Ok general knowledge time:

I'm sure there are many here who would remember the Trax music show from the 80's?

What I'd like to know is how long it ran for - from memory it began in 85 til the late 80's but I'm not sure.

Was Trax meant to be a replacement for Sounds or just a more 'adult' music show?

Also - being an Adelaide boy - there was a local show called Music Express which I loved watching every Sunday afternoon. This was a general pop show with a few local bands performing live. This was shown from about the late 70s - mid 80s - until about the time Trax came along. It was shown on Ch. 7

This was usually on just before Solid Gold, and then it was Countdown - what a Sunday line up!

Anyway I was wondering whether the Music Express title was just in Adelaide or whether each state had their own version of the show?

I have never heard of Trax!

Sounds great *

hmm ok, well as far as I'm aware Trax was a nationally syndicted show....but maybe it was only a local show in Adelaide - to be honest I can't recall.

But I do know that several Trax records were released - Trax Australian Made, etc.

It was hosted by some guy whose name escapes me and used Eye of the Tiger by Survivor & And We Danced by The Hooters for its various opening titles over the years.

As for Music Express, it was hosted by Greg Clarke and Di Miller - 2 very 'hip and happening' Radio DJs of the era and I think I recall Ignatius Jones appeared on their show once for an interview and all hell broke loose....which was highly amusing to watch for a youngster such as myself back in the 'good old days'...

I haven't heard of it either.
Where is a time machine when you need one? I'm in the wrong era, I don't belong here - get me back to the 80's.

Wow, I'm really surprised by that - I honestly thought Trax was a nationally aired show.

Oh well, from memory Music Express ran from 1978 - about 84 and then Trax ran from 85 till I think 89.

Both were very good music shows - although apparently only aired in Adelaide. Both were shown on Sunday afternoons - I remember that clearly as they were on before Solid Gold which was then before Countdown - a great trifecta.

Mind you there could have been locally made music shows in Sydney and Melbourne I've never heard of too...states tended to do their own programming back in those days - Adelaide didn't start showing Hey Hey It's Saturday until 1987 - whether that was a good thing or not I'll leave to others to decide!

As far as I know Trax and Music Express were only on in Adelaide. Trax was usually hosted by DJ's from SAFM. Andrew Peters hosted for a while. I can't recall either show going through into the 90's although there was the short lived Trax Retro in the mid 90's hosted by Sean Craig Murphy.

Guru, can I PLEASE board your time machine?!?!

I must get back to the Early 80s and have my VHS's ready to record!!!!!

CRY ... I don't belong in the now either, it's fricking terrible

Of course that's right yes I do recall Trax Retro -wasn't a bad little nostalgia show either - I think that show was tied up with the Greed nightclub (retro club which played only 80's tunes).

For some reason I always thought Trax was shown nationally given the many albums the show released - about 15 from memory - but i don't remember it going thru the 90's either.

I think Steve Whittam also hosted Music Express for awhile as well - for those wondering who he is he can be seen in the 1/10/78 Countdown ep promoting October DJ's. I believe Mr Whittam was working at 5KA at the time.

Those were really great days for music on TV - tons of shows to satisfy the many musical tastes of the era, Sounds, Music Express, Trax, Countdown, Nightmoves, Solid Gold, etc - can I join the time machine as well please???

Adelaide was the place to be for music shows in the 80's. As well as the national ones like Countdown, Sounds, Music Video, MTV etc we had Trax, Music Express, Top 40 Video, Razzmatazz, Clipz, Simulrock. Ah those were the days

Razzmatazz?

There was an AMAZING music program in the UK like TOTP called the same thing. Surely you guys didn't get that?!!!!!!

Geez Jase, I remember Clipz and all those others - I long for those days!

Having said that time and distance has blurred my memory of whether Razzmatazz was from the UK or just a local version. Although I do remember quite a lot of British gameshows and the occassional music show from the UK were definately shown here so it's possible it was from overseas.

But yes everytime I turned on the TV in the late 70s/80s there always seemed to be a music show on - is it any wonder I have an affinity for those times??

Razzmatazz was just a clip show that was on every day for half an hour. I think it only ran in 1986.

Ah ok - so many programmes during that time it's difficult to remember them all!

I think of lot of those mentioned shows were produced by Ch. 7 - at least Music Express/Trax/Sounds were anyway.

What I wouldn't give to go into the local Ch 7 archives to search for those tapes...assuming they haven't been wiped. Most likely gathering dust like 98% of the other old shows everyone wants to see!

Oh well - Adelaide was certainly blessed with some very fine local music productions during those years and I'm eternally grateful I got to see them - compared to today's lot of shows those programmes leave them for dust!

Now that I think of it - one of the hosts of Music Express - Greg Clarke - can be seen in the 8/7/84 Countdown ep in the background during Culture Club's Adelaide visit where they perform in Rundle Mall.

For anyone interested the walkway they stood in is sadly no longer there although the buildings in between still are.

That was a great day though and packed - they should have put a memorial plaque to mark the day they came to town!

