Jools Holland - A Bloody Obvious Target, But Someone Has To Do It!

Or I *assume* it's me (young pale bespectacled studious-looking chap, surname beginning with C ...). I'm gratified. Easy targets, maybe, but every word of it hits.

However.

Since! reading! MC's! KaY! WRaD! post! (above!!!), I've been trying to think of awesome things I've seen on "Later". Air were great, when they were doing their stereolabby thing. I've usually enjoyed Pulp, when they've been on. I think I saw ZZ Top be good once......er.......hmmm......

I can think of a lot more things that were REALLY awful.

Bands I like - EG Stereolab, Six by Seven, Broadcast who just sounded tinny & weak. Like - you people are supposed to be able to mix rock music for TV?

NME kkkritik favourite bands who were just fuxin' terrible - special mention 'ere to prml scrm's appearance circa "vanishing point", and the recent-ish appearance by....er.....having trouble remembering their name....er....dress up like mc5...er....."relationship of command" LP...sorry, it's just gone. You know who I mean anyway. They were fckng GODDAMN USELESS. (an aside - I was bored, and posted something to this effect on MNE's bulletin board - I got a frightening reponse from a dominatrix (!!!!!) who used said band as background music to her - er- "seshes". She threatened to poo in my mouth. CHARMING!!!!) Then there's the techno acts, who, clearly because they are v. boring to watch, and are totally out of context on "later", are allowed to bring their light show along, and get eye-popping jump-cut camera-tilting visuals. NOT FAIR!! How come Coldplay & Eryka wassername don't get that also??? Orbital were miming on their last appearance BTW, unless you call minor fiddling with mixing desk channels, and randomly pushing buttons on synth modules "live performance". Ironic/amusing considering the "We aRe T0TaLLY L!Ve" ethos of "Later".

The thing is, though. Even when it is depressingly mundane, it still knocks the spots off the fare on "4later - music" or whatever it's called. I mean which is worse? Later, or Jo Whiley/some fly on the wall cheap-ass krap following some monosyllabic club DJ as he does PAs in new york & edinburgh (followed next week by a fly on the wall acount of some very slightly less monosyllabic etc etc.)

What I'd like (or what I would have liked if I still had a telly), would be a televisual version of Mark Radcliffe's old evening radio show. Y'know, actual diversity, stuff that is actually interesting, stuff that you really will not hear anywhere else. I'd also like a perpetual motion machine, and lee & herring to be executed.

Alternatively, replacing "Jo Whiley" with "Julie Burchill" could be quite amusing in a car crash kind of way (adopt minnie mouse-with-a- bristolian-accent voice & hurl tirades of abuse @ indie LaYMoRZ)

Anyway - "The last good pop/rock music TV prog was 'The Word'". er...discuss?

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I did quite like "The White Room" when Radcliffe was presenting it; easily better than "Later" anyway!

White Room was good. Radcliffe's getting a bit carried away with the joke rock, though. But like I said earlier, most of them make me want to chuck things at the TV. And I'm sure the other writers can tell you all about being rung up by telly idiots for contacts. All together now: 'well, we don't have a budget as such to pay for your research...'

Most people in / on TV are obviously arseholes. Sensed that years ago, and I always sympathise with those few worthwhile, interesting people such as yourself who have to work alongside them ...

Note to non-British people: 'Our Kid' is a northern expression that people (esp. Radcliffe and Riley) use to refer to younger siblings or younger people generally (as in "You all right, our kid?")

As for JH, I can't believe no one's mentioned the horror that is "Jools' Hootmany", an annual boogie-woogie spectacular that TV bosses use to taunt people whose lives are already so crap that they are staying in on New Year's Eve. I've never watched it, i hasten to add.

I see it's sweeping generalisation Sunday down in Dorset. Obviously.

It's television, but alas it could never be 'on television' as we know it in Britain. Don't ask me why. Television must be in the wrong hands. Television must be embarrassed by love and seriousness and dedication. One thing I can tell you is that this tape contains utterly startling images: Mouse on Mars testing some extraordinary lights in their big rehearsal 'laboratory', or Nobukazu Takemura looking like a young Japanese Stockhausen in his house in Kyoto, surrounded by delicate modular synths.

The intensity, passion and intelligence of the people involved (Markus Popp is totally insane) makes the tape lucid and revelatory. I'd say this tape could change lives the same way David Bowie's appearance on Top of the Pops in 1972 with 'Starman' changed innumerable lives (and very little music-related stuff on broadcast TV has since). It's a glimpse of the Sublime -- a dry, cerebral, technological sublime, certainly -- and television is terrified by the Sublime.

A thing worth living for is a thing worth dying for. Music is a thing worth living for, therefore Sublime. It's certainly a thing worth switching off TV for.

Music television in the English-speaking west sucks because of the way the entry-level systems work for getting into it: lots of work experience opportunities for those who can afford to work for free, which attracts those with very blasé or mutable attitudes and/or Daddy's filofax. Generally, these kind of people do what they're told reflexively. They're no-riskers who then don't ever take risks because they don't know how, and are totally freaked out by anyone who would.

I think if a concerted effort was made to overhaul this structure things would change for the better: mo'better music, television, films, art - you name it. I wish artists would stop appearing on these silly, over-marketed programmes as a matter of principle, to help effect that change (but not overtly. A nice 'sorry, we're busy that day' would do just fine). Then those who DO appear would be seen, eventually, as the shallow, grasping non-artists they are.

