Herrrre's Ed....

Yeah, I've been away and all. Part of my hiatus was because of a wedding. Also during that time, Ed McMahon passed away. Sooo...to kinda conjoin the aspects, here's Part One of about 10 (if you want to see the rest, go to YouTube) of The Tonight Show on Dec. 17, 1969. That is the date Tiny Tim (the freak show who made a hit of Tiptoe Through the Tulips)married Miss Vicki on the show. That is, after guest appearances by Phyllis Diller, Florence Henderson and some Lucas guy who originally did Tiptoe. It is part of a complete show, complete with the living color peacock, the acid flashback-quality into sequence, and commercials of the era (telling us to have Pepto tablets for Montezuma's revenge, that salt for cooking is important only for women, and that you can take Salem out of the country, but you can't take the country out of Salem).

Oh, yeah, Ed...a bit chubbier and way darker-haired than how most of you probably remember. And Doc Severinsen looks positively pervy.

She's my Pet

A little departure from the "era on drugs" motif to look at my idea of purity and silken-voiced goodness, Petula Clark. She rode the crest of the Swinging London groove, with the help of a songwriting team that fancied itself the British version of Bacharach-David. That team didn't have similar enduring renown, but Pet was as solid a muse as Dionne Warwick was for B-D. This song, Downtown, broke Pet big, almost as big as the hairstyles she and the women in the audience had.



Here's my personal favorite, Don't Sleep in the Subway. This was in Italy in 1968, when Pet was already pretty much an anachronism.



And the same song from 2008, when Pet was even more of an anachronism. And no, Pet was not a nuclear-glowing ghost...I think.

He oWns jOO, Chico Escuela

Garrett Morris was a member of the groundbreaking original Saturday Night Live cast. He had a few memorable characters, like the Namibian seeking fondue sets for his country, the headmaster of the Institute for the Hard of Hearing, and the aforementioned Mets icon. But there'd be weeks in which he'd hardly do anything, and he has not done much since.

More of a focal point was his black token counterpart on Fridays, Darrow Igus. Fridays was ABC's answer to SNL, and it lasts for 2-3 years. It spawned Kramer, and via Melanie Chartoff, spawned things for this adolescent that I shant delve into. And as for drug references...while SNL was the 2-3 friends passing a joint in the garage while the folks were sleeping, Fridays was the rave at which they hand out a tablet and a pacifier at the door. The prime example, via Igus. Julia Child probably wouldn't approve of this recipe.



Igus also played Lude Man. Couldn't find a video, but here was the music industry's equivalent of someone who had a a Quaalude vibe.

Back with a veng...well, just back

Real life intervened for a few days, but let's get right back into things. A TV show in the 1960s or 70s didn't have to have psychedelia to have clearly been written under the influence of something wackier than martinis. Take My Mother the Car (1966). I mean, I'm sure someone at ABC was thinking, "A Van Dyke (even if it's not Dick), a talking car...it's genius!" Cop Rock is surely thankful for its existence, so it wouldn't be known as the most ridiculed show ever. Now, would it have had better luck if David Hasselhoff were the star? After all, Knight Rider did OK, and the script had the acuity of a drunken Hasselhoff. This, so the YouTube submitter says, was the final episode.

Let's settle this once and for all, Part I

This will be an occasional series where you can check in to decide an issue of esoteric yet urgent importance. Like this one:

The best Mama Weer All Crazee Now?

1. Slade



Definitely the best hat of the competition. Noddy Holder looks kinda like a fey Michael Caine. I really don't think the dancers are so much into it, and anyone watching on TV who was on acid probably leapt out a window.

2. The Runaways



My favorite version, with Joan Jett, before she became Joan Jett really rocking it out, just knowing her solo career would be better than Lita Ford's. Something about the drummer I found really attractive. Then again, I always liked the bassist from the Go-Go's, so whadda I know?

3. Quiet Riot



Best I can say about this is that their revival gave a kick-start to Slade's reputation as a very influential band. A symbol of the excess of the hair metal mousse and ambiguity era; I wonder how much it costs to rent an ambulance for a video. And Jacques Plante circa 1959 wants his mask back. But the worst part is the lame "but you lied!" ad lib. Noddy Holder, and probably even Michael Caine, wept.

Saturday morning cartoons: the gateway drug

During the early 1970s, some really weird stuff was going on in Saturday morning cartoons. Sure might explain why those of us in our 40s aren't exactly The Greatest Generation II.



The Hair Bear Bunch featured one bear that looked like a cross between Shaggy and Scooby, and one that looked strangely like Marcia Wallace. But the intro did feature one of the best uses of an invisible vehicle in entertainment history, and the bears had a well-stocked fridge for the munchies. But no brownies? Fail!