When I went to Rundle Mall in 1996, I went up where Boy George was in 1994 and sang Karma Chameleon when my friend at the time took me. Had to do it, hehe!

Glad I did when it was still there!

Bless +

I remember one of the 'Trax' CD's. It had a lot of Oz pub rock on it from the early to mid 80's. I thought it was just a random name for a compilation CD, but now I know of it's origin. It had a picture of a kangaroo on the cover wearing shades, looking cool.

Unfortunately, I never got to witness many locally produced music shows, coming from Canberra. We only had 1 commercial channel up to early '89. Capital 7 TV and that was pretty much taking as much content as they could from 7,9 & 10...and we didn't get Hey Hey til '89...when WIN and PRIME came in. Yes i was deprived. Just as well we all got the ABC.

Yes I remember the cover to that compilation album very well Michael - although I'm sure the show released about 15 or so albums over the years.

And how could any self respecting fan of Culture CLub not go to the walkway in Rundle Mall? Even though it's not there anymore whenever I walk under where it used to be I always think of that day in 84 when the place stood still for that great group.

Probably almost had as many people saw them as when The Beatles came to Adelaide in 1964 or close to it....at least we have that Countdown ep as a memento...

I've got Trax.. Australian Made 1&2 plus Trax.. British Made and Trax.. American Made. I didn't know there were any others than these. I'm intrigued.

I have the Australian Made Trax LP but all the songs on it are older. They range from Easybeats (1967) to Split Enz (1980) yet the LP came out in 1987. Was Trax a retro style show?

On the back, apart from a SAFM logo, there is also a Channel 10 logo so I don't think this replaced Sounds since that was on 7. Channel 7 also had After Dark which was a Sounds spin off and of course Nightmoves.

Channel 10 had John Torv's Video Music show in the mid 80's, I have about 1 hour of one episode from about October 1984 on a tape somewhere. That was a good video clips show and the episode that I have also includes a Duran Duran competition along with a couple of rare clips of new Aussie releases that week from Flotsam Jetsam and Samurai Trash which I put on my YouTube channel.

I also have two 3 hour videos taped off Channel 10's Night Shift from 1988 and 1989. One of them has the complete intro to QED - This One clip which is chopped off on the Countdown screening.

I am guessing that Trax may have been Channel 10's music show between Video Music and Night Shift.

I will have to do some research into music shows of the 80's some day as there were a lot out there. Wish I had a video recorder in the early 80's as SBS's Rock Around The World with Basia Bonkowski was a great show. There was one called Antenna on the ABC as I have a clip of Takeaways - Sweet & Sour from 1984 and it has the closing credits at the end along with the female host mentioning to tune in again - if only I could.

Rock Around The World would be AMAZING to be repeated on SBS!

They played LOTS of stuff from The Tube in the UK and obscure gems!

The Noise with Annette Shun Wah was a HUGE FAV of mine in the 80's. I watched it very often and they also played HEAPS of live performances from the UK (The Tube) being one of them. I still have a mini concert on vhs which Duran did for The Tube which I got from the Noise in 1987 for the Notorious album.

SBS was truly AMAZING for global music in the 80's and stuff from the UK, THE BEST actually without a doubt!

Here's the Reader's Digest version of Trax..

Trax aired from about late 84 - 89 I'm guessing and played mostly rock groups - in the style of the Triple M rock format. It wasn't a retro show although as Jase mentioned earlier there was a Trax Retro which aired in 1996 which played Adam and the Ants, Blondie, etc.

Trax definately originally aired on Ch. 7. What happened was that in 1987 the local Ch 10 and 7 stations swapped call signs and so the local shows that were on Ch 7 were then shown on Ch 10 - hence why that 1987 cd Guru has mentions Ch 10.

Trax usually aired on Sunday afternoons from 5 - 6, just before Countdown aired. Although in latter years it moved timeslots on a regular basis.

It wasn't a bad show although I preferred Music Express which was more pop orientated and was the precussor to Trax.

Patrick, Music Express ran until at least 1986 as i had a video of a classics edition they did. On this ep they had a competition giving away a hifi system which was quite special as it had a CD player in it. A consolation prize was the True Colors CD by Cyndi Lauper which had just come out.

Ah I see ok - thanks for clearing that up Jase.

I honestly thought Trax replaced Music Express as they seemed to come/go at the same time - but as the old saying goes 'the memory cheats'!

That 1986 ep sounds great - I'm sure CD players were very much a 'must have' item back in those days....although having said that I still miss the giant vinyl albums as some of their covers are works of art in themselves which I think is missing from the smaller CD packaging these days.

There were so many great music shows in the mid 80's that I never appreciated what we had until it was gone. And then you wish you had recorded it all but the moment is lost. To then make matters worse we find out later that TV stations threw out a lot of that material.

