Product: The Old Grey Whistle Test, Vol. 2 (2005)
Rating: 3.0
Mixed bag - as was the show.
The BBC have chosen to treat OGWT as if it's run was one long homogeneous series and the selection of music a history of the show. It wasn't. It was obvious at the time and interviews from Vol 1 really confirm that it was really 2 shows... The Bob Harris era, which featured eclectic art rock in a tiny studio characterized by high quality and occasionally impenetrable musicianship and the Anne Nightingale era characterized by whatever pseudo counter culture image the major labels were promoting that year.In keeping with the fact that the BBC, when it caught on, ditched the former in favour of the latter - a lot of the real gems have turned up missing from these collections.That said, they're still pretty good and have a few magnificent performances on them. In keeping with the OGWT philosophy this is mostly about the music. The chats before each are vaguely interesting but can be skipped once you've heard them once. Scene breaks separate the music from the chats in a way which music lovers love and video producers hate. Kudos.Back to the real content. There is some good music, some disappointments, a couple of nice surprises and a couple of real gems here.Patti Smith was disappointing, singing Because the Night like she'd been moking cigars constantly for the last 3 hours and was afraid to breathe for fear of her lungs collapsing.Head Hands and Feet were a nice surprise with a neat bluesey opening number I'd never heard before.Thomas Dolby provided a great performance of Hyperactive. I liked the song but never realised how richly complex it was before seeing it performed.For me, though, the high and the low point were one and the same - Joan Armatrading, looking both astonishingly young and frighteningly mature for her age sings Love and Affection in a way that still gives me shivers when I think about it. An unbelievable amount of musical, emotional and poetic talent crammed into that one 3 minute performance. And that song alone was cut short before it finished. Other artists got to ramble the last chorus over and over while they faded out and this song they cut off the denuement. What a joy and what a travesty.The presence of that performance alone made this a 4* product but that 5-10 missing seconds cost them a star and that was a well deservered demerit.All in all a mixed bag with enough good to be worth owning both for pleasure and history.