March 23: To Bradford's National Museum of Photography for a viewing of the 1969 Granada TV
Johnny Cash in San Quentin concert video. Quite apart from the Museum's TV Heaven viewing room having the most uncomfortable seating on the entire planet (despite the additional cushions handed out by the host), the video is a bit of a muddle, the result of a rather literary/didactic motivation, which persists into the resulting movie.
The concept was to use San Quentin prison as the venue for an examination of the way the myths of the Old West - the gunfighter, the maverick - persist today and survive within prison walls. This overview fell by the wayside while the show was being firmed up, but persists in an now entirely irrelevant intro, with clips from classic western movies and a portentous voice-over.
The interviews with inmates are interesting and could have made a programme in their own right, but they tend to interrupt the flow of the music.
As a result, the music occupies les than half the footage, but what there is makes fascinating viewing, demonstrating how Cash could work an audience, whipping them up to a frenzy (as demonstrated by the opening clip on this posting) and then calming them down with a spiritual song, like the lovely
He turned the water into wine.
This footage is unlikely ever to see commercial release, because of copyright issues between Granada and the Columbia record company (now part of Sony) who released the audio CD. Thirty-second clips of nearly all the songs may be heard at
http://www.legacyrecordings.com/site_artists/product_4994.html.
However, like all the huge number of archived programmes in the Museum's TV Heaven, the show can be viewed at any time (though not online). You have to come to Bradford and view your choice in the cubicles provided. Hopefully, the seats will be more comfortable than in the 38-seater viewing area.
Details of the over 900 programmes in TV Heaven can be found at
http://www.nmpft.org.uk/television/.
