rage YT playlists: for Australians (and other folks) who don't hate music

August 19, 2010 11:02 AM

rage is a weekend-only night-time music video show on Australia's ABC1 that started back in 1987. The presentation was minimal, with an intro, hours of music videos, and then the outro, no adverts, and a few variations from this no-frills format. The format remains largely unchanged to date, and you can check the archive of playlists (back to 1998) and see a mix of local talent and international hits, but one thing was missing: the videos. Enter the rage YouTube playlist generator. [via mefi projects]

The rage YouTube playlist generator is a minimal display of hours of music videos, queried from the rage playlists. Choose a previously generated playlist, or enter a date from the archives and get a custom playlist generated just for you.

The weekend format followed a general schedule. Friday was for new and recent videos, Saturday had guest programmers who talked about their picks or the shows were themed around some group(s), and for a short while you could catch the skit comedy show John Safran's Music Jamboree in the very early hours of Saturday mornings in 2002.

More Videos
- The first video shown on Friday, 17 April 1987: "Weird Libido" by the Australian post-punk band Lime Spiders (discogs)
- Second: "(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party)" - The Beastie Boys
- ABC Australia Christmas Logo 1987
- "Mutt" - Blink 182, live on rage (poorly synced and fuzzy picture)
- Grant Lee Buffalo live in Jan 1995: Mockingbirds, Fuzzy, Drag, Honey Don't Think, and Mighty Joe Moon

Guest Host clips - Much more info can be found in rage's collection of guests and specials going back to 1990, and here are some clips on YT
- Veruca Salt (late 1997)
- Bloodhound Gang (late 1997)
- Blink 182 (27 June 1998)
- Green Day (5 June 1999)
- New Order (9 February 2002)

John Safran's Music Jamboree
Episode 1: part 1, part 2, part 3
TISM live on JSMJ: "I'm On The Drug" (TISM previously)

posted by filthy light thief (26 comments total)

Oh this is awesome. Back in the KaZaa/free college broadband days, every other music video I'd download had the "rage" tag in the corner. Australian music video pirates made my late teenage years a blast, and I am looking forward to going on a nostalgia trip when I get home. Speaking of which, I really need to dig up that DVD I burned of my collected music videos. It's a perfect time capsule Griphus' Music Tastes ca. 2003.
posted by griphus at 11:12 AM on August 19, 2010

Hah - now that you mention it, I recall these "Rage" watermarks also. As a kid in the US, I assumed they were some video ripping person/group, not an Australian music video channel.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:43 AM on August 19, 2010

this is great. I picked a random day in Feb. 2001 and the playlist it gave me was one classic after another - At The Drive In, Hendrix, QOTSA, Stones, Powderfinger. thanks.
posted by mannequito at 1:25 PM on August 19, 2010

Hah, I clicked on a clip by "...And you will know us by the trail of dead", and as the song started playing, and ad for a Liberal candidate for the upcoming Australian election popped up.

I don't think the Liberal party are doing their marketing properly.

Otherwise, this is awesome!
posted by robotot at 1:58 PM on August 19, 2010

I once maintained an extensive library of video tapes of Rage guest programmers. Even the fairly mediocre bands could be relied upon to program some brilliant music (Everclear's effort is one of my favourites).

And then when Youtube appeared, I kind of figured my Rage video collection would become pretty redundant, and it was relegated to the back of my Dad's shed. It looks like I was right.
posted by Jimbob at 2:04 PM on August 19, 2010

Also, the about page is pretty interesting, outlining the weekly process of gathering video and getting it ready to air broken down by day, and how guest spots are prepped and filmed.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:25 PM on August 19, 2010

Back in the dark days before Youtube, I had a friend who would check Rage's playlist each Friday night, then set her alarm clock for when the good videos were on.

I forget sometimes that being able to access any song, any movie, any video anytime you want is a very recent thing.

As a kid in the US, I assumed they were some video ripping person/group, not an Australian music video channel.

I had the opposite experience- I was confused about why Rage, presumably an obscure show internationally, was such a popular choice for Youtube videos. My partner had to explain to me that music video shows without ads, streaming feeds at the bottom of the screen and constant interruptions for inane competitions were pretty rare.

