I had stayed up watching Purdue play Tennessee in the Bluebonnet Bowl.

(I had to research who had played and that Purdue won 26-22)

At some point, I had switched over to Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve and, for whatever reason, got drawn in to the march toward 1980. It wasn’t the music. I was still about a year from music truly mattering to me.

The only performer who I remember was Barry Manilow singing some song called It’s Just Another New Year’s Eve. Even with my relative amibivilance toward music, Manilow was so everywhere for such a stretch in the ’70s, I knew some of his songs.

I think when 1980 finally hit, I shrugged and shuffled off to bed. It still felt pretty much like 1979 to me.

Here’s a trio of songs by acts that, according to Mr. Pop Culture, performed on that Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve in 1979 (even if I don’t remember seeing them)…

Blondie – Heart Of Glass
from Parallel Lines

So, I wasn’t listening to music in 1979, but I did know Blondie’s Heart Of Glass. On the rare occasions when there was music in my life, Heart Of Glass seemed to be playing.

I loved it – the trancey, shimmering disco beat and the sexy indifference of Debbie Harry’s vocal. There had to be millions of twelve-year old boys who took notice of Debbie Harry in 1979.

I didn’t know it then, but Blondie would become one of my favorite bands of the time and one that I still adore. The group incorporated a lot of musical styles into their sound, sometimes disasterously, but often the failures were at least interesting.

Chic – Le Freak
from Black History in Music

I did a bit of research and Chic’s most recent hit as the ’70s closed was the engaging Good Times. whose bass part would prove to be quite influential (Queen’s Another One Bites The Dust being just one example).

I could have sworn I had a copy, but, if I do it’s missing.

I do have Le Freak, from the year before. Like Heart Of Glass, Le Freak was one of the handful of songs I probably knew by name. Of course, the “freak out!” was what hooked me and my friends in junior high.

Village People – Go West (12″ version)
from The Best Of The Village People

Village People were everywhere for a year or so. It seemed like they popped up a lot on television which made me familiar with Y.M.C.A., Macho Man, and In The Navy.

Yeah, Y.M.C.A. is good fun, but it’s worn out its welcome with me.

I think I first heard Go West as a Pet Shop Boys cover. Then, it was used in a commercial for butter – farmers on tractors singing it – while I was living in London. It’s catchy as hell and dramatic to the hilt.

I have no doubt that the first time I reached midnight was probably watching television with my father. It was, more than likely, something on the CBS Late Movie in the early ’70s. The show’s nightly fare often consisted of sci-fi or suspense stuff – one of the more terrifying being a flick called Gargoyles, set in a remote stretch of highway in the Southwest.

(I’d be curious how it has held up after thirtysome years, but it seems to be available nowhere)

There was something comfortable about hearing the familiar intro music and seeing the opening graphics, then, the announcer dramatically announcing, “Tonight, on the CBS Late Movie…” A short trailer would follow which would either heighten the anticipation or puncture it.

Of course, with only half a dozen channels from which to choose and all but one or two concluding the broadcast day with a somber sign-off sometime around one in the morning, you either muddled through or went to bed.

(or, you fell asleep on the couch under a pile of blankets while attempting to muddle through)

There was something wonderful about the solitude and peace at that time of the night. I’d peer out the window behind me and there was little but inky blackness and, perhaps a light or two from one of the few neighboring homes in our rural area.

As everyone else in the house was usually asleep, I owned the world.

(not bad for some kid that wasn’t old enough to drive)

There was nothing left to accomplish aside from raiding the fridge during the next commercial break.

Elvis Costello & The Attractions – B Movie
from Get Happy!

Elvis Costello is one of those artists for whom I feel a sense of failure that I have never embraced as much as I feel I should. The critics love him. Friends from almost every period of my life, whose taste I respect, love him. Paloma loves him.

I’ve always been a bit more ambivilant. And, despite that ambivilance, I realize that I own a large chunk of his catalog.

Maybe I need to make more of an effort to meet Elvis halfway.

Pulp – TV Movie
from This Is Hardcore

I owned a trio of Pulp’s records from the mid-’90s when they reached their highest profile in their native UK. Here in the States, the group garnered little attention (which is too bad).

