Seven Ages of Rock
- Thread starter Slothrop
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Slothrop
Tight but Polite
It's not so much that they don't say anything entirely new, it's that they don't take into account anything that's been said since 1971. Over the years, there's been a fair bit of criticism of sixties blues rock / heavy blues from all sorts of perspectives and a lot of questioning of how significant the psychedelic movement actually was if you weren't there and on drugs at the time, and I think the programme would have been a whole lot more interesting and thought provoking (for people who know almost nothing about the music as well as for people who can recite the words to The White Room backwards) if it had at least acknowledged that this sort of discussion existed rather than just trotting out all the usual self congratulation unadulterated.
FWIW, some of the music programming on BBC4 has been genuinely quite good, so Seven Ages of Rock isn't completely symptomatic of the beeb's music docs. Although I'm still waiting for Rave Britannia...
And yeah, is David Fricke always so bloody annoying or is it only when he's a talking head on a thing about the sixties?
I wish they had let us actually watch and hear more of Hendrix rather than the 5 or max 10 second clips they kept showing. A big problem with the attention-deficit monkies who seem to populate TV editing suits these days is they can't leave a piece of archive film running for more than a few seconds with out cutting to something else or putting some twat on voiceover.
The 'Jimi Hendrix' doc they showed later on BBC4 on Saturday was much better...early 70s Jagger et al alternating with film of Jimi live - whole songs too!
The 'Jimi Hendrix' doc they showed later on BBC4 on Saturday was much better...early 70s Jagger et al alternating with film of Jimi live - whole songs too!
crackerjack
Well-known member
That shit drives me up the wall. Dunno if it's a product of split-second attention spans or the cost of showing 'rock heritage' footage that ain't your own. I imagine Jimi's Monterrey guitar sacritfice costs a bundle every time.
Guybrush
Dittohead
I read this excerpt from Thomas Frank’s The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism a couple of weeks ago, and it really struck a nerve. Many of the points that he brings up should be emphasised whenever the so-called counter-culture of the 60s is discussed, I think. Two money-quotes:
(It should be added that the perceived political failure of the counter-culture is a notion very specific to American conditions. In the Nordic countries, it had a profound effect on all aspects of society from the 60s and beyond, effects that still linger on to this day.)
(It should be added that the perceived political failure of the counter-culture is a notion very specific to American conditions. In the Nordic countries, it had a profound effect on all aspects of society from the 60s and beyond, effects that still linger on to this day.)
Blindingly OTM. The last episode on Indie looks quite BELIEVABLY bad...
don_quixote
Trent End
actually for that very reason it's gotta be the one to look forward to most hasnt it?
would have loved something truly obscure; a grindcore program would have been fun. wonder if we'll get any husker du in the grunge one
would have loved something truly obscure; a grindcore program would have been fun. wonder if we'll get any husker du in the grunge one
sodiumnightlife
Sweet Virginia
the pages of NME are coated with an anger inducing substance.
don_quixote
Trent End
i predict lashings of john harris
the bbc 4 series on californian folk and country rock and singer songwriters from the late 60's to the 70s is much more successful, and astonishingly all the interviewiees, david crosby, mike davis the sociologist, david geffen, the eagles etc, all seem to be knowledgable, honest and cool people, i particulary loathe those kinda confessional singer songwriters that emerged after joni michell though, horrible stuff.
I guess if you hone into something and get to record it well you can create something worthwhile, david crosby seemed to be the dude back then, the best weed, a hot tub full of ladies, outspoken views.
I guess if you hone into something and get to record it well you can create something worthwhile, david crosby seemed to be the dude back then, the best weed, a hot tub full of ladies, outspoken views.
The one on British Jazz was enjoyable too, almost incidental to one's appreciation of the actual music. But that seemed like a much more high-quality job (writing wise) than this more recent rock one... which was terrible even from a rockist perspective (ie- episode 2 conflated the Velvet Underground, psychedelia, glam, and prog- in a way which made absolutely no sense, seemingly on the basis that both psych and the velvets "used a lightshow"...) It seems this programme is designed for those with ABSOLUTELY zero knowledge of the music, it's both laden with lame tick-the-myth icon-spotting and yet at the same time fails to even cohere within a canonic appreciation of rock. Unfortunately all the while without being subversive or creating a new or interesting narrative or analysis- amounting to little more than a botched or shoddily executed rockism.
Further confirming to my mind why the BBC deserve absolutely no support whatsoever anymore.
Further confirming to my mind why the BBC deserve absolutely no support whatsoever anymore.
crackerjack
Well-known member
There was a whole series? i saw a 90 minute show which was excellent, even though I don't like hardly any of that stuff (His Holy Youngness excepted).
