On Wednesday, December 24th at 10:00pm, Brooklyn Independent Television’s Caught In The Act will feature The Melodians, the Jamaican music group credited with helping to ushering in the Rastafarian movement and Rocksteady genre.
Melodian founding members Trevor McNaughton and Tony Brevett, along with trumpet player Cameron Washington, were guests in BIT studios earlier this month to promote their new album, “Songs In The Key of Hope,” due out in 2009.
Among the songs performed for their Caught In The Act appearance was their big hit “Rivers of Babylon” and Woody Gutherie’s “This Land Is Your Land.” “Rivers of Babylon” was on the soundtrack for the 1972 movie “The Harder They Come.” That soundtrack played a major part in popularizing reggae in the United States and is bestowed with numerous “Best Albums of All Time” accolades.
In this feature, The Melodians are interviewed by music buff Andy Herz, an entertainment attorney and producer for the remastered release of “The Harder They Come.” Viewers are in for a treat as The Melodians strum their way through songs that have survived the decades and share stories that they’ve collected since forming in 1965.
This episode of Caught In The Act will air Wednesday, December 24th at 10pm. Rebroadcasts occur on Mondays and Wednesdays at 2pm and 10pm through Wednesday, January 28th on the BCAT Network (Timewarner 56, Cablevision 69, RCN 84 and Verizon 44).
About Caught In The Act: Each month, Caught in the Act profiles a cross-section of key Brooklyn professionals in fine art, dance, music, theater—and new forms of expression combining all of the above. From established institutions of international stature, to the emerging artists and companies that have long made our borough’s arts scene so exciting, Caught in the Act catches them in the act of creating, displaying, interpreting—and enriching—the cultural life of Brooklyn. For more information about Caught In The Act, please visit our website.
Sidenote: WARNING! Around the BCAT offices, the tune “Rivers of Babylon” has been passed back and forth between the administration and producers like an incredibly contagious, yet melodic cold. One person will start humming it, three minutes later some one else will start whistling another part of the chorus, and by the end of the day the happy tune has spread itself throughout BCAT’s offices. Just moments ago, Alease Anan, Assistant to the Executive Producer, waved her fist in the air and said, “I can’t get this song out of my head! Ahhh!” You have been warned.
How great is this spot? Pretty darn great if you ask us. And if you continued to ask us questions, we would guess that the next one would be, “Hey. Who made that?”
Well that would be the one and only Gen Liu, BCAT’s Website and Brooklyn Bulletin Board Coordinator. When Gen isn’t busy making promos for our Center for Media Education, she’s busy keeping track of our massive databases or keeping the Bulletin Board on track or doing a myriad other things that go into making BCAT work like the well-oiled machine that it is. (Soon we’ll be converting to wind power, but until then, oil will have to do.)
Sorry. That was a bad oil pun.
But lets get back to this Center for Media Education promo. Can you believe that something like this exists? State-of-the-art-studios? Editing bays for as far as the near-sighted eye can see? (We’ve got seven of them.) Access to camera equipment and audio equipment for FREE? Uhhhh AND you get the opportunity to broadcast your own TV show on one of four cable channels?
Dang!
That’s really some amazing stuff. And it’s all right here a BCAT.
Want to partake of some of this amazing stuff? The first thing you gotta do is attend an orientation. Lucky for you, our new January – March 2009 course schedule was just announced.
Orientations are Free.
Space is available on a first come, first served basis.
• Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2009, 6pm-8pm
• Saturday, Jan. 10, 2009, 11am-1pm
• Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2009, 6pm-8pm
• Saturday, Feb. 21, 2009, 11am-1pm
• Tuesday, March 3, 2009, 6pm-8pm
• Saturday, March 7, 2009, 11am-1pm
Once you attend one of those, all you have to do is enroll in either our Basic Field Production & Editing Workshop or our Basic Television Studio Workshop and you’re well on your way to becoming a Certified BCAT Community Producer. (This means you get access to all the goodies that BCAT has to offer. Whoo hoo!)
To find out when those classes and more are offered, take a gander at the Center for Media Education’s at BCAT’s website.
Oh. And welcome to the blog. We’re going to start utilizing this thing like nobody’s business.
Stay tuned!
(Get it? Stay tuned? Like. On television… and we’re a television station? See?! See how that’s kind of funny.)
Ahem.
We’ll start working on our jokes.
Welcome to Brooklyn Free Speech TV’s new blog!
Brooklyn Free Speech TV provides all Brooklynites with access to studio facilities, equipment, training, and channel time, making it possible for them to take their message to millions of their neighbors (and people all over the world via the Internet). Free Speech TV currently cablecasts over 500 unique programs each week, echoing Brooklyn’s own rich diversity in range.
We hope this blog will be a useful resource for Brooklyn Free Speech TV’s producers and fans alike. Check here regularly in future for special features like Producer of the Week, news items about Free Speech producers, resource sharing, photos, and more. Whether you are a certified producer or one of our viewers, we want to hear your voice, too, so please write in. It’s your site, too!
Brooklyn Free Speech TV is an intitiative of Brooklyn Community Access Television (BCAT), the media arts program of BRIC Arts │Media │Bklyn. For more information, please visit our web site: www.briconline.org/bcat.
