Channel Highlights w/c 2nd November
Saturday 2nd November, 3.00pm - Broadway Bonanza: The Pajama Game with Elizabeth Seal
With its dazzling dance and direction, great songs and top stars, this fun and well-loved musical from the 1950s, set in the Sleep-Tite Pajama Factory in Iowa where romance blossoms as the workers strike, brought sweet dreams to Broadway as audiences tucked up to enjoy the show, as presenter Lesley Anne Knight and her special guest Elizabeth Seal, who starred in the revival at the London Coliseum, discover.
Saturday 2nd November, 7.00pm - Neil McCormick’s Needle Time: Lisa Stansfield
She’s been around the world and she’s all woman, and now English soul songstress Lisa Stansfield unpacks the story of her life in music to our Neil, telling him why her string of huge hits in the 90s was a mixed blessing, who her singing influences are, and how she feels the time is right to return.
Saturday 2nd November, 8.00pm - Guitar Greatness - from girls to grunge
Amped up, acoustic or air, plugged in or plucked, strummed or smashed - we grab the guitar here and gather together in a four-hour, four programme special, the great, the good and the downright genius on the coolest instrument on the planet:Girls with Guitars (8pm), from punk to rock to pop, these girls can jam like there’s no tomorrow; Grunge Pioneers (9pm), get down and dirty with these Babes in Toyland, Pearl Jam, Hole and more of the ‘Seattle Sound’; air guitars required here as the going gets heavy, and the amp gets cranked up, in Vintage Metal (10pm); and join the global alternative rock phenomenon that was Kurt Cobain and co in Nirvana (11pm) – and if the neighbours come a-knocking, well, ‘Nevermind’!
Sunday 3rd November, 5.00pm - Steve Lamacq: My Vintage (and Thursday 7th November at 10pm)
We’re turning the tables on consummate DJ Steve Lamacq, whose breadth of music knowledge is legendary, as heard over the airwaves over many years on Radio One and Two, and currently BBC 6 Music, as he comes up with his ultimate best-of playlist which includes cracking tracks from artists he has known, admired, interviewed and shared a beer or two with, and one of which he finds as scary as Dr Who’s Daleks!
Sunday 3rd November, 8.00pm - The Janice Long Review Show (and Wednesday 6th November at 10pm)
Tom Robinson, of those anthemic songs and uncompromising campaigns, gives the inside track on his band’s own album, ‘Power in the Darkness’, now 35 years old, and this powerful, politically driven offering, along with Coldplay’s impressive 2000 debut ‘Parachutes’ gets the going over by him and fellow record reviewers, singer songwriter Ed Harcourt and music writer Jude Rogers, on Janice’s popular weekly show.
Monday 4th November, 4.00pm - Broadway Bonanza: West Side Story with Anna-Jane Casey (and Thursday 7thNovember at 12.15pm and Saturday 9th November at 3pm)
We’re getting down and dangerous with the Sharks and the Jets, as one of musical history’s most powerful, passionate and memorable shows takes centre stage with its dazzling dance sequences, enthralling take on the Romeo and Juliet tale transferred to 1950s Upper West Side, sharp young stars, and songs including ‘Maria’, and ‘America’: Lesley Anne Knight explores its explosive appeal with guest Anna-Jane Casey who played Anita in the West End revival.
Tuesday 5th November, 10.00pm - Neil McCormick’s Needle Time: Graham Nash (and Saturday 9th November at 7pm)
He ain’t heavy, but he has been a huge musical influence on both sides of the pond, as singer songwriter with The Hollies, and folk-rock supergroup Crosby, Stills & Nash, and now the legend that is Graham Nash comes clean to our interviewer Neil about the highs and lows of life on the road, the fallings out, the mind-bending substances, the struggle to keep real, the campaigning and, of course, the making of the magnificent music.
Wednesday 6th November, 7.30pm - Vintage TV at Rewind 2013 (and Friday 8th November at 5.30pm)
With the nights, eek, now drawing in, summer festivals and their good time vibe can start to seem oh so far away, but despair not as Vintage TV brings you regular little vignettes from the laid-back warmer months as our woman-on-the-spot Janice Long interviews acts at this year’s celebration of all things 80s, Rewind 2013; here she presents The Pointer Sisters and American rocker Steve Augeri of Journey.
