The Go!! Show

The Go!! Show
Genre	Music television
Directed by	Godfrey Phillips
Creative director	Bruce Rowland
Presented by	Alan Field Ian Turpie Johnny Young
Composer	The Strangers
Country of origin	Australia
Original language	English
No.of seasons	3
No.of episodes	222
Production
Producers	Dennis Smith Godfrey Phillips Julian Jover
Production location	Nunawading, Victoria
Running time	55 min(1964–66) 25 min(1967)
Production companies	Willard-King Productions DYT Productions
Original release
Network	ATV Network Ten
Release	August 1964(1964-08)– August 1967(1967-08)

The Go!! Show(also known simply asGo!!) was an Australianpopular musictelevision series which was produced before a live audienceand aired onNetwork TenATV-0,Melbourne,from August 1964 to August 1967, running one hour three nights a night.

It was produced by Willard-King Productions, DYT Productions.Over its run it was hosted, in turn, by Alan Field (1964),Ian Turpie(1964–66) andJohnny Young(1966–67) andRonnie Burns

The series was known for having a regular roster of performers includingThe Strangers,a line of Go-Go dancing who appeared from week to week,Olivia Newton-JohnandPat Carroll,Lynne Randell,Normie RoweandThe Twilights.

History

When the Melbourne-basedGo Show!!premiered in August 1964, the other major competing television popular music show seriesBandstand,was made by theNine Network,which was made in Sydney. While that series had been an important outlet for the first wave of Australian rock'n'roll, it did not engage strongly with the so-called "Beat Boom" acts which emerged in the mid-1960s and onwards;Bandstandsubsequently settled into a more mainstream musical variety format aimed at a broad general audience.

Unusually the main competition forGo!!was broadcast on the same station: in December 1965, ATV-0 commissioned a second pop show,Kommotion,produced by theWillard-Kingorganisation and hosted by popular Melbourne radio and TV personality,Ken Sparkes.It was broadcast with five episodes each week day.

The Go!! Showfocussed on the more sophisticated youth market and tended to concentrate on local solo performers, whileKommotion(which was in part modelled on the American series,Shindig!) pursued a more group- and chart-oriented format, as well as featuring a troupe ofgo-godancers and a regular team of young performers who mimed to the latest overseas hits.

Production

The Go!! Showwas made by DYT Productions, a production company founded and run by Australian musicianHorrie Dargiewith partners Arthur Young and Johnny Tillbrook, with producers Dennis Smith, Godfrey Phillips and Julian Jover working onGo!!specifically.It premiered in August 1964, just after theBeatles' Australian tour and just days after ATV-0's official opening. It was videotaped before a live audience, with early episodes being one-hour long and it screened three nights per week. In its third season broadcast 1966–67, it was shortened to thirty minutes. Because national television networking was only just being established in Australia,The Go!! Showwas only seen inVictoriafor its first two years.

Presenters

There were three hosts ofGo!!during its run: the first was North-English comedianAlan Field,who had compered the July 1964Beatlestour.Singer-actorIan Turpietook over from Field from episode 26 until August 1966 when Turpie quit, stating that pursuing a career as an adult entertainer forced him to resign). Pop star and futureYoung Talent TimehostJohnny Youngtook over. In an incident in December 1966, Young arrived at the ATV studio complaining of feeling "tired and hot". During taping of an episode, Young began "fumbling and making silly mistakes", and reportedly forgot the name of the artist he was meant to introduce, and subsequently collapsed on camera; the incident was attributed to Young's hectic schedule.

Performers

The Go!! Showalmost exclusively featured local performers and concentrated on solo singers, who were typically backed by the show's house bandThe Strangers.It featured many of the major Australian pop stars of the time, including DYT-managed singerApril Byron,resident female singer of the first season,Bobby & Laurie,The Spinning Wheels,Lynne Randell,Johnny Devlin,Colin Cook,The Twilights,Mike FurberandNormie Rowe.Olivia Newton-JohnandPat Carrollwere regulars with Newton-John making at least sixteen appearances between February 1965 and December 1966. Singer and composerBuddy Englandauditioned for the premiere episode and became a regular performer for the entire run of the series.

The Strangersalso performed their own material on weekly basis throughout the life of the show. They notably secured one of the first sponsorship deals in Australian pop and were provided with a set of distinctive "El Toro" model electric guitars and basses made by the noted Melbourne-basedluthierMaton.Strangers singer-guitaristJohn Farrarbecame a prominent session arranger in the late '60s before moving overseas and achieving great international success in the 1970s and beyond as a producer for Olivia Newton-John. He also wrote two additional songs for theGrease: The Original Soundtrack from the Motion Pictureof the film version of the Broadway musicalGreasewhich became the biggest hits of the movie.

Record label

Coinciding with the premiere of the TV series, production team DYT launched their own record labelGo!! RecordsandThe Go!! Showfrequently cross-promoted acts signed to the label. Unconnected pop magazineGo-Set(1966–1974) which coincidentally shared the "Go" brand and market formed a marketing triumvirate.

Although it was extremely popular, attracting as many as 400,000 viewers each week,The Go!! Showwas cancelled suddenly in August 1967 after more than 200 episodes, at virtually the same time as the axing ofKommotion.According toKommotionhost Ken Sparkes, the main cause was the imposition of anActors Equityban on miming in TV programs, which effectively put both shows out of business.

Like most pop shows of the time, it was customary for performers to mime to a recording of their latest hit;Kommotiontypically used commercial recordings of current hits, whereasGo!!(like the BBC'sTop of the Pops) often used pre-taped tracks specially recorded for the show. With the cancellation of the series the Go!! label soon folded since its main means of promotion had been remov The network replaced the cancelled shows with a new Saturday morning pop showUptight,which was nationally networked; it ran until the end of 1969 when it was 'rebranded' asHappening '70(followed byHappening '71and '72).

Surviving episodes

Like most other Australian TV shows from this period, there is very little surviving archival material fromThe Go!! Show.Most of the more than 200 episodes were subsequently destroyed when the network archives ran out of storage space, although numerous fragments and several entire programs have survived. The exact amount of remaining footage is uncertain, but at least seven episodes from late 1966 are known to have survived in their entirety. This material was copied from tapes in the archive sometime in the late 1990s and circulated widely among collectors over the next few years; some clips have since made their way ontoYouTube.

See also

• List of Australian music television shows

External links

• The Go!! ShowatIMDb
• The Go!! Show
• The Go!! ShowEpisodes