Beat-Club

My Sunday morning visit to Camden market turned out more expensive than I had anticipated. You would think that at my age I should know better but sadly that's not the case.

I was lured into an emporium selling a wide range of rare (and not so rare) DVDs. I believe it is something to do with the magnetic pull of the earth and is caused by the moon and tides and suchlike, but being non-scientific I have no idea how it all works. Anyway, suffice to say I find it impossible to walk past a store selling books, CDs or DVDs. And if they sell all three, then the tracker dogs have to be called when I fail to return home after several hours.

The cause of my spending spree on this occasion was a complete set of DVDs containing  every single episode of the legendary German music programme 'Beat-Club'.

The program, broadcast from Bremen, ran for eighty three episodes between September 1965 and December 1972. It was presented by Uschi Nerke and featured some of the best music acts around at the time. The complete set comes in three volumes (1965-1967, 1968-1970 & 1970-1972) and each volume consists of eight (yes eight) DVDs. Eventually I decided to purchase only Volumes 2 & 3 partly to ease the strain on the finances, partly to avoid the annoying Dave Lee Travis who co-hosted some of the early episodes and partly because the music from the episodes after 1967 appealed to me more.

Of course I have so far only dipped into random selections of the feast on offer and it would be pointless even beginning to list some of the artists and bands featured. There are simply so many! Those wishing to learn more about the content of each show can do so by accessing www.tv.com/shows/beat-club/.

Now it can rain all it likes. I'll have my feet up in front of the telly wallowing in sweet nostalgia.