{"id":20195,"date":"2020-12-14T05:30:49","date_gmt":"2020-12-14T10:30:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=20195"},"modified":"2020-11-18T09:36:29","modified_gmt":"2020-11-18T14:36:29","slug":"book-review-ready-steady-go-the-weekend-starts-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2020\/12\/14\/book-review-ready-steady-go-the-weekend-starts-here\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Ready Steady Go!: The Weekend Starts Here"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Launched a few years ago, BMG Books broke into the market with the excellent Hotter Than a Pepper Sprout<\/i><\/a>, Billy Edd Wheeler\u2019s lively memoir. Soon thereafter, the publisher began its RPM series in earnest; that series shines a light on the histories of important record label. Titles have included Gillian Gaar\u2019s book on Sub Pop<\/a> and Billy Vera\u2019s history of Specialty Records<\/a>. So in a relatively short span of time, BMG Books has established itself as the go-to source for new titles exploring music and the entertainment business.<\/p>\n

But with all respect to the authors of those fine books, the publisher\u2019s latest title is in many ways its most impressive to date. A substantial coffee table book, Andy Neill\u2019s Ready Steady Go!: The Weekend Starts Here<\/i> is a lavish \u2013 and more importantly, definitive<\/i> \u2013 chronicle of the beloved British pop music program(me) of the \u201860s.<\/p>\n

Across its 260-plus pages \u2013 inside a sturdy, colorful hard cover the exact size of a vinyl LP \u2013 Ready Steady Go!<\/i> not only presents the show\u2019s history through eye-popping color photos and sharp black-and-white ones, but Neill\u2019s narrative places RSG<\/i>\u2019s story into the larger context of pop culture history. Like any good coffee-table tome, not a single page of Neill\u2019s book is lacking in images. But the photos and graphics are perfectly balanced by text that is both exhaustive and highly readable. Neill\u2019s episodic approach to his subject means that while one can read the book start to finish, it\u2019s just as enjoyable (and enlightening) an experience to open to a random page and just start reading.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Extensive interviews \u2013 with presenters, crew, musical guests and so forth \u2013 make Ready Steady Go!<\/i> much, much more than one man\/fan\u2019s take on the influential show. Even though its time on air (every Friday evening from August 1963 to late December \u201866) was somewhat brief, RSG<\/i> left a lasting impression on a generation of viewers.<\/p>\n

Other shows of its era \u2013 Juke Box Jury<\/i>, Countdown<\/i>, Top of the Pops<\/i> and Thank Your Lucky Stars<\/i> \u2013 all had their time, but RSG<\/i> stood (and stands) head and shoulders above the rest. It was a rite of passage for pop acts of the era to appear on the show, and a list of artists showcased on the program could fill .. well, a bunch of pages. Helpfully, Neill has compiled just such a list: the book includes a complete episode guide, noting broadcast date and times, director, guests (and songs performed) as well as episode trivia.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Even more notably, Neill indicates for each whether each episode survives today in complete or partial form. Sadly, only one \u2013 one!<\/i> \u2013 episode from 1963 survives in any form, so we\u2019ll likely never get to see clips of Johnny Kidd and the Pirates\u2019 appearance, nor clips of pop groups singing songs written for (or given to) them by John Lennon and Paul McCartney: Tommy Quickly (\u201cTip of My Tongue\u201d), The Fourmost (\u201cHello Little Girl\u201d) and so on.<\/p>\n

But rather than focus on what we don\u2019t have, there\u2019s great reason to celebrate Andy Neill\u2019s monumental work, one that helps enshrine the importance of Ready Steady Go! <\/i>in a format that can be enjoyed by generations to come.<\/p>\n

Nota bene:<\/i> While Dave Clark (of the eponymous Five) acquired the rights to what does remain of the actual RSG video archive in the 1980s, he never did much with it. In 2018, BMG Rights Management acquired ancillary rights to the archive; doubtless that paved the way for the access to (and inclusion of) the thousands of images that adorn Andy Neill\u2019s book. While ancillary rights aren\u2019t the same as access to the moving images themselves, it might not be too much to hope that BMG might do something Blu-Ray-ish with the Ready Steady Go!<\/i> video archive. That would be something.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Launched a few years ago, BMG Books broke into the market with the excellent Hotter Than a Pepper Sprout, Billy Edd Wheeler\u2019s lively memoir. Soon thereafter, the publisher began its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20087,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,3668,49,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book","category-music-business","category-new-release","category-pop","cat-10-id","cat-3668-id","cat-49-id","cat-51-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20195"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20198,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20195\/revisions\/20198"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}