"Synth Britannia, the latest in BBC4's Britannia series, airs on October 16. John Foxx is interviewed along with Daniel Miller, Gary Numan, Neil Tennant, Phil Oakey, Martin Gore, Bernard Sumner, Cabaret Voltaire, Vince Clarke, Martyn Ware, Midge Ure, Soft Cell, Kraftwerk, Throbbing Gristle and Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark."

About the electronic music pioneers of the late 70s / early 80s.

Should be very interesting.

Trailer:


Repeats:
Saturday 17th October at 12:20am on BBC Four
BBC FourSunday 18th October at 11:40pm on BBC Four
BBC FourMonday 19th October at 3:10am on BBC Four

thanks for the heads-up, I shall have to watch that.

The documentary was fine. The programme that followed it was appalling (Synth at the BBC). A motley collection of TOTP miming and poor quality live performances with really awful canned applause in between. Ultravox's Vienna was butchered beyond belief with a whole chunk missing and "Ghosts" was faded out just as you were enjoying it. Truly horrible way to treat classic songs.

The Vienna clip was a TOTP pre-edit, which they used to do sometimes. Decent quality performances of that song are few & far between as everywhere used to play the over-hyped video. I feel Vienna unfairly overshadows the singles Ultravox put out thereafter (well between 81 & 83 anyway), All Stood Still & The Thin Wall are prime bits of hard-edged synth-pop but rarely heard these days.
The Japan performance was interesting, but myabe they should have used the unbelievably high quality TOTP performance for that song, which is arguably one of the finest examples of how good TOTP could be, capturing the ambience of the song completely at the height of Michael Hurll's "Party" era. As an 8-year old it floored me at the time, and probably played a massive role in pushing such an unorthodox track to UK #5

The documentary was good. With only a few minor mistakes (Vienna was in Jan 81, not 82) and omissions (Bowie's Berlin-Triology, Ultravox with John Foxx).

I would have prefered a little bit more (social and political) background information and analysis. The Thatcher's in their garden was a great clip, but there was no real exploration of the effects of her political actions on the music.

Or more about the reaction of the rock critics to the new sound.

It wasn't only the NME-journalists who hated Gary Numan. Everyone hated him (apart from the millions who bought his records).

The interviews were all very good. I never knew that Andy McCluskey had humour

At the BBC:
Did the bands record completly new backing tracks for TV-shows in the 80s or could they bring in their own tapes and just add a few parts to satisfy the MU?

Roger Daltrey and others talk about Musicians Union rules for tv performances on the BBC "Old Grey Whistle Test" DVD set (Volume 2).

The niggles I have with it are very much similar to all BBC music docu's - the Britpop docu's that always mention Menswear as if to suggest the genre was doomed by mid-95, but always omit main players like The Charlatans, Ocean Colour Scene etc at the expense of waxing over-lyrical on The Stone Roses, Blur & Oasis (central though those bands were)
Soft Cell pre-dated Yazoo by a year, and yet they stated Yazoo set the blueprint for yin & yan synth duo's. Ultravox seemed to not exist either before or after Vienna, and no mention was made to link Midge Ure with other synth-pop highwatermarks like Fade To Grey (which was played briefly) or Yellow Pearl (which represented not only acceptance by way of becoming the TOTP theme, but of synth-pops reach into the world of rock that OMD were so keen to bury). The Thompson Twins & Howard Jones were made out to be pop embarrassments symbolic of some kind of bangwagoneering, but in truth both those acts produced some excellent singles (Love On Your Side, What Is Love?) but never confined themselves strictly to synth pop anyway before (along with most acts of that era) disappearing up the road marked "OVER-PRODUCTION" in 1985. Why weren't The Eurythmics mentioned in that light, as they abandoned the synth-pop blueprint by the close of '84? And, like you said, the faliure to mention Bowie's Berlin trilogy (despite heralding Eno's role in Roxy) was just plain sloppy

And Nik Kershaw who I thought was very talented and under estimated?

Never really rated Nik Kershaw till i saw him live at Portsmouth Guildhall some years ago.He had a really good band which gave the songs a rockier edge."Wouldnt It Be Good" was thunderous! He still tours and is well worth seeking out.Details of a couple of accoustic shows on this link. Chesney Hawkes has been known to turn up at Niks shows but dont let that put you off!!



www.nikkershaw.net/

Although Nik was initially marketed as a 'synth-pop' act (and to be fair, Dancing Girls (his 2nd hit) was very electro) he was very much an old-fashioned singer-songwriter/multi-instrumentalist.
Definitely under-rated, his first 2 albums are excellent - and he never really went the way of horrible over-production, he just fell out of fashion

Wasn't Sparks the blueprint for yin & yan synth duos?

Bowie will be mentioned next week in the second part / the prequel:

Krautrock: The Rebirth of Germany.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nf10k

Broadcasts on BBC FOUR:
Fri 23 Oct 21:00
Sat 24 Oct 01:25
Sat 24 Oct 23:30
Sun 25 Oct 01:30