[HN Gopher] Moog dancers prove that TV was more adventurous in t...
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Moog dancers prove that TV was more adventurous in the 70s
Author : jensgk
Score : 72 points
Date : 2022-12-03 12:45 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.synthtopia.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.synthtopia.com)
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| It may have been adventurous, but this was definitely not
| mainstream. It was fringe and probably shown on public
| broadcasting in very limited markets, and at a late hour (i.e.,
| low viewership).
| robotresearcher wrote:
| This was an ATV production. ATV made shows for the commercial
| channel ITV in England, which showed content that varied by
| region.
|
| This was back when there were two BBC (public) channels and one
| commercial channel. And they all shut down at bedtime.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Neat; but I feel an average episode of So you think you can
| dance, or any of the myriad x factor / America got talent have
| equivalent coreographies :)
| Reason077 wrote:
| Just remember that the children who watched this stuff are
| responsible for many of the world's problems today.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| There's no correlation or causation between the people who
| watched this show and "the worlds problems today."
| fredley wrote:
| 1983 Turtle Dreams by Meredith Monk: https://youtu.be/FBlnrRUVfo0
| birdyrooster wrote:
| There were tons of great 70s TV. The public access comedy from
| that era is akin to YouTube of this one.
|
| Big Chuck and Little John come to mind
| [deleted]
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Yeah, if your goal is to find adventurous content in the avant
| garde sense there's no question the internet has enabled far,
| far, more than what existed on tv in the 70s.
|
| Also it's just incomparable how quality vs price has changed in
| camera equipment and related. You can put together a setup that
| rivals broadcast quality for about the price of an economy car.
| We live in a golden age of independent productions being much
| more affordable.
|
| So celebrate the Moog dancers if you like, but I think this
| subtext that we've lost something or become less adventurous
| totally preposterous.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > We live in a golden age of independent productions being much
| more affordable.
|
| I'm torn on this. I suppose it's a beautiful thing to enable
| more creators but we are also awash in garbage content with BS
| at scale.
| incone123 wrote:
| Only online. If you prefer to leave curation to others then
| you still have TV
| insanitybit wrote:
| Risk is inherent to adventurous content.
| [deleted]
| drewcoo wrote:
| > subtext that we've lost something or become less adventurous
| totally preposterous
|
| This was shown where everyone might stumble across it. That's
| completely unlike today's insular interest bubbles. The
| unspoken bubbles are a loss for the larger group. The bubbles
| make us less adventurous.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| It's interesting that some people still think of culture as
| expressed by things that large numbers of people were forced to
| watch, on account of there being nothing else good on.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Not too different from "Popcorn" (1972):
| https://youtu.be/YfdLh0MHqKw
| dan-robertson wrote:
| In the 1970s, _The Black and White Minstrel Show_ was still on
| TV. I don't think this one clip proves anything.
|
| I think it is true that there used to be more of an attitude to
| broadcasting 'things the public ought to see' more than the
| things they actually wanted which meant more things like
| classical music, history, dance, etc. Although I'm not sure if
| this clip was due to that attitude. If you look at TV today,
| things like nature documentaries can still be very popular and
| high quality.
|
| Some of the 'high-brow' content was relegated to special channels
| and so just seen less. Nowadays, it seems like Netflix, YouTube,
| etc is actually a good place for more niche things to be able to
| reach a wider audience.
| smackeyacky wrote:
| This doesn't look adventurous to me. It's more like an extension
| of "Page 3" culture that spilled over to TV. It's not that much
| different to the "Hot Gossip" dancers on Kenny Everett's TV show
| or "Top of the Pops" at the end of the decade.
|
| Old UK TV shows look weird to todays audience (not adventurous)
| because they are a reflection of a time we have long moved on
| from. The pandering racism of "Love Thy Neighbour" and "The Black
| and White Minstrel Show", the scantily clad "totty" in Benny
| Hill.
|
| I suppose on an incredibly naive way it might seem adventurous
| but I'm very glad we've moved on.
| flumpcakes wrote:
| I don't see how we went from interpretive dance by a mixed
| group of men and women to sexualising the women as "page 3" and
| "totty"?
