Picture from The Guardian
A friend of mine posted this link on my Facebook profile a week or so ago about music on television and how it has dried up, it got me thinking about the future archive. There are very few outlets for live (or mimed) performances for bands these days and this is a shame because it means that in the future we won't have the same back catalogue that we used to. Okay so we have music videos and kids today watch them on YouTube on their phones (usually on public transport, the little shits) so probably don't care too much about this situation, but this will make for less interesting BBC4 programmes (does anyone watch BBC4 on a night other than Friday?) and Top of the Pops 2 style compilation shows in years to come. The NME article refers to Jools Holland's show being the only consistent outlet for live music on television, although the problem is that despite what the author says, Later will never be genre-diverse enough. Top of the Pops, to use the obvious example, dealt with the charts so the range of music reflected what people were buying. Theoretically, on one episode of TOTP you could see a heavy metal band, one of those hip-hop rappers, money grabbing teen sensation, and a once great singer reduced to ironic cabaret status. When BBC4 started showing old episodes of TOTP from 1973 onwards, aside from the weekly 'this is why punk happened' observations, we soon realised what a badly thought out idea this actually was because a large portion of the shows might only have had one worthwhile act on. However, the idea of showing the series in real time on a Thursday was an inspired one. To further enhance the 'real time' element I thought it would have been a good twist to give the presenters whatever Radio 1 show they had at the time the day after broadcast. Noel Edmonds for example would end an old episode by asking the viewers to tune into the Radio 1 Breakfast Show 'tomorrow' and Noel actually presents the show in the present day. Rather than showing full episodes, it might have been better to chop them up and package them in a return of Top of the Pops 2, a show that at its peak had everybody talking. This would also solve the problem of having to scrap the shows presented by sexual deviants.
There are several strong sources of live music available but the well runs dry around the mid-2000s when TOTP finished. Ant and Dec's CD:UK was very 'pop' while TFI Friday is (as I have said before) the perfect time capsule of 1990s British music (I can't bring myself to use the word 'Britpop'). Other shows such as The Word and The White Room exist to remind us of music outside the mainstream and most chat shows have one musical guest. The BBC do a reasonable of documenting Glastonbury every year but as for studio performance there isn't the room anymore. Part of the reason is the attitude that we don't need a show like TOTP anymore because of the change in viewing habits and of course we consume music. Perhaps we don't necessarily need a Top 40 show any longer because we can see music videos whenever we like and therefore don't need to wait until Thursday evening for our chance to watch our favourites, but we do need something with the same eclecticism of TOTP to document music on a year by year basis. I am personally not a fan of Wand Erection but I recognise that they are a successful group who, whether you like it or not, deserve their place in the history of popular music. They (and all the other pop group) would have been on TOTP if it was still around. I have just finished reading Mishaps, Miming and Music: True Adventures of TV's No. 1 Pop Show by Ian Gittins, an easy to read history of TOTP. Aside from the unfortunate fact that it was written before Jimmy Savile died and his being a rapist and a paedophile was still being kept a secret by the powers that be, this is an interesting read that demonstrates the hole left by its absence from television. TOTP saw off so many other music shows from Ready Steady Go to The Tube via so many others and the BBC4 programmes reflect this. In forty years time when we want to reflect on the 2000s and 2010s via archive music we are going to be reduced to whatever hotchpotch of acts appeared on Later With Jools Holland, the special guests on Sunday editions of X-Factor, and the band who get to close chat shows by plugging their latest release. Morally this isn't too different to recording over so many culturally important moments in television to save money on tape.
This week's edition of The Sunday Alternative can be heard here.
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April housekeeping
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