Country rock
Country rock is a subgenre of popular music, formed from the fusion of rock and country. It was developed by rock musicians who began to record country-flavored records in the late-1960s and early-1970s; these musicians recorded rock records using country themes, vocal styles, additional instrumentation, most characteristically pedal steel guitars. Country rock began with artists like Bob Dylan, the Byrds, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Gram Parsons and others, reaching its greatest popularity in the 1970s with artists such as Emmylou Harris, the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, Michael Nesmith and Pure Prairie League. Country rock influenced artists in other genres, including the Band, Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Rolling Stones, George Harrison's solo work, it played a part in the development of Southern rock. Rock and roll has been seen as a combination of rhythm and blues and country music, a fusion evident in 1950s rockabilly. There has been cross-pollination throughout the history of both genres.
John Einarson states, that "rom a variety of perspectives and motivations, these musicians either played rock & roll attitude, or added a country feel to rock, or folk, or bluegrass, there was no formula". Country influences can be heard on rock records through the 1960s, including the Beatles' 1964 recordings "I'll Cry Instead", "Baby's in Black" and "I Don't Want to Spoil the Party", the Byrds' 1965 cover version of Porter Wagoner's "Satisfied Mind", on the Rolling Stones "High and Dry", as well as Buffalo Springfield's "Go and Say Goodbye" and "Kind Woman". According to The Encyclopedia of Country Music, the Beatles' "I Don't Want to Spoil the Party", their cover of the Buck Owens country hit "Act Naturally" and their 1965 album Rubber Soul can all be seen "with hindsight" as examples of country rock. In 1966, as many rock artists moved towards expansive and experimental psychedelia, Bob Dylan spearheaded the back-to-basics roots revival when he went to Nashville to record the album Blonde on Blonde, using notable local musicians like Charlie McCoy.
This, the subsequent more country-influenced albums, John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline, have been seen as creating the genre of country folk, a route pursued by a number of acoustic, folk musicians. Dylan's lead was followed by the Byrds, who were joined by Gram Parsons in 1968. Parsons had mixed country with rock and folk to create what he called "Cosmic American Music". Earlier in the year Parsons had released Safe at Home with the International Submarine Band, which made extensive use of pedal steel and is seen by some as the first true country-rock album; the result of Parsons' brief tenure in the Byrds was Sweetheart of the Rodeo considered one of the finest and most influential recordings in the genre. The Byrds continued for a brief period in the same vein, but Parsons left soon after the album was released to be joined by another ex-Byrds member Chris Hillman in forming the Flying Burrito Brothers. Over the next two years they recorded the albums The Gilded Palace of Sin and Burrito Deluxe, which helped establish the respectability and parameters of the genre, before Parsons departed to pursue a solo career.
Country rock was a popular style in the California music scene of the late 1960s, was adopted by bands including Hearts and Flowers and New Riders of the Purple Sage. Some folk-rockers followed the Byrds into the genre, among them the Beau Brummels and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. A number of performers enjoyed a renaissance by adopting country sounds, including: the Beatles, who re-explored elements of country in their albums, like "Rocky Raccoon" and "Don't Pass Me By" from their eponymous "White Album", "Octopus's Garden" from Abbey Road. One of the few acts to move from the country side towards rock were the bluegrass band the Dillards; the greatest commercial success for country rock came in the 1970s, with the Doobie Brothers mixing in elements of R&B, Emmylou Harris becoming the "Queen of country-rock" and Linda Ronstadt creating a successful pop-oriented brand of the genre. Pure Prairie League, formed in Ohio in 1969 by Craig Fuller, had both critical and commercial success with 5 straight Top 40 LP releases, including Bustin' Out, acclaimed by Allmusic critic Richard Foss as "an album, unequaled in country-rock" and Two Lane Highway, described by Rolling Stone as "a worthy companion to the likes of the Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo and other gems of the genre".
