Focal Neil Nigel Planer's trip on BBC4 TV 3am sat

[david44]

Who better tha Nigel Planer hippy Neil from the Young One's to present


The rise and fall of arguably the most visionary period in British music history, when between 1965 and 1970 a handful of dreamers re-imagined pop music. The psychedelic era produced some of the most ground-breaking music ever made, pioneered by young improvising bands like Soft Machine and Pink Floyd, then quickly taken to the charts by the likes of the Beatles, Procol Harum, Small Faces and Moody Blues.

This film, narrated by Nigel Planer, features contributions and freshly shot performances from artists who lived and breathed the psych revolution

Category: General Music/Ballet/Dance

Director: Sam Bridger
Executive Producer: Mark Cooper
Producer: Sam Bridger

Cast
Narrator Nigel Planer (IMDB)

BBC4
10:00pm-11:00pm (1 hour )Fri 23 Oct
(Subtitles) Starts in 1 hour(s) 55 minutes
More on Psychedelic Britannia

Read more at Psychedelic Britannia on BBC4, Fri 23 Oct 10:00pm - Your UK TV Listings at TVGuide.co.uk

[david44]

If you cme down this far you may enjoy

[david44]

Powis Sq Notting Hill Gate we're Mick Jagger and we haven't had our 'e'

[david44]

London was the only place to be in the 60's Stones in the Park
Grand Funk,Perfumed Garden, Buddy Rich, Paul Simon Van Morrison and Al Srweart in Bayswater, The Faces ,John Mayall

[david44]

compilation of the genre from programmes such as Colour Me Pop, How It Is, Top of the Pops and Once More with Felix. Performers include pre-rocker Status Quo, a rustic looking Incredible String band and a youthful Donovan. Plus, Bonzo Dog Doo Band, Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger and the Trinity, the Moody Blues, Joe Cocker, the Move, Procol Harum, Cream, Jimi Hendrix and the Who

Category: General Music/Ballet/Dance

Executive Producer: Mark Cooper
Producer: Stephanie McWhinnie

BBC4
11:00pm-12:00am (1 hour )Fri 23 Oct
(Subtitles) Starts in 2 hour(s) 42 minutes
More on Totally 60s Psychedelic Rock at the BBC
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Read more at Totally 60s Psychedelic Rock at the BBC on BBC4, Fri 23 Oct 11:00pm - Your UK TV Listings at TVGuide.co.uk

[BaitongBoy]

London was the only place to be in the 60's

Haight-Ashbury was up there, too...


but: "England swings like a pendulum do"...Written and performed by a Yank, originally....

[david44]

London was the only place to be in the 60's

Haight-Ashbury was up there, too...


but: "England swings like a pendulum do"...Written and performed by a Yank, originally....

Touche correct, Filmore West and the whole Kool Aid gang

Paul Simon penned Homeward Bound sitting at a railroad station on the Mersey riviera at Widnes or equally lovely Runcorn contend on a clear day you cannot see the Vodka factory in Warrington

One of local lasses shacked up with him and Al Stewart somewhere of Portobello Rd near the IT place

In the capital Stewart had the good fortune to share a flat with one Paul Simon, still young but already with the album Wednesday Morning, 3am under his belt. ‘I could hear him writing songs through the wall. I guess I was the first person in the world to hear ‘Richard Cory’. I was always uncertain about how to construct a song and by paying attention when Paul was finishing off ‘Homeward Bound’, for example, I thought: “Okay, I think I’ve got the hang of this now.”’

By 1967, in releasing an album Stewart had achieved an ambition he’d previously considered ‘unthinkable.’ However, he is scathing of Bedsitter Images, adjudging it ‘a mess.’ He explains: ‘Judy Collins had recorded an album with an orchestra called In My Life and it was beautiful. Roy Guest who was managing me talked CBS into making a record with me with an orchestra, which I should never have done. I was totally out of my depth. It was a whole mish-mash of different styles. The songs weren’t that great, either. I learnt from it because the next one I did with Fairport Convention as the backing band, and that sounded a lot better.’

AlStewart-hi-es-Color3Stewart is referring to Love Chronicles (1969), which was, on its 18-minute title track, also graced by Jimmy Page. In said title track, he became the first artist to use a variant of the f-word on a record, although he says he wasn’t aware of the milestone when he wrote it.

