Soul & Beyond, 8pm BBC4 Friday 9th Nov 18

[Seano]

Just spotted that at 8pm tonight Corinne Bailey Rae and Trevor Nelson are in a programme about how Soul music influenced them. The write up refers to it being episode 5/10, but no idea what the previous 4 were, whether they were all focussed on Soul, or who the featured people were.

[Kegsy]

Just been watching this, Mr Nelson claims his favourite female singer on Motown was Gladys Knight, and then they play Midnight Train To Georgia, which came out on Buddah, Do me a favour Trevor stop pretending you were there "back in the day". Then we get some shit that Bob Marley was making/taking references/influences, on Stir It Up, to Parliament/Funkadelic, do me a favour again. 

Ok there are bits in the progamme which are nice to see but why use Trevor Nelson to present it ?, we on here all know at least 20 others who could have done it better.

[Colnago]

I’ve always thought he’s a guy of limited knowledge of the music, more into mainstream at best , just a guy who’s landed a plum job with the beeb .

[Seano]

1 hour ago, Kegsy said:

Just been watching this, Mr Nelson claims his favourite female singer on Motown was Gladys Knight, and then they play Midnight Train To Georgia, which came out on Buddah, Do me a favour Trevor stop pretending you were there "back in the day". Then we get some shit that Bob Marley was making/taking references/influences, on Stir It Up, to Parliament/Funkadelic, do me a favour again. 

Exactly what I moaned about to my wife while watching it - loads more interesting stuff to say if you want to reference Gladys' Motown period.

It would have been far better to have just had the clips and none of the sofa chat, especially as it wasn't even chat, it felt far too scripted for that. I didn't actually mind having Bob Marley on, though based on the little I know of his music I'd have gone for 'Waiting in Vain'. But the closest things came to Parliament/Funkadelic was Elton John's glasses, and even then it didn't exactly sound like Bootsy....

The tiny glimmer of brightness was that they did include Bobby Womack, but even there I've seen better stuff featuring him on BBC programmes, which I presume was the constraining factor for their supposed "beginner's guide for an alien".

The problem seemed to be in the construct; it tried to blend people talking about their early and then subsequent musical influential moments relating to a specific genre of music, in this case Soul, but then drifted through the programme to include other bits that seemed to be more about their informed opinion of key artists. So it started with the Jackson 5 because it was one of Trevor's first recollections, then later we flick back to a 60's clip of Aretha simply because she was known as the Queen of Soul. The programme would have been much stronger to be either entirely about the personal historical moments of music that moulded these two presenters, or abandon that and, like Kegsy and Cologno say, find someone who has a far more comprehensive knowledge of this area to select the clips, even if they still have to be restricted by what's already owned by the BBC.