Jarvis Cocker always reminded me of a latter day Ray Davies. This is Hardcore was a darker, more somber affair than the band’s previous Different Class. TV Movie, lamenting a failed relationship, is somber, but it is also lovely and moving.

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band – TV Movie
from Tracks

Of all the artists whose heyday has overlapped with my years as a music fan, few amassed as much unreleased music as Bruce Springsteen (Prince would be in that conversation, too). Some of that music popped up as b-sides or as hits for other acts (Pink Cadillac fell into both categories).

Springsteen finally raided the archives on the box set Tracks. TV Movie was an outtake from Born In The USA and though that set isn’t lacking by its exclusion, the song is a fun, self-effacing romp.

Elton John – I’ve Seen That Movie Too
from Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

In retrospect, Elton John produced a staggering amount of amazing music in the ’70s and his classic album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road has a little bit of everything that made him a superstar for the ages.

It’s not difficult to picture Elton playing the resigned I’ve Seen That Movie Too in some piano bar at an hour when the crowd has dwindled and I would have been crashed out on the couch during yet another showing of Night Of The Lepus on the CBS Late Movie.

Christmas is a little over nine weeks away, and already the movie studios and television networks are pumping out special editions of DVD and Blu-Ray sets unmistakable for their gift potential, including new editions and expanded versions of cult and classic favorites. This week shows a pretty broad cross section of the last forty years of film and television, including at least one half-forgotten classic TV series, possibly the best cop show ever, and a half-dozen other, smaller releases with appeal to more selective audiences.

The big release this week, of course, is Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen on DVD and Blu-Ray. Nevertheless, the following is just a sampling of what else is available, including the suggested manufacturer’s list price. Of course, prices may vary according to retailer, and will likely decrease as the holidays bear down on us.

Planes, Trains, & Automobiles – “Those Aren’t Pillows” Edition ($14.98)  Boasting career highs from both writer-director John Hughes and co-star John Candy, this 1987 classic features Steve Martin as Neal Page, an uptight Chicago executive stuck in a series of accidents, near-accidents and strokes of bad luck while trying to fly home for Thanksgiving. Candy plays Del Griffith, the slovenly shower curtain ring salesman who dogs his every errant step and false move. The chemistry between Candy and Martin is almost legendary, with each new calamity building on the last to overwhelm the mismatched travelers. Full of quotes and scenes you’ll re-create with friends through the holidays. “Dell Griffith, please to meet you.”

This new DVD includes Hughes and Candy retrospectives and a deleted scene.

Monsoon Wedding – The Criterion Collection ($39.95) This 2001 dramatic comedy won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and helped reignite foreign film afficianados’ love affair with Bollywood cinema. Directed by Mira Nair (the upcoming Amelia), the story follows the entanglements and complications arising from a traditional Punjabi wedding, showing the ups and downs of both the family members and the servants on whose shoulders the celebration ultimately rests. Maybe some of the characters are a bit broad, and the observations a little precious, but audiences who enjoy family centered works such as this probably won’t care anyway.

The Criterion edition contains all the usual premium-grade extras you’d expect, including three short documentaries about India directed by Nair. Also available on Blu-Ray disc.

Easy Rider ($38.96) - The iconic road movie about 60s rebellion comes – only a little ironically – to Blu-Ray disc with a new featurette and commentary by director and co-star Dennis Hopper. For those few who don’t already know, the 1969 film follows two rebels (Hopper and Peter Fonda) as they drive from California to New Orleans in order to see Mardi Gras. Along the way they pick up a small-town lawyer (Jack Nicholson, in his star-making role) who shares their disillusionment with society and its trappings. For a treatise on freedom, the film’s attention to form, structure, and even geographic accuracy are appropriately loose, with digressions and long talky passages frequently interrupting the travelogue montage sequences. And the infamous ending, though explosive at the time, today feels both pretentious and stiff. Still, the movie overall captures the era’s zeitgeist, even while as a work of cinema it gets creakier by the year.

