This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 24 October 2015.
Psychedelic
Britannia: Friday, BBC Four
SAS:
Who Dares Wins: Monday,
Channel 4
Paul
Whitelaw
A
kaleidoscopic tapestry of wonderful archive footage, seasoned talking
heads and mind-blowing music, Psychedelic Britannia paid
bewitching tribute to one of the most colourful periods in British
pop history.
It
chronicled those forward-thinking years between 1965 and 1970 when
bands such as Pink Floyd, The Yardbirds and yer Beatles swapped their
beat/blues roots for experiments in jazz, classical, the avant-garde,
Indian drones and holy modal chanting. It was a time of studio
experimentation and long, wiggy improvisations, where anything went
and usually did.
It
was also a time of drugs. Lots and lots of consciousness-expanding
drugs. After all, that's how the genre got its name and most of its
untrammelled vision.
One
of many choice interviewees, Yes/Tomorrow's Steve Howe, aka the
librarian ghost from Ghostbusters, said he once played his
guitar for ten hours continuously while on acid. Time, alas, hasn't
archived this marathon.
Soft
Machine's Robert Wyatt claimed that one of the reasons they played
endless jams at London's legendary UFO club was because they didn't
allow any gaps for the crowd to boo. They were probably too zonked to
care anyway.
Wyatt
also revealed that he barely knows what a CV is. “I was too young
to take any notice of that crap,” he chuckled. Wyatt was typical of
the many young hairies who dropped out of conventional society to
form a bohemian counter-culture steeped in a unique British fusion of
pastoral Edwardian whimsy and cultural revolution. Within months it
had infiltrated the mainstream.
Of
course, not everyone from his generation was impressed by this new
Arcadian Age. One of the programme's many great finds was a clip of a
young mod at Alexandra Palace's 14 Hour Technicolour Dream. A BBC
reporter asked him what he was expecting. “Sumfink better than
this,” he sniffed. It was pure Quadrophenia.
I
was always going to enjoy this beautifully assembled programme, as
British psych is one of my favourite genres. But I was particularly
impressed by the way it managed to gently mock its sillier excesses,
while simultaneously treating it with respect. That's precisely the
right approach, as the pie-eyed eccentricity of British psych is one
of its defining and most charming characteristics.
Even
the choice of narrator, Nigel Planer, alias Neil from The Young
Ones, was inspired. His affectionately droll script correctly
argued that this is when British pop found its first truly original
voice.Only 60 minutes long, I can excuse its exclusion of the lesser-known, one-shot acts that gave British psychedelia much of its quirky identity. Only an hour, but it was quite a trip.
It's
probably safe to assume that “Turn on, tune in, drop out” isn't
part of the SAS handbook. But what does it take to join this rock
hard military unit? SAS: Who Dares Wins attempts to explain by
following a group of ex-Special Forces soldiers as they put 30
civilians through a recreation of the gruelling selection process
that they once endured.
Despite
the insight it affords into this grimly serious world, it's basically
a generic boot camp show of the type we're all familiar with. It even
finds the judges/trainers sitting around a table to decide which of
the contestants/recruits should stay in the competition/process: The
Great British Bloke Off. On that point, why aren't there any
women involved?
Such
mysteries aside, the programme does at least reveal that
psychological strength is essentially more important than physical
fitness in the SAS. Alpha males aren't necessarily welcome. And for
the shallower among us, we can all get a kick from the fact that the
chief instructor has clearly modelled himself on the classic bearded
Action Man.
