I had reason recently to be reminded of the quality of this guy's music for British tv. In the 70s and 80s he broke away from his prog rock duties to give us some cool themes and scoring for the likes of the BBC's gritty thriller Gangsters, the student black comedy A Very Peculiar Practice, and the computer influenced thriller Bird of Prey. The first two also had opening theme songs performed by Chris Farlowe and Elkie Brooks respectively.
It's a shame there weren't cd soundtracks at the time of each of these series, but even now a good compilation of all would be very welcome. Being a solo artist with a few releases to his name I wouldn't have thought it would be too difficult.
I'm only familiar with Greenslade's Pentateuch, which I had on LP AND CD....wish I had kept the LP set as the CD print and art is tiny. I'd love to hear more, and to see some of these things, esp. Bird of Prey.
Hey, I went through a Dave Greenslade phase in the early/mid 80s after catching his scores for Artemis 81, Bird Of Prey and Jekyll And Hyde, all of which I enjoyed very much (quietly influential on me too).
Soon after, I bought the Pentateuch album which, though a bit too prog rock for me and not quite weird enough, I enjoyed in parts.
I had reason recently to be reminded of the quality of this guy's music for British tv. In the 70s and 80s he broke away from his prog rock duties to give us some cool themes and scoring for the likes of the BBC's gritty thriller Gangsters, the student black comedy A Very Peculiar Practice, and the computer influenced thriller Bird of Prey. The first two also had opening theme songs performed by Chris Farlowe and Elkie Brooks respectively.
It's a shame there weren't cd soundtracks at the time of each of these series, but even now a good compilation of all would be very welcome. Being a solo artist with a few releases to his name I wouldn't have thought it would be too difficult.
I included two of Dave's TV themes on The A to Z of British TV Themes -- Volume 4: Bird of Prey & Kinsey. As I remember it, he had to especially re-record Bird of Prey (a very short theme) because he no longer had the original.
Jekyll and Hyde, Artemis 81 and Kinsey are all news to me. Well, I remember the first two being on at least but don't remember the music. Same goes for A Very Peculiar Practice, which I watched but again unaware of DG's music, despite liking the song.
After digging around the other day I did find the Gangsters theme on Time and Tide. However it's the (excellent) instrumental from the first series, whereas I got the 7" single of the Chris Farlowe song version back in the day on 'Beeb' Records with The Sarah Gant Theme on the b side.
I also borrowed The Pentateuch in the 80s from a mate and remember playing it quite a bit.
Sad to think an artist doesn't have the recordings of his work though. I'm assuming it's because they have shelves full of stuff and they can't keep everything. Trouble with this is that recording it all over again makes a release totally unlikely compared to dusting off the originals and selecting the best for a smaller release cd. Of course if he had MOST of his stuff still around and only needed to fill the odd gap for completism... But this is wishful thinking on the part of a fan, and even less commercially viable than that small release cd.
And I do remember listening quite a bit to a nice audio recording I made of the Bird of Prey theme on broadcast, and leaving the tape running while quite a large chunk of incidentals played without much interference from dialogue and other sounds. Pretty good stuff, and most likely will never see the light of day.
All makes me realise what a scoop it was when a fan of Ken Freeman's synth scores for the 1980s BBC tea time sf series The Tripods was keen enough to get to the guy and convince him to release HIS work. This is the kind of release I would imagine we could get if it could be suggested and organised. Any professionals here about to tell me "it's not that simple...." please remember this is, as I say, just a fan's wishful thinking!
Jekyll and Hyde, Artemis 81 and Kinsey are all news to me. Well, I remember the first two being on at least but don't remember the music. Same goes for A Very Peculiar Practice, which I watched but again unaware of DG's music, despite liking the song.
After digging around the other day I did find the Gangsters theme on Time and Tide. However it's the (excellent) instrumental from the first series, whereas I got the 7" single of the Chris Farlowe song version back in the day on 'Beeb' Records with The Sarah Gant Theme on the b side.
I also borrowed The Pentateuch in the 80s from a mate and remember playing it quite a bit.
Sad to think an artist doesn't have the recordings of his work though. I'm assuming it's because they have shelves full of stuff and they can't keep everything. Trouble with this is that recording it all over again makes a release totally unlikely compared to dusting off the originals and selecting the best for a smaller release cd. Of course if he had MOST of his stuff still around and only needed to fill the odd gap for completism... But this is wishful thinking on the part of a fan, and even less commercially viable than that small release cd.
And I do remember listening quite a bit to a nice audio recording I made of the Bird of Prey theme on broadcast, and leaving the tape running while quite a large chunk of incidentals played without much interference from dialogue and other sounds. Pretty good stuff, and most likely will never see the light of day.
All makes me realise what a scoop it was when a fan of Ken Freeman's synth scores for the 1980s BBC tea time sf series The Tripods was keen enough to get to the guy and convince him to release HIS work. This is the kind of release I would imagine we could get if it could be suggested and organised. Any professionals here about to tell me "it's not that simple...." please remember this is, as I say, just a fan's wishful thinking!
It's kind of indicative of the hyper-practical attitude of a lot of UK based media composers of that time - "it's just a job, mate" and they'd just chuck their stuff away and move on. The thought of actual score albums of such material was simply another world away in those days.
I haven't seen the show since its original screening on BBC, I vaguely remember the second series being disappointing and getting very surreal.
I have the 45rpm single with vocal, as far as I know the instrumental version wasn't released.
As I said above Timmer, the instrumental has been available for years,. If you don't mind buying an album for one track Gangsters is on this and it's excellent:
