a few feet away centre stage with (obviously) a nice PA, it was a lot of fun.

the bit where jools holland is brutally murdered for helping sell records by beverley knight, jamiroquai and athlete.

i despise how wide-ranging the show is, actually. it has an uncanny knack of coming up with acts that provide some of the most mind-numbing sets.

reading somewhere that Mark E Smith said that The Fall would play the show so long as Holland didn't come near them 'with his fucking boogie woogie piano playing'

But that At The Drive In performance was the best thing ever on the show! When they played One Armed Scissor without actually playing any parts of the song, but implying them by keeping the structure the same - brilliant! One of the few good performances on a show that usually drains energy out of the best. Other highlights - the episode where Dizzee was there to be interviewed (but wasn't performing) and he stared blankly at Jules throughout the whole thing barely bothering to answer. Scott Walker's performances (and the fact that he didn't appear in the opening 'jam'.) The clip they showed, when Eddy Grant was on the show, of the Equals rocking the fuck out... on Playschool!

And he may be persona non-grata here but here's an amazing bit that Marcello Carlin posted on ILM in 2001:

"SCENE: Draughty ersatz "Top of the Pops" studio. A circle of not very diverse musicians listlessly parp, thump and stand about through some exceptionally lame boogie-woogie orchestrated by a middle-aged pianist standing, ringmaster-style, in the cynosure of the failed storm. The ringmaster leers towards the camera, narrowly missing the glass.

JH: Yes! My FRIENDS WELCOME! To! Later! With the ubla-ubla-mumble-mumble-ah yes indeed! And! A superb! Cast! Of! Musicians! Here tonight! And I have to say! Straight through! 'Cos they're the only ones you're watching the programme! For! Hands! Together for! Manic Toploader Coldphonics! Ah yes!

(Bradfield/Jones/Whoever The Hell Toploader Bloke Is, Is It Dan Someone Or Other proceed to warble semi-tonally through their current Number 27 smash hit fourth single from the underperforming album. Scattered whoops and applause)

JH: Yes! And! Magnificent A-Ba-Ba-Ba-Ba-Fats Domino! Now! Sitting here! We do not have legends! But this! Is a! Legend! With a dodgy new acoustic direction CD to sell! Midge! Ure!

URE: Aye! Yes! It's live! And that's whit counts! Live! Only £5.99! New world music direction! No hits since '85! All doonhill after Slik!

JH: Such! Articulacy! Buy his magnificent new album! For one pound! In all Record & Tape Exchange emporia! Now! There is soul! And there is "Nu" Soul! And there is R&B! And here is a lady! The like of which you've never heard! Before! Erykah Macy likes her so much! She recorded her album! On her behalf! Put it together! For! Pink Freedom Sunshine Cliche!

(Cue five minutes of dreary generic sub-sub-sub-Lauryn Hill "tasteful" jazzfunk with the same three primary colour clad backing singers you seem to get for all these types. Viewer strains to hold on to life)

JH: Ah! Yes! Radical! Ray Charles! But acceptable! Now! Tradition! Please welcome! Bill Wyman and his Indwelling Catheters! With Van the Man! Morrison Man!

(Ancient semi-derelict '60s failures shamble onto stage to launch into some goodtime boogie-woogie. Van the Man struggles to articulate his soul through the Forest of Dean which constitutes his nasal hairs with Beckettian lyrics of the calibre of "She's my baby/Don't mean maybe/Make you mine/Feel so fine." A 42-year-old IT middle manager planted in the audience makes a fool of himself by boogieing along energetically, much like your grandad trying to do the twist to N.E.R.D.)

JH: Now! To widen! The brief! Comedians! Without a script! What's the point? The! League! Of! Gentlemen!

LOG: Erm, we really make jokes for everyone else, and if we like them, it's a bonus. Erm, I'm not really in touch with pop music, erm, I bought "Unplugged" by the Corrs. Their inimitable fusion of traditional Hibernian sentiment with modern technology certainly makes me feel like dancing!