Former members of Ronstadt's backing band went on to form the Eagles, who emerged as one of the most successful rock acts of all time, producing albums that included Desperado and Hotel
American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers
The American Society of Composers and Publishers is an American non-profit performance-rights organization that protects its members' musical copyrights by monitoring public performances of their music, whether via a broadcast or live performance, compensating them accordingly. ASCAP collects licensing fees from users of music created by ASCAP members distributes them back to its members as royalties. In effect, the arrangement is the product of a compromise: when a song is played, the user does not have to pay the copyright holder directly, nor does the music creator have to bill a radio station for use of a song. In 2012, ASCAP collected over US$941 million in licensing fees and distributed $828.7 million in royalties to its members, with an 11.6 percent operating expense ratio. As of July 2018, ASCAP membership included over 670,000 songwriters and music publishers, with over 11 million registered works. In the United States, ASCAP competes with four other PROs – Broadcast Music, Inc. the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers, Global Music Rights, & Pro Music Rights.
Unlike collecting societies outside the United States, ASCAP contract is non-exclusive, although it is not so simple for a foreign person to join ASCAP, it is possible. ASCAP has an office in the United Kingdom; as the artist agreement is non-exclusive, authors can license using a creative commons license. The ASCAP bill of rights states, "we have the right to choose when and where our creative works may be used for free". If an author is going to use a creative commons license with another's works, this is the only author's rights organisation that has a non-exclusive contract that a foreign person can join. If an author uses a Creative Commons license and is not a member of a performing rights organisation, the works would generate royalties, these royalties are collected and given to publishers and artists that are members of these organisations. ASCAP was founded by Victor Herbert, together with composers Louis Hirsch, John Raymond Hubbell, Silvio Hein and Gustave Kerker, a lyricist Glen MacDonough, publishers George Maxwell and Jay Witmark, a copyright attorney Nathan Burkan at the Hotel Claridge in New York City on February 13, 1914, to protect the copyrighted musical compositions of its members, who were writers and publishers associated with New York City's Tin Pan Alley.
ASCAP's earliest members included the era's most active songwriters—Irving Berlin, George M. Cohan, Rudolf Friml, Otto Harbach, Jerome Kern, John Philip Sousa, Alfred Baldwin Sloane, James Weldon Johnson, Robert Hood Bowers and Harry Tierney. Subsequently, many other prominent songwriters became members. In 1919, ASCAP and the Performing Rights Society of Great Britain, signed the first reciprocal agreement for the representation of each other's members' works in their respective territories. Today, ASCAP has global reciprocal agreements and licenses the U. S. performances of hundreds of thousands of international music creators. The advent of radio in the 1920s brought an important new source of income for ASCAP. Radio stations only broadcast performers live, the performers working for free. Performers wanted to be paid, recorded performances became more prevalent. ASCAP started collecting license fees from the broadcasters. Between 1931 and 1939, ASCAP increased royalty rates charged to broadcasters more than 400%.
In the late 1930s, ASCAP's general control over most music and its membership requirements were considered to be in restraint of trade and illegal under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. The Justice Department abandoned the case; the Justice Department sued again in 1941, the case was settled with a consent decree in which the most important points were that ASCAP must set rates and not discriminate between customers who have the same requirements to license music, or "similar standing." Anyone, unable to negotiate satisfactory terms with ASCAP, or is otherwise unable to get a license, may go to the court overseeing the consent decree and litigate the terms they find objectionable, the terms set by the court will be binding upon the licensee and ASCAP. BMI signed a consent decree in 1941, although the terms were much more favorable to BMI than those applied to ASCAP. In 1940, when ASCAP tried to double its license fees again, radio broadcasters formed a boycott of ASCAP and founded a competing royalty agency, Broadcast Music Incorporated.
During a ten-month period lasting from January 1 to October 29, 1941, no music licensed by ASCAP was broadcast on NBC and CBS radio stations. Instead, the stations played regional music and styles, traditionally disdained by ASCAP; when the differences between ASCAP and the broadcasters were resolved in October 1941, ASCAP agreed to settle for a lower fee than they had demanded. ASCAP's membership diversified further in the 1940s, bringing along jazz and swing greats, including Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Fletcher Henderson; the movies soared in popularity during the 1930s and 1940s, with them came classic scores and songs by new ASCAP members like Harold Arlen, Johnny Mercer, Cole Porter, Morton Gould, Jule Styne. Classical-music composers Aaron Copland, Igor Stravinsky, Leonard Bernstein brought their compositions into the ASCAP repertory in the 1940s; the rise of rock and roll derived from both country music and rhythm and blues music caused airplay of BMI licensed songs to double that of ASCAP licensed songs.
