I don't think it has anything to do with Poltergeist - from the quick shufty I had it seems to be about general 70's TV having an air of weirdness about it.
I thought they were called The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band? Where did I get that from?
They were originally called The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band (a pun on the surrealist movement dada), but shortened their name later, I think because it was easier to say.
Hello, it's Bob here... I'm the writer of the 'Haunted Generation' article. Thanks for the kind words, it was an utter labour of love, and I'm thrilled with how it looks in the magazine.
This is the piece of music that sparked off my interest in the whole thing... it's called Roygbiv, and it's by Boards of Canada. It's actually from 1998, which is when I heard it for the first time, but it's clearly designed to be evocative of those mid-1970s BBC Programmes for Schools and Colleges, and it marked my first inkling that there was an emerging school of musicians and artists mining their fuzzy, slightly unsettling childhood memories to make new music and art. I still feel a bit woozy when I hear it now...
The Radcliffe and Maconie show on BBC 6 Music namechecked the FT and the hauntology article this afternoon, and it set off a programme-long discussion of scary stuff in vintage TV. This article has legs!
Incidentally, I was discussing your article with a friend last night, and he suggested the ultimate example of supposedly innocuous but actually disturbing hauntology was the opening titles for BBC geography education programme Near and Far. There's a terrible quality version of them on YouTube if you want a (vague) idea of what he means.
The Radcliffe and Maconie show on BBC 6 Music namechecked the FT and the hauntology article this afternoon, and it set off a programme-long discussion of scary stuff in vintage TV. This article has legs!
Absolutely loved the Haunted Generation article, I always thought TV and even some of the lesson material we had in school in the 70's was weird and surreal and frightening, and even seemingly normal things would sometimes terrify me too. The absolute height of terror for me was the telly series Escape Into Night. We did probably have more than a normal fair share of weirdness going on at home at that time though, we certainly had lots of Fortean books and magazines. I have checked out some of the music mentioned in the article and it does bring back that feeling.