Vega$: The First Season Volume 1 ($36.98) More than twenty years before the sexy lab rats of CSI:, Las Vegas was kept safe by freewheelin’ private detective Dan Tanna (Robert Urich), cruising the streets in his vintage Thunderbird and solving cases with his bumbling sidekick and single-mom secretary. The show is vintage late 70s cheese, right down to the swanky, horn-driven music and do-your-thing attitude, and with his cool car and hip bachelor pad Tanna is the archetypal private eye of the period. Urich, who might be described not unkindly as the Tim Daly of his generation, holds the show down thanks to his easy charm. The three-disc set includes the first half of the first season, though why CBS video wouldn’t spring for the other half is anybody’s guess.

Homicide: Life On The Street – The Complete Series ($149.95) About as far from Vega$ as humanly possible in tone and approach alike, NBC’s critically-adored, audience-starved 1993-99 procedural consistently struggled to find its audience, and no wonder. The show was simply ahead of its time, as demonstrated by the success of The Wire, Homicide creator David Simon’s later effort and a sequel to this earlier series in all but name. Based on Simon’s book chronicling his year with the Baltimore Police homicide department, Homicide the series ranks among the best television ever produced, and for our money it’s the best cop show ever. Utterly and completely riveting for six of its seven seasons, with the seventh (following the departure of breakout star Andre Braugher) being only very good. The middle seasons depicting the mammoth “Luther Mahoney Saga” are essential viewing for any cop show fan.

The equally mammoth 35-disc collection includes all 122 episodes, three crossover Law & Order episodes, and the 2001 telepic Homicide: Life Everlasting, which served as coda and elegy and for the series.

The Hunger: The Complete Second Season ($39.98) Possibly the closest thing Generation X’ers might ever get to their own Twilight outside of the Whedonverse (True Blood arguably notwithstanding), the second and final season of this British anthology series featured demons, vampires, and smart erotica mixed into a potent swirl and hosted by David Bowie, who at 62 years old still has more erotic cool than the somnambulant hipsters of Twilight likely ever will.

The four disc set includes all 22 episodes, produced by Tony and Ridley Scott and featuring appearances by Anthony Michael Hall, Giovanni Ribisi, Eric Roberts, Brad Dourif, Jennifer Beals, and many others. The first season, hosted by Terrence Stamp, is also available.

- Michael Kabel

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

So Bea Arthur has moved on. She was 86 and she had a good run – as good as a human could hope (I would think).

I wasn’t even yet in grade school when she showed up as the title character in the television show Maude. As JB astutely notes, the show did have one of the funkiest themes of all time. Even at four or five, I knew there was something about it.

The show was incredibly topical, or so I’ve read. The subjects that the show addressed – abortion, racism, alcoholism – were not on my radar. I remember watching the show as a kid, but I had little idea what most of it was about.

I’m sure that I was amused by Maude’s brassy persona and sarcasm.

And I do most definitely remember Adrienne Barbeau.

Like Donny Hathaway’s theme and Maude herself, there was something that I found compelling about Adrienne Barbeau (even if I didn’t quite understand it).

So, bon voyage, Bea. You seemed like swell dame.

Some of the songs that were hits when Maude debuted in September, 1971…

Paul McCartney – Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey
I don’t recall hearing this song in 1971. If I did hear it, it didn’t register.

It is a wonderfully jaunty little tune. I mean, would it be considered a shanty?

What makes a song a shanty – a certain musical style or lots of nautical references? And with the Somalian pirates making headlines (or are they losing their audience?), could shanties be the grunge of this decade?

John Denver – Take Me Home, Country Roads
I do remember John Denver on the radio and he was one of the first acts to catch my ear. Of course, those television specials were some of the first music performances I probably viewed. At the age of five, this long-haired fellow in the floppy hat, traipsing around the Rockies with bear cubs and denim-clad hippie chicks was, in my mind, The Man.

I still love Take Me Home, Country Roads. Every time it pops up on shuffle Paloma and I wonder if Emmylou Harris sings on the song (and, each time I make a mental note to research that and, each time, I forget).

The Carpenters – Superstar
Like John Denver, The Carpenters hits in the early ’70s are some of the first songs I vividly remember hearing on the radio. If I had to make a short list of favorites by the duo, Superstar would most definitely be on there.