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| > The pandering racism of "Love Thy Neighbour"
|
| You get that both parties - the white guy and the black guy -
| were bigoted racist idiots, neither were right, and their wives
| who actually got on fine were exasperated with them, right? I
| mean, you've actually seen the series, I'm sure?
|
| Because if you'd seen Love Thy Neighbour, you'd know that both
| guys were racist bigoted idiots.
|
| You'd also know that even in the 1970s when it was aired,
| everyone thought it was shite.
| hairofadog wrote:
| Shout out to Mummenschanz
|
| https://youtu.be/lkontjT7uvg
|
| https://youtu.be/xe95sn0cN3k
| TehCorwiz wrote:
| My son just had a field trip to see them live!
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| This is cool, and I'm sure it was extremely adventurous at the
| time, but "weird music videos" is a genre that has been perfectly
| healthy for the last 40 years. The fashions in music, style, and
| mood have changed; the general oddball appeal hasn't.
| bloomingeek wrote:
| This does not compute. (And I grew up in the 70's!)
| flumpcakes wrote:
| Mainstream broadcast TV, for myself in the UK, has been dead for
| about a decade. There is literally nothing of value that I want
| to see. I have netflix/prime/nowtv/ad nausaum to compete for my
| attention and I can choose something for the mood I am in.
|
| Sometimes I do miss the days of being forced to watch "what ever
| is on" but I think that is more of a failing in curating the
| programming for these services. I wish there was a website I
| could check-off my interests, list my location and the streaming
| services I subscribe to, and it would just give me my next show
| to watch.
|
| I also wish something like that existed for video games,
| collating my steam library + subscription services (EA, PS+,
| Gamepass, etc.) and just tell me what game to play next, before
| they age off etc.
|
| Honestly, in this digital age where everything is automated and
| the era of search I find the curation and recommendation of all
| of these subscription services to be really very poor.
| chaostheory wrote:
| Google, Amazon, and Apple all have AI recommendation apps that
| show you how what you might want to watch, but you have to buy
| their respective streaming boxes to access it. Not sure about
| Roku, but if they didn't have a similar service I would find it
| strange
|
| If you find these recommendation services poor, did you give
| them feedback on the initial and subsequent recommendations in
| order to train them?
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > Mainstream broadcast TV, for myself in the UK, has been dead
| for about a decade
|
| OK, I'm not in the UK. However, I always like to defy
| conventional wisdom that everyone knows, and that is certainly
| some of it.
|
| Broadcast TV is digital now, in the US at least. An antenna
| will cost you $50-75 or so, it's tiny, and _if_ you have line-
| of-sight with the tower, you get a perfect picture. It will be
| in 4K soon, supposedly.
|
| What's on? Well, sports, if you like that. I watched the US v.
| Netherlands match yesterday on broadcast. All the big college
| football games were on yesterday. If you don't watch sports,
| then yeah, there's not much.
|
| Still: local news, much better than you find on the web. And
| PBS stations. And ancient TV shows, e.g. Frasier, Taxi. It
| doesn't replace streaming, but it IS free.
| harry8 wrote:
| >Still: local news, much better than you find on the web
|
| Can't you find the exact local news broadcast on the web to
| watch at the time of your choosing? If not why not? Seems
| odd.
| hinkley wrote:
| I learned recently that Danny Elfman's band Oingo Boingo started
| life as a surrealist theater troupe, started by his brother
| Richard. That incarnation appeared on The Gong Show. It was just
| pure chaos, and they won anyway.
| qohen wrote:
| And, via the magic of YouTube, you can see it all here:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsmwVWELBBc
| eesmith wrote:
| I think it's better than the Buck Rogers roller disco -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1W6OlH3ms0 .
|
| I'm rather fond of the dancing in Raumpatrouille -
| https://youtu.be/evx-1CtRlek?t=25 .
|
| "Alive from Off Center" had some avant-garde modern dance in the
| 1980s and 1990s - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3O6YHHN5dA .
|
| A bit more light-hearted: "Nine Person Precision Ball Passing" -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaidOy8-Hdo . Only 29 views.
|
| More avant-garde dancing - https://youtu.be/ITBIagJImNk?t=249 .
|
| Going on a tangent: the social protests from this collection of
| spoken-word pieces in this 1991 episode are, sadly, essentially
| unchanged - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HY7pKQ-Imco .
