"Stimpy" wrote in message
...
On 24/7/05 23:40, "steve" wrote:

On Sun, 24 Jul 2005 10:54:19 -0700, bowroaduk wrote:

More exhibitionists and wannabe Big Brother house inmates having their
15
minutes of fame.

No, used to be a non-pop music show focusing on bands that could play
live

Oddly enough, that's how I remember it but, based on old VHS's and the new
'best of DVD', there was a lot of miming and contemporary pop on there as
well.

Having said that, in it's day it definitely had the 'weekend starts here'
feel about it.

I think bowroaduk was thinking of 'The Word' rather than 'The Tube'

The Tube used to be produced at Tyne-Tees' City Road Studios when my wife
worked there back in 1982. The first series was almost entirely live, either
from Studio 5, which had been purpose-built for it, or from the 'Egypt
Cottage' pub, which was between the main building and Studio 5 (the owner
refused to sell, but let TTTV use the place for acts like Tom Waits) Later
series used a lot of pre-recorded video, as well as stuff fed in from
outside- made for a surreal experience when this happened if you were on the
studio floor, as there wasn't always a monitor to watch. Quite a lot of
bands had their first live TV airing there, such as Frankie Goes To
Hollywood and U2. Quite bizzare sometimes to go and pick herself up at work
and find piles of autograph seekers outside...
One of the early presenters, Gary Mewis, was a 'real' Tube driver, who used
to belt up to Newcastle after work on Fridays- I bumped into him some years
after, when he was training crew at Eurotunnel.
Quite a few people who cut their teeth on the Tube went on to work on other
TV music programmes- Chris Cowie on TOTP for one, Geof Wonfer for another.
Brian