Reminder: Melissa/ Radiohead on BBC 2/ Later

This is a 148-page magazine ! too much to scan surely !

(Yeah, I watched the whole thing to be sad indie fanboy over Pajo and Sweeney and tune out the overwrought overguitared overflanged over-bloody-Corganed dirge they were plodding through. Mock me, I don't care. Much.)

Was Melissa standing on the right? Next to the keyboard playing guy?

why wasn't it just called the radiohead show - 4 songs, glad there wasn't anyone else good on it.

PAT METHENY - man, you fkn wasted it.

I only listened to the first radiohead song (watched the rest of later with the sound turned down), and listened to other stuff instead. its indie rock etc etc.

you would think it would not be too difficult to have a 90 minute diverse music show a week [on all 3 networks competing against each other], without waffle and wacky bullshit ala c4 or the dullness of most of the music on Later.

The Tube, Whistle Test in the 80s were far from perfect - but they were a lot better than the slop and shoddy rubbish music TV in the late 80s, 90s and this decade.

and yeh the recent Whistle Test Years show was a bit of a revelation - putting bands like Gang Of Four and an early Adam Ant on for example, both sounded more unpredictable and vaguely exciting than whatever you see on...well there isn't even an equivalent today thats how bad it is

i think there should be a Later with Jools clone except minimal presenter and audience coverage (more like the last series of Jo Whiley basically) - keep the acts performing all in the same studio as thats always pretty cool. either combine this with elements of Jo Whiley whereby there are also artists in the studio talking bollocks/having interesting discussion...cut to features, interviews and new videos...try and focus on music that is not getting much attention elsewhere or at least not as much as it should i guess. funnily enough this sounds pretty close to the previous two formats of the Jo Whiley show which i really enjoyed watching despite the focus on loads of shite acts and irrelevant issues. a missed opportunity basically.

Did Later used to be better 6-8 eight years ago or was I just more easily impressed? Did it get less interesting just because Jools got older and the BBC became ever more obsessed with safeness, or did the White Room (which I thought was pretty good but I guess nobody else here did) force it to get blander so as not to overlap? Why did the White Room stop anyway, not enough viewers?

music on television suffers greatly from the sense of it always being the "last medium to know"

i think melissa must be in this shot. black and white kimono? just to the right of the keyboards in this picture?

radiohead from 2001 was on immediately afterwards on bbc4 and they get a mention in a forthcoming totp2 episode for the 18th.

andy

they are also on radio 1's lamacq tomorrow from 8 (bst)

andy

I think what happens is it enforces Jools Holland's view of music as a craft and all musicians having that in common regardless of genre. So respect for musicianship, and music as a 'common language'. That's the central aesthetic/tenet and artists appearing choose (or are forced) to conceal any dislike they may have for other musics. Actually Holland's view is fairly common among musicians so it's pretty much voluntary I'd say. It's like when Pete Townshend's father (big band musician Cliff Townshend) took him to see Bill Haley & the Comets and remarked to his son 'hmm..not bad...'

the key phrase here is 'all being interviewed'. was disappointed by the lack of music by the above-mentioned although the talk of the valve sound system was interesting. maybe if these things were 30 minutes long rather than just 10...

andy

Another good show a while back (just for the bands they covered) was that Barfly thing on Channel 4. Actually what's happened to 4 music now? there doesn't seem to be anything decent on wednesday nights.