ASCAP officials decided. So ASCAP spearheaded a congressional investigation into the prac
Red Dog: True Blue
Red Dog: True Blue is a 2016 Australian family comedy film directed by Kriv Stenders, written by Daniel Taplitz and starring Jason Isaacs, Levi Miller and Bryan Brown. It is a prequel to the 2011 film Red Dog, detailing the early days of the Red Dog, the Pilbara Wanderer. An iconic Australian story of family and adventure, between a young boy and a scrappy one-of-a-kind dog that would grow up to become an Australian legend. P hoenix as Red Dog, he was played in the first film by Koko, but was replaced after his death and the film is dedicated to his memory. Levi Miller as Mick Jason Isaacs as Michael Carter Bryan Brown as Grandpa Calen Tassone as Taylor Pete Hanna Mangan-Lawrence as Betty Thomas Cocquerel as Stemple Kee Chan as Jimmy Umbrella Steve Le Marquand as Little John Justine Clarke as Diane Carter Zen McGrath as Theo Carter Filming began early in 2015 and was released on Boxing Day in 2016. Red Dog: True Blue has a 100% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on reviews from 13 critics.
The film grossed $5,218,716 at a quarter of the original film's takings. Geoffrey Hall was nominated for Best Cinematography at the 7th AACTA Awards. Red Dog: True Blue official site Red Dog: True Blue at Internet Movie Database Red Dog: True Blue at Rotten Tomatoes
Roy Orbison
Roy Kelton Orbison was an American singer and musician known for his powerful voice, wide vocal range, impassioned singing style, complex song structures, dark, emotional ballads. The combination led many critics to describe his music as operatic, nicknaming him "the Caruso of Rock" and "the Big O". While most male rock-and-roll performers in the 1950s and 1960s projected a defiant masculinity, many of Orbison's songs instead conveyed vulnerability. During performances, he was known for standing still and solitary and for wearing black clothes to match his dyed jet-black hair and dark sunglasses. Born in Texas, Orbison began singing in a country-and-western band in high school, he was signed by Sam Phillips, of Sun Records, in 1956, but his greatest success came with Monument Records. From 1960 to 1966, 22 of his singles reached the Billboard Top 40, he wrote or co-wrote all that rose to the Top 10, including "Only the Lonely", "Running Scared", "Crying", "In Dreams", "Oh, Pretty Woman". Soon afterward, he was struck by a number of personal tragedies.
In the 1980s, Orbison experienced a resurgence in popularity following the success of several cover versions of his songs. In 1988, he co-founded the Traveling Wilburys, a rock supergroup, with George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne. Orbison died of a heart attack in December 1988 at the age of 52. One month Orbison's song "You Got It", co-written with Lynne and Petty, was released as a solo single and became his first hit to break the U. S. Top 10 in 25 years. Orbison's honors include inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in the same year, the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1989. Rolling Stone placed him at number 37 on their list of the "Greatest Artists of All Time" and number 13 on their list of the "100 Greatest Singers of All Time'. In 2002, Billboard magazine listed Orbison at number 74 in the Top 600 recording artists. Roy Kelton Orbison was born in Vernon, the middle son of Orbie Lee Orbison, an oil well driller and car mechanic, Nadine Vesta Shults, a nurse.
After the Great Depression, the family moved to Fort Worth in 1942 searching for work, according to Marcel Riesco's research on the "Authorized Roy Orbison" both parents found jobs at the aircraft factories, expanded as a result of the United States entering World War II. Orbison’s direct paternal ancestor was Thomas Orbison from Lurgan, County Armagh, Northern Ireland who settled in Pennsylvania Colony in the mid 18th century. Young Roy Orbison attended Denver Avenue Elementary School until a polio scare prompted the family to return to Vernon. In 1946, they moved to Wink, Texas. Orbison described life in Wink as "football, oil fields, oil and sand" and expressed relief that he was able to leave the desolate town. All the Orbison children were afflicted with poor eyesight, he was not confident about his appearance and began dyeing his nearly-white hair black when he was still young. He was quiet, self-effacing, remarkably polite and obliging—a product, biographer Alan Clayson wrote, of his Southern upbringing.
