VH-1 Israel (which is the VH-1 we get here in Portugal, don't ask me) recently showed Beat Club: Punk, which has to be some of the most bizarre television I've ever seen. It seems thar, by 1977, the show has degenerated into an oldies/schlager type thingie, so you get to see all these archetypal German aunties happily clapping along to The Tom Robinson Band's "2-4-6-8 Motorway" and Plastic Betrand doing the whole Cliff Richard routine.
Oddest moment of them all, tho, has to be The Scorpions looking as un-Punk as physically possible doing "He's A Woman". At the end of the song, the camera focuses on Klaus and they do some visual sleight-of-hand kinda thing so it looks like he has a tiny breast.
I don't think that the DVD box set is available internationally, but I do know that some Musikladen stuff is available in the U.S. Post your anecdotes here.
― Daniel_Rf (Daniel_Rf), Sunday, 10 November 2002 13:49 (twenty-three years ago)
I'm always struck by how *unmoved* the audiences were, even compared to TOTP of the day. TOTP's lowest point was probably the late 70s (the audience standing still during Chic's "Le Freak", of all things, as if they were listening to Lindisfarne or Smokie) but there's something quite bizarre about the way the German audience responded to Stevie Wonder's "Living For The City" which goes well beyond that: it's as though they literally ***could never understand*** it, and their expressions captured their bafflement. I wonder whether you could ever get that sort of distance today.
DLT's intros when presenting it = dud, naturally.
― robin carmody (robin carmody), Sunday, 10 November 2002 17:51 (twenty-three years ago)
― your null fame (yournullfame), Monday, 11 November 2002 09:31 (twenty-three years ago)
Oh my god yes, and "Superstition" too -- those wonderfully shouty backup singers!
― Jody Beth Rosen (Jody Beth Rosen), Monday, 11 November 2002 09:39 (twenty-three years ago)
Lots of great bands appear to have been on it though and I suppose it's up there with Ready Steady Go and Ed Sullivan as great archive music tv that has actually survived. Unlike, say, TOTP. And yes, even then DLT = a big dud.
― mms (mms), Monday, 11 November 2002 12:13 (twenty-three years ago)
― Jay Vee (Manon_70), Monday, 11 November 2002 12:55 (twenty-three years ago)
German audiences *so* cannot clap to the beat. That and the comatose expressions on their face make for hilarious viewing...
― Elisabeth K, Tuesday, 12 November 2002 14:27 (twenty-three years ago)
-----------go.to/stevek
― steve k, Tuesday, 12 November 2002 21:32 (twenty-three years ago)
First they buy our DVDs (and damnit, Beat Club had EVERYONE- not even the Old Grey Whistle DVD could boast as impressive a roster) and then they make fun of us. :(
― Daniel_Rf (Daniel_Rf), Wednesday, 13 November 2002 00:51 (twenty-three years ago)