Beat-Club was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 music program that ran from September 1965 to December 1972. It was broadcast from Bremen, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 on Erstes Deutsches Fernsehen

Das Erste

Erstes Deutsches Fernsehen , marketed as Das Erste , is the principal publicly owned television channel in Germany...

, the national public TV channel of the ARD

ARD (broadcaster)

ARD is a joint organization of Germany's regional public-service broadcasters...

, and produced by one of its members, Radio Bremen

Radio Bremen

Radio Bremen , Germany's smallest public radio and television broadcaster, is the legally mandated broadcaster for the city-state of Bremen...

, later co-produced by WDR

Westdeutscher Rundfunk

Westdeutscher Rundfunk is a German public-broadcasting institution based in the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia with its main office in Cologne. WDR is a constituent member of the consortium of German public-broadcasting institutions, ARD...

 following the 38th episode. It is notable for being the first German show to be based around popular music, and featured artists like Frank Zappa

Frank Zappa

Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed...

, The Rolling Stones

The Rolling Stones

The Rolling Stones are an English rock band, formed in London in April 1962 by Brian Jones , Ian Stewart , Mick Jagger , and Keith Richards . Bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts completed the early line-up...

, Gene Pitney

Gene Pitney

Eugene Francis Alan Pitney, known as Gene Pitney , was an American singer-songwriter, musician and sound engineer. Through the mid-1960s, he enjoyed success as a recording artist on both sides of the Atlantic and was among the group of early 1960s American acts who continued to enjoy hits after the...

, Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin were an English rock band, active in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Formed in 1968, they consisted of guitarist Jimmy Page, singer Robert Plant, bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones, and drummer John Bonham...

, Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix

James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...

, Ike & Tina Turner

Ike & Tina Turner

Ike & Tina Turner were an American rock & roll and soul duo, made of the husband-and-wife team of Ike Turner and Tina Turner in the 1960s and 1970s. Spanning sixteen years together as a recording group, the duo's repertoire included rock & roll, soul, blues and funk...

, The Who

The Who

The Who are an English rock band formed in 1964 by Roger Daltrey , Pete Townshend , John Entwistle and Keith Moon . They became known for energetic live performances which often included instrument destruction...

, Black Sabbath

Black Sabbath

Black Sabbath are an English heavy metal band, formed in Aston, Birmingham in 1969 by Ozzy Osbourne , Tony Iommi , Geezer Butler , and Bill Ward . The band has since experienced multiple line-up changes, with Tony Iommi the only constant presence in the band through the years. A total of 22...

, The Bee Gees

Bee Gees

The Bee Gees are a musical group that originally comprised three brothers: Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb. The trio was successful for most of their 40-plus years of recording music, but they had two distinct periods of exceptional success: as a pop act in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and as a...

, The Beach Boys

The Beach Boys

The Beach Boys are an American rock band, formed in 1961 in Hawthorne, California. The group was initially composed of brothers Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson, their cousin Mike Love, and friend Al Jardine. Managed by the Wilsons' father Murry, The Beach Boys signed to Capitol Records in 1962...

, The Doors

The Doors

The Doors were an American rock band formed in 1965 in Los Angeles, California, with vocalist Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, drummer John Densmore, and guitarist Robby Krieger...

 and Kraftwerk

Kraftwerk

Kraftwerk is an influential electronic music band from Düsseldorf, Germany. The group was formed by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider in 1970, and was fronted by them until Schneider's departure in 2008...

 in its seven-year run. In 1972, it was replaced by Musikladen

Musikladen

Der Musikladen was a West German music television programme that ran from December 13, 1972 to November 29, 1984. The show continued the 1960s Beat-Club under a new name, and in turn was replaced by Extratour.-History:...

.

Performances from the show can now be seen on VH1 Classic

VH1 Classic

VH1 Classic is a television network, launched on May 8, 2000. It is operated as part of MTV Networks, a subsidiary of Viacom and primarily features music videos and concert footage from the 1970s through the mid-1990s, though it formerly included a wider range of genres and time periods...

, and reruns air in several European countries. Several DVD

DVD

A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

 collections have also been released.

In early 2008, the first free Video on demand

Video on demand

Video on Demand or Audio and Video On Demand are systems which allow users to select and watch/listen to video or audio content on demand...

 web portal for Beat-Club and Musikladen

Musikladen

Der Musikladen was a West German music television programme that ran from December 13, 1972 to November 29, 1984. The show continued the 1960s Beat-Club under a new name, and in turn was replaced by Extratour.-History:...

 was launched at Mybeatclub.com, featuring the most popular songs and artists of both shows. In 2010, mybeatclub.com was replaced by www.youtube.de/beatclub.

Show history

Beat-Club was co-created by Gerhard Augustin and Mike Leckebusch. The show premiered on 25 September 1965 with Augustin and Uschi Nerke hosting. German TV personality Wilhelm Wieben opened the first show with a short speech. After eight episodes, Augustin stepped down from his hosting role and was replaced by DJ Dave Lee Travis

Dave Lee Travis

Dave Lee Travis , also known professionally as DLT and the Hairy Cornflake, is a British radio presenter, best known for his career on BBC Radio 1.-Early life:...

.

The show's earlier episodes featured live performances, and was set in front of a plain brick wall. It underwent a revamp in 1967, when a more professional look was adapted with large cards in the background displaying the names of the performers. Around this time, a troupe of young women billed the "Go-Go-Girls," were introduced to dance to songs when their performers couldn't appear.

In early 1969, Travis was replaced by Dave Dee, of Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich

Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich

Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich , were a British pop/rock group of the 1960s. Two of their single releases sold in excess of one million copies each, and they reached Number One in the UK with the second of them, "The Legend of Xanadu".-Biography:Five friends from Wiltshire, David John Harman,...

. On 31 December 1969, "Beat-Club" switched to color and again featured live performances. Dee departed in 1970, leaving Nerke as the lone host.

Follow up on radio and on the internet

The former TV show is now a weekly radio programme on Radio Bremen 1 and on a webchannel offered by the radio station. Interestingly it is again hosted by Uschi Nerke who did it in the 60s and early 70s on TV. The link to the show can be found in the external link section.

External links

• Radio Bremen's Beat-Club website
• http://web.archive.org/web/20080410180707/http://www.radiobremen.de/tv/beatclub/sendungen_liste.html - Full (in German) program listings with original air dates 1965-1972.
• TV.com: Beat-Club - complete list with all tracks (in English)
• Beat-Club channel on YouTube