Radio 4 – ‘Ziggy Stardust came from Isleworth’

For the next seven days you can listen again to this little radio gem. Radio 4 tackles the influence upon David Bowie’s well-known Ziggy Stardust persona of the now largely forgotten 1950s-60s rocker Vince Taylor. Oral testimony from those who worked with and knew Taylor is used to construct a narrative which takes us on a detour off the highway and into a fascinating little byway of British rock. The story is conveyed with wit, intelligence, sympathy, and no hint of nostalgic indulgence. 10/10.

Festival of post-1945 footage

I’m very aware that things have been quiet round here recently, but I hope that normal service will be resumed in 2009.

Earlier in this year, however, I spent a lot of time putting together a variety of clips from YouTube (and/or the BFI and BBC) as additional teaching material for the QMUL Level 1 course ‘The Road From 1945: Britain Since the Second World War’.  My supervisor, Dan Todman of Trenchfever, hit upon the idea (excellent, I think) of a new blog consisting of primary film, televisual and musical sources to complement the other course documents and teaching materials. Although comments are not enabled on the Road from 1945 blog, we would be interested to hear any reactions through the comments which you can post here. 

As we explain on this page, the clips are categorized chronologicaly and cross-referenced thematically.  I was responsible for most of the material which might be of particular interest to Window Smashers: on The Sixties; the 1970s; the 1980s; Music; Cultural History; Political History and Devolution (or, more accurately, the non-English parts of the UK since the late 1960s). 

I’d appreciate any feedback on the the choices of clips, the passages I have written to contextualize them, and the questions I’ve posed to get the students thinking.

Steady as she goes, Sunny Jim

Here are two interesting quotes from the 16th June 2008 edition of BBC Radio Four’s 1968 Day by Day series. As well as offering insights into the generational shifts of the time, they are also excellent examples of the distinctive rhetorical style of James Callaghan.

The then Home Secretary spoke (using what Anthony Howard once described beautifully as his ‘Dixon of Dock Green’ mode) to The World This Weekend about the ongoing student protests in Britain and abroad. The first quote could (as so often with Callaghan) be described as ‘avuncular’. I’m undecided about the adjective which best describes the second:

“I think some of the student leaders are thoughtful, idealistic people who have something to contribute to society…I think they’re all more self-confident these days than we used to be. They’re more self-confident perhaps because they’ve got greater financial independence than we used to have. But although more self-confident I doubt whether they’re any more mature.”

“I think Mr Tariq Ali is a spoiled, rich playboy who the medium of mass communication has elevated to a distinction that a squalid nuisance doesn’t really command.”

‘Tis Mr. Hendrix’ “quintessential psychedelic track”, my liege

The blogosphere thanks Gladys Hinton for solving the riddle of the BBC’s Medieval Purple Haze. The brilliant arrangement is the work of Tam Nightingale. You can read more about it and download it here.

I’ve been trying to figure out which musical form Jimi’s opus now most closely resembles (such are the kinds of questions that keep me awake at night). My best guess is that it has been turned into something that could almost be called a Rigaudon. It can’t be a Galliard, Gigue or Saltarello because it is in duple (ie, 4/4) time, and it can’t be a Gavotte or Bourree because it starts on the first beat of the bar, not with an anacrusis (i.e., on the up-beat or in the middle of the bar). But then, it could almost be a Tambourin because the Tef is so prominent (I’d never heard of a Tef either, but the BBC link explains). I’m racking my brain for the catch-all Medieval/early-Baroque term for ‘dance’ (form unspecified), in the same way that ayre/air can simply mean ‘tune’. Any musicologists out there?

If all of this has turned you on to shawms and rebecs, here’s a site which will enlighten you further. Bladder Pipe, anyone? I’m off to put my Virginals through a wah-wah.

In the air

I’m pleased that the Broadway opening of Hair at the Biltmore Theatre on 29th April has been noted in Radio 4′s 1968: Day by Day. According to John Tusa, ‘Broadway’s defences crumble[d]‘ as the ‘first Rock Musical’ arrived after playing Off-Broadway for six months. (Not only that, Sir John: Hair was the first theatre piece ever to transfer from Off- to On-Broadway.) However, while it’s great to hear a burst of Nina Simone, the rather clumsy statement ‘at [Hair's] heart: Nina Simone’s classic – Ain’t Got No…I Got Life‘ could give the erroneous impression that she wrote the song. It was Gerome Ragni, James Rado and Galt MacDermot’s ‘classic’ before it was ‘hers’.

Forty years and one day later, Albert Hoffman, the man who invented LSD, died. He was 102. He must have been doing something right.

Forty years and two days later, the city formerly known as ‘Swinging’ London seems inclined, on May Day, to elect as its Mayor a man who does a very convincing impersonation of an imbecile – which, of course, he can’t be because he was ‘educated’ at Eton and Balliol. And it just doesn’t get any better than that, does it? If, forty years on, so many caps can still willingly be doffed at a pig’s bladder on a stick, did 1968 change anything…?

Demographics and intertextuality

As the title of this post suggests, I’ve been wrestling with a lot of theoretically-dense stuff recently. (Some of it could more accurately be described as ‘merely’ theoretical; some as ‘merely’ dense – but that’s another story.) Perhaps that’s why ‘demographics’ and ‘intertextuality’ pop into my head every time I hear the excellent trailer music for the BBC’s upcoming Medieval series. This cracking version of Hendrix’ Purple Haze tops even that by the Kronos Quartet. It takes a lot for a musical joke to make me repeatedly laugh out loud, but this one is so brilliantly observed and performed (I know not by whom) that it does the trick every time.

