Pop On The Box

I used to like Night Flight in the mid-80s when I was but a wee yank lad. It was where I saw "Decline of Western Civilization" and that video about fish heads, rolly polly fish heads and that video for "Bad Habits" where he greases it and he oils it, he flushes it down the toilet... I wish I knew who that was. I thought it might be Bad Habits,cuz there's a fat bald guy in the band, but I can never find a title on an album that would be the right title. Anyone know? I think a TV show should be full of good stuff with a variety. Now how about that for an idea?!

Kill Jool and bring back Whispering Bob I say.

Anyone remember Snub TV? BBC2 6PM ish mid/late Eighties. no presenters. i remember seeing video for ' Freak Scene' on it. and Throwing Muses playing live. can't understand why it didn't last...

so anyway, my answer is bring back that for starters.

I'll answer this question later, when _As If_ is over.

As If hurts my head. Is that how people my age are supposed to act? I'll have to start doing a lot of confusing flashbacks and get a group of friends that represents multicultural society (gay bloke, black girl, nu-metal fan...).

I guess flicking between VH1, MTV and the Box, is my favourite show...so you can watch 2 seconds of Westlife, 1 minute of Linkin Park, and a bit of Bon Jovi behind the Music then flick back to the box and watch a video with Snoop Dogg in it (Xvbit, Dr Dre, Lil Bow Wow...the man is omnipresent!) and then back to MTV but it's usually a commercial break by then (intersting that VH1 and MTV have breaks at the exact same time). So, ideally no presenters...but if my show does need to have some, then I guess Ant&Dec and Cat Deeley would be cool. No Jools Holland type bands on my show, or Jo Whiley chin wagging stuff...The occasional live performance is also okay, but preferably more videos.

Obviously everyone loves Ant and Dec, but their patronage/enthusiasm is after all bought and paid for, and CDUK is the part of SMTV that I’m most likely to not be bothered about missing. Jo Whiley and Jayne Middlemiss seem to be duking it out for the Tracy-MacLeod useless TV rockchick award (and Davina McCall makes Gaby Roslin look like Gitta Sereny). (That’s a brains snidey, not a body snidey.)

Salvation arrives onliquely: I just bet some of you out there detest the practice, but I really like how high-end TV drama — you knew, of course, that we’re living thru a Golden Age of TVD, no? — uses popsongs as mise-en-scene and greek chorus and wry camera-pull perspective and, oh, just dozens of other brilliant things too. _This Life_ started it (had to be the BBC, as they, by state charter, can use any record on any programme w/o paying for it), and was kind of simultaneously breakthrough and hohum in its deployment (good excuse: it was first). OK, so I like _As If_ and _Teachers_, I think they do all the things they should be doing well: inc.this. It began as a Hollywood marketing-targeting device: now that’s just a pretext. Instead, it’s a really really neat preview-review commentary (as in, this is what we the makers of this series — which you the viewer [in this case, me] like — think of these records, expressed as a USE rather than an OPINION).

And with Jamie Oliver, it all works in the opposite direction. Pukka!

TRL, because the kids are alright. Duh.

Snub TV in the late 80s was the best music show, the music selected was more radical and creative than your bog standard music show, arkane, Throwing Muses, My Bloody Valentine, Wolfgang Press, Dinosaur Jnr, The Young Gods, Spacemen 3, Happy Mondays etc

I think that a weekly format program like The Tube/ or Whistle Test - is still needed - don't like that Jools Holland program - no quality control to many dull bands.

I think that a weekly format program i.e some live studio sets i.e some interviews i.e some recent live recordings i.e some club reports i.e some roundtable discussion on new videos

Music on television at the moment does not appeal to me. I went home for Christmas to see my parents/brother and the number of stations/ channels on the satelite has increased - except instead of one or two crap choices like 5 years ago - MTV and VH1 - there seems to be about 10 and they are all crap niches - staid genre generic formats that bore me rigid.

Most of the music I enjoy is not reflected on music television.

As for MTV2 - an utter joke, no quality control - and the amount of generic rubbish whether its the latest rap rock/nu metal cash in bullshit or dull britpop/dadrock blandness

Music television as a whole is even worse than the radio.

