Old Grey Whistle Test

keefg

For those of you who are of a *cough* certain age, you may be please to know that on channel 271 on Sky - the channel is called Mainstreet - they are showing The Old Grey Whistle Test.

I used to watch this programme years ago, much cooler than TOTP at the time, and a great place to watch good live music from bands in the 70's & 80's.

enjoy

Latchy

Ah (whispering) Bob Harris .......if ever a man made you think you needed a hearing aid it was him .......:D

Dudess

OGWT is well before my time but I used to love watching re-runs on BBC and UK Gold - some brilliant stuff on them. Yep, Bob Harris is great - what a style! So refreshing compared to all those "wa-hey! I'm mad and I'm crazy" knobs. That and The Tube - they'll never make 'em like that again. Even TOTP was pretty good.

mike65

Bob Harris? Sooooooooooooooooo - quiet!

Whenever I catch a bit of old footage I can only marvel at how hairdressers stayed in business in the 70s.

Blatent excuse for old hairy rockers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBY35TFJxSc

Mike.

Latchy

Some great artists appear on TOGWT including ,Bowie , roxy music,Lou Reed , Bob marley ......

keefg

Dudess wrote:

Even TOTP was pretty good.

:eek: Shame on you Dudess....I thought you had much better taste.



Edit: TOTP stopped being "good" the day that Stock, Aitkin (spelling?) & Waterman got their first hideous creation on it.

Latchy

Quote - keefg Edit: TOTP stopped being "good" the day that Stock, Aitkin (spelling?) & Waterman got their first hideous creation on it.

Who Kylie or Rick Astley ?:D

Dudess

Oh that's what I mean - TOTP was only a platform for popular music so how good or bad it was depends on how good or bad the charts were. I'd go a bit later and say from about 1991 on that it stopped being good. S.A.W sucked (well maybe not all the time - I was 10 in 1988 so I couldn't help but love Jason!) but there was still good stuff in the charts at that stage.

grumpytrousers

keefg wrote: »

Edit: TOTP stopped being "good" the day that Stock, Aitkin (spelling?) & Waterman got their first hideous creation on it.

See, that'd be at least 1985, cos you had Dead or Alive doing 'You spin me right 'round' (Like a Record)' back then.

None more than I would love to blindly diss *everything* SAW ever did, but jesus, that one STILL does the trick today, although it's helped by the fact that Pete Burns did have a decent set of pipes on 'im...

Dudess

I have a soft spot for a LOT of SAW!!!

klaus flouride

O.G.W.T. would have Motorhead on one minute, and the next thing would be an acoustic artist and then maybe a bit of folk- it had great variety (I wasn't old enough to see the originals, they repeated the programme on BBC 3 or 4 a few months ago - so its possible that it was re-edited). Compare that to the 'songs from a room' series on RTE (may have got the title wrong there), they did have some good acts on the show, but jesus c.- almost every act was an acoustic singer song writer (Glen Hansard clones), some of them were bloody awful.

I never really understood the whole T.O.T.P. 'mime' thing- it made the programme unwatchable quite often.

ShawnRaven

klaus flouride wrote: »

I never really understood the whole T.O.T.P. 'mime' thing- it made the programme unwatchable quite often.

Unless Marillion were on it! You were guaranteed fun then.
VR!

johnpilar

If I'm not mistaken the ogwt was the first programme to come up with the idea of using videos to accompany the songs of artists that were unable to make it to the studio to perform live. some of these videos were arty in their own way and often went down well with a bit of spliff:D

klaus flouride

validreasoning! wrote: »

Unless Marillion were on it! You were guaranteed fun then.
VR!

Yeah, there were a few bands who would just blatantly take the p1ss; Remember the fuss Manic Street created when they wore the balaclavas?

There was something strange about it though; How come they allowed the vocals to be sung live but not allow the musicians to play?

(Nirvana's performance of 'Teen Spirit' for example - before i heard that i thought the reason bands couldn't play live was in case somebody cursed).

grumpytrousers

see also

Oasis performing, i think, Cigs & Alcohol with Noel 'singing' and Liam playing guitar.

Also, Dexys Midnight Runners doing 'Jacky Wilson Says' with the backdrop of darts legend Jocky Wilson

Latchy

The backdrop on the OGWT was ****ty if i remember,perhaps to give it that lived in appeal

John

There's a bunch of the OGWT performances out on DVD, I've only got the fist volume (2DVD set) but it's really good. Very eclectic, similar vibe to what Jools Holland is doing with his show.

johnpilar

anyone know why it was called"the old grey whistle test"

mike65

The name comes from Tin Pan Alley, could a tune being composed in a publishing/printing house pass muster by being whistled by the cleaning staff (who were elderly as a rule).

Mike.

Latchy

The kicking invisable man into was very catchy for it's time ......

Kali

lynyrd skynyrd's performance of free bird on the OGWT was outstanding, believe it's on the 2-dvd box-set. well worth a look.

Wishbone Ash

johnpilar wrote: »

anyone know why it was called"the old grey whistle test"

mike65 wrote:

The name comes from Tin Pan Alley, could a tune being composed in a publishing/printing house pass muster by being whistled by the cleaning staff (who were elderly as a rule).

Mike.

I was led to believe that the name originated from the porters who worked in the bowels of the BBC and wore grey coats. In pre digital days, they had to manually assemble records for the various shows. They tended to be older but were renowned for their musical knowledge and use to regularly quiz each other - hence the old grey whistle test.

The_g-man

The song from the night before that the janitors whistle to themselves while cleaning up the place in the morning was likely to be the unforgettable tune for everyone else.
http://www.play.com/DVD/DVD/4-/717714/The-Old-Grey-Whistle-Test-Vols-1-3-Box-Set/Product.html

big b

latchyco wrote: »

The kicking invisable man into was very catchy for it's time ......

......with the timeless "Stone fox chase" by Area Code 615 musical accompaniment:D

Dudess

Yeah it's a class intro.