Thanks GuruBob - always useful to have the updated lists to tell us exactly where we are all at with this. Another very good Summer of Countdowns about to reach its conclusion and another 17 shows never screened before on Rage so very good overall.
With regards to Countdown Friday, yes looks like only 3 episodes in total have survived at all. It wasnt a particularly exciting show, just playing video clips that would normally have made it to Countdown shows but due to lack of time and space they ended up showing them on the alternative show instead. It was only for a period of 1982 that this show lasted, and of course you see the little yellow logo "Countdown Friday" occassionally plastered across the screen during a partial play on a regular Countdown episode which indicated that you could catch the full length version on the following Fridays show. I think we saw this on one of the 1982 shows screened this Summer.
Countdown Flipside was a clip request show (hosted by John Peters), from the 1983 period but I think it finished up at the end of 1983. I dont think any episodes were retained - I do have a few domestic recordings on VHS though including a couple of full shows and many partials. I used to tape clips a lot back in the day. One of the episodes has an old football finals 1983 score plastered across the screen I do recall that. I am sure I transferred all those to DVD a while back, will need to recheck. Interesting that they could be the only surviving copies, maybe Id better get copies back to the ABC!!
Regarding Friday Countdowns, the Kent Music Report (who compiled a national chart from 1974 to 1998, with ARIA licensing it between mid-1983 and mid-June 1988) published Countdown playlists. Here's one with a Friday playlist, thanks to Brad:
edit - coincidentally, this is the same one that Guru Bob mentioned above, though missing the clips that weren't shown in all states.
Brett (2)
You have full episodes of Countdown Flipside!
WOW
So you had a VCR in 1983 and could afford to record full shows seeing videotape was ,mega expensive then.
How FABULOUS!!!!!
I knwo Countdown Friday was only around a short time in 1982 but sometimes some of the clips shown in Humdrum on the Sunday would say with the yellow strip 'Countdown Friday' for the following Friday. So sometimes some more rarer clips made it to Countdown Friday. Again, the Duran Duran COUNTDOWN performance of My Own Way was one of them only shown on Countdown Friday. rage have that performance and they have played it twice luckily as I wanted it for years and was never ab;e to locate it on any 1982 episode.
Here's the earliest Flipside program I saw listed in the Kent Report:
Wow, see I thought Flipside sometimes played some rare things.
Yuki Takahashi with Murdered By The Music, that was only played in a Hundrum on Countdown. Glad that Sardine V and Sandie Shaw got an extra play as well as they only both got played once on Countdown.
And YAY, Like A Ghost got played again. I don't know the Boys Brigade track ...
And The Numbers with Big Beat
Here's one with a Monitors song for which no video (or even an audio-only clip) is on YouTube:
WOW, No Laughing Matter by Eurogliders video. Such a stunning clip, it was on You Tube in pretty poor shape but was amazing to see.
I also got the Monitors videos off Lee some years ago as well, they are so BRILLIANT!
Here's another one that may be of interest. They're not listed in every Kent Report (or maybe Flipside wasn't on every Friday?); some weeks they just have the Sunday playlist, or the 2 most-recent Sunday episodes.
Thanks Guru Bob for the Monitors videos, I'd never seen or heard those songs before. It's great that they kept the continuity of having the Blakeney twins in all 4 videos.
Nathan, I just noticed in that latest Countdown scan, a single by The Dugites I'd never heard of. Seems they had quite a few non-charting singles between their hits.
Does anyone know why Divinyls 'Only Lonely' was 'LP only' in Australia (as is listed on one of those Countdown playlists)? I heard it a lot on radio, and there were 2 music videos filmed for it. It seems strange that they didn't release it as a single locally, as it no doubt would have been a big (well, top 20 probably) hit for them.
I always assumed that 'Only Lonely' had been a single, due to the airplay it received. Being "LP only" would explain why it didn't chart, and it isn't listed on 45cat either.
267 November 23 1980 Ross Wilson (Mondo Rock)
< I hope they play this episode one day, as it contains the only known performance by Tina Turner of 'Are You Breaking My Heart' (which exists on youtube in fuzzy VHS quality from a TV1 (Foxtel) broadcast of just the clip, as they did sometimes between non-music tv shows.
'Only Lonely' was a single in the US & Japan.
https://www.discogs.com/Divinyls-Only-Lonely-Science-Fiction/master/164030
By the way, the Kent Report info I have posted is from scans done by the National Library of Australia (they offer a scanning service for a fee). Brad obtained some of these after requesting the new releases/hit predictions sections of the Kent Report from 1982-3. There are no Countdown playlists I've seen on the scans from the second half of 1983; maybe they were on a different page, or no longer included. But theoretically, the Kent Music Report could contain playlists for some of the Countdowns where no archival information is available on TARA.
My understanding is that these lists were published after the event - so the episode actually had to air before it was included in the Kent Report. For some weeks in 1982, the playlists for 2 weeks of Countdown are listed in the same section, so maybe it wasn't included every week.
Brett (2) If you find the full Flipside episodes I's love copies, I can pay you for them.
We didn't get a VCR till 1985 and I also had to really limit and be fussy with what I recorded as video tapes were expensive and sometimes after tapes were full I'd have to re record over some things as well, arghhhhh. It's amazing the technology we have now compared to then. We can now record limitless amounts of material but unfortunately, the content then was GENIUS and now it isn't. So all we have is January for Countdown's to be recorded and the occasional VAULTS when rage play some RARE vintage pieces
Wow just read the entire thread and am so impressed with all of the info and resources that people have gone through. I would love to see Countdown Flipside shows replayed if possible also maybe as tv fillers through out the year on ch 2 though I doubt very much that is going to happen. I too can relate to copywrite strikes on You Tube and over a period of time I just decided not to bother anymore. Too much time and effort spent only to lose an account altogether. I deal with Dailymotion and Vimeo now and have to this time had no such trouble. As much as You Tube is wonderful to browse for classic content of whatever source you can want they are a complete pain in the **** to deal with as an account holder so it is for that reason I have chosen not to deal with them anymore.