To show a couple of examples, in November 1984 you could watch:
Monday to Friday Ch 9 5-5:30pm Wavelength music video show
Monday to Thursday SBS 6-6:30pm Rock Around The World and a longer version from 11pm to 1am on Friday night.
Monday night 11:30pm-1am Ch 10 Nightmoves with Lee Simon (which had crossed over after Channel 7 dropped it)
Tuesday 10-11pm Ch 2 Rock Arena
Friday SBS 6-6:30 Freeze Frame which covered music, comedy and fashion
Friday 11:30pm - 6am Ch 10 John Torv's Music Video all night video show
Saturday Ch 7 9am-12pm - Sounds with Donnie Sutherland
Saturday 4-6pm (SA only) Music Express hosted by Greg Clark and Di Stapleton
Saturday 5-6pm Countdown repeat
Saturday SBS 6-6:30 Continetal Drift - a rock profile series hosted by Basia Bonkowski
Saturday 9:30pm-12am Ch 9 Hey Hey It's Saturday with a live rock act each week
Sunday 10-10:30am - Antenna featuring music videos, lifestyle and movie reviews
Sunday 4-6pm Solid Gold US show hosted by Marilyn McCoo, Rick Dees and others
Sunday 6-7pm Countdown

In August 1985 on a Saturday alone you would get:
12am-6am Ch10 Music Video with Basia Bonkowski (she crossed to Ch10 after Rock Around The World ended in 1984)
9am-12pm Ch7 Sounds
11am-12pm Ch9 Rockit with Lee Simon
12-12:30pm Ch2 Antenna
12:30-1pm Ch2 Sweet & Sour repeat episodes
1-3pm Ch2 Beatbox
5-6pm Ch2 Countdown repeat
12:30pm-6am Ch10 Music Video
That was about 19 hours of music shows from Friday night to Sunday morning - my VCR, if I had one at the time, would have gone into meltdown had I appreciated what we had. On top of that you still had Rock Arena on a Tuesday, Culture Shock on SBS Tuesdays 6-7pm and on Thursday nights on Ch10 was This Week's Music from 1-2am

All this was shown at a time when TV stations still shut down at midnight. I think Channel 9 started running all night movies by the early 80s but apart from the Video Music show on Friday and Saturday nights on Channel 10, the stations generally shut down after midnight.

I repeat my call for someone to invent that time machine.

Geez Guru, that list bought tears to my eyes.

The old phrase 'if we knew then what we know now' is very apt when it comes to that.

There were a whole heap of fantastic music shows in that era which catered for all different tastes. All I can say is hunt down any old video cassettes - some may be on them.

And you're right in that Ch 9 did indeed show classic films from about the early 80's - it became a TV staple for many years and a boon for insomniacs.

Having said that there is absolutely no excuse whatsover for networks to not show some of the existing material in their archives after midnight at least - there is an audience out there who are desperate to see these things.

I know I've gone on about this before but I won't shut up until something is done!!!

Trax use to air in Perth - I am sure I have some eps recorded.

We didnt have Ch10 then either so 7 and 9 use to purchase popular Ch10 shows and show them.

Xmaniac68
Great to see you are back again, I have been trying to get in contact for over half a year now but must have your old contact details as I am getting no responses. Have you moved east yet? Please email and say hello.

Oh Guru... Those lists have just really made me very sad and nostalgic. Not fair, I HATE now, it will NEVER be the same again. How utterly depressing.

I remember watching so many music programs on the weekend, It was so very exciting. There is NO excitement like that anymore. That list is also bringing me to tears Patrick... Purely a genius decade was the 80's and music television in this country. The fact that many of these programs have been taped over and deleted is just the most WORST thing in the world!

Thank goodness I started this website and Forum as it's nice to see others who long for such music, times and archival information +

We had a show in Tassie called "Tracks" (?) in the mid-80's, late on Friday nights. It was hosted by local TV personality Mike Lunn (who also did the Saturday Fun Show here).

It used to be on after Cheers re-runs and I used to watch on my parents bedroom TV as I only had a black and white one in my bedroom. I distinctly remmeber 'Brothers in Arms' being mentioned as a new album so it was clearly airing in early 85 (?) as I think that album was released in very late 84 (?)

Sorry I think I'm getting misty eyed...

Cheers,

Kyron

there was also a south east regional version of music express that ran on channel 8(ses8)from1984/5 to 1988/9 with hosts don rinarldo(?) and caroline kenny/gazzard.
I used to love watching this every saturday at around 5.00pm it moved to 11.00am in the later 80's and even did a few all night specials

hmmm interesting. It appears there may have been more versions of Music Express/Trax than I thought.

Yes, Don Rinaldo is still a radio DJ here in Adelaide and I've heard of Caroline Kennedy as well. Although I mainly remember Greg Clarke hosting it, as I watched it a lot during the late 70's/early 80s (the golden era in my book!)

Whatever the case it was a great show and I've written away to the local station asking if its still in their archives. Unfortunately state based programming fell by the wayside in the early 90's so I hope none of these classic shows got wiped as well.....

There's a local music video show from Bendigo's BCV-8 [now as Southern Cross Ten] and it's called "Breezin'" hosted by a young Glenn Ridge, it was shown in the early and/or mid-80s before Glenn moved to Ballarat's BTV-6 [now as WIN Television] to host its music video show, Off The Record while hosting Kids Only and The Super Saturday Show on the same TV station and then, become as a host of Sale Of The Century.