British TV shows ignore the most creative British music.. Zan Lyons, Rothko, The The, Ed Rush & Optical, Two Lone Swordsmen, Mogwai, VNV Nation, Ashfelt, Earthtone 9, Slam, Life Without Buildings, Sulpher, Luke Slater, Surgeon, Echoboy, Dave Tipper, Kode 9, Defenestration, Layo & Bushwacka, Womb, Autechre, Larmousse, Funk D' Void, Scorn, Mesh, No Man, Twig, Electrelane, Portal, Max Tundra, Swayzak, Lo Fidelity Allstars, Violet Indiana, Radio 9, Chris Clark, Yellow 6, AC Acoustics, Avrocar, Circulation, Matthew Herbert, Rico, Way out West, Xpress 2, Faultline, Capitol K, The Workhouse and Nought (both from Oxford), Anathema, Bad Company (jungle) Third Eye Foundation, 2nd Gen.... etc

and it be ideal if we had a weekly music show, then the likes of The Chameleons, Techno Animal, Godflesh, The Opposition, Nurse With Wound, Bows, Squarepusher, Kosheen, Elizabeth Frazer, Appliance could all play live on the show - and reach a wider audience.. all set to release new material in 2001.

There is a new band on Fierce Panda label called The Music that are releasing a debut single in May - across between Godspeed You Black Emperor and Six by Seven

any chance of TV apperance - no way instead we have imported bullshit pappa fucking roach and crazy cunting town

as for the most exicting new band, I forget to answer my question on another thread on ILM .. in Britain, Ashfelt - the British media ignore them !

check here for details of Ashfelt

Download the MP3 at this website Ashfe lt

music on television sucks in 2001.

and so does Steve Lamacq, NME (Those bastards at NME still have still not acknowledged The Chameleons are back in a news column !) and Xfm -- all guily of supporting generic shit, they celebrate the mediocore, the lowest common denominator, generic faddish rubbish and ignore the creatives and mavericks.

I hate the way music is presented and portrayed in so much of the British media

There is so much interesting music around - but it is the media that is killing the music by not giving it exposure !

And who would you have on it? just keep check my music weblog for ideas as 2001 unfolds DJ Martian

Is it too much to ask for one decent 90 minutes music show a week on TV that puts creativity and art before conformity and commerce?

Wake up Britain. Wake up the Media.

unlike the dj...sadly i dont have that much to write about. i like that the BOX (all rap videos all the time for 2.99 a vid (call in) has been replaced with MTV2 (usual crap with unknown bands incl.) where i live..i like the behing the music shows on VH1 and the where are they now shows..thay have a new video game show which is allright. MTV plays the same 10 videos over and over. that sucks. maybe overseas tv has a better selection or im 10 years late..oh well

NIGHT FLIGHT ruled like nothing else. That's my standard. It's funny, I never liked modern music growing up, but I loved that show. I watched it on cable as a little kid and then later a local broadcast station used to show it at 2 AM Saturday nights so my middle school Saturday night television ritual was Twin Peaks, then Saturday Night Live, then a movie, then two hours of Night Flight.

It was an odd show. It felt really underground. It was in wide syndication so surely a big company must've been behind it, but each show sort of felt like it had been snuck out in secret with the suits not even aware of it's existence. There was a smattering of new and old videos along with a lot of short films and cartoons from around the world, which, for me, made it really unpredictable and watchable. Wall to music videos can get boring, I think.

So, I think that would be the ideal. Throw some 1940's era Superman cartoons in there and put some otherwise difficult to see old and modern short films in the mix and you'd have something cool. Maybe even have the occasional theme, but don't mention it. Just let viewers notice on their own.

BET's rap city. despite the stupidity of host big tigger (especially when he enters the 'freestyle corner'), with frequently brilliant guest djs (kool dj red alert, dj len, tony touch, etc) and totally random guest artists (eightball and mjg one day, beatnuts the next, krs-one got next - of course, all these artists have videos in current rotation, another great thing about the show) it's very great. plus, sometimes they'll take the day off and just show four or five 'ol school jams' in a row, allowing you to see somewhat overlooked non-old school classics like '93 til infinity' and 'electric relaxation' again (or for the first time, seeing as how they weren't exactly overplayed the first time around). lots of other treats, like birthday announcements (happy belated, biz markie!) and sporadic discussions of hiphop culture, and you have the best music show on tv for a person who doesn't have m2. represent.

Bring back Normski - the first series of Dance Energy changed my life. Snub TV was good - but then so was 'indie' at that time. VH-1 and MTV2 are not my thing - I agree with Mark about prime time TV after the stunning deployment of Tindersticks in 'Second Sight'.

I liked it when all you had to do to get on 'The Tube' was wear black and get some art college mate ( usually called Martin ) to do a video of yourself and best mate walking through an industrial wasteland to the sound of a dodgy sequenced synth + beatbox dirge.