Which means that in the days before video on demand, we were pretty damn lucky.
posted by PercyByssheShelley at 2:33 PM on August 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

Some context for non-Australian mefites:

Rage started at about midnight on Friday and Saturday nights, and went until about 6-9am on Saturday and Sunday mornings (it has shifted a bit over the years). Traditionally, one would go out on the town, stumble home and have a nightcap or a cup of tea whilst watching "just one or two" video clips on Rage. INEVITABLY, this would turn into several hours of video clip watching (just one more!!) and a modest evening out would turn into an all-nighter. For kids, you had to wade through a couple of hours of Rage in order to get to the cartoons on a Saturday and Sunday morning. It was a pretty decent musical education for us!!

This is pretty much the universal experience of gen-X and gen-Y folks. And remember, pay TV is only just catching on - when Rage started we only got two channels. Additionally, pre-youtube, this was the only way to watch a diverse range of video clips.
posted by Alice Russel-Wallace at 3:01 PM on August 19, 2010 [10 favorites]

the great thing about rage was getting a heap of clips by the same band all in a row.
posted by awfurby at 3:25 PM on August 19, 2010

Thank you for this post! it's great to see Rage get some respect. I've recently been in hospital and it's kept me company on sleepless weekends and it's allowed me to reflect on the simplistic awesomness of the program. It's the perfect music show- No bullshit, no ads and no annoying useless presenters.

It's also responsible for my exposure to music as a youngun'. Rage was the glue that held our family together on a Saturday. I distinctly remember getting up early each week as a seven year old and being fascinated by the movements of the top ten. One weekend all the previous top ten songs had been played and we were only at #2! This was unprecedented! Turned out Kylie Minogue's 'I should be so Lucky' had shot to number one. It blew my tiny mind.

JIMBOB- I can't believe you listed Everclear's guest programming as a fave!! A friend leant me a tape of it back in year 12 and That one program got me into so many of my beloved bands now- namely Radiohead ('Just') and They Might Be Giants (Birdhouse in Your Soul)

Rage you are like a warm blanket. Never, ever change.
posted by AzzaMcKazza at 3:26 PM on August 19, 2010

Okay Rage's archive of guest clips fails me, as does Youtube. The Smashing Pumpkins, as guest programmers, were fascinating. James Iha is trying to pull it all together, get through the job, be cheery. D'arcy, however, was a complete, utter, nasty, grumpy bitch who clearly wanted to be doing anything besides picking videos for Rage. The entire night, you were sitting there waiting for someone to stab someone.
posted by Jimbob at 4:15 PM on August 19, 2010

It's probably no consolation at all to you Jimbob, but here's 18 minutes of Billy Corgan hosting rage.
posted by filthy light thief at 4:38 PM on August 19, 2010

Rage and the clip for Tools Sober is the reason I gave up 'shrooms back in '91.
Rrrrrrrrrraaaaagggggeeeeeeeeh!
posted by Duke999R at 5:08 PM on August 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

Rage was awesome. I have strangely acute memories of there being some sort of official Rage IRC channel. I remember when I was 13 or 14 or whatever and the scrolly thing on the bottom of the screen asked for me (and the other regulars) to come back into the chat room. That felt like the future; now I know it's the past.
posted by Sticherbeast at 6:36 PM on August 19, 2010

> Rage started at about midnight on Friday and Saturday nights, and went until about 6-9am on Saturday and Sunday mornings (it has shifted a bit over the years). Traditionally, one would go out on the town, stumble home and have a nightcap or a cup of tea whilst watching "just one or two" video clips on Rage. INEVITABLY, this would turn into several hours of video clip watching (just one more!!) and a modest evening out would turn into an all-nighter. For kids, you had to wade through a couple of hours of Rage in order to get to the cartoons on a Saturday and Sunday morning. It was a pretty decent musical education for us!!

Oh my god, you just encapsulated my life from ages 14-33.

I remember visiting a friend from highschool, Geoff, and finding a stack of notebooks he'd filled with pencil annotations in the tiniest handwriting ever. Turns out, Geoff would tape Rage overnight, then transcribe the playlists into notebooks, including the exact length of each track, its video counter number, and the time it had aired. There were maybe a half-dozen of these books. (Later I discovered that Geoff also wrote a date on the bottom of the box of tissues in his bathroom so he'd know exactly how long it lasted—but that's a story for another day).