And the 7" single version (also featured on 1982 With A Bullet) is far better than the slower version on the Rio LP don't you think?
That explains also to me that the "My Own Way" clip that I have only seen on rage in retro month once - back in 2010, from memory - had words across the screen saying it was requested by someone - which at the time I couldn't figure out why that was there, but if it was lifted from Countdown Friday, then it makes sense.
Hi GuruBob,
this is my first post.
I have been collecting and recording Countdowns since Rage started playing them. In the 90s. I had a friend of Molly who worded me up that they would drop every January. First ones i recorded were to SVHS (JVC-7600 Gold - possibly the best Super VHS VCR ever made) and then in the early 2000s i captured them digitally to my PC. Sometimes i ran out of hard drive space back then tho half way, and the **** thing also liked corrupting files and i also lost some episodes by burning them to DVD-Rs that now have erased themselves (what a terrible format).
at any rate, your list is waaayyyy off.
I have cross-referenced your list to the episodes i have on my HDs that were played by Rage at some point. For 2 of them, i only have half of the episode due to corruption problems. Also several of them you have the date wrong by a few days.
This is what i have from your list that HAS been replayed on Rage (because i have them!) ...you will need to adjust your list:
231 March 16 1980 Steve Gilpin (Mi-Sex)
239 May 11 1980 Bob Geldof (Boomtown Rats)
267 November 23 1980 Ross Wilson (Mondo Rock)
283 May 3 1981 Greedy Smith (Mental As Anything)
298 August 23 1981 Paul Northam (MEO 245)
307 October 25 1981 Sharon O’Neill
336 July 11 1982 James Reyne (Australian Crawl)
341 August 15 (ACTUALLY 17th!!!) 1982 Greedy and Peter (Mental As Anything) (I HAVE HALF ONLY)
343 August 29 1982 Annalise Morrow (The Numbers)
366 April 10 1983 Mark (aka comedian Bob Downe) and Wendy (Globos) (I HAVE HALF ONLY)
390 October 2 1983 Marc Hunter (Dragon)
404 February 19 1984 David Sterry and Richard Zatorski (Real Life)
474 August 11 1985 Howard Jones
489 November 24 (ACTUALLY 23rd!!) 1985 Brian Canham (Pseudo Echo)
497 February 23 1986 Mark Knopfler (Dire Straits)
499 March 9 (ACTUALLY 8th!!) 1986 Molly (interviews Stevie Nicks)
504 April 13 1986 Spencer and Billy (The Johnnys)
536 November 23 1986 Molly (Australian Made Tour)
550 April 19 1987 Molly (from Underground disco)
560 June 28 1987 Dave Dobbyn
i am yet to transfer any of my SVHS tapes, so there is probably more. But i figure whats the point in transferring them when they are likely to come around again on Rage again soon to capture digitally.
Hope this update helps.
Cheers,
Eightys Boy.
Well I’m impressed, even if no-one else is.
When did you get your first digital TV tuner to record direct to computer disk (not DVD)? For me it was in 2006. But I was an early adopter in 2002 buying a digital set top box - HD capable too - which cost me a huge sum. But I still recorded that signal to VHS. Better than analog, but nothing like a pure digital recording workflow.
Oh - and did you record Rock Arenas as well or just the Countdowns?
heya Clip!
first captures were analog to hard drive with a TV tuner board that cost me a packet. It used to crash a lot. Then I had a Canopus ADVC100 and took SVHS feeds from my JVC recorder's tuner into the Canopus and then firewire into the PC around 2002 or so which was a lot more stable.
Yes i grabbed the Rock arenas as well that looked interesting. A lot of them were crap tho and i struggled in the early days with limited hard drive space for the huge video files (not these days!!) so i didnt keep them all. ive got 6 complete episodes.
i lost around 10 dvds each with 2 countdowns per DVD due to dvd "fade"...burnt to bad media. The media started throwing errors 2 years after the burn and now are all completely corrupt. I managed to extract a few of them after a lot of research using some special dvd readers, but you only had 1 crack at extracting, once the laser read the track it self destructed and the data was gone you had to extract once and it was your only chance! And i lost another 6 or 7 with a buggy copy of Roxio that i used back then to free up my hard drive, which would burn the files and everything look ok but now that ive gone back to the dvds, the files are listed in the dvd fine but they are all 00000000000 empty. I cried when i went back to those dvds :(
nowadays all my countdowns sit in a QNAP server with backup RAID running, along with a second QNAP that is unplugged and i turn on once every 6 months to back up the main QNAP (so a virus cannot corrupt it) and then i got hard drives sitting in my parents house under the stairs in case my place burns down. Im not taking any chances these days!!
Ha ha, I have got off-site back-ups of my music video external hard drives just in case they get stolen, burnt, or corrupted, too.
Hi Jason
Not sure if the site is updated however, I have a video tape copy of this show i recorded from the day it was broadcaat (I appeared in it -ahaha)
Ep 432 Thriller Dance competition episode only known to exist in an off air recording, it may not be in the ABC archives.
I have this one on tape too - 425 July 15 1984 State Heats Beatstreet competition
Regards
John
Howdy there,
Sorry for the 2 year late reply. So 43 episodes of 1970's Countdown have been aired. I only have 22 of them. So if anyone wants to head over to the Countdown Digital File Sharing thread and share some of the others I would appreciate it. My list of C/D shows is there for all to see. I will willingly share copies to everyone who wants it.
cheers,
kiersey...
.