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| I'm curious how they did the wearable lighting on that Buck
| Rogers roller disco. That would have been around 1978 or so.
| Only red LEDs existed then, and the lights they're wearing are
| green. How would they have been powered? Batteries don't seem
| like they'd power so many incandescents for very long.
| toast0 wrote:
| The lights are just on the skates right? The necklaces seem
| like just very reflective of other lighting, but I looked on
| a phone, and the image quality isn't great.
|
| I suspect those would be incandescent in a greenish tube,
| though. I've got a replica glowing lifeclock from Logan's Run
| (supposedly molded from production molds), and it's a little
| mini incadescent. Stuff some batteries in the skates, change
| them between takes if you need to.
| eesmith wrote:
| It would have been between September 1979 and April 1981 says
| Wikipedia.
|
| We had red, yellow, and green LEDs by then. While I don't
| know the history, I stuck "green led" into archive.org and
| found things like "At one-fifth the current, these red,
| yellow and green LED seven-segment numeric displays are equal
| in brightness to the previous displays." in a 1975
| advertisement at https://archive.org/details/sim_i-d_july-
| august-1975_22_4/pa... .
|
| Though I think you mean high-intensity green?
|
| That said, what green lights do you mean? The closest I could
| spot was in the skates, and they didn't look all that green.
| Can you give a time code?
|
| The shots are only a few seconds long. There's plenty of time
| to replace batteries as needed.
|
| Or perhaps it's more that they reflect green well, rather
| than emit green?
| unknownsky wrote:
| Does anyone know the choreographer? It looks so much like what
| Bob Fosse was doing in the 60's, e.g.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSSlWfOCgLw
| drdec wrote:
| America's Got Talent would put these people on.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoFeZ-_MVFE
| Izkata wrote:
| This explains an aspect of sci-fi I never really got (aside from
| how simple it is to depict): "Entertainment" across species often
| means bringing in scantily-clad dancers. Apparently the writers
| were just partially mimicking some of what was already on TV.
|
| (I like it more when they don't do that, since they had more room
| to play with reactions - like Phlox at movie night in _Star Trek:
| Enterprise_. He found it a lot more interesting to watch the
| audience.)
| cletus wrote:
| I grew up in Australia. At this time (many years ago) TV was
| basically a mix of ABC (ie the Australian version of PBS) and
| British TV (mostly BBC but also some ITV and Channel 4). I cannot
| adequately describe just how good TV was from this era,
| particularly children's TV.
|
| Prime example: Dr Who. This was the era of Tom Baker as the
| Doctor. Honestly, it was amazing. But there were other shows that
| were just plain goofy like The Goodies and Monkey. On the sci-fi
| front you had Blake's Seven, which was way ahead of its time in
| moral complexity. To this day, Avon is an amazing character.
|
| We saw very little American TV. Sesame Street was a notable
| exception. At the time this even dealth with complex issues (eg
| the actor who played Mr Cooper died IRL and his death was on the
| show).
|
| As I got older you got into shows like Grange Hill, which
| actually dealt with issues like a kid dying of a heroin overdose.
|
| In my teens I got into more adult shows like Yes Minister (which,
| to this day, is amazing). We had in-depth news program that was
| of exceedingly high quality (ie Four Corners and the 7:30 Report)
| that included such gems as [1] (referring to the Kirki [2]).
|
| But what happened in the 1980s to the BBC in particular was that
| children's TV got really dumbed down. Dr Who was viewed as "too
| scary". So all this innovation basically disappeared under the
| guise of the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
|
| It wasn't really until the 2000s that TV recovered from this and
| even now I believe even now that children's TV is simply awful.
| None of it seems to be intellectually engaging at all and
| certainly not "adventurous".
