Rock on TV: Old Grey Whistle Test

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Rock on TV: Old Grey Whistle Test
This is a critical look by the NMEs Mick Farren at the making of the OGWT on BBC 2. Interesting because the week he chose to come along was also the week the Butts Band appearead and they get a mention in his piece.

Meanwhile, in a small, cramped studio, dedicated men wrestle desperately with obsolete equipment in a noble attempt to produce meaningful rock TV for 800 quid a week...

...The result? Breathtaking integrity and all the raw excitement of a bowl of prune muesli. What can be done for the Whistle Test? In the second of our Rock-on-TV probes, MICK FARREN reports...

THERE'S A legend in Philadelphia that tells how after the murder of Martin Luther King, a riot started to build up in the city's black ghettos. While the National Guard were on the verge of being called out, some bright, post McLuhan law-and-order enthusiast had a smart idea.
James Brown was in town – and without delay he was pressed into putting out a four-hour soul spectacular over one of the local TV stations.
The potential rioters all went indoors to watch the show and the city was saved.
At the Old Grey Whistle Test they are either unaware that high energy rock and roll pumping out of the telly has that kind of potential, or they know all about it but aren't going to give us any.
For however, long it has been going on, the Old Grey Whistle Test has always come down the tube accompanied by a definite sense of frustration.It has always been such a brave attempt to keep the flag on the earnest, serious, Joe Niceguy rock 'n' roll music flying. It has always seemed to be a tidy magazine show, presented on a minuscule budget for the tiny minority who like progressive rock 'n' roll. That could quite easily be its first mistake. It set out to achieve an objective, reached it and settled back into a comfortable format.
The programme isn't classified as light entertainment. That's the category that covers a multitude of atrocities from the Cilla Black Show to Top Of The Pops. It comes from a department, called Presentation, a ratty hold-all that covers every thing from Film '74 through the Book Programme to Gardening Shows. In many ways, its whole approach is rather like a gardening show. It has the same kind of rigid, conservative format, and the same solid camera work.
This would all be very fine if it was just a minority interest show with a viewing audience strictly limited to the faithful. But the frustration begins to creep in when you realise it's one half of the regular, schedule network rock music TV.
OGWT (someone should suffer for that loathsome name) would be fine and dandy if there was even one more show ... just one more show that bridged the gap between the infantile and the academic. Then Whistle Test might drop into perspective. As it is, with the only alternative being Top Of The Pops, it tends to lapse into a kind of homespun isolation.
A comparative situation would be if the only rock papers available were Popster and Zigzag.
Whistle Test moves in a world without competition, and that's really a tough place to be – because it means there's no measure of success. Every year it hits the number one slot in most of the weeklies' major polls. The only other contenders are Top Of The Pops and a couple of local kids' shows.
The production staff operate in a vacuum. It's a pleasant, homely and very well meaning vacuum, but it's a vacuum. The line that divides laid-back from tedious is almost invisible.
Take, for instance, the format. Every week, almost without exception, we are given the same rigid order: the electric band, a record, a film clip, the solo performer, an interview and the electric band again. The credits roll, and that's it till next Tuesday.
Why no mixing of it? Why not the occasional show devoted to a single theme, or even a single artist, live and on film? An anthology, say, of 'The Who then and now' would be pretty solid TV. Is it BBC rules, lack of imagination or just severely limited funds and facilities?
The answer seems to be a combination of all three. The budget for each weekly show is just 800 pounds, and the producers are restricted to a mere five hours in a minute studio. In addition, producer Michael Appleton, director Colin Strong and anchorman Bob Harris all share an almost Calvinist, no frills approach to the presentation of music.
Their criterion seems to be that of honest wholesomeness. It would seem that, in their book, Bridget St. John rates a lot higher than Sparks.
The frustration extends not only to the viewer, but clearly back into the studio. Making the show within the incredibly limited budget and facilities must be something of a nightmare. Outside broadcasts are totally out of the question. An OB unit can quite easily cost a grand before it leaves the building.
Even ready-made film clips often present insurmountable problems. Much top quality material is put out of the reach of Whistle Test, and consequently our TV screens, simply because of the fees demanded by the organisations owning the rights are so high. Two hundred pounds a minute is not-unusual asking price for unreleased footage of Hendrix or The Who.
Further material fails to reach our screens because it's impossible to resolve ownership battles between artist, management and filmmaker. Some excellent footage of a Janis Joplin tour lies unseen for exactly this reason.



The Butts band appeared on June 11th, 1974: studio guests Butts Band, Bridget St. John.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

To be totally fair to all concerned, a lot of the weakness in Whistle Test presentation seems to be a result of these limitations. It's easy to sit around at home and bitch about the tedious formula camera work, but when you actually see the tiny, cramped studio with its eight microphone points and three huge, almost-obsolete colour cameras it's easy to understand why every band is broken down into a set pattern of one long shot, a close-up of the singer, round the band a couple of times in medium close-up, and a shot of the guitar player's fingers during the solo.
Recording of the electric bands that normally open and close the show takes place on a Monday afternoon. In this instance it's the Butts Band, the latest incarnation of ex-Doors Robbie Krieger and John Densmore – who prove tight, well-rehearsed and ultimately professional.
This latter fact is a relief to director Colin Strong. He has two hours to put two songs on tape. Most of that time is spent lining up the shots, rehearsing the camera moves and getting a sound balance. If the band decides to screw up as well, the whole operation can be thrown into panic and confusion.
The position is further aggravated by the possibilities of complaints of sound leak from neighbouring studios, and a mysterious BBC rota system that can give them, at any time, a sound engineer who may never have worked with music – or who hates longhairs and rock and roll.