‘It seemed to want to be part of the song,’ he reasons. ‘How else do you express that sentiment: “It was less like fucking and more like making love?” It did get me on the front page of the Sunday People.’

Stewart’s tenure as a solo artist could well have ended after Zero She Flies (1970). He reveals, ‘After my third album, CBS hadn’t renewed my contract and I thought at that point of going off and joining a band. There were a couple of bands I had in mind, one of which was Matthews Southern Comfort. There was a delightful folk duo from Ireland called Tir na nOg but I wasn’t Irish and I didn’t really fit. CBS came back to me and said: “Can we have another three albums?”’

With the album Past, Present and Future, (1973), personal and professional trauma led Stewart to deliberately redefine himself as an artist. ‘The girl I wrote the song ‘Love Chronicles’ about, we had a breaking up which left me extremely depressed for a while and I made an album all about the break-up called Orange and got pretty much the first negative reviews that I’d had.

I looked around and thought: “What else can I write about?” I’ve always read lots of history. I thought: “I’m going to write an album of the twentieth century in history. Probably no one will buy it but that doesn’t matter. I don’t ever want to write another love song.” The record outsold the first four records put together so I thought: “We’re onto something here.”’

Stewart had stumbled on his calling. His back catalogue is now studded with songs about real-life, bygone battles, administrations, admirals, sailors and explorers. ‘It just works for me,’ he shrugs. ‘I think there’s room for one historical folk-rock artist in the world and I just happen to have the job at the moment.’ He concedes, though, that his trademark gentle voice is sometimes not suited to epic fare like the ten-minute ‘Nostradamus’: ‘I’ve always wanted to sing like Roger Daltrey.

There was another breakthrough with 1975’s Modern Times. ‘That was the first proper record,’ he says, attributing much of this to his new producer. ‘Alan Parsons didn’t just record one acoustic guitar track. He would overdub it four times or eight times so you had this huge acoustic guitar sound.’

The next leap forward was a quantum commercial one. The multi-platinum success of Year of the Cat (1976) took Stewart into the ranks of the superstar. He recalls, ‘Year of the Cat was this irresistible force. I never had had a hit single. This was the seventh album. So it was just remarkable. You never see these things coming.’

Although the album was a hit in his home country, the title track climbed no higher than no. 31 in the singles chart. ‘In England they used a shorter edit,’ Stewart recollects. ‘The album track was six minutes 40 seconds and the single in the rest of the world was cut down to four minutes 20 seconds. RCA still thought that was too long so they did a hatchet-job edit to get it down to about three minutes which left out all the good bits. It was a hit single in pretty much every other country from Brazil to Peru to Hong Kong to South Africa to Australia…’ Another fondly remembered part of the album is the revolutionary’s anthem ‘On the Border’.

Year of the Cat saw Stewart employ a modus operandi which, although peculiar, he has used several other times: leaving the lyrics until last. ‘It really is a tightrope walk because if for any reason you get writer’s block, you’re done. At this point we’d spent $175,000 on making all the music and I didn’t have a word of it. So I just basically sat around for three months and wrote lyrics. ‘Year of the Cat’ itself was called ‘Foot of the Stage’ when I started. It was about Tony Hancock.

For a while it was called ‘Horse of the Year’ – Princess Anne was in there somewhere. But I like the idea of being able to do rewrites and to write lyrics on radically different subjects.’

armor_110225-7209Time Passages (1978) was another very successful album, spinning off two US Top 30 singles in the title track and ‘Song on the Radio’. However, despite his admiration for Parsons and his new level of success, Stewart wasn’t completely happy about the “easy listening” path down which he was being taken. ‘I was never a big fan of saxophones,’ he reveals. ‘I thought the saxophone was a jazz instrument.

Alan Parsons insisted that we have it on Year of the Cat and it worked I suppose but I’m doing shows and I’ve got a saxophone playing in my ear and it’s an annoying noise.’ Of ‘Time Passages’, he says: ‘I was never that fond of the song. The final insult was I got into an elevator in a department store and I thought: “Oh, God – there’s a muzak version of ‘Time Passages.’” Then it dawned on me that it actually was the record and I thought: “That’s it. That’s the end. I’ve made muzak. I’ve got to get back to my roots.” So I gradually began to phase out saxophones and mid-tempo ballads.’

