A couple of weeks ago I received a message on Friday night Boomerang productions would be filming the latest edition of Bandit – a now quarterly Welsh-language pop combo series which has in the past hosted Radio Luxembourg/Racehorses, Threatmantics and Mr Huw, among others. It holds the mantel with Pobol Y Cwm of being the only show on S4C you’ve ever actually watched (although I’ve always meant to catch Y Byd ar Bedwar and always managed to miss it) and in a change to what I remember of the show, portions were to be filmed in front of a live studio audience who were to be rounded up via bus for the show via Twitter. The incentives: free bus and free beer. Whatcouldpossiblygowrong?
I arrived back from work at 6pm and ran like a banshee to the Sherman Theatre where I was greeted by an army of excitable Welsh-speaking teenagers – even the 21-year-old third year who I was sat next to and was swigging a litre bottle of vodka and coke felt old. My party was split in half, leaving from the castle, and so I was trapped on a minibus with what was a bit like a party travelling on their way to Butlins at the start of the summer holidays. One guy, let’s call him Mr Hat, insisted on barking out love songs on the way to the ITV studios. Cute.
Arriving at the studio and shepherded into a holding pen, a magical door opened and a canteen of goodies is revealed. Now when I thought there was to be free booze, I assumed it would be a couple of bottles of Carling and that’s your lot. The producers bought in at least 5 crates or so of Strongbow and Carling. Now I haven’t eaten, so the affect of any of these cans of joy is inevitably multiplied times a thousand. Worryingly a team of St John’s Ambulance paramedics were on stand by in case one of the aforementioned teens, or me (more likey me) threw up their Strongbow all over the expensive central-government funded cabling.
A can and a half later a man with a chequered shirt came out and announced we had 10 minutes to drink up and get ready for the show. Queue knocking back my poision and wandering into the studio, giddy and wobbly from the speed cider drinking. We were first hearded into the right hand side of the set, then the left. Then the right. Then the left. Then Derwyddon Dr Gonzo started playing. And stopped. The chequered shirt guy came back over, said thanks for the clapping, now can you look like you’re enjoying the band. Um, OK. If I was honest I wasn’t – maybe in Welsh I would get something I’m missing but the Ska-Punk-Jazz thing is a new line I don’t want to cross. We watch DDG play the same song about three times, and are at one point asked to chat less and clap more – a request which generates all the energy of a cold shower.
After DDG it dawned that watching a live band on tele isn’t very much like watching a live band at all. The producers need to ensure they’re filming the band right, have enough shots of them, and have the audience in the can, have enough shots of them. There’s only one camera to do all of this, hence the repeated takes.. The result is something to the manufactured of artificial. It really doesn’t look as bad in the finished thing, but in real life it is gruelling and frankly doesn’t elicit the kind of spontaneous responses you might get at a gig. This I suppose isn’t the point. I mean, have you SEEN a typical clwb audience to a band they’ve never seen before? They talk, chat, bicker, heckle – generally only the front three people (I know who you are) will show any sign of movement. A group of bored looking mid-20s Brains guzzling miseries would look shit on TV, wouldn’t it?
But…. but… Remember this performance? Its raw as hell and sticks in my head like a migrane, still, and it was filmed 30 years ago.Iain Curtis is shaking into the camera and through that lens changing the face of popular music in a stroke. When’s the last time you watched music TV and the hairs on your back literally stand up on end? A part of me wants bands to be caught and captured uncomfortable and sweaty and horrible. And I want to see the audience go fucking loopy for them, or to look uninterested. Ultimately it should reflect reality like a Broomfield film – it should be a documentary of a trend or something happening, like news from the concert hall carpet. Not to just look pretty and tidy. It should shake you up and make you go outside.
It’s been a long process to get here from Joy Division, but some of what I saw that Friday night helped me see how, going into the end of the first decade of the 21st century, music television has sped into irrelevancy. If you look at mainstream English TV things are much worse. Jools Holland will not put on a band that hasn’t had either heaps of mainstream critical recognition, a major label deal, or a three-decade long career. The shows that are on are sanitised and far removed from anything actually going on in the bars and clubs of Wales, England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. You could read Kruger and Plan B, watch Jools and wonder about the parallel universe that produced both. Bandit does do its best, and to give them their credit even with the polish it is heaps better than many English language shows, making up almost an hour of largely obscure local talent. You could easily fill a one-off Welsh music special with bands yn y saesneg but we would never see it and no one is making it.
This isn’t a rant about Bandit anymore – watch the special as its got Mr Huw and bands who aren’t DDG. Hats off to them for taking it steady and sticking there for so many years, but what I really want to see is TV that puts a mirror to what me and plenty of others go to see every week, and stops telling us what TV people think music is about and tells me what music people think TV should be about.
Bandit is currently available to view for the next few weeks on S4C.co.uk.
