Further to what I was talking about yesterday about the Old Grey Whistle Test being our only place to see ‘serious’ rock music, I thought today I’d look back at all the other places we might access music from time to time back in the day.
TV thought kids just wanted pop music so there were programmes to service that. One such was ‘Lift Off with Ayesha’ who was a rare bit of diversity in the early 70s presenting a programme which featured the likes of Middle of the Road and Pickettywitch but also on one memorable occasion, Black Sabbath. You watched for these rare occasions. Like one afternoon I was off school and there was a half hour of Man live from some sort of festival. I wonder what happened to that footage?
Of course there were pop programmes by Marc Bolan, Bay City Rollers and the Arrows, Marc’s show did feature some great bands. If you look at the details now, it shows the likes of Hawkwind, Steve Gibbons Band, Bowie and Thin Lizzy appeared in 1977.
Towards the end of the 70s there was Rock Goes To College and Sight and Sound In Concert, which was broadcast on the radio too. There were some great bands on them but the one that always stood out to me was Lone Star doing their deconstructed version of She Said She Said by the Beatles. But punk and new wave was all the rage so less rock bands than might have been played. I do seem to recall seeing Bruford with Allan Holdsworth playing difficult jazz-rock, which must have had a limited audience
Crawler were on and a stoned John Martyn too. ACDC’s performance was iconic. We’d never seen anything like them with Angus a ball of energy and Bon Scott strutting and preening, stripped to the waist.
Be Bop Deluxe, Steve Hillage and Rory were excellent. This was at a turning point in rock where there was conflict between the new and less new. It was quite tribal at the time, wasn’t it? I remember being disappointed when it featured the Rubinoos or the Rich Kids.
Although these programmes existed, they were few and far between and hardly comprehensive; a few crumbs to a starving kid like me.
