LOVED the 1982 Carol Pope Episode, AMAZING!

But, did you guys notice the age of the tape ... The lines are unfortunate. But hey, what do ya do...

Yes I noticed the lines as well - a worry considering how many MORE episodes Rage have yet to play...what condition must they be in?

Which is a reason why Rage MUST play more Countdown eps in order to preserve the quality of the tapes - otherwise soon they won't be able to be shown at all, which would be terrible.

But anyway the Carol Pope ep was great - loved her caustic wit. I was especially delighted that it ended with Melissa Manchester's 'You Should Here How She Talks About You'.

I love that song and remember the clip very well. Does anyone know where the clip came from? Looks like from Solid Gold to me - the dancers were fantastic!

Hi Patrick, It looks like it was from 'Solid Gold', as i don't think there was an official clip made for the song. Love the 82 & 83 episodes!

It was HEAVENLY!

I FINALLY have Moir Sisters with "So Excited", Serious Young Insects and of course the MEGA FABULOUS FANTASTIC AND WOW of Rough Trade. Carol was such a WITTY Host!... All Touch performance was so RAW and to die for!

Moir Sisters and their outfits and campness KILLED me!!!

Yeh the Moir Sisters couldn't have been more 80's!

Agree about ending with "you should hear how she talks about you"..such a great song.

I know,

SOOOOOOOOO 80s Dolly Magazine. Such a CAMP song!

Yes, I was too very pleased with Melissa Manchester, would like to get a copy without the credits though.

And it was INDEED from Solid Gold, OH YEAH!

I loved Carol Pope's intro to the Moir Sisters - very droll.

I should mention the Flashez segment on the Stevie Wonder bus was hilarious. Imagine if they continued the concept into the 80's - would have loved to gone on a Duran Duran or Madonna bus!

When were the double decker buses phased out in Sydney? On my first visit there in the mid 80's I don't recall seeing one, anyone know?

Oh yeh that Flashez Stevie Wonder bus was fabtastic!

I was expecting a run of the mill interview but what we got was some amazing scenes of Sydney street life circa 1976.

I know, The bus trip was FAB ! ! !

YES agreed the lines on the "Countdown" ep from Oct 22, 1982 were a little annoying particularly so as I noticed it more from the Olivia "Heart Attack" clip whom I could watch all day and never get bored. Enough said. Moir Sisters was also a highlight for me off the show though with "Countdown" mostly every show was fairly entertaining so I never really ever got bored when I watched it during the 70's & 80's as have always been into it.

"Flashez segments were fun and if I am not mistaken we would have also seen a younger Kate Fitzpatrick interviewing "The Saints" Aussie band.

I too in regard to the Melissa Manchester music clip enjoyed seeing if from "Solid Gold". Remember it way back in 1982 just before Ten Eyewitness News on a Sunday arvo and I also had it on the "Women Of Rock" 1982 compilation album. Wow what memories. It was def from Solid Gold music show as I viewed it a couple of years back on a "Solid Gold" You tube channel at the time. Gosh whatever did we do before You Tube lol.

The lines were VERY obvious during the Rough Trade performance unfortunately

Hi Patrick,

Apparently the remaining Countdown episodes were transferred some time ago to either BetacamSP or Digital Betacam so they'll last a while. Any inconsistencies or tape problems at the dubbing stage will unfortunately be visible/audible each time the dub is played. Rage are set up mainly for Digital Betacam and it's from this system you see Countdown etc as they are now. But the team have done well in keeping any problems to a minimum - some are unavoidable and mostly it all comes down to not only the age of the original tapes but how well they stored etc.

When sunday spectrum's countdown special was shown there was a shot of a video machine rolling and the tape in use was Memorex - not exactly known in recent years for decent quality, but the problems aren't confined to just that. Scotch and Ampex also had their problems.

The lines you guys have mentioned I would imagine are due to a head clog where the tape's oxide materials have flaked off a bit and covered the video heads during playback/transfer. When a tape reaches this point it's usually "mission critical" and a race to save it before the tape becomes a clear roll of see-through plastic.

Cheers,
Frank

Are they, well that is somewhat disappointing to know. I only flicked through quickly to watch what I really wanted to see asap earlier this morning. Prob tonight after dinner will sit back down and watch it from the start of the "Flashez" segments. Just out of curiosity did it start about 12.50am rather than 12.30 from the allocated time on the "Rage" website. I could have sworn that the other show "10.30 Slot" finished 12.50am.

The first Flashez didn't start until 1am-ish. It was just brutal putting up with all that BDO garbage waiting for Flashez to start

what was the reasoning behind Carol Pope hosting Countdown I wonder?

All touch was their only single to chart here, and it only reached number 40. Mind you it stayed in the Top100 for 40 weeks, which must be some kind of record for such a minor hit.

I'd say the reasoning was to have a diverse array of hosts fronting the show whether they had numerous hits or not.

The likes of *****foot, Roger Voudouris, Bob Welch, and even Christopher Atkins all only had 1 hits and yet presented Countdown at some time or other.

That was what was so great about the show - its diversity. Just look at that Carol Pope episode for example, one moment you had the Moir Sisters camping it up on stage and the next clip was a video for Rose Tattoo. All very strange when looking at it now, but that's what made the show so EXCITING!!!

You never knew what was going to come up next - and that's why it's such an enduring show now.

ooops seems the swear button got me in my earlier post.

