Seven Ages of Rock

Slothrop

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Oh my life. If anyone feels that they don't have enough anger in their lives, I'd strongly advise them to watch this programme.

I'm normally a bit of an apologist for rockism, but this programme was astonishingly shit. I mean, I don't mind the fact that it's a series about rock to the exclusion of everything else (although I'm already annoyed at the prospect of the indie one trying to convince us that the Arctic Monkeys represent a new golden age of something or other rather than a pretty good stab at a tried and tested formula) - noone complained that Folk Britannia didn't have enough about hip hop or Soul Britannia failed to mention any of the greats of Breton Shawm music. It's not that I don't like the music involved (the first one centred on Cream and, in particular, Jimi Hendrix, both of whom I consider to be pretty acceptable.) I'm not even going to complain that they seem to be focussing on a couple of the most canonical artists and events from any given period - they're trying to cover the whole of rock in seven episodes, I'm not expecting an in depth feature on Bogshed or anything.

It was just so bloody predictable.

Essentially the BBC have decided that they have to target it at people who've never so much as leafed through a copy of Mojo, and as a result their attempt to condense the history of 60's rock into one hour was precisely the two dozen cliches that would show up on a Family Fortunes 'predictable cliches about the sixties' list. Jimi Hendrix revolutionized the way people played guitar. Oh really? Sgt Pepper revolutionized the way people approach recording albums. No shit. Everyone was like 'omg, Clapton is god', but then they were like 'omg, no, HENDRIX is god!' Altamount kind of represented the death of the spirit of the sixties. Oh my god make it stop.

It didn't help that they had that complete twunt from Rolling Stone (whose sole virtue seems to be making Charles Shaar Murray seem like a good thing in comparison) and a load of other arseholes going through smugly restating the orthodox party line on What The Sixties Was All About giving the impression that the programme makers didn't make the least effort to actually think of anything to say about the subject but just wheeled out the usual suspects to say the usual things in the usual way accompanying some fairly reasonable archive footage. And while I don't mind the odd bit of nu-rockism - insofar as I don't go apopleptic as soon as people start talking about significance or meaning in music - hearing the level of self importance and self congratulation on the part of the people who wrote about or listened to the muic about how culturally significant and incredibly high-art it just made me want to vomit.

Sorry about the rant, but I haven't been so annoyed by any bit of culture for quite some time. So did anyone else catch it? Or does anyone plan to watch the next one, which is probably going to leave me unable to listen to the Velvet Underground for weeks in a horrible bit of Clockwork Orange-esque conditioning?
 
M

martin

----
Slothrop said:
So did anyone else catch it? Or does anyone plan to watch the next one, which is probably going to leave me unable to listen to the Velvet Underground for weeks in a horrible bit of Clockwork Orange-esque conditioning?
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I didn't, but I'm not surprised. To be honest, the only person I could ever stand yapping about Hendrix (who was fucking brilliant) on TV was Alan Freeman. Hendrix's music was about come-spurting winged Aztec monkey gods with bazookas destroying civilisation, and gypsy sex with Hindu deities, the BBC's far too conservative to explore this angle. And to be honest, I'd rather watch an 114-hour documentary on cloud formation than ANYTHING about the VU or punk ever again (might catch the Strummer flick though)
 
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swears

swears

preppy-kei
TV programs on the history of music are almost going to be crap by definition aren't they?
It's always the lowest common denominator. There was a half decent one a few years back on channel 4 about the history of dance music, which I suppose was an easier task considering they only had 15 or so years to cover, compared to the 50 years rock has been around.
 
john eden

john eden

male pale and stale
Yeah I watched whilst doing the ironing. My other half fell asleep, which I thought was quite impressive.