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirki_(tanker)
| Lio wrote:
| This sort of stuff was all too wide spread when I were a lad.
|
| I can't describe the disappointment of rushing home from school
| to find the Looney Tunes slot on BBC 2 be replaced by a "cultural
| exchange" cartoon from Eastern Europe.
|
| No offence to anyone from Eastern Europe but having Bugs Bunny
| replaced by geometric shapes fighting via the medium of Free Jazz
| is ...well it's culture shock on a level that no 7 year old
| should be put through.
| conradfr wrote:
| If you want some weird things, watch the show Tracks on the
| French-German public channel Arte.
|
| https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/RC-014037/tracks/
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@TRACKSARTEFr/videos
| bbanyc wrote:
| This feels like one of the weird no-dialogue segments on the
| Muppet Show, only with people instead of Muppets.
| csours wrote:
| This would be right at home in an Alamo Drafthouse pre-show.
| p1necone wrote:
| Is it really surprising that _TV_ is turning to garbage? There 's
| no great conspiracy to dumb it down, it's just a question of
| demographics. TV used to be the primary source of home
| entertainment for every age group, now it's just people too
| technologically illiterate to work out how to sign up for
| streaming services.
|
| In my group of close 25 - 32 ish year old friends, encompassing
| maybe 10 households I don't know a _single_ one who actually has
| their TV hooked up to regular TV, all of them consume content
| through a combination of streaming services and piracy.
|
| Expand your search past regular broadcast television and you'll
| find there's a thousand times more weird, avant garde stuff out
| there today if that's what you're into.
| fullshark wrote:
| Aren't there lots of tv shows with music and dancing? The style
| has changed.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Soul Train was the grand daddy of them all.
| brudgers wrote:
| I loved Soul Train.
|
| Unlike this clip, it was built around celebrity and
| commercial music.
|
| That probably explains why it had such a long run.
|
| Incidentally, Wikipedia says it started in 1971 the same year
| this clip purports to be.
| brudgers wrote:
| What stands out to me in the piece is the high budget combined
| with a lack of any celebrity and the use of an original
| composition.
|
| Someone was paid to write an original composition and another
| to choreograph the dancing.
|
| Those are expensive cameras dancing on a proper soundstage
| operates by professionals and shot with a multi-camera setup by
| another set of professionals...it's all choreographed,
| rehearsed, directed, and edited.
|
| Nothing like that happens today without a celebrity.
| Animats wrote:
| > Nothing like that happens today without a celebrity.
|
| Now that's an interesting insight.
|
| Dance groups still do works like that. Here's ODC San
| Francisco.[1] Not many people watch that sort of thing.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oyi9-01Gx7E
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| In 1970 most people hadn't heard a Moog before. So this was
| pretty abstract and futuristic.
|
| The modern equivalent would be a stage full of Boston
| Dynamics robots choreographed by an AI with an AI-generated
| trap music score.
|
| Although it reminds me that the BBC had musique concrete
| station idents in the 70s. Also used more famously for
| incidental music for Dr Who and a few other shows.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlscKj5L4Q8
| brudgers wrote:
| Because Boston Dynamics robots don't currently provide T&A,
| I don't think it would hold my interest to the same degree.
|
| Or more generally, to the degree humans are hardwired
| and/or culturally programmed to watch dance, I think it is
| to watch people dance.
|
| Watching waves break on rocks, clouds blow by, and fires
| crackle is a different type of experience _for me_ than
| watching dance or sport or juggling.
|
| I have a higher degree of isomorphism with other humans
| than non-humans and I believe that creates a different
| context for my experiences.
