Visit the official Doctor Who website

Visit the official Doctor Who website
Look to the future

Asylum seekers...

Asylum seekers...
Refuge of the Daleks

Doctor Who picture resource

Doctor Who picture resource
Roam the space lanes!

Explore the Doctor Who classic series website

Explore the Doctor Who classic series website
Step back in time

Infiltrate The Hub of Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood

Infiltrate The Hub of Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood
Armed and extremely dangerous

Investigate The Sarah Jane Adventures

Investigate The Sarah Jane Adventures
Fearless in the face of adversity

Call on Dani’s House

Call on Dani’s House
Harmer’s a charmer

Intercept the UFO fabsite

Intercept the UFO fabsite
Defending the Earth against alien invaders!

Uncover the secrets of the Dollhouse

Uncover the secrets of the Dollhouse
Programmable agent Echo exposed!

Hell’s belles

Hell’s belles
Naughty but nice

Love Exposure

Love Exposure
Flash photography!

Primeval portal

Primeval portal
Dressed to kill or damsels in distress?

Charmed, to be sure!

Charmed, to be sure!
The witches of San Francisco

Take on t.A.T.u.

Take on t.A.T.u.
All the way from Moscow

Proceed to the Luther website

Proceed to the Luther website
John and Jenny discuss their next move

DCI Banks is on the case

DCI Banks is on the case
You can bet on it!

On The Grid with Spooks

On The Grid with Spooks
Secret agents of Section D

Bridge to Hustle

Bridge to Hustle
Shady characters

Life on Ashes To Ashes

Life on Ashes To Ashes
Coppers with a chequered past

Claire’s no Exile

Claire’s no Exile
Goose steps

Vexed is back on the beat!

Vexed is back on the beat!
Mismatched DI Armstrong and bright fast-tracker Georgina Dixon

Medium, both super and natural

Medium, both super and natural
Open the door to your dreams

Who’s that girl? (350-picture Slideshow)

Tuesday 29 May 2007

Far Beyond the Pale Horizon



There’s an excellent new rock-documentary series, in seven parts, currently running on BBC Two, on Saturday evenings, appropriately entitled “Seven Ages of Rock”! Last weekend, it’s repeated on Sundays on BBC One, the second instalment moved forward from the rhythm and blues of the Sixties, featured in the first programme, to the era of glam and progressive rock under the title “White Light, White Heat: Art Rock”. It essentially covered the work of five acts, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Velvet Underground, David Bowie and Roxy Music, exploring the links, as the episode-title suggests, between art and rock! Bryan Ferry read Fine Art at Newcastle University, for example, while Andy Warhol managed Lou Reed’s band, the Velvets, in the States. During the Peter Gabriel era of Genesis the movement became increasingly surreal as Gabriel donned a red dress and the head of a fox!! This harked back to the days when Pink Floyd boasted Syd Barrett as their lead singer, detailing the release of their first single, “Arnold Layne”, about a transvestite stealing women’s underwear from washing lines!!! Controversial, for the time, whereas today he could just pop into Primark’s!

Keeping a sharp eye, and ear, on the career of Syd was a young man named David Jones who, after changing his surname to Bowie, picked up where Barrett left off, scoring a novelty hit in the late Sixties with a song called “Space Oddity”. It wasn’t until 1972 that Bowie became a major player, however, with the release of hit single “Starman” from the album “Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars”. He would later cover Floyd’s second single, the exceptional “See Emily Play”, on his album “Pinups”. Supporting Bowie on a couple of major concert dates in London was an up-and-coming glam-rock outfit called Roxy Music. Again in 1972, they released what became a seminal rock single based on one of Bryan’s paintings, “Virginia Plain”. In my opinion, there hasn’t been a single to top the inventiveness of this recording in the last 35 years. Its strengths lie in the instrumentation and sonority of the track rather than melody and harmony. Chromatic bass line, synthesiser treatments, oboe ostinato coupled with Ferry’s voice and lyric, pulling together an extraordinary list of references, make this song unique in the annals of rock. Programme three, next weekend, documents the rise of Punk in the late Seventies!

2 comments:

doppelganger said...

It was a good documentary I agree...

Fun to watch with the wife, who absolutely hates any hint of rock pomposity..

Everyone I knew at school wanted to be in the Velvet Underground...

What was striking was how many of those guys still seem so alive and 'together'...Like poor Sid took all the angst and hysteria in one go...

D'ya reckon Bolan is gonna get inched out of this story? Was Hendrix on last week?

TimeWarden said...

I guess your wife wasn't too keen on "The Wall" then?!!

When I was at school, I wanted to be Bryan Ferry! Roxy Music's guitarist, Phil Manzanera, certainly played on at least one of the Velvet's records, possibly a live album?

It is sad what became of Syd but, who knows, perhaps he was ultimately happier out of the limelight than he would've been had he stayed in the Floyd? I can understand both the quest for fame and the desire to remain anonymous!

I think Marc Bolan has been passed by and, judging from the comments on the BBC's website, a lot of people are unhappy about it! Maybe he's seen as transitional between The Beatles and Bowie?

Bolan was certainly, initially, bigger than Bowie with a whole string of number one, and two, hit singles that included "Ride a White Swan", "Hot Love", "Get it On", "Jeepster", "Telegram Sam", "Metal Guru", "Children of the Revolution", "20th Century Boy", "Solid Gold Easy Action". An impressive list!

Jimi Hendrix was featured in the first programme together with Cream, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and Bob Dylan. I'm already disappointed by the absence of The Stranglers from the next edition but it does include The Buzzcocks as well as all the usual suspects such as The Clash and The Pistols!