48 min 2 sec – Aug 29, 2007
4000holes.blogspot.com
A few years back, a portable jukebox that had once belonged to John Lennon, in the 60’s was discovered. On it were Lennon’s hand written labels for his favorite 40 songs. This documentary is about those songs. Perfect.
50 min 26 sec – Jul 8, 2007
It might be just so effing po faced to have ‘Lord Bragg’ pontificate about the gritty Northern realism of the Smiths as being so, er, real, so true. But then again, they actually were. In the vast wasteland of crimped-hair, musical dross that was the eighties, Manchester and the Smiths were a cultural beacon. La Lala-La…
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1 hr 24 min 10 sec – Jul 11, 2007
The story of Live Aid – the worlds biggest concert. Seeing this in an age where people don’t seem to give-a-shit, almost brings tears to my eyes. In fact, it almost brought tears to my eyes then, because I couldn’t go, on account of being somewhere in the middle of Hungary, where I crashed a party after hearing ‘do they know its Christmas’ from the window.
Journalists have been trying for years to track down the girl that Bono picks out of the audience making her globally famous for 15 minutes. I know who she is, but I’m not telling!
There are two places in the world that rank high in the importance of 60’s and early 70’s Soul: the North of the Midwest, where it was made and the North of England where the blue-collar, black American art form was truly appreciated by their white English counterpart.
This is a great documentary about the Wigan Casino an unlikely and forgotten cultural Mecca.
Running time: 26 mins.
Full screen
A classic documentary from one of the greatest architecture critics. This film was made in the same year as Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour wrote ‘Learning from Las Vegas’, heralding the birth of the Post Modern architecture movement. Its a better legacy than the buildings that were subsequently produced.
Running time: 52 mins.
Full screen
Comments Off on Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles architecture, nostalgia, smashing telly top 10 documentaries
OK, most of what I’ll post here will be full length finds – but some clips are so great and when you put them together into a list you’ve got a mini TV show.
Here are my top 10 TV intro’s of all time – post yours in the comments.
1. Hawaii Five-0 We are so not worthy-0. Book him Dan-o.
[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r0-z5ZtsaI”]
2. Knots Landing The ultimate B-league show, it had this really weird link to the characters of Dallas. But the theme tune – once you hear it, you just cannot get it out of your head – dammit. This is what it looked like on German TV, for no other reason than that’s random, and you get to hear the tune twice – so that I can ruin your day.
3. Starsky and Hutch They invented funk. Didn’t they?
4. Ironside. Saul Bass style graphics and an ear piercing wail at the beginning, that has you grasping your privates.
5. The Money Program. Jimmy Smith’s big band style from ‘The Cat’, when he switched to Verve records. I guess they knew he was just sooo money.
6. The Monkees. The band made for network TV, that spawned Cable TV, on Internet TV. The thing about the Monkees is that although they were fake, the songs were actually good. Destroys all faith in human kind.
7. Rockford Files. Everyone should own a wood-veneered answer phone system, if they want to get ahead.
8. Taxi. I think I’m gonna cry, a $10.99 keyboard from Wallgreen never sounded so good.
9. Citizen Smith. “Power to the people”, cut to sound of single baby crying.
10. Banana splits. So – Much – Fun. Did you know that the guy in the elephant costume is a Republican Congressman? How are you going to prove I’m lying? And here is the Dickies version, the fastest song ever recorded before the invention of chrystal meth. And here are some fans doing it – cos apparenty that’s what people do over at YouTube cos its one big party there. Smashing Telly is a party of one.
And please, someone, anyone, if you have them, put up the themes for the following: The Liver Birds; The Likely Lads (not the Libertines version); Z-Cars.