It's interesting that Japan and Germany - both places with a large "middle class" - seem to lack all the negative associations English speakers reserve for their middle classes and have cooperative, flourishing creative scenes which will dominate over the coming decade. Not entirely without coincidence, both societies 'lost' the last big war, and had to basically get on with things under sanctions imposed by so-called winners, countries with societies which are, overall, much less egalitarian and much more troubled than those they criticise for having a more homogenous cultural landscape. After all, isn't pointing out the lack of multi-culture in an-Other country kind of racist and backward-looking in and of itself?

Also, all the Japanese TV I have ever seen is brash, noisy and hyper. What you describe sounds like the exact opposite. Maybe that's why it was worth saving.

I think if a concerted effort was made to overhaul this structure things would change for the better: mo'better music, television, films, art - you name it. I wish artists would stop appearing on these silly, over-marketed programmes as a matter of principle, to help effect that change (but not overtly. A nice 'sorry, we're busy that day' would do just fine).

So I take it you're not supporting Luke Haines' boycott of all radio and TV and recording studios this week? He thinks there should be a week in which no music is made or played. By unfortunate co-incidence, he has a record out the same week, so it's a bit of a transparent marketing ploy, innit? 'Apres moi la silence' kinda hubris.

Note: when they have the Pet Shop Boys musical to blab at, they unwrap and demummify out Peregrine Worsthorne!! Which is quite funny, in a way, tho I just turned over and watched Shannon Tweed or something vaguely intelligent.

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As it happens, I don't like what Luke is suggesting - it's too overt and it's too easy to say 'cynical marketing ploy'. It's very boring to jump up and down saying what a refusenik you are, straight into the mic. of a newspaper journalist's tape recorder (when my interview subjects do this, I'm always thinking about that GB Shaw quote about negotiating the price of a whore). Much better to just say you're busy, as I suggested earlier.

Video mags: a nice idea from the 80s worth reviving. Since you already have the necessary technology, why not make some yourself?

Every word Momus says about British TV is true, obviously. The only TOTP performances that genuinely affected and changed me were the KLF in '91 / '92 and Pulp in '95. At that stage, I felt, everything both those bands did *mattered*. Their every move excited me. So, yes, the mediocrity of it all frustrates me sometimes.

I often see acts I dislike on Later. I have never seen Lloyd Cole or Harriet Wheeler on Later.

Merritt played a perverse and inapt solo version of 'I Don't Wanna Get Over You' around about the time of the US election - in fact, I seem to remember hearing that he couldn't cast a vote cos he was on Later that week. Anyway, the point is, they should have let him play more songs.

Marcello Carlin, obviously!

So you agree with Paulin for once?

My presenting team: Troussé as cool front-man for the late-night ladies in the audience. Jones for booking unlistenable acts and talking about 80s sit-coms during his intros.

Spotted drinking beer at table in background: Hopkins, Ewing.

Your all tasteless weirdos who should be shot, Jools Holland OBE is a God, one of teh last great Gods of our time and i never want to here his name bad mouthed ever again!!!!!

From the Holy Moly newsletter:

"His inability to convincingly read his ‘crib cards’ reveals that Jools Holland rarely has a clue who the bands on his show are. To add salt to the wounds of ignorance, we hear that bands who appear on Later… are charged a 'non-optional' fee of around a grand for their backdrop."

A small thing maybe, but naything to spear Holland.

-- suzy (theartskooldisk...), June 4th, 2001.

http://www.specialten.com/
http://www.juno.co.uk/products/175837-01.htm

I'm sure there are more examples of these... someone should start a thread. Maybe I will.

Ha ha McCoy Tyner on last night's Later refusing to end his (amazing) number, JH mirthlessly grinning and gurning in front of camera, finally resorting to "Get off!" so um Elbow could finish the show. Tyner totally pwned Mr Boogie Woogie Piano Magic!

LOLsome indeed. Hope McCoy kneed him in the balls in the green room after the show. Still they did need extra time for that insightful interview with Beady Eye, eh? As for Elbow... uh, wtf?!?!?!?!

later is still on! jeez.

youtube thread of later with jools holland would be good. i'd start it but can't find the right jpeg with which to open thread

Beady Eye were atrocious, Liam's voice is well and truly shot. Couldn't bear to watch JH doing his creepily solicitous "interview" with LG.

The thing about 'Later...' is that in theory it's the kind of show I should like, but in practice and execution I can't stand it.

They need Cecil Taylor on there, just once.

"Corinne! BaileyRae!"

They need Cecil Taylor on there, just once.

Get Jools to play some boogie woogie piano with him

"Nurse! WithWound!"

"Godspeed You! Black Emperor"

"Acid... Mothers! Temple... andTheMeltingParaisoUFO!"

if u saw a thread called

RIP Jools Holland

would u assume he died or just that it was another facetious ilx thread

classic carlin content upthread btw

2001 was a watershed

I guess it was OK for 2001.

ok, half the time I'm bored and flick channels, especially if JH is adding boogie woogie piano into the mix, plus musicians should never give interviews, but sometimes it's great, its the only live music show on mainstream British telly and we would miss it terribly if it went. Whistle Test and the Tube got slagged when they were on....

Quite rightly, for they were shit.

it was kind of the end of the post britop pre landfill lull when

Destiny's Child, Mogwai, Skitz, Ludacris, Atari Teenage Riot, Two Dollar Guitar, Roger Whittaker, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Squarepusher, Derek Bailey, Cannibal Ox

could have been in a single issue of the nme give or take a septuagenarian free jazz guitarist or two

"jools holland is a national treasure"

About 1,600 results (0.32 seconds)

"jools holland is a cunt"

About 1,730 results (0.31 seconds)

democracy has spoken.