The Associates and Billy MacKenzie - video research

A guide to the Associates clips that I’m still looking to improve. Some are already on the DVD, but others have yet to be put on. I have YouTube links to samples of everything, although some of these clips are not the exact same copies as the ones I have so their quality is different.


THE LATE SHOW (BBC)
Live performance of “Wild and Lonely” and “Strasbourg Square”, with Tracy McLeod presenting. McLeod comments that this is the last edition before 30th April 1990, but the last edition listed at the BFI’s website (11th April) appears to be a different programme.
Quality is so-so 576i off-air recording with mono sound (given that this was 1990, it might have been broadcast in stereo), with McLeod’s links missed off. YouTube clip is low definition, progressive version of both songs in full with intros.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQc8og6M3zA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvtiAF3KKZQ

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S TUBE (Tyne Tees for Channel Four)
29th June 1984 (info from itnsource website). Off-air VHS. Interview with Muriel Gray is at lower quality than the mime of “Those First Impressions”, each being form a different part of the programme.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74ssPmpB-vU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsAcf7qew-8

STUDIO ONE IN CONCERT (Border)
21st September 1985, according to BFI. My newest version is a Daemons-style restoration with luma signal from one off-air VHS and chroma from an off-air Betamax. Set is “Breakfast”, “Message Oblique Speech”, “Those First Impressions”, “Club Country” and “Waiting for the Loveboat”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOTfym2fjLQ

STUDIO ONE (Border)
A sister programme of the above, with no data at the BFI. Comprises three interview segments of Muriel Gray interviewing Billy, with an astrologer, interspersed with three extracts from Studio One in Concert (“Breakfast”, “Club Country” and “Those First Impressions”). Some captures of this have the “striped” effect found when two interlaced fields have been resized and combined in the wrong way to make one progressive frame.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPyvAiAm9yk

RIVERSIDE (BBC)
Live performance of “Breakfast”. Again, my best version is a restoration using two different recordings. Date unknown.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8u6EgA4sJmA

ORS 85 (BBC) (possibly ORS 84 instead)
A filmed interview walking around locations in Dundee and a live studio performance of Breakfast, with Timmy Mallett doing links inbetween. Breakfast was a single in January 1985 so I’ll guess ORS 85. Date unknown.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptq6Du1QHSI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaDeylF3qmI

TOP OF THE POPS (BBC)
I can’t find a definitive list of transmission dates for these:

Party Fears Two: 25th February and 11th March 1982 OR 11th March and 25th March 1982
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZSMDaewz2A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewiMdGXs3I0

Club Country: 27th May and 10th June 1982 OR 13th May and 10th June 1982
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozEm7g0NIA0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4SYf9wocNk

18 Carat Love Affair: 12th August 1982
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krsCEr-6V5Y

Those First Impressions: 21st June 1984
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzdkX3_youM

Quality varies. Both Party Fears Two clips and Those First Impressions are so-so.

WHISTLE TEST (BBC)
The quality is pretty good for an off-air, but does anyone know a transmission date for this interview with Suzanne Smith? It was accompanied with clips from the Ronnie Scott’s concert from December 1984.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxhB1KiziWs

HOGMANAY SHOW (unknown title) (Scottish TV )
31st December 1986. Mime of Paul Haig and Billy performing “Amazing Grace” is missing its intro from Muriel Gray. I have two different copies of this – the better one has a timeclock so I use a rectangle of picture from the off-air version to cover that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOTfym2fjLQ

DON’T LOOK DOWN (Scottish TV)
Sometime in 1994. Again, my copy has mono soundtrack while it is possible that it was broadcast in stereo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2wtJCDzVu0

GLASGOW’S BIG DAY (unknown production for Channel Four)
A live performance at George Square in Glasgow city centre, recorded on May Bank holiday 1990. I have a copy of the camera footage (only the first song - “Fever In The Shadows” - was broadcast) but it’s 576p when it should be 576i.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BIChAUd_LY

UNKNOWN BRITISH PROGRAMMES
Does anyone know which programmes these two interviews come from?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw5p4Ts3iIE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAqYmTH6REE

OVERSEAS....
“Party Fears Two”, “Skipping” and “White Car in Germany” from Dutch VPRO TV programme GÖTTERDAMMERUNG 2000 (every British band with a Velvet Underground LP and valid passports appeared on that show - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zh-FwoZQZG0), and “Party Fears Two” from Belgian RTBF GÉNÉRATION 80 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aNIv7h2s5g). All from 1982, and rough. There are others that I don’t know the titles of – a Japanese clip at a festival in Yokohama in 1985 playing “A Matter of Gender” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqoQfR_GesA) and a French clip of “Kites” being played live in the studio by Billy MacKenzie and Howard Hughes (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4gXrYHnbXA).

Please, Mister Postman

Sarah and I are still going through the pile of DVDs and selling them on Amazon. Amazon Marketplace doesn't fetishise feedback in the same way as eBay, but it does feature and some buyers do leave comments. I do sometimes wonder why people say that they consider the service "excellent" but only give three points out of five. The other problem is delivery times for international customers, where Royal Mail is only the first link in the chain and not always the weakest.

In fact, other countries' postal services are much like phoning Dial-A-Stereotype:
GERMANY: Scarily efficient
PORTUGAL: anything but
FRANCE: well, you know, that depends, doesn't it?

Anyway, time for another Lazy Youtube Embed. Anyone who knows me will wonder why it's taken me so long to discover this lot, given how many Andy buttons they press:

Saturday morning at the movies, who cares what picture we see?

Glasgow City Council run a free film for children every Saturday morning at a couple of participating cinemas - the Glasgow Film Theatre and the Parkhead branch of Cineworld. Very often the film in question is an old classic or something that has recently come off distribution (recent ones have been Up, Coraline, Fantastic
Mr Fox and Where the Wild Things Are). Staying in the east, and with a baby in tow, I use the car so that makes it Parkhead.

This morning was left open in the schedules as a surprise - it turned out to be "CJ7", an amiable enough comedy from China. The minute the staff told people it was in Cantonese the queue halved in size, with phrases like "ach, rubbish" being thrown about. Good job it wasn't in black and white or there would have been a bloody riot.

Unless people have really young children - for whom the film wouldn't have been suitable anyway - I never understood this problem. Film's a very visual medium. It's MEANT to be. Subtitles didn't stop people watching Avatar or Passion of the Christ, did they?

The most chilling bit in all this, when the house lights went back on at the end, was the ethnic mix in the room. The people who turned their nose up at foreign muck were largely white, while those open-minded enough to at least give it a go largely weren't. Sometimes I need the east end of Glasgow like I need a hole in my head.

The John Lennon Effect

For months now, my younger sister has been selling off my late father's DVD collection with me - I set up the sales on Amazon or eBay and she does the to-ing and fro-ing. It's a big collection and it's taking time, so we've seen something happen several times. It happened again this weekend.

The John Lennon effect.

My wife told me while eating our tea last night that Jean Simmons had died. After I checked that she meant the actress and not the bloke above on the left - easy mistake to make and all that - the penny dropped. A copy of Olivier's Hamlet, where she plays Ophelia, had been on sale for weeks, but it sold that very afternoon. I shifted a Pretty In Pink within 24 hours of John Hughes dying. Polanski films did well after the long arm of the law finally caught up with the dirty old bugger.

I name it after the ex-Beatle, because of the way I remember the UK singles chart filling up with Lennon's solo singles after he was killed. If it happened just once I'd shrug my shoulders and say "it's just coincidence", but there's a pattern. Do you go out and buy a film or an album, just because the people involved are in the news? I can't say I've ever done that.