...that the rights for retail release are not entirely clear & that might be the hold up. On the other hand, within the industry DC has a reputation as a hard bargain striker...

to an article in a 'rival' mag, as I understand it Dave Clark of the eponymous '5' owns all the rights to Ready Steady Go and he sits on the reels that are fashioned into a throne in his big mansion not letting anyone have a peek.

nb. the main thrust of this is true, other embelishments have been made.

was the DC5 being on every week and being soooo good that they even had better quality film than the rest of the show as if the footage had magically been chucked in as some sort of after thought 20 years later.

These herberts weren't fit to lick the boots of Dave Clarke (not the techno one, obviously)

Jaw dropping, breath taking, power. The rarely captured on camera very essence of soul music.

There's considerable debate amongst archivists/collectors as to how much RSG material actually survives.

The programme was made by Associated-Rediffusion, who were one of the ITV franchise operators at the time. Little of their material has survived; probably due to a combination of reasons such as the loss of their franchise, and the fact that all of their material was in black & white and therefore unlikely to be rebroadcast. Thames Television, A-R's successor, wiped a lot of old A-R tapes during the late 1970s. There's also rumours that some of A-R's archive tapes got re-used before then when Magic Roundabout was being re-dubbed into English.

It's rumoured that the recordings currently in Dave Clark's possession were discovered in a cupboard at Associated-Rediffusion's former head office a good number of years after their demise. Exactly how much he acquired isn't clear, but it's likely that these recordings were tele-cine transfers made for overseas sales.

There's also a few episodes and clips of RSG in the hands of the British Film Institute.

In the mid eighties there were about half a dozen compilation shows of RSG clips, topped up with generous helpings of DC5.

I fear we may have seen all there is to see, but you never know. Below the Fabs from late '64, notable for Paul Gadd's 'bouncer' intervention at the end. Seeing him clapping along in the crowd now seems faintly creepy...

I saw one of these re-edited RSGs, and I swear that during one of the DC5 performances there was a sudden, jarring shot of a girl in a crowd, on film stock as opposed to VT, clearly mouthing the words "Ringo... Ringo..."

other than to say that RSG was the greatest British music programme ever broadcast*.

Ooo here's a High Fidelity top 5 British music shows:

1: RSG
2: TOTP
3: OGWT
4: The Tube
5: TFI Friday

Get the tapes of that lot and you've got a fine archive of Post-HJH popular music.

(* Apart from Rick Wakeman's Gas Tank, obviously)

I know from experience that the legalities involved in getting clearances from those involved are an administrative nightmare and punitively expensive. For a long time now there have been blanket clearances in place to cover repeats, compilations, "secondary exploitation" etc., but back in the 60s when all this pop music mularky was still seen as transient & ephemeral nonsense (hence the recycling of tapes), there was no thought given to signing up rights for future usage.

Dave Clark is nothing if not an astute businessman (he was certainly one of the first UK musicians to retain rights to his own masters and license them to labels for release), and my guess is that he's waiting for these shows to become public domain (probably in the next few years), so he can release them with only songwriting royalties to be paid...