OLD GREY WHISTLE TEST - Grey Memories




One of my favourite programmes of youth was BBC's  Old Grey Whistle Test. A relative late-comer to the programme, I joined at the stage when 'Whispering' Bob Harris was beginning to lose control of, what until that point had been, his own private TV music show. No longer was the programme showing the prog rock dinosaurs of old. The youthful new bands of the mid-seventies were beginning to take a much larger foothold of TV's only real alternative to 'Top Of The Pops'. Although perfectly relaxed with the 'new wave' of music that he now presented, the introduction of excitable Annie Nightingale as co-presenter obviously irked the reserved Harris, quickly forcing him to leave the programme completely. 'Young upstart journalists' David Hepworth and Mark Ellen, and DJs Andy Kershaw and Richard Skinner, alternatively carried on banging in the nails and digging the grave, of this fine TV institution until it lost firstly it's 'Old Grey' pre-title and inevitably it's soul. By 1987 the programme was little more than an overriding title for live concerts and was dropped completely.

The influence of the 'Test' over the years can not be exaggerated, and it certainly introduced me to hundreds of acts that I would otherwise have missed. In 1980, the BBC released an album of tracks that had featured on the programme over the past few years, and the album became a regular visitor to my turntable at the time. Tracks on 'Test Pressing' were;-

1. Police - Can't Stand Losing You
2. Tubeway Army - Down In the Park
3. Willie Nile - Across The River
4. Yellow Magic Orchestra - Cosmic Surfin'
5. Simple Minds - Chelsea Girl
6. John Etheridge & Ric Sanders (credited as '2nd Vision') - Ice Bells
7. Blondie - Eat To the Beat
8. Jo Jo Zep & the Falcons - Shape I'm In
9. Landscape - Sonja Henie
10. Selecter - Missing Words
11. Alda Reserve - Some Get Away
12. Genesis - Please Don't Ask
13. John Cooper Clarke - Beasley Street

A fantastic album that I can recommend to anyone.

30 years later, I found all these tracks along with the theme tune to OGWT;- Stone Fox Chase by Area Code 615, and then went on to create my own album of personal memories of the programme.

Grey Memories:-

1. Patti Smith - Dancing Barefoot
2. Monochrome Set - 405 Lines
3. Devo - Jocko Homo
4. Talking Heads - Psycho Killer
5. XTC - Radios In Motion
6. Frank Zappa - Baby Snakes
7. Bruce Springsteen - Rosalita
8. Meat Loaf - Bat Out Of Hell
9. Ellen Foley - What's A Matter Baby
10. Kansas - Dust In The Wind
11. Elton John - Tiny Dancer
12. Roches - Hammond Song
13. Santana - Black Magic Woman
14. Dire Straits - Sultans Of Swing
15. Peter Tosh (with Mick Jagger) - (You Gotta Walk) Don't Look Back
16. Frank Zappa - City Of Tiny Lights
17. John Etheridge and Ric Sanders - Dancing Circle
18. XTC - Yacht Dance (Live on 'Whistle Test')
19. Patti Smith - Because The Night (Live on 'Whistle Test) 
20. Al Stewart - Year Of The Cat (Live on 'Whistle Test)