Yeah, we all love Murray Gold's thundering bombast and having Doc Dave turn up at the Proms to sell orchestras to kids, but the real heart of Doctor Who's musical identity lies somewhere stranger. Nowadays the show sounds very two-thousand and eight, but back in 1963 it sounded very
two-billion and eight, like desperate little scrapings of conciousness washed up on the shores of forever.
The Radiophonic Workshop! Even the name sounds evocative, summoning up images of elves catching sounds in flasks and then beating them with tiny hammers. Which is pretty much what happened. During those moments in its history when the the BBC remembers what it is (an organisation with a progressive remit and barrelfulls of public money) then you get odd little departments like the Workshop cropping up.
There lay Britain in the early sixties, still trying to get guitar pop quite right, and what where the ladies and gents of the Radiophonic Workshop doing? Presumably still wearing suits to the office, as BBC employees did back then, they were bleeping like they were hardcore ravers from 1988, droning like they were Canadian post-rockers from the mid-nineties, and turning the clockwork grindings of Ben Ben into theme tunes like they were
mental.
These people were nuts, these people were
brilliant, and thier contribution to our culture is hardwired into
Doctor Who's strange and vivid DNA.
I mention this today because I've just been listening to three hours worth of their achive noodling on BBC6. And you can too...
Go here...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/6music/shows/freakzone/...and click on Listen Again (Before Sunday).
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