While the birth of punk in 1976 had a seismic impact on British music,
television was slow to respond; The Sex Pistols' 'God Save the Queen' was
famously banned by Top of the Pops (BBC, 1964-) despite making it to number two in the official chart. Some of the
more housetrained post-punk acts did make it on to The Old Grey Whistle Test
(BBC, 1971-87), where they sat uncomfortably among the show's favoured classic
rock and prog artists, but it was two programmes outside the mainstream which
really engaged with the new scene: Granada's So It Goes (ITV, 1976-77) and ATV's
Revolver.
So It Goes, despite an open-minded booking policy, mirrored Whistle Test in
featuring studio performances without an audience. Revolver - admittedly
launched in a Summer 1978, after the worst of the anti-punk media frenzy had
passed - bravely attempted to capture "all the energy, noise and atmosphere of a
rock concert" (as the TV Times put it) by placing a live audience at the core of
the show, in the tradition of Ready, Steady, Go! (ITV, 1963-66).
Indeed, Revolver's most innovative element was designed to evoke the
confrontational atmosphere associated with punk gigs. Peter Cook was
invited to guest on the programme on the strength of the notorious Derek and
Clive recordings, which shared with punk a kind of adolescent, deliberately
puerile nihilism. In the guise of the seedy manager of the rundown nightclub
rented out to the TV company, Cook would appear on a video screen, sneering at the acts and antagonising the studio audience. One guest, Buzzcocks' Pete Shelley, recalled Cook distributing porn magazines, which he encouraged audience members to hold up during sets to put off the bands. Not
surprisingly, Cook's contribution is better remembered than that of nominal
host Les Ross.
For all its punk credentials, the show's music policy was often bewildering -
appearing alongside the likes of X-Ray Spex, Ian Dury and Siouxsie and the Banshees were Kate Bush, Lindisfarne, Bonnie Tyler and the avowedly
anti-punk Dire Straits.
Revolver's engagingly chaotic presentation makes it perhaps an ancestor of
Channel 4's controversial The Word (1990-95), but in 1978 it drew critical
derision and failed to impress ITV managers. Unpromoted and buried in a late
night Friday slot (ironically the exact post-pub slot in which The Word
thrived), the series was starved of an audience and was pulled after just seven
editions.
Mark Duguid
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