These are the backing tracks for the wilson live shows, along with the videos I fashioned to run behind us. Credit: Curtis E. Johnson 2021-12-13 (Monday, 13^th of December 2021 - 3 years 9 days ago)

In the eighties, on the back of the arrival of MTV, there was a bit of a surge in pop music telly. A little company in London called Music Box used to make dirt-cheap music programming and sell it to TV stations around the world. In 1988 they had an "indie" music programme led by Rachel Davis, who had been a researcher for the relatively hip BBC DJ Janis Long, and in due course I, newly signed to Creation and sporting my best green paisley shirt, went along to be interviewed by Rachel for the show.

They were supposed to use one little twenty minute reel of videotape and edit the interview down from that. They ended up with three reels of this shit. For some reason, things just got really funny with the sound and light blokes and everyone was just falling about with mirth. It was very enjoyable, for a telly experience, and I left and went about my business.

Around this time Alan McGee started saying things like "Pat Fish should be on the telly."

I figured that he had plans to retire me and get me a job as a Tony Wilson impersonator. Of course, Alan was still on the drugs back then. I paid it no mind.

A couple of months later, Music Box got in touch and said that they wanted me to do a screen test for a presenter's gig on Rachel's show. This I duly did, thinking that no more would come of it. Then they offered me the job. I asked my new boss what they were proposing to pay me. He told me and I can still remember my reply: "Wow! You really are all overpaid in telly, aren't you?"

Actually, in telly terms, it was an absolute pittance. For me, however, it represented a three figure sum, every fortnight, just for standing around saying "Here's My Bloody Valentine."

So from about February 1989 to the end of 1990 I had a covert telly career, co-presenting this show, which they called "Transmission" (yup), with Rachel and some other telly bod whom I very rarely saw as we alternated, for the most part. The show aired on various regional independent TV stations around Britain. My regional station didn't get it, but they did get it up the road in Rugby, where the telly came from Birmingham. It was very odd to hear people from Rugby saying "I saw you on telly" when you didn't even realise that the show was going out. You know, I just used to make 'em and forget 'em for the most part. I didn't really understand that there were places where real people were actually watching this shit.

It was on the national telly NHK in Japan. National telly. In Japan. Just consider that a moment. Yeah, I know. Momus probably wants to kill me. He befriended me on Facebook the other day. I should probably reinforce my security arrangements.

Once a team from NHK came to our show's London offices to interview us about the programme. When my turn came I went into the little interview room and found myself answering thirty minutes' worth of questions about the Jazz Butcher. Not a word about the telly programme. I came out smirking. Like a fucking expert.

It was on national telly in Portugal as well. At seven thirty on a Friday evening. The Pastels. Joe Foster. Dave Kusworth. On national telly. At half past seven on a Friday evening. They put on a Creation night in Lisbon and they filled a huge theatre two nights running. I didn't get invited. Nikki Sudden got invited. Nikki Sudden got stabbed. Life, eh?

Transmission also went out on some long-gone pan-European cable channel, which, given that most people in Britain hadn't got their heads around all these new channels yet, meant that I was forever being asked if I was working for Rupert Murdoch's loathsome Sky TV. It was the only non-terrestrial channel that most people had heard of, you see. And it was annoying.

I had the pleasure of interviewing loads of my mates for the show: Sudden, Kusworth, Alex Novak, Pete Astor, the Blue Aeroplanes and so on. I got to interview one or two people I didn't know, as well, the most memorable of which has to be Lydia Lunch.

The programme filled a bit of a void and a lot of people, it turns out, were quite grateful for it when they were youngsters at the time. But you couldn't help but see trouble coming. The commercial breaks would be filled with averts for nice teen grooming products. Then you would cut back to some bunch of whey-faced, lank-haired skinny drop-outs in scuffed leather jackets, doing stuff with fuzz pedals. Sooner or later, somebody was actually going to watch this show and spot what I had spotted. Major subcultural demographic fail.

At the start of 1991 I was told that the show was being cancelled "because of the recession". I breathed a small sigh of relief and put in my final invoice.

I could write so much about music and telly, but I shall leave with you with one Top Telly Tip:

Saying "Here's the Primitives" into a microphone while walking down a street is much, much harder than you think.

Credit: Pat x 2016-02-15 09:19:49 (Monday, 15^th of February 2016 - 8 years 312 days ago)