Top of the Pops on BBC Four

[Steve Williams]

[James2001]

[VMPhil]

I'm enjoying these latest Story Of programmes but I'm a bit disappointed with the quality of the archive footage they're using. As mentioned previously they're all in 25p rather than 50i, but the actual video quality seems a lot poorer - it almost feels like they've used preview clips from an archive website or we're watching a not fully rendered version of the programme. The difference is very noticeable when you watch those 1998 BBC Choice artist compilations they've also been digging out.

Was interested to see last night the 1997 Oasis documentary Right Here, Right Now, which was first broadcast on BBC1 the night before the release of Be Here Now. I think there was similar one made for Pulp a couple of years earlier.

The 2000 Later gig was good but the audience seemed absolutely dead at points, like a 70s TOTP!

[Steve Williams]

Was interested to see last night the 1997 Oasis documentary Right Here, Right Now, which was first broadcast on BBC1 the night before the release of Be Here Now. I think there was similar one made for Pulp a couple of years earlier.

Yes, as I said in Creamguide, this Oasis doc was big news at the time, the fact there was a programme about Oasis on BBC1, even though it was at eleven o'clock in the middle of August.

I wonder what kids today make of the excitement there used to be about "our" music getting on TV. The doc included the familiar clip of Blur vs Oasis on the Six O'Clock News, and that was a huge thing*. Of course, these days pop music is on the news all the time. Same with the Britpop Now programme in the summer of 1995, that was a bloody big deal and it was on BBC2 at 7pm on a Wednesday in August, an absolutely dead slot.

Indeed I wonder if this kind of event was one contribution to the decline of Pops, because from then on pop music was regularly on all kinds of shows and in the news and so on, so Pops was no longer the only place to see these things in primetime.

* Of course Stuart Maconie once argued in Q that Cool Britannia started at 6pm on Monday 14th August 1995 when Blur vs Oasis was on the news and ended at 10pm on Wednesday 26th June 1996 when Gareth Southgate missed his penalty, which is as good a definition as anything.

I remember someone writing to the Radio Times complaining that Blur were on Pops the week the two records were out (Oasis had been on the week before) and were also on Britpop Now when Oasis weren't (as they'd turned down the chance to appear) and this was biased towards Blur and the BBC should be impartial, as if it were a real election.

[telebox2001]

I always thought Cool Britannia ended when Diana died, which I'm pretty sure was the week The Verve's "The Drugs Don't Work" came out. It was kind of Britpop's last hurrah before bubblegum bands completely dominated for a few years (Spice Girls, Boyzone, Solid Harmonie, Honeyz, Steps, S Slub 7, Precious, 911 etc)

[Steve Williams]

I always thought Cool Britannia ended when Diana died, which I'm pretty sure was the week The Verve's "The Drugs Don't Work" came out.  It was kind of Britpop's last hurrah before bubblegum bands completely dominated for a few years (Spice Girls, Boyzone, Solid Harmonie, Honeyz, Steps, S Slub 7, Precious, 911 etc)

There were some big events post-Euro 96, like Labour's election victory, but as a cultural force Britpop was a busted flush by then. Blur had already disowned it and their eponymous album in 1997 was a very conscious move away from it, and we had Noel Gallagher at 10 Downing Street and when you're hob-nobbing with the establishment then you're no longer fashionable.

There were also some big albums at the time but the likes of Radiohead and The Verve were very much post-Britpop and weren't as accessible as the jaunty pop tunes of 1995/96.

[VMPhil]

Is it just me or does it feel like there’s been a *lot* of covers on TOTP ’92 recently? I’m just watching 22/10/92 and there’s an Abba tribute group on performing a cover of an Erasure song, because Erasure had just recently had a hit with a cover of an Abba song! Maybe indicative of a slump in the pop charts at this time before Britpop.

[James2001]

I'm enjoying these latest Story Of programmes but I'm a bit disappointed with the quality of the archive footage they're using. As mentioned previously they're all in 25p rather than 50i, but the actual video quality seems a lot poorer - it almost feels like they've used preview clips from an archive website or we're watching a not fully rendered version of the programme. The difference is very noticeable when you watch those 1998 BBC Choice artist compilations they've also been digging out.

That's what happens when you're throwing away half the resolution of an SD image that wasn't too great in the first place by filmising it, then upscaling it to HD- it looks shit. Especially when you're throwing PAL artifacts on top of it. It does look particularly bad though, even by the standards of filmised SD content. Reminds me of the deleted scenes on the Red Dwarf 7 and 8 DVDs which come from low quality AVID runoffs- and have a message preceeding them to let us know that's why they look so poor. Maybe they are just using the low resolution preview files rather than going to the effort of getting the proper 576i footage.

Strangely though, the 20 seconds or so of footage they showed of the crowds at glastonbury wasn't filmised.

[James2001]

A shot of Elstree Film Studios again in the Story of 96... even with a sign saying "Elstree Film Studios" visible. Surely the researchers should be able to get it right...

[Whataday]

Is it just me or does it feel like there’s been a *lot* of covers on TOTP ’92 recently? I’m just watching 22/10/92 and there’s an Abba tribute group on performing a cover of an Erasure song, because Erasure had just recently had a hit with a cover of an Abba song! Maybe indicative of a slump in the pop charts at this time before Britpop.

That's Bjorn Again, the most famous ABBA tribute/parody group in the world. They released a single around the same time ABBA Gold was storming the album charts during the ABBA renaissance of the early 90s.

The same sort of thing happened in the late 90s when ABBA Mania came out.

[James2001]

The same sort of thing happened in the late 90s when ABBA Mania came out.

The less said about the A*Teens, the better...

[Colm]

A thought: are studio performances in these series getting filmic treatment as a means to mask or reduce the flashing/strobing lights?

Some of the clips on 'Big Hits' had adjusted levels applied to lessen these effects, to extremes I've not noticed since some of the 80s editions.

I did spot a very brief snippet of Faithless' 'Insomnia' performance during 'The Story of...' where it seemed the filmic effect appeared not to have been added...

I'm dreading the 1997 programmes when we see the chrome sets covered up bit-by-bit, among other debatable crimes under the Cowey regime.

[mumu03]

And judging by their previous coverage of 'Year Zero' and the move to Fridays, they won't offer any particularly critical or alternative perspectives on the Cowey era either. Kind of amazing when you consider that both wiped millions of viewers off of the programme's figures.

[VMPhil]

And judging by their previous coverage of 'Year Zero' and the move to Fridays, they won't offer any particularly critical or alternative perspectives on the Cowey era either. Kind of amazing when you consider that both wiped millions of viewers off of the programme's figures.

I can easily understand why they haven't done that. They're mainly supposed to be fun, entertaining, nostalgic look backs at the music of that particular year and how Top of the Pops covered it. Extra insight into the behind the scenes of the show is always welcome but understandably not the main focus, and probably of limited interest to viewers beyond us lot.

[BBCMeridian]

A thought: are studio performances in these series getting filmic treatment as a means to mask or reduce the flashing/strobing lights?

Some of the clips on 'Big Hits' had adjusted levels applied to lessen these effects, to extremes I've not noticed since some of the 80s editions.

I did spot a very brief snippet of Faithless' 'Insomnia' performance during 'The Story of...' where it seemed the filmic effect appeared not to have been added...

I'm dreading the 1997 programmes when we see the chrome sets covered up bit-by-bit, among other debatable crimes under the Cowey regime.

I thought the cowey era was the best era for Top of the Pops, until the 2003 rebrand ruined the programme.