JH: I'm! Splitting my sides! Thank you League! Now! The same acts! But backwards! Bill Wyman at the piano with me! Here is the same "Ready Steady Go" clip of "Satisfaction" you've seen a million times! Give it up! For Neil! Finn! Acoustic!

(Neil Finn struggles for four-and-a-half minutes to avoid playing "Weather With You." Tumultuous applause comparable to Duran Duran at Wembley Arena circa 1983)

JH: Yes! Mr Neil! God! Finn! Any 18-year-olds watching! You won't know who the hell he is! But we're not interested! 'Cos! Over-40s are our demographic ideal! The people who went to the Comedy Store in 1982 and grew up with Squeeze's Best Of! That's what we're here for! OK, we'll throw you a sop now and then! Radiohead special upcoming! Or see the occasional visionary slip through by mistake! At The Drive In! But we're here as it is one merry world of music . . .

(Interrupted mid-sentence by an entourage of subversives storming through the studio, brandishing AK47s and hand grenades, who seize control of the cameras, microphones, lighting and studio. They are headed by their spokesmen, two pale gentlemen; a young bespectacled studious-looking chap, and a thirtysomething sallow Scot who looks more and more like Ken bloody Stott every bloody day. Some would say Norris Cole if he still had anything up on top. Some would say Loyd Grossman)

C&C: Ladies and gentlemen! We are the C&C Music Factory! We are here to dismantle and demolish this staid, laughable procession of middle-aged, prematurely arthritic wheezings masquerading as vital contemporary music. On "Now with C&C" we bring you Destiny's Child, Mogwai, Skitz, Ludacris, Atari Teenage Riot, Two Dollar Guitar, Roger Whittaker, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Squarepusher, Derek Bailey, Cannibal Ox, and, in a historic collaboration, SClub7 and Merzbow! For fuck's sake! Let's! PUSH THE FUCKING ENVELOPE!

(Happy ending, much jigging, etc. etc.). "

hell is tasteful people

lol and glad to see some dissent here... Jools Holland is surely everything that is wrong about contemporary British pop... scratch that, everything about contemporary British culture... tea with the queen, invites to royal weddings, then some boogie-woogie pianner and smarmy chirpy cheekiness.... both earnest and 'anarchic' at the same time... eclecticism as the vice of the third rate... everyone allowed on, provided they are LIVE LIVE LIVE and can put up with Jools playing boogie-woogie piano in the background....They'd changed it with a grand piano and turned it into a love song. How they did it I don't know.... everything sucked into a bland flavourless but very very TASTEFUL pot-pourri that's oh-so-authentic... Pop as Duke of Edinburgh Award good works... a live 'jam' that is really a politely earnest mulch in which everything ends up tasting of Beverly Knight, i.e. of nothing... what to call this grimly cheerful ideology? Avowedely anti-punk in its musicianly professionalism, anti-Pop(ist) in its insistence on playing live, its hatred of machinery, editing and image, too lacking in any tang to call 'rockist' .... it's BOOGIE-WOOGIEISM


One of the things most missed about Pillbox was the way in which Penman treated it as self-evident that Hollandaze was the enemy of everyting. Four choice cuts of vintate Pawboy:

1. stay up late once a week to catch salad days with sir jools hollandaise…. the reverse alchemist… steadfastly reliably week in week out turning old gold into a river of safe sanitised pap…

2. Or is what I just read in The Groanydad about the recent recording of a JOOLS HOLLAND Hootennany… featuring ‘Johnny Dankworth jamming with Craig David…’ (I am NOT making this up) isn’t… isn’t THAT…
He shivered and averted his eyes from the terrible manuscript…

(IS IT JUST ME addendum:
Is It Just Me, Or. . .is anyone else actually physically ALLERGIC to Craig David, in his any and every manifestation, but more especially when singin’ a coool pseudo samba version of a classic soulful tune with a groovy acoustic guitarist. . .
or. . .Sting. . .I’m A Music Lover, GET ME OUT OF HERE!!!!