He was available to sing and became the focus of attention when he did. He considered his voice memorable. On Roy's sixth birthday, his father gave him a guitar, he recalled that by the age of seven, "I was finished, you know, for anything else". His major musical influence as a youth was country music, he was moved by Lefty Frizzell's singing, with its slurred syllables.. He enjoyed Hank Williams and Jimmie Rodgers. One of the first musicians he heard in person was Ernest Tubb, playing on the back of a flatbed truck in Fort Worth. In West Texas, he was exposed to many forms of music: "sepia", Tex-Mex, the orchestral arrangements of Mantovani, cajun; the cajun favorite "Jole Blon" was one of the first songs. At the age of eight, he began singing on a local radio show. By the late 1940s, he was the show's host. In high school and some friends formed a band, the Wink Westerners, they played country standards and Glenn Miller songs at local honky-tonks and had a weekly radio show on KERB in Kermit. When they were offered $400 to play at a dance, Orbison realized that he could make a living in music.
After graduating from Wink High School, he enrolled at North Texas State College in Denton, planning to study geology so that he could secure work in the oil fields if music did not pay. Orbison heard that his North Texas State schoolmate Pat Boone had signed a record deal, which further strengthened his resolve to become a professional musician. While at North Texas State College, Roy heard a song called "Ooby Dooby", composed by Dick Penner and Wade Moore in mere minutes atop a fraternity house at the college, after his first year of college, he returned to Wink with "Ooby Dooby" in hand and continued performing with the Wink Westerners. Orbison moved to Odessa and enrolled in Odessa Junior College; as two members of the band quit, one to attend school elsewhere and one to join the Navy, two new members were added to the group, who won a talent contest and obtained their own television show on KMID-TV in Midland, Texas. The Wink Westerners kept performing on local TV, played dances on the weekends, attended college during the day.
While living in
Dennis Waterman
Dennis Waterman is an English actor and singer, best known for his tough-guy roles in television series including The Sweeney and New Tricks. Waterman's acting career has spanned 60 years, starting with his childhood roles in film and theatre, his adult roles in film and West End theatre, he is notable for the range of roles he played, including horror, comedy, comedy-drama and sports, as well as police TV series such as The Sweeney. He has appeared in 28 films. Waterman was born the youngest of nine children to Rose Juliana and Harry Frank Waterman in Clapham, London; the family, which included siblings Ken, Stella and Myrna, lived at 2 Elms Road, Clapham Common South Side. Harry Waterman was a ticket collector for British Railways. Two older sisters and Vera, had left home by the time Dennis was born, another brother, had died as a young child. Boxing was a big part of Waterman's childhood, his father had made all of his sons box. His older brother Ken first took Dennis boxing when he was three years old, when he was ten Dennis joined Caius Boxing Club.
Another older brother, was a welterweight boxing champion. Waterman was educated at the Granard Primary School, a state primary school on the Ashburton Estate in Putney, South-West London, followed by Corona Stage School, an independent school at Ravenscourt Park in Hammersmith in West London. Waterman's acting career began in childhood, his first role was in Night Train for Inverness. He appeared in two small stage rôles for the Royal Shakespeare Company's 1960 season. In 1961, at the age of 13, he played the part of Winthrop Paroo in the Adelphi Theatre production of The Music Man. A year he starred as William Brown in the BBC TV series William based on the Just William books of Richmal Crompton. Waterman played the rôle of Oliver Twist in the production of the Lionel Bart musical Oliver! Staged at the Mermaid Theatre, London, in the early 1960s, appears on the cast recording released in 1961. Waterman was a series regular in the 1962 CBS comedy Fair Exchange, playing teenage son Neville Finch.