Anyone wondering who *****foot is, I meant
p u s s yfoot, who had a hit in 77 with 'the Way that you Do It'.

Better be careful to put the space in next time!

BTW while watching the Flashez segment on Billy Joel it struck me how he looked like a young Sylvester Stallone - I half expected the man himself to walk into the interview!!

What interested me about the Billy Joel interview was his open admission to being influenced by Paul McCartney/Beatles. I always knew there were some Beatles influences (especially on Iron Curtain) but didn't know McCartney had such a huge impact on his career.

Yeah I noticed that too - he came out with some fairly interesting comments.

I remember in the December 1978 Countdown shown last year where Elton John thought that Joel had ripped off his sound for his then latest album - seems Billy took his influences from wherever he could. Although to be fair so does almost every other artist.

I can eiher take or leave Joel's music although my fave tracks of his are 'Don't Ask Me Why' and 'Pressure' - both very catchy songs with some pretty good lyrics and a great video for the latter of course.

> All touch was their only single to chart here, and it
> only reached number 40. Mind you it stayed in the
> Top100 for 40 weeks, which must be some kind of
> record for such a minor hit.

Yeah, pretty impressive. I had to double check David Kent's book (checking the A-Z listing in the back as well) to see it wasn't a misprint. But it's not a record - Marilyn Manson's 'The Beautiful People' spent 55 weeks in the top 100 despite peaking at just #42. Another one that springs to mind is Bananarama's 'I Heard a Rumour' spending 32 weeks in the chart despite peaking at just #32.

'I Heard A Rumour' went Top 20 - I have the ARIA charts of '87 to prove it.

I didn't see any lines on the 24/10/82 episode hosted by Carol Pope. I'll have to check it again and get back to you. Maybe we have better transmission in the Nations Capital!

Speaking of Carol Pope, when she was in Australia hosting this episode, does anyone know if she did any other TV gigs while here? She looks very familiar.

When I first heard this song, and only up to a year or so ago, I thought the lead singer of Rough Trade was a bloke. She still sounds like one. When I saw an excerpt of the clip 'All Touch', I thought it was definitely a bloke in drag. So why didn't the band join her on the visit? Also, when she sang 'All Touch' on Countdown, it sounded live ie not like the original recording.

Speaking of this, did any artist sing 'live' on Countdown? John Farnham springs to mind, as the few songs he sang on Countdown, didn't sound exactly the same as the original.

There were no faults on my HDD copy either - must have been a transmission problem only affecting standard signal, not the HD one?

Well if your copy has no lines then I MUST have a copy.

Patrick like em also had lines. They look like lines from old tape damage and they are white ... Also just checked my Foxtel IQ copy and THAT too has the white lines. Sometimes they are more obvious than other times. I am CERTAIN it has nothing to do with our transmission and more to do with tape rott from the ABC...

And YES, I am sure Carol sand live on Countdown as well. It really does sound live. She sounded BRILLIANT!

Definitely a tape problem folks - the lines caused by head clog as explained above. It tends to give off a venetian blind effect when it happens.

YES, EXACTLY!

It looks like a venetian blind effect for sure!

Spot on Frankster, maybe the 2 here who didn't notice the lines aren't noticing it. But during Olivia and Rough Trade the venetian blind effect is SO visable!

So Frankster, I take you noticed the lines as well then!

And it's not my reception obviously!

I certainly did Jason - and the only reason why I did is because I would look for something like that being right into the technology. What would be obvious to me probably wouldn't be for quite a few people :)

Definitely not a reception issue, trust me. The entire episode wasn't affected though, just here and there.

There were definitely visible lines-very noticable whenever white was on screen

Thanks for the info Frankster - nice to know my eye-sight wasn't going wonky!

I was a mite disturbed to see the episode in that condition - although I'm very grateful it wasn't any worse - it didn't spoil my enjoyment of it - how could it with Ms Pope giving it her all?

I guess that's either the good or bad thing about having better TV sets these days - you can see all the technical flaws clearly whether you want to or not.

Can somebody confirm if the lines were an issue, as somebody else stated further up the string of this post. I can confirm I watched Olivia Neutron Bombs "heart attack" twice and saw no lines. I quickly went through the rest of the Oct 82 episode and saw no such thing.

I don't want to say anyone is wrong, but I am now intrigued. I recorded mine of the ABC1 stream in Sydney, on my pioneer SD hard-drive recorder. My Mar 83 episode was totally messed up through reception issues though, have to arrange to see if my Nth gong friend got it.

Mark Chris, I didn't notice any issues with the 1982 one either... although I didn't watch the 'Heart Attack' vid. I too coincidentally recorded it in SD on a Pioneer HDD/DVD recorder. Didn't have probs with the 1983 episode either, though from both I only kept the bits I wanted to keep and deleted the rest.

I watched this episode again, to see if it had any lines, and you're right - venetian blinds! Can't believe I didn't pick it up the first time. Maybe it was because I was sitting so far away from the telly and it was on a 48 inch standard TV set. Funny how the lines only appear on lighter colours or where there was significant lighting on the show. No lines on any black objects.

Hi Nathan,
I must apologize to you, re the Bananarama thread in this post. I checked out the ARIA charts from the latter half of '87 and you're right - 'I Heard A Rumour' only peaked at No.32 on 20 September 1987. Don't know what made me think it went Top 20. So anyway sorry and I will check the facts before I go mouthing off incorrectly.
Cheers.
Michael.

No offense taken Michael!