Did you catch the passing reference yesterday to the 1974 special Pan's People In Concert? Well, as luck would have it, and yes, this is the show with the much reshown gyrating-to-free-jazz routine...
Difficult to know where to begin, isn't it?
(Previously on Yes It's Number One: Babs on This Is Your Life)
5 comments:
I remember seeing a Pan's People documentary where Dee Dee said those costumes for the middle clip were the most expensive ever made for the TOTP dancers!
Sorry, I meant to say it was the cushion-writhing outfits that were the most expensive. I can't believe they cost more than the entire set of clobber for 'Jungle Rock'. I guess less is more!
Indeed they were, though I can't imagine where the expense went unless it was because they were specifically fitted. The Jungle Rock costumes must have come from the back of a storage cupboard from when Play Away didn't want them any more. It's also been let on that the song and tap dance routine at the end of part 2 and onto part 3 is basically all lies - hardly any of them could sing and two at best could tap dance, so tapes were utilised for the latter and hope for the former. (Also of note: Louise, Dee Dee's co-writher, left about a month after this was broadcast)
Just noticed if you put Pan's People into Google the autocomplete's first suggestion is 'pan's people cherry'. Is that my fault?
This is probably old news to others but I found it intriguing. I've found an interview with Louise while she was in Pan’s People. She mentions her boyfriend Tony who’s got a farm near Sheffield, and later in the interview she says she’d ‘like to have a family and farm near Sheffield’. I then found on another site that Louise married a millionaire from Sheffield who also had a property in Marbella! Remember we're talking about a millionaire in the mid-70's, not one of your common or garden moneybags these days!
Well... about as unique a half-hour of telly as any you could ever hope to see, for a start. When I heard Pan's had done an 'In Concert' special for BBC2 - as BBC4 have shown us, more usually home to the sort of singer-songwriters that would've shat their fringe-jackets out their arses if they'd have thought they were doing anything as tacky as a Light Entertainment show - I expected it'd be spangly fun on a grander scale than that of Pops, as opposed to...
Well, as opposed to genuinely excellent shape-throwing on the level of the earlier numbers, real class next to all the Get Downs & Monster Mashes we can't forget, rubbing shoulders with ambitious Colby mindfucks like the CSO clock minefield - what must the studio audience have made of that?
That's a fascinating point, too - the extensive coverage of BBC Ticket Unit callers there aren't half a mixed bunch, are they? Nice to see lots of starstruck little girls, in addition to the scattered, expected Dirty Old Men. (And old women, for that matter.)
The records were commendably all over the place, an' all; Ella Fitzgerald, Buddy Miles, the Black Dyke Mills Band... Probably my favourite, the stunning 'Chinese Garden' number - I would state absolutely categorically that that was the Duke Ellington band, they're unmistakeable, and I still can't quite believe those credits, if it wasn't them.
Stanley Dorfman's still active too, according to Wikipedia; moved to LA, still makes music shows & films.
Other than that, if anybody can prove to me Clive James didn't review this in the Observer at the time (it's not in Visions Before Midnight, anyway), why add anything else?
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