Kommotion
Kommotion | |
---|---|
Genre | Pop music |
Based on | |
Directed by |
|
Presented by | Ken Sparkes |
Opening theme | March of the Mods by Joe Loss and His Orchestra |
Country of origin | Australia |
Original language | English |
No. of seasons | 3 |
Production | |
Producers |
|
Production locations | Nunawading, Victoria, Australia |
Running time | 25 minutes |
Production company | Willard King Organisation |
Original release | |
Network | ATV-0 |
Release | 1964 1967 | –
Related | |
Kommotion was a popular Australian "Top 40" pop music TV show that premiered in December 1964. The program was hosted by popular
It was produced by the
In August 1964 Channel 0 premiered its first pop TV program,
Format and presentation
Both Kommotion and Go!! featured the current beat-pop style, and both were strongly influenced by United Kingdom-based Ready Steady Go! and the Jack Good-produced American pop TV show, Shindig!.[2] Although many local guest acts appeared on both shows, there were notable stylistic differences between them. The Go!! Show was more closely modelled on Ready, Steady, Go! and was aimed at a slightly older, more sophisticated audience, it featured more local music, and it cost more to produce.[2]
Kommotion was aimed at a younger teen audience and its style was more like Shindig!. Early episodes featured a troupe of "go-go" dancers (a Shindig! trademark) and had more overseas hits than The Go!! Show, although it did so by using local
Scores of leading Melbourne and interstate pop acts appeared on the show during its two-year run, including
Alongside the appearances by local pop groups, the producers also came up with a simple and cost-effective way of showcasing current international hits. In those days, purpose-made music videos (then called "film clips") were only just beginning to be used to promote new recordings. Australia's great distance from the US and the UK meant that visits by major overseas acts were relatively rare, so the stock-in-trade for Kommotion was to use a troupe of young performers who danced and/or mimed to the latest overseas hits. The producers hired a group of about a dozen Melbourne teenagers, chosen for their looks, fashion sense and dancing ability. The regular cast roster included Ian Meldrum, Tony Healey, David Bland, Alex Rappel, Lex Kaplan, Jillian Fitzgerald, Alex Silbersher, Leon Kammer, Chantal Contouri (later a star of Number 96), Grant Rule (later executive producer of Countdown), Norman Willison, pioneering 'go-go girl' Denise Drysdale, Shirley Reichman, Bob Pritchard and dancer Maggie Stewart (who met pop star Ronnie Burns on the show and later married him). Some performers such as Bob Pritchard went on to release records themselves. Pritchard recorded 'Shoppin Around" , "Pretty Girl" and "Goodbye Sam, Hello Samantha" which reached number four on the Australian charts. Pritchard also performed in TV dramas such as Homicide, Division 4 and Hunter.
For the mimed segments, the producers matched the performers with a particular style of music. Jillian Fitzgerald, chosen for her dancing ability, was given the 'soul' category (in spite of her fair skin) and she mimed to R&B classics like Ike and Tina's "
The addition of the one-hour Sunday Kommotion special evidently caused some controversy. An unattributed press clipping from the time (reproduced on the Laurie Allan tribute site) indicates that The Go!! Show producers DYT were concerned about the increased competition from their rival (which also cost less to produce), and the article suggested that this move might oversaturate the pop market and lead to a drop in ratings all round, as well as over-exposing the relatively small pool of Australia's top-ranking pop talent. The latter issue was borne out by Jim Keays' comments in his autobiography, in which he reported that The Masters Apprentices were invited on both shows so regularly that they eventually had to 'ration' their appearances for fear of overexposure.
The October 12, 1966 issue of Go-Set magazine reported that the show was sold to an unspecified American television network and was to be aired to fifty million people,[3] but this never seemed to have materialized.
Kommotion label
Like The Go!! Show, the success of Kommotion also gave rise to a short-lived pop record label of the same name. The label was set up to promote artists who appeared on the show. It is believed to have been owned by pop entrepreneur
Series cancellation
Although the device of miming to overseas releases proved popular and highly cost-effective, it was in fact this very practice that brought about the demise of Kommotion—the series was cancelled in early 1967 after Australian Actors Equity imposed a ban on miming on all music TV shows, due to concerns that the practice was denying work to Australian musicians.
Like many other Australian pop shows of the period, most of the original tapes of Kommotion were subsequently erased or disposed of. The small amount of material that has survived was copied from the Channel 0 archive in the 1990s and copies have since circulated widely among collectors of Australian popular music.
The floor manager for both Kommotion and The Go!! Show was Ralph Baker, who became well known in Melbourne in the late 1960s as Melbourne's version of "Deadly Earnest", the late night horror movie presenter. There was a local 'Earnest' in several capitals, with Sydney's Ian Bannerman being the original. Baker subsequently became the original floor manager on 0-10's later pop show Uptight.
See also
References
- ^ "Johnny Chester - Year By Year". johnnychester.com. Archived from the original on 11 April 2013. Retrieved 8 March 2013.
- ^ a b Kimball, Duncan. "Kommotion". Milesago. Archived from the original on 8 March 2007. Retrieved 10 May 2017.
- ^ Meldrum, Ian (12 October 1966). "Kommotion to go on American Television" (PDF). Go-Set. Vol. 1, no. 37. p. 1. Archived (PDF) from the original on 14 July 2019. Retrieved 6 January 2020.
External links
- Kommotion at IMDb