Surely the link is that all (bar glam, unless this means Bowie) had pretensions to being art-with-a-capital-a rather than just music to dance/sing along/fall in love to. I only caught the end, and must admit it did seem weird watching Genesis on a show that had started with VU, but there is a link if you consider where rock was pre-65-ish
bruno
est malade
so the bbc doesen't do music the way you would like it to. what of the top notch political documentaries, nature programmes, news programmes, websites and so on, would you retire your support for these things too? sometimes i think the bbc is wasted on britons.
crackerjack
Well-known member
I agree with you here, though top notch political docs are a thing of the past on the Beeb now that Panorama's been gutted.
I've argued elsewhere that about the BBC, so I won't thread de-rail, but as I said this merely "further confirms" what I already thought- ie that I pretty much hate all of the BBC's output with a very very limited number of exceptions, that large swathes of output could substantially be met by the free market as effectively, and that they should lose their license fee, or at least be forced to sell off BBC1/2 Radio 1/2. I was informed by Padraig that this would be "disastrous" (and I surely defer to his knowledge over mine here, however it remains to be said that it appears to be pretty "disastrous" as it stands...)
Everything it touches turns to shite- it can't even make drama now without it being infected with an infantile cheapness, from the writing to the way its filmed. Don't get me started on the news either- inane banter between newsreaders on BBC1 between items, Newsnight being turned into a shite arts programme to appease the monstrous ego of Kirstie Warke, the lame pretensions towards "balance" (FFS)... Rant over.
@crackerjack-- yes, of course there is that, although as an analysis it meant that this was an incredibly superficial reading of all of the bands involved- there was no one who actually managed to get to the point of saying why- beyond introducing theatricality- the bands were important to the development of rock or why they were of note... but really the question arises as to what is the point of this piece of programming? 7 fucking hours of inaccurate stuff painted in brushstrokes broad enough to render it useless. Who exactly is it for?
Everything it touches turns to shite- it can't even make drama now without it being infected with an infantile cheapness, from the writing to the way its filmed. Don't get me started on the news either- inane banter between newsreaders on BBC1 between items, Newsnight being turned into a shite arts programme to appease the monstrous ego of Kirstie Warke, the lame pretensions towards "balance" (FFS)... Rant over.
@crackerjack-- yes, of course there is that, although as an analysis it meant that this was an incredibly superficial reading of all of the bands involved- there was no one who actually managed to get to the point of saying why- beyond introducing theatricality- the bands were important to the development of rock or why they were of note... but really the question arises as to what is the point of this piece of programming? 7 fucking hours of inaccurate stuff painted in brushstrokes broad enough to render it useless. Who exactly is it for?
Slothrop
Tight but Polite
I was a lot less annoyed by the second one than the first one - I think primarily because the ground was comparatively less well trodden (Velvets, Floyd, Bowie, Roxy Music, Genesis as against the Stones, Hendrix, the Beatles and Cream) and in particular because it's slightly less easy for people to do the whole smug "this was undoubtedly the finest hour of youth culture and I was there and you weren't" mythbuilding thing about David Bowie miming being trapped in a phone box or Peter Gabriel dressed as Bill and Ben than it is about Hendrix at Woodstock. Based on this, though, I'm expecting the punk one to make me absolutely livid.
And yeah, I think the theme was that they were all Art / pop crossovers, although I think they kind of just took a lot of bands that fitted the theme and then bunged them all one after another rather than actually doing much with it.
Helpfully, though, the whole shebang was followed on BBC 4 by those two Bowie live films which were top.
And yeah, I think the theme was that they were all Art / pop crossovers, although I think they kind of just took a lot of bands that fitted the theme and then bunged them all one after another rather than actually doing much with it.
Helpfully, though, the whole shebang was followed on BBC 4 by those two Bowie live films which were top.
Ah- I had the opposite reading- the first one seemed far superior as at least it viewed the emergence of "rock" thru the prism of Hendrix, and had the author of the widely regarded best Hendrix biog to provide context etc... this 2nd one seemed like a mess- it should've either gone on a psych-->prog narrative or a velvets/stooges--->glam one. What it went with was seemingly determined by "here's some footage of theatrical rock from the early 70s"-- and yes, the footage was really good, but the writing on this series is beyond dire.
bruno
est malade
we may be seeing two different bbcs then, the one i'm familiar with is the world service. just the international news and programmes like hardtalk are a godsend in a spectrum swamped with cnn and other shite. and off the top of my head a documentary on tetris, the radiophonic workshop, the ones by adam curtis, the list goes on.
bruno
est malade
then again it could not. show me something like bbc jam, which was shut down on free market grounds. find something like 1xtra, for all its faults, nothing there either. no monetary incentive, perhaps?