Hell is TASTEFUL People.)


3. Jools Holland,
· Later With Jools Holland,
· all Jools Holland’s unfunny comic mates & hack pals & monosyllabic pissed-up guests
· Lou Reed,
· Lou Reed’s tai chi mate doing tai chi during "A Perfect Day", and who was that Maris-Piper-looking bloke who took a verse of "Perfect Day" and but then sounded like an unholy cross between Elmer Fudd and Graham Norton? And that thing Lou was doing – was he under the impression that was SINGING? Lawks amighty, pawkids! How the flighty have broken!
· The Vines
· The Vines a second
· and a third time. . .
· and most of all that spoiled child posing as a fifth form Iggy Pop, thet PRAT, that FAKE, that (somebody give him a good SLAP) little twit "singer" in The Vines, I mean, don’t people BOO anymore? Did we go thru Dada, Surrealism, Acephale, Situationism, the Motherfuckers, the Beats, Burroughs, Punk to end up with. . .The Good Old Days with Jools Holland?
· Ladysniff Black Mmblahblah {oooh sorry, I'd better check with The Observer real "roots mon" music dept see if you're allowed to SAY this lot’re TEDIOUS beyond endurance and HAMMY beyond Dickinson and about as ‘authentic’ as their matching white plimmies. . .


4. {and the only fault I can find with Avid Merriam and Bo Selecta is that he hasn't done a Holland yet - perhaps, the thought springs to mind, a Holland who instead of being all creepily nice to each and every musician on the planet, like some 70s LA groupie, spits contempt and envy and loathing at them - 'And who have we got on the show tonight? OH SHITE! Not fookin Craig fookin' David again? Yer no talent chancer - I thought I loved the sound of me own voice but you - you yer bastard self promotin' networking cooont! I'd imagine that out of "seven days" all yer'd hav left for oother people after yer'd taken out tossin yerself off before a mirror would be half a bastard hour on Tuesday afternooon...' Etc.}

johnny dankworth jamming with craig david

'jools' holland drinks in my local.

many a time have i considered whether the prison sentence would be worth the service to pop music

The BBC website gives you a flavour of how bad this show is-

Vote
Who should appear on the next series of Later?

Kaiser Chiefs
Femi Kuti
Gorillaz
Charlotte Church
Mariah Carey
Missy Eliott

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Arggghhhhhh.

i saw At The Drive-in on one of the shows. highlight of my life. obviously not, but it seemed ok.

since when has k punk started talking so much sense? are u taking your medication again?

although you're mad if you think Lil' Flip isn't better than The Cure.

Hi everyone... it's my first post!

I hadnt watched LWJH in ages but i randomly saw Arcade Fire on there recently and they were great. Like an Amish idea of a rock band.

So i went out and bought their album.

Jools Holland is a ar$e though, no doubt about it.

mpc said:

since when has k punk started talking so much sense? are u taking your medication again?
.

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You like the Futureheads. I don't think there's any medication that will sort that out.

k-punk said:

You like the Futureheads. I don't think there's any medication that will sort that out.

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bahahahahaha

k-punk said:

You like the Futureheads. I don't think there's any medication that will sort that out.

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dun ur hype type-i aint got tyme 4 intanet thugs. either link man on da roadside or shut ur rasclat mouth.

r u stupid?

i'll leng u down (blud).

i aint even heard of the futureheads.

which sides r they from?

r u dumb?

flonce breh.

my favourite moment was luther vandross singing 'any love' with jools on the joanna .

why is music coverage on terrestrial gogglebox so bad?

mpc said:

dun ur hype type-i aint got tyme 4 intanet thugs. either link man on da roadside or shut ur rasclat mouth.

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Er... Try this thread.... (post 47)

r u stupid?

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No... I just have a memory .... Perhaps your dialect-implant surgery has caused memory lapses?