Viewers outside of the UK would love to see more of this…

prob bein that elvis imitators can’t/won’t ever do WHERE ELVIS MIGHT HAVE GONE if living yet (and yes, undogged by the colonel) — so the imagined idea is undermined by its execution

that darts moment — teds in surplices — was totally a wtf “free lunch” moment tho, in the programme and (it reminded you) at the time

(wasn’t this a sub-radar way of saying “oi! carmody! wanna take it outside!?”)

I thought this was quite poor unless the Elvis-impersonator renditions were intentionally bad so as to test the song’s durability to the limits. Perhaps I misunderstood but none of the songs he picked sound better re-imagined as Elvis singles and the idea that ‘yes you can imagine Elvis singing this song’ isn’t enough on it’s own as it’s easy enough to imagine Elvis singing countless hits - plus where does it leave all those classic instrumentals or indeed ‘Close To The Edit’?

is that why the bbc i-player gave me 60 mins of sound and 40 mins of image limping 2/3s the speed along behind it!!? (and the image stopped the moment the sound did so i never saw adam faith or the sugababes AT ALL)

but even so oh oh i *LOVED* this! so i am 1 x ho for p.morley again, i guess i shd read his book after all!

“Shake your hair girl with your ponytail
Takes me right back (when you were young)
Throw your precious gifts into the air
Watch them fall down (when you were young)
Lift up your feet and put them on the ground
You used to walk upon (when you were young)
Lift up your feet and put them on the ground
The hills were higher (when we were young)
Lift up your feet and put them on the ground
The trees were taller (when you were young)
Lift up your feet and put them on the ground
The grass was greener (when you were young)
Lift up your feet and put them on the ground
You used to walk upon (when you were young)”

- I really liked the fifties ep, how many times did Pete Wylie say ‘wow’ at Joe Brown again? :-) Wish they got round to talking about how genuinely wacky some of that stuff ws, and maybe mentioned Jerry Lee Lewis, etc.

What did everyone think about Morley’s theory on songs being great cuz you can imagine them being sung by Elvis? The only Elvis impersonator seemed to be the Las Vegas years, so…

Oh, and Mutya’s not selling because she is boring. Being miserable/moany is only an interesting characteristic if it’s combined with something else, like wit or (best of all) cracking tunes. ‘Song 4 Mutya’ isn’t enough.

Yes, Pop On Trial 50’s is worth watching for Joe Brown’s insiderism alone (and is better than the Pop Britannia at covering the same ground). I quite liked the disjointed nature of the show, as it put paid to the great big lie of the great pop narrative (and indeed CP Lee’s demand for novelty records at the end was a worthwhile reminder that much of this HAPPENED AT THE SAME TIME). Did remind me that all you need for good TV is a few passionate people, a few knowledgable people and a good researcher. Maconie’s presentation avoided the worst of his know-it-all tendancies and was quite natural. Perhaps a bit more argument between the panelists could have livened things up but on the whole a nicely current and poptimist reading of this dark decade.

Did anyone see the Pop Britannia fifties episode, and if so is that worth catching too?

trying to control it as it grows is a horribly bad idea; but also — almost invariably — a backfiring idea: it just won’t grow

anyway, the effect of success — pop success OR critical success — is an embiggening of the pond, bcz you bring ppl into it with all their hopes and projects and projections, and some of these become attached to the original small-pond thing

ie the good thing isn’t YOU WIN, so much as YOU ENABLE LOTS OF (possibly otherwise unpossible) STUFF UNDER YOUR UMBRELLA (ella ella ella)

(yes you are a big fish in a small pond floating on an upturned umbrella as projections turn into an ocean) (best metaphor EVAH) (evah evah evah)

The trouble with Mutya is that, as bad as her album is, it’s not selling for exactly the same reason that Sally Shapiro isn’t selling and the same reason that Adele and Duffy will shift millions - well, thousands - of their albums.

And of course getting a melodicist / lyricist / pop svengali to do a closed room Juke Box Jury job on a selection of pre-release singles would show what a crap shoot the whole thing is. But would sure as hell be interesting.

For example why didn’t the Noise Next Door sell any records? Kula Shaker die on the arse with their second album. Why is Mutya not selling records?

or a committed fan of Genre X saying what’s bad WITHIN this genre (not thins bad for being nearly in but not; or “jazz for ppl who don’t like jazz” etc)

“bad” all too generally seems to mean “iconic example of genre you don’t get the point of, or use to mock social grouping you don’t get the point of”)

(when eth4n and m!nna were my sekrit guests i tried to get them to outlay to me what BAD rap is, with examples, they were really leery of this question, despite the former’s fairly decided opnions in ref music: they did oblige eventually but very reluctantly, and with huge caveats — viz “actually this isn’t that bad” etc)

Macca’s impassable I Dunno Like shield of determined amicability will of course automatically cancel out Mark’s pipedream, more’s the pity.