| ozten wrote:
| Agreed! 1970 "Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp". Watch an episode on
| YT[1]. Totally bonkers. This should could not be made today.
| (Chimps forced to snow ski with a Peregrine Falcon tied to it's
| shoulder? So dangerous)
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3ctZI9_oyo
| spanktheuser wrote:
| Rare footage of a 1999 performance:
|
| https://youtu.be/LiXg_70rMeM
| open-source-ux wrote:
| Hmm, I'm not sure I call this more 'adventurous' than TV today -
| definitely cool. Did 70s TV (in the UK) offer greater variety of
| programming? Performances of dance (including contemporary dance)
| have a long history on UK TV.
|
| _It's hard to imagine where you might see something like this
| today_
|
| Ironically, you are more likely to see something like this on
| YouTube than on TV (I mean not just viewing old TV clips).
|
| Aside: The _BBC Archive_ channel on YouTube is a great dip into
| some of the BBC archives.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@BBCArchive/videos
| golemiprague wrote:
| NHK Japan morning shows for kids are still this type of quirky in
| some way. Including the classic Pythagoras switchi. I think from
| a 70' point of view this was their chatGPT, an exploration of new
| music and style of dance which these days we just do in the
| internet.
| crooked-v wrote:
| This immediately reminds me of that trend of 'light dancers' that
| was prominent on America's Got Talent for a few years until
| people got bored of them.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvrCyIZb5q8
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > for a few years until people got bored of them.
|
| I agree, but at a personal level I find it sad how that, given
| the _gargantuan_ amount of media available, and the ease of
| consuming it, how quickly things fall into the "old fad"
| bucket.
|
| For example, I find that there is a lot of content on TikTok
| that is truly amazing. I like watching parkour videos, and I'm
| amazed at these people's skills and daredevil tricks. But it's
| so easily to quickly scroll through hundreds of these videos
| that they lose their unique luster too quickly, and after a
| while it feels like "meh, that was cool, what's next".
|
| I guess I'm arguing that this overabundance of consumable media
| content has some big negative consequences, similar to how the
| overabundance of food in the middle part of the last century
| had grave health consequences for most Western nations.
| hamburglar wrote:
| Isn't this just the nature of novelty? The most interesting
| thing about something is often the idea and the fact that
| it's new and unexpected. The first time you see it, you're
| surprised and delighted. Novelty drops off quickly unless
| people using the same idea add significant innovation to it.
| exosappie wrote:
| taylorius wrote:
| There was a LOT of this sort of stuff on 70s UK telly. On kids TV
| too. "Adventurous" is one word for it. I'd rather have had an
| episode of Battle of the Planets, myself.
| quelsolaar wrote:
| Hard not to look at this and see the inspiration to Daft Punks
| "around the world" video directed by Michel Gondry:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0HSD_i2DvA
| bawolff wrote:
| > It's hard to imagine where you might see something like this
| today
|
| I dont think its that hard to imagine in a time where weird
| dancing memes are what the kids are doing on tiktok
| rhplus wrote:
| _"It's hard to imagine where you might see something like this
| today."_
|
| YouTube or TikTok, because broadcast TV is all but dead.
| brudgers wrote:
| That was my first thought, but my second was nothing _new_ on
| YouTube has that kind of budget.
|
| I mean there's the three broadcast cameras dancing plus
| operators plus more broadcast cameras shooting operating on a
| full soundstage with crews of gaffers and grips and catering
| and scale wages.
|
| I am not saying that YouTube and TikTok aren't possibly as
| creative. Only that nobody is putting that level of resources
| behind a TikTok because nobody will put that much money at
| risk.
| mattkrause wrote:
| Some of OK Go's videos might be close: the crew shot for
| their Rube Goldberg video has a ton of folks in it.
| speedgoose wrote:
| ArteTV does broadcast content like this.
| tyingq wrote:
| I think the Tellitubbies features some similar acid-drop music
| and visuals.
| norswap wrote:
| There's stuff like this on Arte (Franco-German culture TV
| channel) all the time.
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