There was a documentary on BBC Four a couple of nights ago about the ITV music show Ready Steady Go!, which ran from 1963 to 1966. It's a programme I've often heard about, mainly from my dad who was about the right age at the time when it was on but I'd always assumed it was like a miserable and old fashioned version of Top of the Pops. Quite the contrary it seems! It actually looked even more fun and "natural" than TOTP, with people dancing all over the place and singers mingling with the audience, plus actual interviews - including with the Beatles - and miming judging contests and such! They even got a number of Motown artists to appear on it, such as Stevie Wonder and Otis Redding - oh, and then there was a James Brown special, which got wiped. Apparently Top of the Pops pretty much killed Ready Steady Go! when it was launched on BBC One.

Erm, discuss?


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ready_Steady_Go!

I've taped that off the telly.

Still not got around to watching it though.

I have seen clips of it. I believe Dusty Springfield did some presenting work for it. Sacrilege I know in a world of specialist equipment, vinyl v everything else, cassette tapes returning to popularity, and all that, but I don't mind the medium for delivery much.

If I absolutely love the song or the voice I'll probably go in search of more of that persons work, but again I'm not that bothered about the medium. I suppose in a way I'm like a wine drinker who doesn't care about the grape so much as the result of drinking it/whether it's personally palatable in the first place.

The dancing in a television studio is always stilted in my opinion. It's just not the right environment. I strongly feel that to dance to popular music you need nightclub lighting, security staff who will blind eye to recreational drug use, and the chance of meeting the next great love of your life/for the night.

Or in a field on a blazing hot day, or in a house. Basically anywhere other than a television studio, which can surely only be matched in its fundamentally inappropriate vibe by a school disco held in a dining hall or some godforsaken, off peak, religiously administered annex building.

A smoke machine, bleachers, your mum taping your moves to show the neighbours, and Jimmy Savile leering on from the side of the dance floor don't really cut the mustard. The idea of being stopped at intervals to take part in quizzes and contests makes my teeth itch. No wonder it was ditched.

And all of that is before we come to the great ITV debate. Had they run it concurrently with TOTP on BBC1, I wouldn't have watched it anyway because I was raised to find ITV output and its commercial focus to be rather downmarket.

This is always the thing from Ready Steady Go that leaps to my mind.

In 1966, teenager Melanie Coe runs away from home. Paul McCartney reads a report about her disappearance, in the Daily Mirror and is inspired to write a song about it; She's Leaving Home.

What he doesn't realise is that he'd actually met her, three years earlier, when he was judging a Brenda Lee miming contest on Ready Steady Go and awarded her first prize.

Was that mentioned in the documentary?

I was hoping this would be a running commentary thread on every episode on BBC4, Part 5.

cosmictanya wrote:

I have seen clips of it. I believe Dusty Springfield did some presenting work for it.

Yes she did, and Dusty was featured quite a lot in the documentary. She did a duet with Martha and the Vandellas which Martha Reeves was interviewed about, saying that she still watches the clip regularly as it brings back such good memories for her.

Although it was all shown in black and white colour footage does exist.

The Call of the Wendigo wrote:

Was that mentioned in the documentary?

Melanie Coe WAS featured (and interviewed) and the footage with Paul McCartney was shown but as far as I'm aware the She's Leaving Home link wasn't mentioned, although they did mention something about her going missing, which confused me. I then read about it on Wikipedia!

'I was a cameraman on the Six-Five Special'