RE: TV Retromania, I thought of a couple more American tv shows that were always on: Lost In Space, MASH, F Troop, Hogan's Heroes, Mr Ed, very vague recollection of Cisco & Pancho. Then Into the 70s Brady Bunch never seemed to go away and Happy Days. This and the aforementioned shows in the previous post were just on in the 70/80s along with whatever 80s shows were on but it was all the same. Nobody as far as I could remember was placing more value on the new over the old. It was just Telly. Almost forgot about the cartoons of Warner Bros- Roadrunner, Bugs Bunny, Sylvester & Tweety, Pepe Le Pew and The one about the Rooster and the dog. Not forgetting others like Felix the Cat, Quick Draw McGraw & Al Kabong (were they one and the same?) Gumby, Tom & Jerry, Top Cat, Captain Caveman, Roger Ramjet, Huckle Berry Hound &Yogi fuckin Bear. Most of these were constantly on our screens for decades.
They weren't fixed in a time! Who knows when they were made between the 50s and the 80s I guess. Having a quick look on the net though reveals that some had their origins as far back as the 20s. We didn't care we didn't know any better. There were only two channels in Cardross right up until who knows when as I left in 1989, but I think not that long ago. These are only the shows I was allowed to watch as I came from a very strict catholic background. No Sullivans or Young Doctors for me Let alone Prisoner Cell Block H. When The Young Ones came along No Chance! God wait there's more: fuckin Lassie, The Littlest Hobo, Skippy & Flipper which I believe all had the same premise just with a change the animal. The funny thing is I'm not really feelin nostalgia for these shows at all. I like Skippy on a purely aesthetic level. It was shot on film and really captured true Australian light, sun and bush landscape. It was beautifully filmed. Out of the rest of this lot I'd probs only wanna watch Al Kabong, Captain Caveman, Roadrunner, Gumby & Roger Ramjet ever again just out of curiosity. A lot of it gives me a slightly bleak mildly bored feeling. I was probably only watching them because it was too hot outside to play.
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| What a great concept for a quasi-super hero. Cape & Mask with Guitar as weapon! The Mrs doesn't believe this was a tv show. I guess it does sound quite absurd. |
It doesn't inspire me like it does the British who seem to revere (they do make exceptional telly) their shows and their soundtracks, a lot of which we didn't get here (We got Dr Who, The Wombles and The Magic Roundabout of course) or I just don't remember. We didn't have our own Oliver Postgate either. I can't see an Australian equivalent of Broadcast or a label like Ghostbox making music inspired by 2nd hand often 2nd rate American TV. Although the music was often awesome on some of those old American cartoons-quite Avant and mental. Try to play a Carl Stalling compilation to someone, they'll immediately get it and go "oh yeah old cartoon music cool" but by about track 6 it's like "ok enough of that." Weird huh? So it's ok with the visual craziness but as a pure listening experience they cannot handle it. Maybe the BBC Workshop, Oram, Derbyshire, Baker and others like Vernon Elliot and the like were more accessible as music to just listen to whilst still being Avant-Garde and alien. My friends would be able to sit through a BBC workshop compilation much more comfortably than a Stalling one. I do remember some cool music from 70/80s Aussie wildlife documentaries which was probably library music or hopefully commissioned work and yet to be rediscovered, sad to say the former is probably true. We can still hope though.
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| Delia soundtracking the future |