This need to save time extends, to a degree, into the actual booking policy. It isn't categorically stated, but you get the feeling that preference is given to bands who demonstrate their reliability. The honest workmanlike musician is preferred to the erratic genius.
There is also a definite bias toward plain down-home music. Flash and filigree would look kind of incongruous against the spartan backdrop of bare studio wall.

*

THE REMAINDER of the show is pierced together on the Tuesday of transmission. The studio opens at 8.30 a.m. and the space between then and programme time is devoted to run-throughs of the film and tape to be used in that night's show rehearsals of Bob Harris's links, a taped interview with Boz Scaggs for the following week and a lengthy camera and sound rehearsal with the acoustic act.
In this case the acoustic act is Bridget St. John and friends, who have been on the show before and seem to have a general seal of approval. When this is complete there are still ten minutes left, and the production staff and musicians make a run to the hospitality room that is more of a gesture than a need.
From the titles at the beginning to the captions at the end, the whole thing runs smoothly. For the most part it's fairly simple matter of exactly cueing the various sections of film and videotape that make up the bulk of the show.
The only parts going out live are Bridget St. John and Bob Harris, and neither of them give much cause for alarm. There is a certain amount of rather self-conscious adrenalin raising with NASA-style countdowns for the changes, but it in no way competes with the high drama of News At Ten.
After the show closes there's a wind-up session back in the hospitality room, and the drinks cabinet is opened up in earnest.
Brian Rix is chasing scantily clad dollies across the statutory colour TV, and apart from a small group that includes Bob Harris and musicians, it all starts to become very BBC and very corporate. I make my excuses and leave.

*

DESPITE a certain us-and-them lip service, Whistle Test is very definitely BBC. Its ancestors are Line Up, Colour Me Pop, and Disco 2. You become well aware that the team who put it out are working within incredible limitations, but you can't help wondering how much the show would improve if they did have more money and facilities.
Producer Michael Appleton, who has the appearance of a long haired rugby half-back in a crumpled Levi suit, has a no nonsense approach to programming rock and roll that would hardly lend itself to a high energy shuck and jive spectacular.
His attitude is that TV provides a guide to what the people who make the albums look like when they're playing. He talks about the music speaking for itself, and is a firm believer in not letting the visual representation get in the way of the musicians.
He seems painfully uninterested in the actual creative work of discovering original techniques for putting rock and roll on TV in it own context. You begin to feel that as far as he is concerned, the natural home of rock is either on stage or on record, and that the function of TV is to report and relay this to a wider audience.
It's all so serious. Somewhere along the line the fun seems to have been lost. The fact that rock is loud and gaudy at root seems to have been forgotten.
Colin Strong echoes this position in his response to the practical camera work. He is also an advocate of stark simplicity to the point of having a secret ambition to find a folk singer who could cope with delivering an entire song while held by a single camera shot.
Bob Harris seems about the most hopeful. He enjoys the cosy, relaxed atmosphere of Whistle Test, but also sees the viability of a fast-moving club format show with a number of live bands and high-speed linkage. His feeling is that a third show with this kind of format would ideally allow. Whistle Test to concentrate more fully on the kind of laid-back material that he is essentially happier to deal with.
Harris, however, is not about to push for anything. His gig is strictly that of the presenter. Although he contributes a good many ideas, he has no part in the final decisions. It seems that to succeed in the BBC you have to be a master of internal politics rather than creativity.
This is really the heart of the problem. The overall programming is controlled by men who come from a generation and background to whom rock is anathema. They fail to realise that there are now 30-year-old housewives who grew up with Elvis Presley and the Beatles, and who would be more than happy to see more boogie on the box.
This kind of realisation might be possible in a small flexible outfit like Capital Radio, but in the BBC monolith, it's impossible. To the programme controllers, 800 quid a week to give a bunch of unwashed hippies some of their loathsome music is quite adequate. It keeps them quiet while they plan bigger and better Cillas and Lulus for the sensible people.
It isn't, in fact, all bad. When the current series of Whistle Test winds up on July 9 there's an extra half-hour extension which will be given over to a film of the Stones in San Diego on their 1965 tour. It's moments like that that make it just about tolerable.
For reference, the show returns on September 25 with the possibility of bigger and better studios and more of the stereo sound experiment that began with the Van Morrison show.
The final word, in terms of fairness, and it seems to be a particularly fair week, has to be aimed at ITV. The BBC does at least give us an hour a week of some kind of rock and roll: it may be bad, but it's there. The independent channels offer nothing.
You would think that the success of K-Tel's advertising campaign might indicate the viability of rock shows, but it seems the answer is No Way. Maybe that should be the direction of further inquiries.
As I left the TV Centre I happened to glance up at the roof of the lift. There, written in purple magic marker, was the legend – "TV sucks". It seemed strangely apt.
Mick Farren, NME, 22 June 1974