Ah, the Groovie Ghoulies (never mind the bad spelling by the YouTube doer). Featuring Dangerous Drac, Frightening Frank and....Weirdo Wolfieeee! Wolfie's howl was like a "wa-wooo-wooo-wooo!" Without the fangs, he'd be almost a dead ringer for Kenny Loggins. Heck, even the ghosts in the video seem stoned!



Hong Kong Phooey, one of the hundreds of Scatman Crothers voice jobs. The switchboard woman had the standard-issue blue-tinted glasses that cartoon babes of that era had. And perfect for this era: the hero couldn't be bothered to get out of his night clothes. And Hanna-Barbera cost-cutting alert: the cat in the intro has more that a passing resemblance to Muttley in Wacky Racers.

LSD Barbie

"Please, won't you think of the children" is not exclusive to current times. That sentiment, especially regarding attractive, blonde, female, white children has come up before, going all the way back to Reefer Madness. Around 1968, there was this cautionary tale about LSD, complete with an old-school classroom slideshow style title frame. The lead in this has a hairstyle that's about three years out of date and a fascination with a hot dog that would make Freud rise from the dead. LSD also apparently makes you change into a mismatched blouse and capri.

We've got your Saturday covered

Was going to do a big thing on the drug reference richness that is Sid and Marty Krofft (to paraphrase George Carlin, they put the extra f in there just to piss 'em off). But I really don't have the time, so here's a quick hit, so to speak, combining characters from the Saturday morning titan H.R. Pufnstuf (I'm craving brownies just typing the name) and the members of the Bay City Rollers (S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y...NIGHT!)Dunno what this is from, and it's a mystery as to why either of them thought the other would be a particular boost; Pufnstuf had faded away by the time the Rollers (who supposedly got their name by throwing a dart at a map and hitting Bay City, Mich.) hit around 1975-76.

Go round and round, go round and round

Today, a rambling look at roller derby, which was like drive-ins as a cultural phenomenon of rapidly suburbanizing and affluent America. Drive-ins lasted a bit longer, as the two main leagues petered out by about 1974. This happening to the International Roller Derby League is not surprising in light of the fact that the guy doing this interview, Jerry Seltzer, was the league owner. With the hairstyle and pot belly of someone heading to the swinging singles bar in his Fiat with the top down. Maybe having the top down explains how his hair got that way. Here, he's interviewing Charlie O'Connell of the Bay Area Bombers and Ronnie Robinson of the Midwest Pioneers to set up their match race. O'Connell has a major case of helmet hair, and Robinson has a major case of drowsiness. One question: Each team had about 16 players (8 men, 8 women). Why, then, is O'Connell No. 40 and Robinson No. 58? All this from the sports Mecca of Hammond, Ind.



That O'Connell guy, he's good, by the way. He takes care of business here against the New York Chiefs, which used to be an even quicker sellout at Madison Square Garden than WWWF wrestling (back when Jessie McMahon ran the show). And their uniforms gave them big-looking butts.



And here is perhaps the main icon of old-school roller derby, Anne Calvello (No. 13 for the Red Devils, whose team name on the back had to have been borrowed from a bowling league). She was in various incarnations of the sports for more than 50 years and died in the last year.



Now on the West Coast, the main team was the Los Angeles Thunderbirds, who were in a league that made less of a pretense of making play appear real (in any league, it was as scripted as pro wrestling). Ralphie Valladeres was the legend of that circuit, and was even part of that god-awful RollerGames show about a decade ago. And Ronnie Rains was "the Psycho."



And before it faded into less cultural relevance, roller derby even got the Hollywood treatment.




Nowadays, the main roller derby gimmick is grrrrl power, with games made up of women with really punny names. A Lilith Fair for these times, perhaps.

Man, how times change, Part 1

This will be an occasional feature here, in which I will unearth (OK, merely search YouTube for) blasts from the past that kinda contrast with the present.

Before Mike Farrell was Dr. B.J. Hunnicut, and before he became a symbol of causes and political correctness, he was a shill for cancer sticks. In this 1970 ad, back when Big Tobacco could still advertise on TV, he and some very pretty woman (man, she should have gone further than Farrell) sail on a boat to promote Chesterfield 101s. That's an odd size; I've heard of 100s and 120s, but 101? He seems like a dreamboat up until the end, when he hogged the coupon. Do they still have coupons with packs of cigarettes? And is Chesterfield still around?

Hey, Dude

Long before Kenny Rogers made a lot of mediocre country music, injected a load of Botox and created Kramer's favorite chicken, he was a member of a group called the First Edition that kind of tried a few styles to see what worked in the marketplace. Here is perhaps their best-known effort, complete with far-out hippy-dippy lighting effects. So, like, abide.



