MIXED MEDIA, MIXED EMOTIONS
Autumn is always that time when issues both new and old begin to surface, and Britain's been staggering under a surfeit of repeats. There are always at least two people (currently David Sylvian and Bauhaus) playing at being Bowie again, and there's also Edsel, F-Beat's new indie label for re-issues.
MIXED MEDIA, MIXED EMOTIONS
LETTER FROM BRITAIN
Cynthia Rose
Autumn is always that time when issues both new and old begin to surface, and Britain's been staggering under a surfeit of repeats. There are always at least two people (currently David Sylvian and Bauhaus) playing at being Bowie again, and there's also Edsel, F-Beat's new indie label for re-issues. It's 'Demonic Sound' is meant as a sidebar to F-Beat's modern Demon subsidiary: so far it's given us The Escorts From The Blue Angel, The Merseybeats, Little Richard's Get Down With It! and Let's Stomp—compilation / of Liverpool Beat combos like Rory Storm & the Hurricanes, Derry White and the Pressmen, Mark Peters and the Silhouettes, Sonny Webb and the Cascades, and Faron's Flamingos.
The newest hot issue is this week's debut of Channel 4—the first new channel on British TV in 18 years! It's slightly anti-climatic to discover that its schedules already contain a depressingly high number of repeats (the fourth channel is financed through subscriptions set by Britain's Independent Broadcasting Company; with London Weekend TV set to supply Channel 4 with 130 hours of showtime and Thames TV 80 hours)