As someone who listens to a lot of music, I probably should receive demerits for not knowing songwriter Leon Russell’s version (actually, I confess to not really being familiar with Russell at all (although I’m sure I’ve read about him at Whiteray’s blog).

All of that aside, Superstar is pretty glorious.

The Doors – Riders On The Storm
Even though Jim Morrison had been dead for well over a decade, The Doors were one of the bands among most of the students in my high school. The band’s hold was taken to an extreme by two sisters who were rather adamant that they were illegitimate hatchlings of The Lizard King.

Apparently, it was the last song that The Doors recorded as a band, from sessions in December of 1970. Three months later, Morrison would move to Paris.

Riders On The Storm would have to be considered one of The Doors’ signature songs and it is one cinematic trip.

This is it. This is it.
This is life, the one you get…
So go and have a ball.
The facts of life are all about you.

Together, we’re gonna find our way.
If not for the courage of the fearless crew, the Minnow would be lost.

Fish don’t fry in the kitchen, beans don’t burn on the grill.
Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again.

There’s a new girl in town, and she’s looking good.
Got a smile, got a song for the neighborhood
Who could it be? Believe it or not…it’s just me.

Shar-la-la-La

When you think of PBS for kids, what comes to mind? For me, growing up and even today, it’s Sesame Street 3-2-1 Contact, and Mr. Rodgers. Back in the 70s, PBS and Sesame Workshop came up with a show for older kids called The Electric Company. I barely remember this show, but if you look around online, you’ll see it was a very loved show. Just today, I found out that it is coming back!

Ask any Gen Xer about The Electric Company, and many will smile and shout out “HEY YOU GUYS!” Even though I barely remember this show, I still remember that. It was one of the most memorable part of the intro. In my research for this, it seems like the “Hey You Guys” part was not in all the season’s intros. But that’s ok, the show itself is more important.

Produced from 1971 to 1977, The Electric Company was made by the Children’s Television Workshop, the makers of Sesame Street. It was meant to be for school age children what Sesame Street was for Pre School and early Elementary age kids. Even though they stopped producing it in 1977, PBS channels continued to show it until 1985.

I guess that’s why I sort of remember it. I remember it being on after Sesame Street, but I believe that it was replaced in my market when 3-2-1 Contact came out. That was an awesome show, but I’ll talk about it on a later date.

I’m sad that my memories of this show are slim. I went looking for clips on YouTube and found few that I remember. I do remember the two faces ones, those were cool. What are some things about this show that you remember? If you can find clips on YouTube, please share in the comments!

Watching TV shows with my sister and parents in the living room.  There was only one television in the house.   It was the first house I remember us living in.  1462 Gaty Ave.  East St. Louis Il.  We gathered to watch all the shows with black people on them like The Flip Wilson Show, Sanford & Son, and Good Times.  We didn’t sleep on Carol Burnett though!

Riding rough and jumping over sh*# on my huffy dirt bike!

That red living room in the house we lived at in South Bend, Indiana.  It had red carpet and red furniture like the couch and chairs.  This was the ”nice” furniture with the plastic on it so we couldn’t sit on it.  We couldn’t even go in that living room except to clean it – or on Christmas morning since that is where the presents were.  If important company came over, the living room was all access then.

When my moms and aunts got together on a Saturday night – I would be running around with my cousins, and they would be listening to Al Green – talking, laughing, drinking, and saying “Awwww that is my SONG” while reminiscing about the funny things they did when they were much younger.  When I listen to certain music now – it take me right back there.

Catch a girl/kiss a girl! ~ Freeze Tag ~ Red Light/Green Light~ Simon Says ~ Hop Scotch ~ Jacks

Sneaking into the Redd Foxx, Richard Pryor, and Dolemite albums when my parents weren’t home.

The TV set we had to use pliers to turn the channel with.

The original Starsky & Hutch and Baretta, Fantasy Island and The Love Boat – SOAP!

Saturday morning cartoons with a big ole tupperware bowl of cereal like Count Chocula or Coco Puffs!  Don’t sleep on that Cap’n Crunch with them damn Crunchberries!