Now I live in London, I really miss Rage. I also miss the programme that more-or-less preceded it, Rock Arena, hosted by Suzanne Dowling (and later Annette Shun Wah, if memory serves). Now that was a show.
posted by hot soup girl at 6:59 PM on August 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

Wow, I can't believe rage only started in 1987 (when I was nine). It feels like it's been on at the same time, with the same intro, for my entire life. Don't ever change.
posted by Wantok at 8:35 PM on August 19, 2010

you had to wade through a couple of hours of Rage in order to get to the cartoons on a Saturday
No way! It was time for Donnie Sutherland's Sounds Unlimited and his cringe-inducing interviews e.g. Siouxsie and the Banshees.
posted by unliteral at 9:04 PM on August 19, 2010

Goodbye to the afternoon and hello my misspent youth!

It was only last week, in the early hours of Saturday morning, that I was thrown into a merlot and mary jane reverie about how well the Rage intro had aged.

But Rage has a lot to answer for. You can't play hours of a wide variety of commercial and independent music videos with no advertising in the perfect timeslot every weekend for over twenty years and not end up with an over abundance of quality creative musicians and performers roaming around the country, solo and in packs, playing for door takings in every corner pub!
posted by Kerasia at 9:17 PM on August 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

I had no idea it only started in 1987 - I started watching it about 1988 and just assumed that it had been around forever. The format just seems so timeless.

And yeah, I've lost count of the number of times I've been sucked into watching "just a couple" of clips only to have it turn into a late night. Most recently just the other week when The Cat Empire were the guest programmers - a whole bunch of Faith No More and Sade and other random stuff.
posted by harriet vane at 12:29 AM on August 20, 2010

rrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaggggggggggggggggggggeeeeeee.

Classic.
posted by micklaw at 1:11 AM on August 20, 2010

Also, they really should put the song tags at the end of the songs (I know this is a big deal down at rage HQ). I don't know how many times I've switched over at 2am to a great song for it to be lost in the ether after that.
posted by micklaw at 1:12 AM on August 20, 2010 [1 favorite]

My brother and I would have Rage on every morning for the top 50 countdown. Did they stop doing that? Because I can only seem to find that Triple J program counting down now, and those hosts annoy me.
The best bit of rage for me was they showed the FULL videoclip, while all the other shows cut out any bit that didn't have music (so we never got the story!).
Oh, micklaw, I too have spent many hours cursing that rage didn't put the song details up at the end.
posted by Saebrial at 2:12 AM on August 20, 2010

This post needs more Lubricated Goat.
posted by Jimbob at 3:01 AM on August 20, 2010 [2 favorites]

Gosh Jimbob. Thanks for that. I remember the double-take my friends and I did the first time we saw that, and any mention of Lubricated Goat reminds me of those late night drinking sessions that Alice R-W was describing in such affectionate detail upthread.

There was a point where Rage started publishing their playlists online the day before they went to air; before then, every drinking session would only get ended when a bad video came on. And to be honest, most bad videos were met with the phrase "well... let's just see what the next one is."

The ritual was so well-established that -- years later -- I have established this as a sort-of ritual with my boyfriend. It's how we bond. We cuddle on the couch, talk about everything in our lives, he perves on some music video hotties, I get faux-outraged, someone ends up trying to imitate Vanilla Ice dancing, and someone pours another vodka and coke.
posted by chronic sublime at 3:25 AM on August 20, 2010

I used to come home from clubbing at about 3 or 4 in the morning and turn rage on, and it seemd like almost every time there would be a Cure special on, so I'd be up for another two or three hours. Good times.
posted by wilful at 4:10 AM on August 20, 2010

Oh, rage, how I love thee. I first started watching it age 11 or so, sat in front of the tv with a video in the vcr, pressing record whenever a great song came on. They were my first experiences of 'the rage effect', staying up all night thinking "I'll go to bed after the next one, I might miss a great song!".

I've commented previously on how much rage meant to me and my musical education, but I love the playlist generator - thanks! I made my own YouTube playlist after I moved to London and discovered my sister had nicked my Best of Rage cd.
posted by goo at 12:29 PM on August 20, 2010