Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- 1945 (from May 1945)
- 1946
- 1947
- 1948
- 1949
- 1950
- 1951
- 1952
- 1953
- 1954
- 1955
- 1956
- 1957
- 1958
- 1959
- 1960
- 1961
- 1962
- 1963
- 1964
- 1965
- 1966
- 1967
- 1968
- 1969
- 1970
- 1972
- Notes to the Text
- Select Bibliography
- Index of Film Titles
- General Index
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- 1945 (from May 1945)
- 1946
- 1947
- 1948
- 1949
- 1950
- 1951
- 1952
- 1953
- 1954
- 1955
- 1956
- 1957
- 1958
- 1959
- 1960
- 1961
- 1962
- 1963
- 1964
- 1965
- 1966
- 1967
- 1968
- 1969
- 1970
- 1972
- Notes to the Text
- Select Bibliography
- Index of Film Titles
- General Index
Summary
The songs have the ring of theatre about them, and are rather more typical of British stage musicals of the time than of British musical films
I’ve Gotta HorsePop Gear
Gonks Go Beat
I’ve Gotta Horse
Three Hats for Lisa
Be My Guest
Catch Us If You Can
Help!
Up Jumped a Swagman
Cuckoo Patrol
Dateline Diamonds
January
The intervening years have given Associated British Pathé’s Pop Gear an archival relevance that it did not own in 1965. Despite the hastily contrived treatment these performers and groups, miming to their recordings, receive from producer Harry Field and director Frederic Goode, we at least have this depository of a slice of British pop music circa 1964. Presumably, the sole purpose of its credited writer Roger Dunton was to provide disc jockey Jimmy Savile with some bare bones linking comments between the acts. Thanks to modern technology not available in the mid-sixties, we may decide to swiftly move on from these. Anyway, Matt Monro, the most veteran of the film’s guests, has already alerted us as to what we are in for in John and Joan Shakespeare’s title song:
It’s been a swinging year for the groups that made the grade,
Those discs you played and played and then played again.
You got the music that you long to hear, It’s all here, and it’s pop gear. The Stones are crazy about it
Dave Clark stamps his foot for it.
The Mersey Sound became a hit and the Beatles started it.
You were the problem child in a world where music sings
Your emotions took on wings, the frenzy, the dreams.
Why, you almost heard the music through the screams!
Yes indeed, and you need,
Oh how you need some more pop gear
Pop, pop, pop gear: This was pop gear!
The real meat of Pop Gear is sandwiched between an opening sequence of The Beatles performing ‘She Loves You’ and a final sequence of them singing Phil Medley and Bert Berns’s ‘Twist and Shout’, both songs being borrowed from a Pathé film. In between, this glorious celebration of the state of British pop as it approached the mid-sixties does what its highly respected senior statesman balladeer Monro has promised.
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- Melody in the DarkBritish Musical Films, 1946-1972, pp. 259 - 273Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2023