Weirdly enough I just ran into MY art-college mate Martin yesterday, for the first time in eight years. He and his buddies did exactly that for their band Circle of Shit: made a scratchy video and got it on the Tube. They were proto-grunge though (and also I think they renamed themselves Circle of Shame — what a sellout! And all for nothing, as video and band were rubbish anyway).

usually i hate dj martian's self- aggrandizing longwinded posts, but the using the term 'crazy cunting town' is genius. i just thought i'd point that out.

Wow... Night Flight... I used to watch that in the States. Wasn't that the program where they first showed things like that punk rock touring movie? What was it called, "Another State Of Mind" or something? It was all about Social Distortion doing a DIY tour and staying with Minor Threat and stuff like that. Wow.

Can I also just say 120 Minutes, back in the mid-80s, when they still threw in a lot of genuinely cool stuff in with all the Depeche Mode and Cure videos?

Oh, and U68 or whatever it was called. It was a cable station in NYC, does anyone else remember it? It used to do this two or three hour rotating tape over and over, so you knew when your favourite videos were coming up, and tape them. They played a lot of stuff like the first JAMC album and Cocteau Twins mixed in with all the rest of the putrid 80s stuff.

None of this stuff is pop, though, is it? I always liked my pop mixed with twisted stuff in old skool Smash Hits stylee.

imagine something like the jo whiley show, but with a presenter who isn't thick, and who showcase min 1 new band every week (not necessarily london-based either) along with the already-there type stuff. That would do me.

x0x0

Not true that 'everyone loves Ant & Dec'. I have seen them and I think they're rubbish, and so is everything on that programme that I saw them on, which is also rubbish.

But it is the usual Foxy address this time ...

Next: the Pinefox's 100-page dissertation on why the people he knew at school who listened to Gary Davies's Bit in the Middle are inherently genetically inferior to himself, and are automatically incapable of reaching any higher level than working at the cosmetics counter in Boots. They're already calling him the Charles Murray of indiepop criticism, y'know.

I don't know about you, but I have a lot of respect for people who work behind the counter at Boots. I think they do a job which is, as far as I can tell, difficult. It may even be essential. Quite possibly it might be glamorous too. Yes, that I can certainly imagine.

'Genetics' is a subject I would never presume to talk about, assuming it exists.

Since we're talking generalisations and assumptions, I'm interested in Robin's selection of the *cosmetics* counter at Boots which is almost invariably staffed by young women - do I detect some projection/fetishisation re. the stereotyped young female pop fan going on, RC? Nowadays Gary Davies would be playing Crazy Town anyway.

Can we - and should we - just take statements of taste as statements of taste without inferring a wider social context?

Sorry if I offended you, Pinefox. I was just a little agitated at the time and created a "personal fantasy" around an extreme caricature which I'd created in my mind (something I do a lot). The Charles Murray comparison was offensive; I apologise.

Tom, I didn't mention the cosmetics counter for any fetishistic reasons. I think I just mentioned it because it was a cliche of where "shallow" pop fans worked in the litany of NME / MM, not something I ever bought into myself, just something I was reminded of when thinking of indiekid snobbery. Actually I specifically remembered a letter in the MM which suggested that Louise Wener was so talentless that she should go and work on the cosmetics counter in Boots (this was when Sleeper were scarily popular) and recalled it, but it's probably a use of subconscious cultural cliche in slightly half-cocked parody of somebody else.

I mentioned Gary Davies simply because his persona, and the music he played in the 80s, embodied everything that Smiths fans tended to define themselves as "above" and "superior to", and the Pinefox seems to be very much of that indie generation (not a criticism). As you once pointed out yourself, Tom, "Panic" is more about his ilk of DJ than it's about soulboy DJs.

There were two things I meant to say about Pop on TV.

1. One of the flaws with Jo Whiley's show, it seemed to me, was the editing. When the conversation was chopped up like that, you were never going to get the flow of an interesting discussion developing. Then again, maybe it would have been even more dismal unedited. But I do kind of think that discussion progs like that need to just let the cameras roll, and let things develop.

2. I think that BBC docus on pop have been quite good. I'm thinking esp. of Walk On By, which is nearing its end as we speak. It hasn't always lived up to its claim to being about 'songs' - I would have liked more about the process of writing, fewer shots of screaming Beatle fans that we've all seen before - but I do think that it occasionally actually taught me something. I'd never even *heard* of Anita O'Day before.

Top Of The Pops moves to a Sunday and amalgamates elements of TOTP and TOTP2 in the process:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1362451,00.html

thoughts, one and all?