Going to baseball games with my father… to see the Cardinals back in the day when they had Lou Brock, Reggie Smith, Bake McBride, Kenny Reitz, Keith Hernandez, Ted Simmons, Garry Templeton, etc.   He loved the Dodgers the most so we always went to see them.  I think a lot of black men loved the Dodgers from when they were in Brooklyn and had players like Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella.  Anyway, we sat in the bleachers $2.50 per seat sold 90 min before each game) and sat next to all the old men who would talk much noise.  This is where I got my affinity for older people. We ate peanuts and listened to KMOX as Jack Buck and Bob Costas did the radio play by play.  Those were some awesome times!

 I fogot all about them other cartoons.. Loony Toons, Fat Albert, Land of The Lost, Tom N’ Jerry, Snagglepuss, (“I hate thosem mieces to pieces… Exit – Stage left!”) Pixie and Dixie… need I go on??   I’m not going to even talk about Underdog, Commander McBragg, and them Go Go Gophers.  But my favorite/most endearing cartoon is “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”   Me and Chuck understand one another!  And I still cry when they fix Charlie’s sick ass tree up and make the best of it.  Yea I watched a lot of television.  But I also learned a lot of valuable lessons from some of those shows too.

Above is a clip from the popular late 70′s television show The Rockford Files where Isaac Hayes displays his acting skills and although he didn’t win an Oscar for his performance he did win an Oscar for his music.

When I heard that Issac Hayes had past away over the weekend in his Memphis home I was saddened and taken by surprise for a number of reasons. During the 1970′s I don’t think there was any black household in North America that played secular music that didn’t have the Shaft record. Hayes was a self taught musician who was born on August 22, 1942 in Covington Tennessee. For his efforts with the Shaft soundtrack Hayes became the first African American to win an Oscar for best movie score in 1972. Rest in Peace Big Homie.

The Rockford Files Intro

I’m a huge fan of the The Rockford Files and just last week I was trying figure out a way to post the above scene featuring Isaac Hayes and Dionne Warwick. I had planned on writing about my love for the series and how I wanted to sample the Mike Post produced show intro during my wannabe producer days in the 90′s. I just loved the the way Post utilized the the Moog Synthesizer. I still find it quite ironic that just last week I was going to post this obscure clip of Mr Hayes and a few days later he passed away.

After 1970, her popularity skyrocketed, and with good reason. The talent that went into The Mary Tyler Moore Show was tremendous. The idea behind it was bold and innovative, a thirty-something single woman making it on her own in Minneapolis, and with such class and élan.

Sung by The Pointer Sisters, this classic debuted in 1976. It is, as you just saw, a pinball going around to different numbers while dodging different obstacles. It’s kind of like a magical pinball adventure. The ball goes into castles, and over moats, around trees and over hills. There is nothing real special about it. The music is a quasi 70s disco-ish sound, and the animation is very 70s, but it’s the retro memories that make this great today.

When ever I go to YouTube and play this clip, or any other like it, I’m transported back to a kid, and I can remember the excitement that this clip use to bring me when it did air. Unfortunately, this didn’t air every episode, or maybe I didn’t catch every episode, or at least not in whole, but from what I remember, it was a real treat when this came on.

There were 11 segments for this, and oddly enough, there was never one made for #1. But here is a list, from Wikipedia, of the 11 segments:

• #2: A Day at the Carnival (amusement park)
• #3: Circus Capers
• #4: FORE! (golf course)
• #5: The Only Way To Travel (modes of transportation)
• #6: Down on the Farm
• #7: World Tour (famous world landmarks)
• #8: Forest Follies
• #9: Play Ball! (baseball)
• #10: Medieval Times (fantasy middle ages)
• #11: Wild Things (jungle)
• #12: Sightseeing, USA

I hope you enjoy this trip down memory lane, at least for those of you who were born long enough ago to have see this on Sesame Street. Let me know what you think of the Sesame Street Pinball Segment; did you like it or not?

BEING ENTERTAINED, CON Y SIN COLORES 

I was a kid in the 60’s; a teen in the 70’s.   TV was my world.

What I find so vastly different between then and now is all the color we see on the tube.   And I mean that it in more ways than one.

I remember the first time I say down in front of a color TV…..wow.    The first program I ever wactched in color was “Bewitched”.

