Monday, December 17, 2007

Programming Notes From All Over

From today's New York Times:

The Early Years of Rock, Later Than Previously Thought
By DANIEL M. GOLD

Any documentary series about the history of rock music that manages to get through its first show without mention of Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly or Chuck Berry, and only a passing reference to the Beatles — well, you have to admire its assertiveness.

And there is a lot of attitude to wade through in “The Seven Ages of Rock,” the series that starts Monday night on VH1 Classic and runs through Sunday.

The producer, William Naylor, is a longtime British documentarian with four earlier series on songwriting to his credit, including “Dancing in the Street” (1996), a 10-part look at rock music’s evolution. For this revisitation he has sliced a very large pie into subgenres, not so much separate ages as competing categories, everything from art rock to punk, heavy metal to alternative.

The first episode claims to examine “The Birth of Rock,” setting 1965 as Year 1....


Read the rest here.

Could be a hot one. Here in the NYC area, the show airs at 9pm. Check your local time and cable listing.

3 comments:

tikistitch said...

Simels - Did you watch? Just caught the first ep on TiVo, and was wondering about your reaction. I was, well, underwhelmed. "Let's see, we've done Dylan goes electric - Oh, I know, we need to add Altamont!"

steve simels said...

tikistich:

I watched -- there was actually a lot of footage I've never seen before. The narration was pretty trite, but the unfamiliar stuff kind of made up for it. For me, at least.

tikistitch said...

We watched again tonight, and I'm somewhat less cranky, I think, now that I get the deal that we're going to pretend Elvis, The Beatles, et al didn't exist (this kind of weirded me out the first time through). You're right, some pretty cool footage, especially cops/stagehands whacking kids. And, despite being a major Who geek, I hadn't heard the story of the stagehands rushing to rescue their instruments before!

Enjoyed the bit of the heavy metal episode I caught tonight, so we'll keep with it.