Waterman was in the original cast of Saved, the play written by Edward Bond, first produced at the Royal Court Theatre in November 1965. He had a major rôle in the 1968 film Up The Junction. In the early 1970s Waterman appeared in the BBC television series Colditz as a young Gestapo officer, he played the brother of a victim of Count Dracula in the Hammer film Scars of Dracula, the boyfriend of Susan George in Fright. He appeared alongside John Huston in a Hollywood western, Man in the Wilderness, he was a member of the company of actors who featured in The Sextet, a BBC 2 series which included the Dennis Potter drama Follow the Yellow Brick Road, Waterman appeared in the same dramatist's Joe's Ark. Both plays were directed by Alan Bridges, it was in 1974 that Waterman appeared in episode 4 of the second series of the comedy programme Man About the House entitled "Did You Ever Meet Rommel", in which he played a friend of Robin's, a German student by the name of Franz Wasserman. He became well known as DS George Carter in The Sweeney during the 1970s.
As well as starring in Minder, he sang the theme song, "I Could Be So Good for You", a top three UK hit in 1980 and a top ten hit in Australia. It was written by his then-wife Patricia Waterman with Gerard Kenny. Waterman recorded a song with George Cole: "What Are We Gonna Get For'Er Indoors?" In 1976 Waterman released his first album, Downwind of Angels and produced by Brian Bennett. A single, "I Will Glide", was released from the album, but did not enter the top 40; the backing singers on "I Will Glide" were the choir of Belmont School, where Brian Bennett's son, was a pupil. In 1978 Waterman returned to the RSC to play Sackett in Bronson Howard's comedy Saratoga. Waterman starred in a television film made by Tyne Tees Television entitled The World Cup: A Captain's Tale, it was the true story of West Auckland F. C. a part-time side who won the Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy, sometimes described as the'First World Cup'. Waterman played the part of the club captain, it cost £ 1.5 million to make. Shooting took place in Turin in Italy.
Scenes were shot in County Durham pit villages and in Ashington, Northumberland where goal posts and a grandstand were erected in a public park with a colliery headframe in the background. Local players took part, donning long pants and high-sided boots of the day, suffering "short back and sides" haircuts; the production boasted several comedy sequences, including a meeting of the club committee and a meeting of the Football Association Council when the suggestion of an English team participating in the new competition received a lukewarm and cynical response from the members. On the agenda was the F. A. Cup draw performed in the conventional manner and dispatched direct from the council chamber to the clubs "by carrier pigeons" released out of the windows. In 1982, Waterman starred in the musical Windy City. A short-lived production, the cast included Anton Rodgers, Diane Langton, Victor Spinetti and Amanda Redman, with whom Waterman had an eighteen-month affair during the run of the musical and with whom he went on to star in the TV series New Tricks.
Windy City closed on 26 February 1983 after 250 performances. Waterman took the lead male rôle in the BAFTA Award-winning BBC adaptation of Fay
Chris Rea
Christopher Anton Rea is a British rock and blues singer-songwriter and guitarist, recognisable for his distinctive, husky-gravel voice and slide guitar playing. The book Guinness Rockopedia described him as a "gravel-voiced guitar stalwart"; the British Hit Singles & Albums stated that Rea was "one of the most popular UK singer-songwriters of the late 1980s. He was a major European star by the time he cracked the UK Top 10 with his 18th chart entry "The Road to Hell". Two of his studio albums, The Road to Hell and Auberge, topped the UK Albums Chart. Rea was nominated three times for the Brit Award for Best British Male Artist: in 1988, 1989 and 1990; as of 2009, he has sold more than 30 million albums worldwide. In America he is best known for the 1978 hit song "Fool" that reached No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 and spent three weeks at No. 1 on the Adult Contemporary chart. This success earned him a Grammy nomination as Best New Artist in 1979, his other hit songs include, "I Can Hear Your Heartbeat", "Stainsby Girls", "Josephine", "On the Beach", "Let's Dance", "Driving Home for Christmas", "Working on It", "Tell Me There's a Heaven", "Auberge", "Looking for the Summer", "Winter Song", "Nothing To Fear", "Julia", "If You Were Me", a duet with Elton John.
