In Praise of British Music Shows

It's PBS pledge time again. Last time, we saw rare a rare Who concert.

This time, it's Billy Joel on the Old Grey Whistle Test circa 1978. I haven't thought of the OGWT since my good friends did a film about Lynyrd Skynard ages ago. They found amazing early footage of the band from that show; OGWT was famous for having the rarest early footage of some of the greatest bands in pop history.

With Top of the Pops in the news lately and my eternal admiration of Later with Jools Holland, it seems that the UK has the advantage when it comes to classic (not classical) music shows. I hear The Tube, which ran in the 80s was pretty amazing as well.

I guess we had Don Kirshner's Rock Concert stateside. But aside from that, we had to wait for some of our heroes to lip sync on the Merv Douglas Show.

Maybe that's why my head exploded when I saw Elvis Costello on Saturday Night Live ... In the UK, they actually had a tradition of showing bands in a natural setting and they'd do things like Elvis: start a song, then stop, then trash the drum kit.

Gorgeous stuff.