Archive for the 'sixties' Category

This fly-on-the-wall documentary was one of about three programmes that made up the BBC Four so-called Beatles Week. It was filmed by Albert and David Maysles, and is a reworking of an 81-minute film they made in 1964 called What’s Happening! The Beatles in the USA.
Some of the footage is familiar from the Anthology series, [...]


I see that the perfect christmas gift this year for a Guardian reader is The Beatles’ remastered box set in mono, a snip at just £200 (less 2p). That’s only £15.38 per disc, fact fans, a mere 200% of the standard price for an album on iTunes. For the privilege of hearing the mono versions [...]


Apollo Talk

02Jul09

I enjoyed reading this long article by Tim Radford in the Guardian about the first moon landing.
What I *love* about our media industry is the way they can’t actually wait for the actual anniversary (20 July), probably because they’ll be going on holiday that weekend.
I was allowed to stay up to watch it on [...]


A blast from the past

Residents of Buckingham were queuing up today outside the Tesco Express on the high street in order to spit in the doorway on their way to the new Waitrose, which has replaced the defunct Budgens in the Meadow Walk shopping centre.
Rumours had been rife for over a year that we’d be [...]


I mentioned Levon Helm the other day in the same breath as Ringo Starr: two great drummers who played for the singer and the song. I love Helm’s minimalist style, where what he leaves out is just as important as what he puts in.
His drums are an essential part of Dirt Farmer, his first solo [...]


Popping Out

19Jan08

BBC4’s Pop On Trial series has been moderately entertaining, if confusing. There seems to be a loose aggregation of related programmes, but (typically of the BBC these days) they don’t seem to be on at regular times.
The Pop Britannia strand might even have been useful in class, except Pete Townshend kept swearing, which would amuse [...]


Born to be Bob

15Dec07

Television situation comedies are the topic for the 2008 GCSE Media Studies exam, which means I’ve been trawling through the archives looking for good, bad and indifferent examples to discuss in class.
It’s fair to say that the sitcom is in crisis, and has been for a number of years. If the likes of My Family [...]


Last month, George Harrison’s solo albums were made available on the iTunes store, meaning that you can now buy Beatles solo stuff on iTunes, with the Beats themselves coming next year, it says here.
This news reminded me of a game Roy and I played a few years ago: proposing a track listing for an imaginary [...]


The Beatles’ Help! is coming out on DVD. I only realised this after watching the 30-minute “making of” special feature docu on BBC2 this week.
Long overdue. Nonsense plot, but fantastic photography and their best film in terms of music (and music videos).
All this and Eleanor Bron in pink leather.
====
p.s. It’s on telly this weekend. [...]


When I was 19, I wrote a novel called The Obald, about a secret world-within-the-world, a hidden organisation that was able to keep tabs on everyone, and knew everything about you, including your shoe size. The Obald was both an abstract idea and a physical place, reached through those strange unlabeled doorways that you often [...]