24 Carrots was another well-regarded effort but after that 1980 album, Stewart became considerably less prolific.

‘I took ten years off to study wine. I did do a few gigs in the 80s and two albums but my mind was elsewhere.’

Between the Wars (1995) was a departure for Stewart. ‘We thought we’d try and play 30s swing a la Django Reinhardt and see what happened if you put lyrics to it.’ It was the first of four Stewart albums on which Laurence Juber was his producer and accompanist. ‘When you talk about acoustic guitar, Laurence is about as good as it gets,’ Stewart enthuses. ‘When I first saw Bert Jansch and John Renbourn it was wonderful, but Laurence can do all of that on one guitar and make it sound like there are four of him. He would play all the lead parts and he would leave me alone to write the lyrics. In fact, the last two records we made are two of my favourites of all the records I’ve ever made, especially A Beach Full of Shells.’

Another collaboration with Juber was Down In The Cellar. This release from 2000 had a bizarre genesis. ‘A record company approached me and they wanted me to do an album of songs based around wine. I [wrote] oblique songs in which wine featured. The idea was to sell the record in the Napa Valley. Millions of tourists go there every year and it has hundreds of wine-tasting rooms. As soon as I finished it, the company went bankrupt. The album ended up not being released in America at all and it certainly didn’t get to any of the wine stores, but EMI picked it up for the UK. So it looked to the outside world as if it was just the latest Al Stewart record.’

Stewart toured the UK in October. The shows were all-acoustic except for a star-studded event at the Royal Albert Hall where he played Year of the Cat in its entirety. ‘The agency that I work through in the UK were aware of the fact that there was a big market for people coming out and playing quote-unquote classic albums from beginning to end.’

‘The Royal Albert Hall is my Achilles Heel. I’ve played there four times and two of them were two of the worst shows I’ve ever done in my life, one because I had food poisoning.’ However, he won’t be fretting that if he’s below-par he has messed up a unique concert: ‘I’ve just become totally philosophical about bad gigs. Everybody’s gonna screw up sometimes.’

Sadly, it’s not inconceivable that Uncorked (2009), Stewart’s exuberant live collaboration with Dave Nachmanoff, might be his last release of any kind. ‘When they re-open all the record stores and people start buying them again, I’ll make another one. I haven’t lost the knack of writing songs. It’s just that not enough people are buying them to make it worthwhile. I don’t mind playing new songs live but hauling a band into Capitol Studios and blowing $75,000 making a record that no one then buys, it’s outside of my budget.’

He remains admirably philosophical about this situation. ‘A lot of people that I grew up with in Bournemouth had basically a two or three year run, then they were back working for the local car company,’ he reflects. ‘The fact that I’ve made a living at it for half a century, you absolutely have no right to be ungrateful.’

Al Stewart: a multi-platinum artist no more, but evidently a nice guy forever.

Sean Eagan

He is a lovely guy and like comtemporary Rafferty underated

[Chittychangchang]

the most visionary period in British music history, when between 1965 and 1970

It all started with the end of big band music and the emergence of sub cultures such as the Teddy Boys, Rockers and Mods which was late 50's early 60's.

Elvis in the states and the early Beatles in the UK was the catalyst for the global popular musicology revolution.

Interesting era in our music history the mid to late 60's, would have loved to experience it.

[david44]

Thanks to recording you can still here the concerts live and studio albums.US had Dick Clarke and Bandbox while UK Jule box Jury and Top of the pops teeny bopper led to full legnth late night music with OGWT the forerunner to Jools Holland

All this was pre utube iTunes where LPs 8tracks cassettes and live music were the way to go and of course in Uk Radio Luxembourg under the bedclothes of every hip teenager,pop music wasnt on UK radio until late 60s!

[david44]

If you never heard whisperin Bob try and track down any OGWT show
Meantime John Peel who'd learned DJng in Texas and Johnnie Walker transformed radio

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Grey_Whistle_Test



Lennon and much more

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...htglCin8W6futY

[taxexile]

a good programme.

i particularly liked seeing arthur "i am the god of hell fire" brown.

i'd forgotten just how good he was.

[david44]

A regular on the Old Profanity Showboat in Bristol in the last year same old show.
We played there once in winter of 1983 so fucking cold ice insode the place, but a very good evening Viv Stanshall,Portishead precursors and I think some of the Bullit line up a kinda white Jazz Warriors.

Better than Walt Disney on ice,

just an old bloke in a freezer

[Perota]

No torrent ?

[Sumbitch]

Haight-Ashbury was up there, too...

Green owed. Unsure how David could have forgotten that. He started a thread on SF.

Also, much of the rest of California was definitely where it was at, including the beaches of Southern California, from Orange County to the Mexican border and the rest of the Bay area, from Santa Cruz to the Russian River.

[david44]

True yet the Haight scene was later the bluesbreakers Stones were early 60s by 1966 Bridger Riley and Anglea Flowers had deveoped op art in London,St martins College of Art Chesleas School Slade and Release were all active Red Mole International Times
There was a lot of cross over with US Frnace Gremany as today.

9/11 1967 the Magical Mystery tour headed west from London

The Birth of Psychedelic London | Red Bull Music Academy ...
daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2013/.../the-birth-of-psychedelic-londo...
Jun 18, 2013 - The prime London psychedelic period – roughly 1965 to the end of 1967

There was even an 1980s revival and again in 2008-

From the Observer archive, 13 September 1981: Soho?s psychedelic revival | News | The Guardian

[Sumbitch]

True yet the Haight scene was later the bluesbreakers Stones were early 60s by 1966 Bridger Riley and Anglea Flowers had deveoped op art in London,St martins College of Art Chesleas School Slade and Release were all active Red Mole International Times
There was a lot of cross over with US Frnace Gremany as today.

9/11 1967 the Magical Mystery tour headed west from London

The Birth of Psychedelic London | Red Bull Music Academy ...
daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2013/.../the-birth-of-psychedelic-londo...
Jun 18, 2013 - The prime London psychedelic period – roughly 1965 to the end of 1967

There was even an 1980s revival and again in 2008-

Yeah, I definitely missed that scene. My bad, if it wasn't because I was a dependent (14-17 years old) during that period.

But "the end of 1967" is significant because of the

Protests of 1968

The protests of 1968 comprised a worldwide escalation of social conflicts, predominantly characterized by popular rebellions against military and bureaucratic elites, who responded with an escalation of political repression.

In capitalist countries, these protests marked a turning point for the civil rights movement in the United States, which produced revolutionary movements like the Black Panther Party. In reaction to the Tet Offensive, protests also sparked a broad movement in opposition to the Vietnam War all over the United States and even into London, Paris, Berlin and Rome. Mass socialist movements grew not only in the United States but also in most European countries. The most spectacular manifestation of this were the May 1968 protests in France, in which students linked up with wildcat strikes of up to ten million workers, and for a few days the movement seemed capable of overthrowing the government. In many other capitalist countries, struggles against dictatorships, state repression, and colonization were also marked by protests in 1968, such as the beginning of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the Tlatelolco massacre in Mexico City, and the escalation of guerrilla warfare against the military dictatorship in Brazil.

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_of_1968

[Sumbitch]

David PM'd me to remind me of the forum's strict policy re: long term memory loss and time travel apparently. To wit:

If u remember the 60s u weren't really there

What this seems to mean is that, if you were there, you were too fooked up on the drugs to effectively keep the memory alive in your long term memory bank. A logical conclusion, until you ask yourself: where are the 60s? I had no idea it was a place and, therefore, a point on a map.

I think Davis Knowlton and I would make great space-time travelers to this particular decade, wherever it is: Davis to report on the huge amount of details and trivia he was able to retain during his first extensive travel about there. And me to show the irony, and lost opportunities never realized but without the exact geographical points where these things never happened.

Well, David, we'll leave it in your court now. But please rsvp those airline tix for two a.s.a.p.

[DrB0b]

Sheesh, more to life than music guys, far more. No wonder so many of you seem so limited, 90% of the last 50 years cultural events have just passed you by. How sad.

[Chittychangchang]

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”

[Sumbitch]

^ yes exactly: "the Lord sayit: yo not hip, ifeth yo no hop first and foremost. Sayit unto those who wish you would change: 'pith off.'"

[Chittychangchang]

^ How do i make that my sig?