I had no idea that Endora has red hair, that the Stevens’ living room carpet was brown.   I had no idea that Uncle Arthur was gay.   What did his sexual orientation have to do with color TV, you ask?  

Nothing.

I guess the first black person I saw on TV was in a crowd scene on an old black and white version of “The Andy Griffith Show”.  

Then, the second time was on “The Dick Van Dyke Show”.  Laura had just given birth and she and Rob thought the hospital had mistakenly given them the wrong baby–NOT Richie “Rosebud” Petri.    Rob was convinved the baby actually belonged to the Peters family, an easy mistake since Rob and Laura’s last name was similar.   So, Rob tracked down the Peters and explained the situation and invited them to their home, you know, the one in New Rochelle on Bonnie Meadow Road.   

There’s a knock on the door; Rob answers it and the fun ensues when Greg Morris and his wife step in side.   See, Greg Morris is a black man,   HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!  The hospital COULDN’T have switched the babies for the obvious reasons.    HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!    Cutting edge comedy in the tense days of the Civil Rights movement.  

Innocuous by today’s standards but rather cutting edge for its day.   

What’s strange to realize is that there were probably people  watching at the time who were repulsed–for lack of a better word–that Rob so kindly invited a  young, black couple into their home.     Stranger still is this sentiment was felt all over, not just in the South.

After that, came “Julia”, Dianne Carrol’s groundbreaking role about a young African American mother and nurse, trying to raise her son, played by Marc Copage.   Lloyd Nolan played the old crumudgeonly doctor for whom she worked.    Whenever he’d arrive at the office, he’d throw his cap from across the room and it would always hit the peg in the hat wrack.   Her son’s best friend was a little red-headed white kid named Earl J. Waggedorn.

I don’t know how or why I remember this worthless, trivial crap??   

But I’m not the only one.  Other people my age remember these things too.  Could this be because kids in my generation actually watched TV because that’s all we had to do back then?

Maybe so, but when we watched, we watched thoroughly.  We got into it and watched everything–the intro,  the show itself, the commercials…even the credits.

Here’s proof:   

“Calvada” was the name of the production company which produced “The Dick Van Dyke Show”.

Wilbur Hatch actually conducted the Ricky Ricardo Orchestra.

The facade of the Stevens’ house, supposedly in suburban New York (the one on Morning Glory Circle),   can still be seen in some shows today.   It was last used in an ad this past Chistmas for Fruit of the Loom underwear.       

Don Fedderson directed, “My Three Sons”.

“Welch’s” brought us “The Flintstone’s” when the shows was on prime time.   Anyone remember Pebbles grabbing her stone-honed,  grape juice-filled sippy cup and saying in her best Jurassic baby talk dialect,  ”Goo-goo, gape goo”??

Max Factor–the brilliant Hollywood make-up artist and founder of his own make-up line of the same name–did make-up for most of TV’s elite in the 50’s and 60′.s

Archie and Edith Bunker lived at 704 Houser Street.

“Botany 500″ dressed Gene Rayburn on “Match Game” featuring the drunken actics of Charles Nelson Riley and raspy voiced,  Brett Sommers (Mrs.  Jack Klugman)

Color was by “Deluxe”;  lenses were all Panaflex, thank you very much.

“Sky King” was sponsored by Nabisco and when he banked his plane to the left,  the wingspan formed the exact same shape as Nabisco triangle and the logo came spinning out at the viewer. 

And the big production companies owned by Lucy and Desi and Bing Crosby duked it out for producing credit back in the day.   

I don’t think kids today watch TV as we did.   They  have more distractions, more stuff to do, but less space in which to do it.

Dangers lurk everywhere these days and parents rarely let kids play in a fenced in backyard without proper supervision.

Sad.

When I was a kid on a Saturday morning in the summer, my friends and I  got on our bikes at 9am and came back home in time for supper.   Our mothers didn’t know where we were and more often not, didn’t worry.    It was a different time and I think it’s because we were a different people.   More trusting, less worried maybe

If I ever got into trouble, my grandmother always found out and tried to scare me with cautionary tales of the Linbergh baby kidnapping, Bonnie and Clyde’s deadly bank robbing spree through Texas,  and the Black Dahlia murder case.

My grandmother stopped reading the newspaper after 1948.