BBC Four

BBC 4

Stephanie McWhinnie

Mark Cooper

Creation at the BBC

Music: Rock & Indie

28/10/2011

BBC Four - Creation at the BBC

With My Bloody Valentine, Primal Scream, Oasis, Ride, Boo Radleys and Teenage Fanclub.

Performances by Creation Records artists including the Jesus and Mary Chain, the Loft, My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Primal Scream, Oasis, Ride, Boo Radleys and Teenage Fanclub.

A trip through the BBC archives from programmes such as Whistle Test, the Oxford Road Show, Top of the Pops and Later with Jools Holland to find some rare and some familiar footage of the bands who were on one of the UK's most seminal and important record labels, Creation Records. 

Founded in 1983 by Alan McGee, Dick Green and Jo Foster, Creation Records was started off as a cottage industry producing 7" singles from a bedroom and went on to sign the one of the biggest bands in the world - Oasis. 

From East Kilbride the Reid brothers, Jim and William, bandmate Douglas Hart and drummer Bobby Gillespie exploded onto the scene as the Jesus and Mary Chain on Whistle Test in 1985, and from the same year a rare piece of footage from Peter Astor's band The Loft on the Oxford Road Show. The Loft morphed into his next project the Weather Prophets, who we see on the Whistle Test later that year. 

My Bloody Valentine nearly bankrupted Creation but produced one of the label's flagship albums, Isn't Anything, while Slowdive were front runners in the 'shoegazing' scene. The 1990s heralded the halcyon days of Creation with the release of Primal Scream's zeitgeist album Screamadelica and arguably the most important band of the decade, Oasis, signing to the label in 1993. Thus followed a string of chart successes for Creation with Ride, the Boo Radleys, Super Furry Animals, Teenage Fanclub and, of course, Oasis. 

The label disintegrated in 1999, but undoubtedly produced some of the most important records of the late 1980s and 1990s.

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