This was on The Smothers Brothers Show on CBS. It was an edgy move at the time by CBS to give these topical comedians their own show. Their political humor, which Bill Maher would snicker at for its mildness, made the Tiffany Network too nervous, and it was soon gone despite decent ratings. NBC added women in bikinis to edgy humor, and made it work with Laugh-In.

So that's why the Beatles took a step back from public life

Hullabaloo was a prime-time music show on NBC from 1965-66 that tried to latch onto that groovy youth vibe while it was still apple-cheeked and carefree (that is to say, before the long hair and stuff like pot, Vietnam and the urban riots made youth a lot angrier and maverick-ier). And what says young and new and irreverent more than Jerry Lewis, huh? Actually, Jerry was trying to puff the rock-band aspirations of his son Gary. In truth, Gary had little talent and the producers of Gary Lewis and the Playboys vinyls did their best to be sure that Gary's contributions were hardly to be heard.

And you'll hear why. To latch onto the groovy youth vibe, going with the Beatles was a good idea then. Well, almost always. The show decided to open with Jerry and Gary doing a duet on Help. More like Yelp. Not even Goldie Hawn's presence as a Hullabaloo girl could save the day.



Some more modern music critics were moved to comment on this performance:



"Yo yo, checkitoutcheckitout! Wow, man...Jerry Lewis, big star. But guess what, this just wasn't a good song for you. And Gary, I think you were a liiitle pitchy in parts. Just not feeling it, dog.







"This was just so beautiful, father and son coming together. It wasn't the best effort ever, but god bless your heart, the love came through."



"What bloody planet are you on, Paww-la? That was god-awful, karaoke dreck. Not one redeeming quality about it. I'll bet the French loved it, though."




"Fuck off, Simon!"

Happy, Q?

Just a quick note to my first and only commenter that an acceptable Judy in Disguise has been found. Thanks for the nice note, but....still a one-hit wonder.

Stoned wash denim

Pity the poor, surely confused kid from this stop-motion Levi's commercial of the mid-70s. He had to wonder why the crew would take long "smoke breaks" in the trailer and come back out with giggles, brownie crumbs on the lips, and red eyes. The old lady was also probably toking up. For the glaucoma, of course. Heck, they were probably blowing power hits into the dog's mouth. The boy's is now either a n'er-do-well in constant need of therapy, or the president of NORML.



0:04--"Waah, I got too close to the damn trailer during smoke break!"
0:10--With the cold look of Dexter on his face, he vows to get the wardrobe lady who made him wear that shirt.
0:12-0:14--Hey, pedophiles buy jeans for their kids, too! Gotta tap whatever market you can.
0:18--With the jacket she provided him, the wardrobe lady faces a slow death.
0:21--The boy beats the dog to the tree.
0:25--The floating rock (fall, dammit, fall) looks like a cross between a baboon head and a ram head.
0:28--Tree at last!
0:34--Good thing, cos that fire hydrant can book!
0:36--And dirt-glide as well as the boy and the dog.
0:41--"Better grab this before the key grip tries to grind it up and put it in his bong!"
0:46--OK, now he's going to come after her family, too.
0:48--Chris Hanson just had the hair stand up on the back of his neck and doesn't know why.
0:52--"Oh, how sweet! Say, are there any brownies left?"
0:56--"Oh really? Shit, let's book!"

OK, so I missed a day.

I don't know if this one will make up for that, or add insult to injury. Anyway, we have Kate Smith in 1966 on Hollywood Palace (ABC's answer to the Ed Sullivan Show), introducing a buncha blokes her beloved Broad Street Bullies would have beat the crap out of. The New Vaudeville Band added megaphone, cheesy cardboard cartoon blurb, tea, and cigarette holder to the repetoire of rock instruments. Only in the Swinging London era. Thanks a bunch, Profumo.



OK, well, I notice that according to my time settings, I didn't miss a day after all. Ah well, you're stuck with it anyway.

No it's not a younger Bentley

It's John Fred (with His Playboy Band). I dunno if he named his band that to try to improve his chances of appearing on Playboy After Dark. But he did deliver one of the greats in the one-hit wonder pantheon, Judy in Disguise (With Glasses). It was catchy, infectuously repetitive, and it glommed onto the Beatles bandwagon, at least as well as someone from Louisiana could glom onto the Beatles. Here is the video, in honor of one of the three known viewers of this blog. Fred's shirt sure drives the "lemonade pie" lyric home, and the guy from Tempole Tudor apparently borrowed the pants for his TOTP rendition of Wunderbar.