Christopher Rea was born in Middlesbrough in the North Riding of Yorkshire in a Roman Catholic family to an Italian father, Camillo Rea, an Irish mother, Winifred Slee, as one of seven children. The name Rea was well known locally thanks to Camillo's ice cream café chain. During his childhood Rea went every summer for a few months to Italy, at the age of 12 started to work as a table clearer in the coffee bar, soon in making the ice-cream in the factory, he was interested to learn about and improve the business, but his ideas did not get support from his father, he left and was replaced by one of his brothers. It was at the comparatively late age of 21–22 that Rea bought his first guitar, a 1961 Hofner V3 and 25-watt Laney, after he left school. With regard to his guitar playing technique, "bottleneck" known as slide guitar, music style, Rea developed it with inspiration of Charlie Patton, but Blind Willie Johnson and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, as well by the success of contemporary Ry Cooder and Joe Walsh.
He was listening to Delta blues musicians like Sonny Boy Williamson II and Muddy Waters gospel blues, opera to light orchestral classics to develop his style. He recalls that "for many people from working-class backgrounds, rock wasn't a chosen thing, it was the only thing, the only avenue of creativity available for them", that "when I was young I wanted most of all to be a writer of films and film music, but Middlesbrough in 1968 wasn't the place to be if you wanted to do movie scores". Due to his late introduction to music and guitar playing compared to Mark Knopfler and Eric Clapton, Rea commented how "I missed the boat, I think", he was self-taught, soon tried to join a friend's group, The Elastic Band, as the first choice for guitar or bass, but according to his father's advice he did not start because the payment was not enough to pay the costs. He found himself working casual labouring jobs, including working in his father's ice cream business. Rea commented that at that time he was "meant to be developing my father's ice-cream cafe into a global concern, but I spent all my time in the stockroom playing slide guitar".
In 1973 he joined the local Middlesbrough band Magdalene, which at a different time featured David Coverdale who went on to join Deep Purple. He began by writing the band's songs, only took up singing because the singer in the band did not show up. Rea went on to form the band The Beautiful Losers with which in 1975 he received the Melody Maker Best Newcomers award, but as he secured a solo recording deal with independent Magnet Records, released his first single entitled "So Much Love" in 1974, the band split in 1977. In 1977 he performed on Hank Marvin's album The Hank Marvin Guitar Syndicate and guested on Catherine Howe's EP The Truth of the Matter. In the same year was recorded his first album, but according to Michael Levy it was started all over again because it did not capture his whole talent. In 1978, Whatever Happened to Benny Santini? was Rea's debut studio album. It was produced by Elton John's record producer Gus Dudgeon; the title of the album was a reference to "Benjamin Santini", the stage name that Rea sarcastically invented but the record label insisted that he should adopt.
The album peaked at No. 49 on the Billboard Hot 200, charted for 12 weeks. The first single taken from the album, "Fool", was Rea's biggest hit in the US, peaking at No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 and reaching No. 1 on the Adult Contemporary Singles chart. Like most of Rea's early singles, "Fool" failed to appear on the UK Singles Chart on its first release and only reached No. 30 when was re-released in late 1978 to capitalise on its U. S. achievement. The overall success was Magnet Records' major breakthrough and their first Top-10 success in the U. S. making Rea their biggest artist. Levy remembers him as "more of a thoughtful, introspective poet than a natural pop performer" which stopped him from becoming not only a major star, but a megastar. However, as the record label had the idea of him being a mix of piano-playing singer-songwriters Elton John and Billy Joel, it gave the record buyers a different impression of him than
New Tricks
New Tricks is a British television procedural crime drama, first broadcast in 2003. In February 2015, BBC One announced the show would end after series 12; the show's title is taken from the proverb "You can't teach an old dog new tricks". The series follows the work of the fictional Unsolved Crime and Open Case Squad of London's Metropolitan Police Service, a squad of retired police officers recruited to re-investigate unsolved crimes. There were cast changes. New Tricks began as a one-off episode broadcast on 27 March 2003; this attracted sufficient viewers for the BBC to commission a series of six episodes, which began on 1 April 2004. Eight-episode series were subsequently commissioned for 2005, 2006 and 2007. A fifth series was commissioned by the BBC after the audience share rose week upon week for the previous series. In 2007, an episode from the fourth series received viewing figures of 9.25 million, becoming the second most-watched programme on BBC One that week, the most-watched New Tricks episode to that point.
