There are certain sights one does not ever forget; the wizened old man, who is your father, as he draws his last breath; the first Mediterranean sunset seen through your lover's hair as she gazes up lovingly from her Greek cocktail; Gaudi's Sagrada Familia; Debbie Harry's crotch, without underwear, seen from the mosh pit; Tina Weymouth playing bass.
The Tom Tom Club were at Glastonbury this year (Tina Weymouth and hubbie, Chris Frantz) and it reminded me of the iconic performance, the first time in the UK I think, of Talking Heads on the Old Grey Whistle Test (OGWT) performing Psycho Killer and Weymouth, stick thin, dwarfed by the Fender Mustang and looking so very intense as though she had only just learned the bass lines that day and needed to concentrate on getting what is a very simple riff right in every measure not just the first one. That memory stayed with me all through the intervening years until......
I used to watch the OGWT every Tuesday without fail and when I heard, about ten or twelve years ago. that the BBC were going to release a collection of clips on DVD, the first thing, in fact the only thing, I looked for was whether 'Psycho Killer' appeared on the disk. It does and without looking for whatever else was included, I went down the record store and bought my copy; it would be worth it if that was the only track that I liked. I liked the idea of Weymouth on tap!
The BBC subsequently released two additional DVDs with further extracts from the programme and I have spent the past five or six hours watching them again in awe and amazement at how good the performances are even after all this time. I had only just started going to gigs and concerts in 1971, when the programme first aired, and it was the only showcase for the sort of music I liked that was available on TV. Radio had been slightly ahead of the game with, first, the Saturday afternoon John Peel show and then the weekday, at 6pm, 'Sounds of the Seventies', which dared to play Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Soft Machine. even the Electric Prunes, if you were lucky. Chart music ruled and even 'Colour me pop', a music programme geared to display the advantages of colour TV was only notable for one single performance; the Nice playing the cut down version of 'America' which peaked at number 21 in the pop charts.
The OGWT, despite its heavy reliance on 'west coast' American music was a gateway into just about every kind of music that was either established in a small way, mostly in the clubs, or was yet to garner an audience bar a few cognoscenti. Although the programme did run through a brief period in the early to mid-seventies where bands mimed to a backing track, only the vocal were 'live', on the whole the bands and the singers were live. If you were of a mind to go and pay good money for a gig on the basis of a performance on the programme, you at least knew what you would be getting.
I had my first exposure to Phillip Glass via the OGWT (Movement 3 of 'The Photographer'*) which prompted an unsuccessful search around record stores the following day for a copy; I had to wait until the Saturday when I could get to HMV with its vast classical collection. I would never have found Stanley Clarke if it were not for an early show featuring Chick Corea and his group; the performance by Stanley on the programme on the release of 'Schooldays' only cemented the initial impression. Jan Akkerman and Focus, with Thijs van Leer hamming it up on yodelling vocals; Heads, Hands and Feet, with the amazing Albert Lee; Lowell George and Little Feat; Bonnie Raitt**; the tragic Judee Sill.
Over the four DVDs, the music almost defines English hippiedom; Friday nights at the Lyceum, Sunday afternoons and evenings at the Roundhouse, the rag-tag remnants of the Isle of Wight which so tried to emulate Woodstock and largely failed. With such gems as the full ten plus minutes of Lynyrd Skynyrd's 'Free Bird' before a live audience; Bob Marley's 'Stir it up' at least a full year before the landmark gig at the Lyceum; Tom Waits' 'Tom Traubert's Blues'; Nils Lofgren at the piano performing 'Going back'; Gary Moore and 'Don't believe a word' with only five strings***; the 'weird sisters', Dan van Vliet and James Osterberg Jnr****; the Texan trio of Freddie King, Johnny Winter and Billy Gibbons*****; the man that has made an entire career out of aping Jimi Hendrix, Robin Trower and later PIL's hypnotic 'Careering' with the quite wonderful Jah Wobble's bass guitar; the Banshees' 'Metal Postcard'; REM's 'Pretty Persuasion' in the days when Stipe had hair; the Adverts****** and 'Bored Teenagers', as much a rallying cry to late seventies UK disaffected youth as Richard Hell's 'Blank Generation'. And finally, 'At Seventeen' by Janis Ian; a song which has scarce a rival in the 'ode to adolescent angst' stakes for all that Ms Ian was writing about a female growing up as a 'plain Jane'.
Of course the show was not without its embarrassments; 'I will follow' by U2 complete with Bono's mullet and 'Riverdance' impressions and Adam Clayton posing like the 'New Romantic' he always wanted to be; the Who miming badly; John Cooper Clarke with more of his abysmal poetry, even Ginsberg would be ashamed of such drivel; the noise that was The Jesus and Mary Chain. The surprise of the of the 4 disks? Howard Jones, synth star of the eighties, with hair, lacquered to within an inch of its life, to match, performing 'No-one is to blame'.
Any regrets? Only one that I can think of. They could find space for the execrable John Cooper Clarke but not for Vinegar Joe with a (very) young Robert Palmer and Elkie Brookes; seriously missed opportunity there!
* About the photographer, Eadweard Muybridge, he of 'galloping horse' fame. Also, the last man to be acquitted of obvious murder in California for 'justifiable homicide'; he shot his wife's lover.
** Whose version of 'Too long at the fair' as performed live at the BBC theatre for the show still brings me to tears.
*** The top 'E' broke about 2 bars into the song; didn't slow him down at all! He still careered through the solos, his fingers all over the shop like little pink maggots with St Vitus' Dance
**** Captain Beefheart and Iggy Pop respectively
***** And don't let anyone try and tell you that SRV is fit to wipe this trio's boots.
****** Strangely, a last minute replacement for Blood, Sweat and Tears; what was the BBC thinking of?
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