Friday, December 02, 2011

Edinburgh Punk and The Tube

I was talking to a very interesting woman last night who is writing a book about the Edinburgh punk scene.
She had been in a band and I asked her if it was the Von Trapp Family- that was Muriel Gray's band, and I had tried to find Muriel as I would have loved to talk to her about it all.
However, it never came to pass. Muriel screen tested for The Tube on the same day as I did. Actually, so did the guy called Nick who later had a hit record with a song called Northern Town or something (which I assume was about Newcastle although he was from darn sarf) and a girl called (I think) Michelle. You had to interview Jools Holland as part of the screen test.
They all got jobs on The Tube and I didn't, which could have led to an extreme case of paranoia but I only needed to watch one episode of Michelle walking backwards holding a microphone interviewing someone to realise that I wouldn't have had the guts to do it!
The producers were rather naughty, as I'm sure many are. They had 'brainstorming sessions' in various cities around the UK, which we were told were arranged so they could meet young people who could possibly act as presenters for the series. They then proceeded to nick everyone's ideas for the entire first series. There was a young woman at the London session who was a regular attendee at air guitar competitions at Camden Palace (now Koko). So there was a  feature on that. My contribution was to tell them about Jammin', a fanzine run by Tony Fletcher. I suggested that they should do a feature on the fanzine and also interview him. So there was a feature on that. And so on, and so on.
However, it was a damned good programme and always had ace music on it (including The Daintees). It seemed that they were capable of airing bands that hadn't been plugged to death and who sounded fresh and authentic, and it was also live which gave it a frisson of excitement, especially one week when Jools Holland swore.
Must say I prefer a bit of good honest swearing rather than a clapped out tw*t trying to publicise his latest book in time for Christmas by 'being controversial' on live TV at a time of industrial unrest.
He doesn't even deserve a name, I'm afraid.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Edinburgh punks were the only ones with moustaches.