Tony Palmer's "All You Need Is Love": Do I Really Want To Watch All 14 Hours Of It?

Or can somebody tell me which episodes are particularly good and which can be safely skipped?

For those of you who don't know it, this was a program that aired on the BBC back in the mid-seventies that promised nothing less than to tell "The Story Of Popular Music" and all its various genres up until that point. I've got a library copy and I've watched a few episodes over the weekend. While there is some interesting stuff in there, at this point in time the whole thing is a little slow-going and dated and annoying in many places- for instance it seems that Fela is viewed as some kind of bad rock imitation, a kind of cargo-cult artist. The ragtime episode is interesting mainly because it lest Eubie Blake do a lot of the talking from his point of view. Because they interviewed both Hoagy Carmichael and Irving Caesar I'm hopeful about the Tin Pan Alley episode, but I'm kind of cringing about what I will see in, say, the country music episode.

Here is a review from Bob Stanley that seems to be OTM: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/may/01/popandrock

Perhaps Comstock Carabinieri can be of help.

IIRC, this show is pretty dated w/lots of rockism galore. Twas the time I suppose.

I remember the final episode where the 'future' was being debated, basically Labelle's "Lady Marmalade" with "oh no" type 'disturbed' strings overlaid.

Can anyone confirm this, and what it all 'meant' ?

I might be wrong, but I think some of the Bangs interview clips that have survived (e.g., him talking about Roxy Music) originate here.