The BBC tv series on reggae a few years back was great as well.
 
matt b

matt b

Indexing all opinion
i watched it because it meant that members of the public wouldn't be singing poorly in my living room any more. they followed my g/f upstairs and started doing it up there.

it was alright, though hardly surprising. i particularly liked the modern day 're-enactments'-a hand squirts lighter fluid on a guitar (er, just play the clip of hendrix doing it for real), some pills fall in a glass of wine etc.

reading some of the blurb on the bbc website, it seems that black flag and bad brains were merely a footnote to the 'greatness' of nirvana. so i guess its downhill from here.

gardener's world on friday was better
 
Guybrush

Guybrush

Dittohead
I didn’t see it, but backslapping nostalgia-fests such as these are almost universally awful. Swears is right in that it’s the lowest-common-denominator approach that makes them so irrelevant, the assumption that the average viewer has got next to no previous knowledge of the subject at all. One of the reasons sports coverage tends to be so good is that the viewer is entrusted with actually knowing something beforehand: the rules of the game, the most talked-about players, etc. This means that the coverage is allowed to be more in-depth—they can focus on that up-and-coming Valencian seventeen-year-old instead of rehashing Ronaldinho’s rags-to-riches story, Zidane’s role in unifying a France divided, or whatever—and this, in turn, leads to the coverage actually bringing something new to life. Most of the time, it’s the details, and not the general outlines, of an event that make it come to life, but you need to know the outlines to appreciate the details. (Which helps explain why any aspect of WW2 is still such a rewarding topic—most people know so much about the generalities of it that the outlines can be skipped for the most part.)
 
T

tox

Factory Girl
2stepfan said:
I enjoyed it. But it was a SHIT night for telly.
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Given that 99% of these types of program will be a wind-up for anyone who knows about the subject, why is it that people let themselves get so angry about them? It was prime-time BBC, of course it was going to be aimed at *everyone* rather than Dissensus.

I too stumbled across this program as an alternative from the female housemate flicking to that Joseph program or Grease is the Word (*shudder*). To be honest I have little interest in the rock music of the 60s and while watching with a critical and somewhat cynical eye, it was still interesting to see events such as Altamount play out on the TV.

Could just be cos I'm a young-un and still taking in different perspectives on things that I'm still learning about. To be fair, it was badly presented television, but it does strike one that for a Geo-scientist, those documentaries about cloud formations might be equally as hackneyed. There's very little chance I'll be watching next week (doubt I'd even remember its on tbh). For the rest of you: if you see it coming up next, go and load up an episode of Woebot TV instead.
 
W

wonk_vitesse

radio eros
agree with alot of the above, it was great to see alot of that footage especially the Hendrix moments. What annoyed me was how UK centric it was. It was as if the west-coast scene didn't exist? no mention of the Grateful Dead for example.
 
C

Chris

fractured oscillations
crackerjack said:
Chalk one up for the BBC :)
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Haha... poor Grateful Dead, no respect. Nah, the Dead are criminally underrated IMHO, except by their fanbase, in which case they're probably a bit overrated.

Is there even anything new to say in regards to the basic rock canon anymore? What could they instead focus on in these retrospectives... keeping in mind that it can't get too obscure for the average viewer? (I don't have an answer myself, as I couldn't be less interested in Hendrix or Clapton anyway, no matter what new light they possibly shed on them.)

On the subject of canons, it seems like lazy and cynical radio programming is trimming down the already tired and limited canon even further. In the US, oldies and classic rock stations, most likely as a result of massive corporate buyouts, have stripped down their formats to the most safe and lame hits by the most obvious and played-out bands. Here in Southern Cali, if you hear Zeppelin on the radio, it's going to be Rock n Roll or D'yer Maker EVERY TIME, (of all the possible Zeppelin songs to choose.. sheesh). Maybe as the boomer demographic is aging, stations are only trying to focus on the less edgy stuff, I dunno. Pretty sad.
 
G

gumdrops

Well-known member
was pretty fucking boring wasnt it apart from the archive footage. the narrative was like the goo goo ga ga of bbc voiceovers - i thought he was going to burst out laughing at one point from all the cliches. it was pretty much the same old 60s rehashes over and over. not to nitpick but okay, TO nitpick, what was up with the crappy graphics/text as well? they looked about 20 years old. i still dont get why they skipped the 50s rock n roll era either. also, (and tieing into how they forgot about the 50s) how can anyone say satisfcation was the invention of rock? are these people dumb? nitpicking again, i didnt think muddy waters and howlin wolf were rhythm n blues artists, i thought they were electric blues artists.
 
Guybrush

Guybrush

Dittohead
Did they show the Beatles’ appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show? Every documentary on the 60s must show the Beatles’ appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Guybrush said:
Did they show the Beatles’ appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show? Every documentary on the 60s must show the Beatles’ appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show.
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Is this in the same historical canon as the weeing-and-pooing elephant on Blue Peter?
 
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