Mad House

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When I tell people where I work & what I do for a living, they generally respond either with, "ooh, I have a friend who works at the BBC, they're in News Online perhaps you know them?", or "why on Earth did you erase all those Pete & Dud shows/Syd Barrett on Top Of The Pops/Madhouse On Castle Street...?" To which I respond with

Comments

[catsgomiaow]

You work at the BBC!? Do you know mzdt? BWAHHAHA ;)

Thanks for the mp3s, I haf downloaded and will get them on the iRiver post haste! :)

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Don't know him. Does he work at the Beeb too? I have added him to my friends list.

[mzdt]

he's a c*nt. he won't add you back... ;-)

[oneofthose]

It was a frustrating programme. But Peggy Seeger and Martin Carthy (who had somehow remembered what it was like to play with Bob Dylan, when only a few years ago he'd been swearing blind he hadn't ever played with Bob Dylan till someone showed him a photo of the two of them onstage together) made it sort of worth the endless irrelevant archive footage of snow (though I did like the bit when the man fell over in the snow). Perhaps what had happened was some people had made a film about the snow they had in 1962 and someone at the television place said "No, no one wants to watch a documentary about old snow. They want documentaries about Bob Dylan. Go away and don't come back till you have one."

[small_circle]

There was the kernel of a fantastic half-hour programme in there (incidentally, the programme appeared to run 15 minutes longer than its scheduled 50 minutes). The interviews were OK, but they should have been longer and more structured, rather than throwing them up in the air & seeing where they landed. More time should have been given over to the pursuit & restoration of the tapes (or lack of them), and why the originals were destroyed (people still can't get their heads round this). The reconstruction attempted towards the end was good too, they should have had a little more of that.

[mzdt]

Well, at least we know it wasn't one of Dione's programmes - did you know she's off on maternity leave?

[small_circle]

I didn't, no. Gosh.
I'm fairly matey with the programme's film researcher, I'll have a word with him...

[oldnarkoverian]

The winter of 1962-3 was bloody cold. We swiped a minimax thermometer from the physics lab over one weekend and put it in the dormitory, and a room with 6 15-year-olds registered a minimum of 16 Fahrenheit. This wasn't Inverness, either, it was Colchester.

There was another BBC play that Dylan sang over. This would have been 1963. Written by Troy Kennedy Martin & starring Ben Carruhers, it was titled, I think, "The Man Without Papers". I remember the play better than the Dylan song (Jack O'Diamonds).

[small_circle]

Ah yes. I have it on the first Fairports LP.
(A bit of googling later....) tx 6/6/65. Doesn't look like he was actually *in* The Man Without Papers, but would be worth seeing nonethelesss. it's probably been erased, then...

The programme did convey the fact that it was a bitterly cold winter almost *too* well, but I was expecting more than a weather report.

Wow! A Judee Sill fan! Mind if I add you?

[oldnarkoverian]

"A Judee Sill fan!"

Not when she was alive. I only heard the one song and couldn't get past my pedantry - Jesus wasn't a crossmaker, he was a proper chippy. Any bodger could knock up a cross.

Then Bob Brainen on WFMU.org started playing her demos.

> Mind if I add you?

B M G. Not there's ever much happening.

Fugu tracks

[anonymous]

Thanks a lot for posting those Harvey. I'd be most grateful if you could offer details in due course of how to purchase the album in/from the UK.

Cheers - Francis.

[fatsothewombat]

Also, the thing is there's so much stuff that the BBC *did* keep that is never repeated, not been released on DVD, and not ever likely to be that they might as well have been burnt.

[small_circle]

Well, like I said, this stuff was made to be watched once (or maybe twice) and then forgotten about, because it was such a new medium. You didn't need to dwell on what had just been transmitted; programme makers were coming up with great new ideas all the time, and being given the freedom to actually make them.

Anything you're looking for particularly?

[fatsothewombat]

This is the thing. Much was only ever intended to be ephemeral. And as well as much not being repeated, there's probably very little interest amongst the public at large when it comes to even watching the stuff. They'll have their flash widescreen plasma TVs and on comes something in black & white with bars at the right and left and before you know it *bosh*; they'll have turned over to the latest Pop Idol clone.

And yes, many things I'd love to see, ranging from the 50s through 80s!