But the combination of Hendrix + irony + psychedelic-cum-Medieval imagery + the pack-shot appeal to ‘take a trip into the Medieval mind’ also makes very clear which demographic sector BBC Four is targeting. While I don’t know much about Medieval History (as Sam Cooke could have said, but didn’t) it might – just – encourage me to tune in (and ‘turn on’?)

If you’re feeling trippy, I will be posting soon on two audacious and highly informative cultural/musical texts which are high on my playlist at the moment. I first discovered Deep Purple’s 1969 Concerto for Group and Orchestra in 1987, when it could not have been more unfashionable and maligned. I discovered Zachariah: The First Electric Western (George Englund, USA, 1971) much more recently, when scouring editions of Time Out from the early 1970s. Jim’s Reviews rather over-plays the homoerotic subtext of the film, but does offer an interesting and perceptive reading of what it rightly summarizes as a ‘surreal and sometimes moving rock-musical Western’. Zachariah is, like the Concerto, an extraordinary, fascinating and very historically-specific piece of hybrid art. I watched it for the first time recently in a state of flu-induced, Benylin and Sudafed-inspired sleep-deprivation in the early hours. This put me, I think, in a similar psychotropic state as those who made it. But it also works in the middle of the day without chemical assistance.

I recommend them both, for various reasons which I shall blog about anon.

“What have you got, 1968, that makes you so damned superior?”*

Image (from London Shaftesbury Theatre production): http://www.michaelbutler.com/hair/ holding/photographs/hair/images/London5.jpg

[*The title of this post is a quote from Hair. In a debate amongst the generations, Claude, the hero, is asked 'what have you got, 1968, that makes you so damned superior....and gives me such a headache?' He replies: 'well if you really want to know, 1948....', then launches into the number 'I Got Life' (made famous by Nina Simone, amongst others). Later versions of the prompt script from the London production reveal that this reference was updated during the five-year run of the show. Thus the line later became, for example : 'what have you got, 1971.....well if you really want to know 1951....']

I mentioned below that there was a comment in a recent BBC Radio 4 programme which I found somewhat dismissive, unjustified, and all too typical of the ‘canonical’ view of the key case studies of my thesis: the ‘Rock Operas’ of the late 1960s and early 1970s. In ‘London’, the first episode of the series 1968 – The Year of Revolutions, presented by John Tusa and first broadcast on Tuesday 18th March at 9am, the playwright (and, generally, astute social commentator) David Edgar discussed the state of theatre during that year. So far, so good. Surely, I thought to myself, Hair, (the undisputed British theatrical event of the year, which opened one day after theatre censorship ended in September) will finally warrant the recognition it deserves?

And lo, we got a burst of the original London cast singing Aquarius, while Edgar told us that the Lord Chamberlain putting down his blue pencil for the last time resulted in ‘this sudden whoosh of work, I mean things like the musical Hair which knew it was coming and wanted to be the first on the block. But much more importantly all kinds of radical theatre work from America in particular but also from Europe which just couldn’t have been performed in Britain which of course came much more in 1969 and subsequent years and transformed the British theatre.’

Mmmm.

ChristieBooks Videos

[Update, 5 February 2009: after rising costs meant that the archive almost disappeared from the web, I'm happy to say that ChristieBooks films are now hosted here. The links below are now redundant, but the videos are being re-encoded and uploaded gradually. Hopefully all the material I mention below will become available again on the new site in due course.]

I’ve been checking out just some of the many excellent films now being hosted by ChristieBooks via Brightcove.TV. While particularly strong on the history of anarchism (often in the context of Spain or Latin America), the subject-matter is highly eclectic. There’s a lot for us hispanophiles, including footage and newsreels from the Spanish Civil War and material on the wonderful Chilean singer Victor Jara (one of the first victims of Pinochet’s 1973 coup, and a hero of mine since I first conjugated the verb ‘recordar’). But there really is something for everyone with an interest in twentieth-century and contemporary history. I recommend a leisurely browse through the whole menu.

Here are direct links to just a handful that particularly caught my eye:

BBC Radio 4: ’1968 – Myth or Reality?’

Let’s not be churlish in advance (an easy thing to do, as we drown in simplistic Channel 5-style clip-shows): it is difficult to deny that the BBC’s extensive coverage of the events of 1968 looks extremely impressive and exciting. We have all summer to judge whether they succeed in answering the question posed by the umbrella title for the season of programmes. The depth and quality of the analysis remains to be seen, but the range of issues to be covered is very commendable indeed.

The 1968: Day by Day segment looks particularly interesting. Hats off to the production team (including Historical Consultant Dominic Sandbrook) for giving so much information on the website about sources and editorial policy.

Set your bookmarks/’Listen Again’ links/videos/BBC IPlayer, etc. It could be a long, hot summer. Here’s hoping it is also an informative one.

BBC – ‘Classic Britannia’

Another TV heads up (but decent TV is like buses – none for ages, then all at once). Here’s a link to the webpage of Classic Britannia; a three-part series on post-1945 British music. Episode 1 focused on Britten and Walton; and also Peter Maxwell Davies, Harrison Birtwistle and others such as John Ogdon who were at the Royal Northern (Manchester) College of Music together in the 1950s.

I thought it was brilliant – intelligent, creative use of footage, good analysis and excellent oral history contributions. Whether you’re an expert or a novice in ‘contemporary music’, this is great ‘cultural history’ TV (in the broadest – and best – sense). Good sample clips on the website too. This Friday we have, of course, ‘swinging London’ in the 1960s-70s – Boulez, Du Pre, Barenboim, Previn, etc.