The Tomorrow People: World's Away

'Worlds Away' is a fun but unsatisfying story from 'The Tomorrow People'. first broadcast in 1975. In it, the homo superior get to go to another planet for the first time, Pyrie, where an evil race of jackal headed aliens called the Khultan are in charge, oppressing and eating the humanoid population. 6,000 year earlier, the Khultan had built our very own pyramids, which are, apparently, actually psychic power suppressing machines.

So fun, yes, but why unsatisfying? Well, Keith Chegwin is in it, but, apart from that, its because they take the time to invent these terrifying Anubis lookalike aliens (and I was really scared of them as a kid), but never actually involve them in the story apart from as holograms and as a disguise. At the end, it turns out that they're not even there any more, they've moved on and left the planet to itself, like intergalactic absentee landlords. It just seems like a bit of a wasted opportunity, really.

This was actually broadcast before the Dr. Who serial 'Pyramids Of Mars', which reiterates the idea of Egyptian Gods as coming from another world, but, quite honestly, Dr. Who looks like 'Solaris' in comparison to this enjoyable but ridiculously slipshod effort. 

Telly Looks At...Disco

One of the pivotal sequences in 'Telly Savalas Looks At Birmingham' is the 'incredible' over forties disco competition held in the 81 acre Cannon Hill Park. Styles range from the slightly shambolic to the unneccessarily sexually suggestive, but the star has to be indefatigable, knicker flashing, high kicking Mrs.Taylor.

As Mr. Savalas rather archly remarks of Mrs. T: "I'm sure somebody loves you, baby". Cheeky twat.

Scott One

In the olden days, nursing a serious and hard to satisfy Scott Walker obsession, I used to take photographs of the telly when he and the Walker Brothers occasionally appeared in archive footage. It was a frustrating, expensive and time consuming affair with a very high failure rate, as few of the shots came out properly when developed. 

Pictures Of New Towns

Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire was designated a new town in 1947. Originally envisaged as 'a city in a park', the first new residents moved in to the town in 1950, although the original expansion plan was not completed until the 1980's. Hemel can boast the first multi-storey car park in the UK, constructed in 1960, as well as the infamous 'Magic Roundabout', an elaborate and mystifying circulatory where six separate roads meet.

In 1957, Hammer Studios shot part of 'Quatermass 2' in the town, cannily linking Hemel Hempstead's construction to the fictional 'Winnerden Flats' being built to house workers at the 'artificial food plant' in the story. Basically a big building site, the town proved an apt and eerie location, starting with the approach on a big empty road which abruptly terminates in the middle of nowhere.

Finding a dirt track that leads to the beginnings of a huge estate, Quatermass stops to interact with a few of the locals. The lady with a speaking role is an actress, but the ladies in the background are real residents, lucky enough to have been allocated one of the few completed houses on a project that still has years to run. There isn't even a pavement for them to push their shopping baskets along.

I believe this is the area of Hemel Hempstead known as Warner's End, although I stand to be corrected. Like all the individual estates in the new town it was designed to have its own mini civic centre: a parade of shops, a pub, a Doctor's surgery, some public art. In the film, however, all they have to look forward to is Whist on Wednesdays (cash prizes), and all there is to see are the abandoned double decker buses that brought them to this brave new world. 

Incidentally, I have been to Hemel Hempstead and it's quite nice, really, with very little evidence of alien invasion.

Instrumental Forms Are Eliminated

Two of my proudest posessions are two little 7" ep's on the Castle label, released in the early 1960's. Marked 'copyright free to amateur users only' they both contain fascinating electronic tracks put together by currently unsung British wireless and sound recording genius F.C Judd.

'Electronic Themes and Music Concrete' (there's a little accent over the first 'e' in concrete that I can't type) is the second of the little records and is 'mainly intended for effects purposes in stage drama, recording and film soundtracks'. The rest of the sleevenotes are equally informative: 'nothing pertaining to electronic music and musique concrete is analogous to conventional music performed with traditional musical instruments. Electronic music and musique concrete may therefore seem extremely complex and without recognizable order, for instrumental forms are eliminated; timbre, functional harmony and symmetrical rhythms are suspended'. So now you know.

Here's a sub ten minute mix of the four tracks: 'Delta F', 'Study In Sinetones', 'Sound Object' and 'Montage'. The quality of the recording is 'much loved', because it is.



If you like what you hear, please let production company Recorded Tuition Limited know. They can be contacted, according to the sleeve, by telephoning Buckhurst 9315. Good luck.

The Avengers: Man-Eater of Surrey Green

The Avengers: M-Appeal

In Camera

The BBC 'Wednesday Play' ran between 1964 and 1970. The idea was simple: a play, often specially commissioned, shown on a Wednesday. The series featured early works from David Mercer, Dennis Potter and Peter Watkins as well as TV landmark 'Cathy Come Home'.

'In Camera' is a 1964 adaptation of Jean-Paul Satre's play 'Huis Clos'. The embodiment of one of Satre's most famous lines, it shows Hell as a psychodrama between three strangers stuck in a room - forever. No racks, no pitchforks, no flames: just other people.

Derren Nesbitt, Actor

Derren Nesbitt looks aggressively quizzical as hunter / assassin Hans Vogeler in 'Time To Kill', a 1960 episode of the fantastic 'Danger Man'.

F*** Me, It's Freddie

FMIF camping it up as Philip Proudfoot in the under-rated (and underseen) spy spoof 'Otley'. Freddie is at his most Freddie-ish, giving a very memorable performance in a film top heavy with acting talent.

His tough looking friend is Robert Brownjohn, a brilliant graphic designer making a cameo as a heavy. Brownjohn most famously directed the title sequences for 'From Russia With Love' and 'Goldfinger', but he was a very important figure in design history for all sorts of reasons. A heroin addict (too much hanging out with Blue Note artists), he died in 1970, aged only 44.

The Way In

The first day of Summer is officially on June 21st, but calendars are for squares, man, I say it's the first of June, even if its snowing. So, in celebration of the sticky weather soon to delight, then annoy, then grind us down, here's a mix I call 'The Door Into Summer'.

It's a mixed bag, but it's all decent stuff. At least one of the tracks has appeared in a previous mix I did elsewhere, but I'm very much a flow kind of mixer, and the whole thing just didn't seem right without it. Anyway, I've said too much...



Tracks:

001 Music De Wolfe: Country Haze 002 Bitter-Sweet: What A Lonely Way To Start The Summertime 003 Margo Guryan: Sun 004 Melodic Energy Commission: The Doorway Into Summer 005 Lalo Schifrin: Bees, Wasps & Mayflies 006 Francois de Roubaix: La Canal Gele 007 Hoyt Axton: The Sunshine Fields Of Love 008 Tully: I Feel The Sun 009 Dick Mills: Seascape 010 Ars Nova: Walk On The Sand 011 Ora: Seashore 012 Friends: One Sweet Day 013 The Advisory Circle: Sundial 014 Blur: Essex Dogs 015 Greta Ann: Sadness Hides The Sun