Also, this video shows the phenomenon of the missing musician. It has the horn players, who were the usual suspects to be missing when a group back then mimed a song, but there's a guy holding a tambourine who presumably was the drummer. I assume the record company was an indy who couldn't pony up for a drum kit. And those string sounds apparently came from heaven itself.

Before Miss Piggy had a frog in her throat...

Paul Revere and the Raiders often looked liked Revolutionary War marionettes with their costumes and kicking movements. But on this video of the song Hungry from one of their seemingly 10,039,113 television appearances in the mid-1960s, Revere, the keyboardist, and lead singer Mark Lindsay were puppet masters themselves. Well, of hand puppets, anyway. Lindsay's was some indeterminate creature that seemed to be a homage to band member "Fang" Volk. As for Revere's...



Yeah, long before the Sesame Street days, Kermit was used in service of cheesy puppet warfare.

Oh, and a postscript from yesterday: the lead singer for American Breed ended up being a Grammy-nominated engineer and one of studio forces behind Styx. Damning with faint praise? That's up to you to decide.

Pornstache alert.

American Breed was at first glance your garden-variety one-hit wonder from 1966-68 out of Chicago that didn't have as much juice as the Buckinghams or Shadows of Night. But the video for that one hit, Bend Me Shape Me, shows that there's more to them than that. Besides featuring perhaps the only drummer/trumpet player combination in rock history, it boasts perhaps the best pornstache ever. Check out the bass player. You can just hear the theme from Hot Potato while looking at him.



As one-hit wonders are wont to do, American Breed kinda crumbled soon after its 15 minutes. Out of the wreckage, the band, led by the bass player, became something much different: Rufus, featuring Chaka Khan (ChakaKahnChakaKahn). But it also was a one-hit wonder.



The bass player in the video...not sure if it's the same dude, but whoever it is is stache-less. What I do know is that Oscar Gamble had to have seen this video at some point.

Oh, and a postscript from my debut post. Remember this Bloom County moment, before Steve Dallas caved before Congress and changed the name to Billy and the Boingers?



How different things might have been if Steve had gone with Opus' "kick-butt" suggestion: The Osmonds.

For starters...

Horace Guy would be saddened, knowing that his good name is being used in service of this bit of silliness. But I have always loved Ball Four, and Jim Bouton's nemesis deserves to have just as good a spring for a little bit longer.

I have pondered starting a blog about stuff only I care about so others don't have to listen to me ramble on about stuff that happened before they were born. But seeing this on youtube today just pushed me over the edge.



So much to say, so little time. OK, here goes. This is from The Osmonds cartoon series that ran in the 1972-73 season. From the Frosty the Snowman folks; boy, how the mighty fell:

:07--Jimmy Osmond already easing into his role as the cockblocking little brother literary device.

:11--Aw, how could that be such a bad apple? It has such cute eyes.

:14--The psychedelic screen border. Cos we know that the LDS were at the forefront of hippie culture.

:21--That bad apple apparently has a speed-like effect on Jimmy

:24--Even fish skeletons know to avoid the bad apple.

:26--Awwww, they blink in sync.

:30--"You call that a trident. Now this....this is a trident!"[/crocodiledundee]

:31--Fine, they're so startled they hit the drink. But why were they standing in the boat in the first place?

:38--The five worst-dressed, most awkwardly dancing silhouettes evah!

:44--The love interests apparently being submitted by each country's Stereotype Commission.

:52--Damn, can that elephant book!

:58--And he's apparently walleyed.

1:03--The elephant and Jimmy (or his scooter) seem to have some chemistry going.

1:09--RAM SPEEED!

1:13--Yo, where did Donnie's silhouette go? Get me Continuity!

1:22--Jimmy trying to outpogo some apple/peach/pumpkin hybrids.

1:25--Jimmy is apparently a suicide apple bomber.

1:29--Ah, there's Donnie!

1:32--They're just as bad as their silhouettes were.

1:39--Their asses have gotta be cold.

1:44--Donnie with his James Cameron moment. Or was it his audition for Pyramid?

1:47--And...and...TWINS!

1:50--Twin peaks!

1:55--"Surely that brat won't find us here...no way could he be in that pile of snow behind us!"

1:57--Is that a mustache and a green fedora on her? And is his hand about to round first?

1:59--Her virtue saved!

2:01--And Donnie catches on to a valuable life lesson at an early age.

2:11--Jimmy as polyester gnome.

2:13--Who also can't dance.

2:20--Making it rain.

2:31--And in a Hanna Barbera-like cost-cutting move, Donnie's shirt matches the color of
the apple.


Well, there you are. I can't promise it'll get any better, but we'll see.