The fifth series continued this good run – on two occasions it was the most-watched programme in Britain for the week, the seventh episode gained a new series high rating of 9.36 million—second only to the X Factor that week. The fifth series aired from 7 July to 25 August 2008; the sixth series finished location filming on 8 May 2009 in central London and began airing on 16 July 2009. The opening episode of series six was watched by 8.07 million, despite clashing with Five's The Mentalist and ITV's Living With Michael Jackson. The second episode clashed with The Mentalist and the relaunch of The Bill on ITV, was watched by 7.59 million. Series 7 and 8 were commissioned by the BBC in September 2009, ensuring that the show would run until 2011; the seventh series completed its run on 12 November. The eighth series opened on 4 July 2011 with 9.2 million viewers, the show's highest rating for three years, the first since the fifth series to break the 9 million barrier. The third episode of series 8, "Lost in Translation", was the show's highest rated episode to date with 9.7 million viewers, becoming the most-watched television programme of the week in the UK.
Episode 7, "The Gentleman Vanishes," surpassed this figure with 9.87 million viewers, was again the top programme of the week. The BBC confirmed in September 2011 that a further two series, each of 10 episodes, had been commissioned, to be broadcast in 2012 and 2013. James Bolam, who played the part of Jack Halford, left the show, claiming that it had "become stale", making his final regular appearance in the first episode of Series 9 and a guest appearance in Series 10, episode 8. In the fourth episode, Denis Lawson joined the cast, as the new character of retired DI Steve McAndrew. Prior to the ninth series premiere, both Amanda Redman and Alun Armstrong announced that they would be leaving the show after the 10th series; the first programme of series nine was broadcast on 27 August 2012, gained 8.52 million viewers, the highest rating of the week. Only Fools and Horses actor Nicholas Lyndhurst and former EastEnders actress Tamzin Outhwaite appeared in Series 10, broadcast in Britain between 30 July and 1 October 2013.
The opening episode of the 10th series gained an audience of 8.86 million viewers, making it the 12th most-watched programme of the year. Filming for series 11 began in late 2013, episode 1 was broadcast at 21:00 GMT on BBC One and BBC One HD on 18 August 2014. Ratings fell from season 10 to season 11 when most of the original cast left. A 12th series of the show began filming in the Autumn of 2014, started broadcasting on 4 August 2015, it was revealed that Dennis Waterman would be leaving the series in the early episodes. In February 2015 it was announced, it was shot at West London Film Studios. The series is broadcast in at least 25 countries, is available on DVD and via online streaming. New Tricks was produced by Wall to Wall Television for the BBC between 2003 and 2014, Headstrong Pictures thereafter. In 2011, James Bolam left the show to be replaced by Denis Lawson. In 2012, both Alun Armstrong and Amanda Redman departed to be replaced by Nicholas Lyndhurst and Tamzin Outhwaite, respectively.
In September 2014, Dennis Waterman announced that he would be leaving the show after filming two episodes of the next series. Larry Lamb replaced him for the rest of the final series. Roy Mitchell, creator of the series, being a supporter of the English football team West Bromwich Albion, named numerous characters after past and then-current players; the original three main male characters derived their names from the club's oldest stand, "The Halfords Lane Stand", at The Hawthorns football ground in West Bromwich. The theme tune of the programme is sung by cast member Dennis Waterman; the song is "It's Alright". Production music was composed by father and son team Brian and Warren Bennett with technical assistance from Olivia Davies; the British release of the first season DVD contains a cover version of "End of the Line" sung by Dennis Waterman at the end of the pilot episode. Series 1 to 12 of New Tricks are available on DVD on Region 2; these titles are distributed by Acorn Media UK. New Tricks at BBC Programmes New Tricks on IMDb New Tricks at Wall To Producers.
New Tricks at BBC Worldwide Americas, Distributor for United States
