the rix mix

We knew The Beatles were coming months before they arrived here.  I was suspicious. I liked rock & roll.   I liked many kinds of music. I didn't have a great cultural or emotional investment in rock & roll.  Those early Beatles singles & the LPs Meet the Beatles & Beatles Second were enjoyable, but they didn't bowl me over.   The Beatles' music seemed too slight to support the madness.  & then there was the marketing: authorized merchandise, Beatles wigs, lunchboxes, dolls, pinup magazines etc. etc. aimed at 10-12 year old girl demographic. Manager Brian Epstein wanted his band innocent enough that parents would buy the crap Beatles merchandise for  the little girls. What happened in high school was a bit different. I was 15, a sophomore.  The 14 & 15 & 16 year old girls I knew who fell in love with one or another of the Beatles did so with self-aware & barely disguised lust. All Epstein needed to sell them were the records & record jackets & some glossy photos of the boys. Their photos were in all the magazines.

My favorite single of 1963 was  Candy Girl b/w Marlena,  by The Four Seasons.  two sided hit bigger in Philly & Atlantic City than NYC.  I had been impressed by some of the songs, vocal harmonies,  on Surfer Girl album.  I thought the Beach Boys & Seasons could cover each other's songs. My favorite LP of '63 was either a movie soundtrack or Stan Kenton's Adventures in Jazz." I was fond of Martha & the Vandellas.

Some kids in my high school detested  The Beatles. There was a serious Fifties hangover   teen culture in my h.s.,  plus leftovers of the folkie hootnanny, which continued to move songs into the top 40, neither of which I much appreciated. The Fifties influence had become parody. The Beatles broke over those like a tidal wave.  That's why I liked The Beatles. As a little kid immersed in the malt shop world of Archie Comics &  Ozzie & Harriet, I had envied teen culture of the mid-Fifties because it had Elvis, plus doo wop & Buddy Holly.  Elvis was a transformer. I must confess to also liking Bob Denver's gentle teen beatnik Maynard G Krebs from Dobie Gillis.     But Elvis meant almost nothing to us in 1964, beatniks were disappearing, there were vestiges of doo wop in the top 40 but lacking the purity & ethereal qualities  of the music that had enchanted me in grammar school. Occasionally a decent song popped out an Elvis Movie. The Beatles were our Elvis. I recognized that much & embraced the change. Soon enough more  music flowed from England, like The Animals' great "House of the Rising Sun." Had to put up with Gerry & Pacemakers & Freddy & The Dreamers &  other forms of mindless profiteering inspired by The Beatles.  Bobby Vee compared to Buddy Holly. The first Beatles LP I bought was the soundtrack to A Hard day's Night with the George Martin instrumentals.

The Beatles in California smoking pot with with who?


At the end of 1964, The Beatles released Beatles '65,  an LP I loved,  initiating a period of about two years when The Beatles recorded & released the finest series of now classic records ever from a band or artist, from "No Reply" & "I Feel Fine"  to "Help!" & "Paperback Writer," "Drive My Car," "Rain,"  "And Your Bird Can Sing" all the way through Rubber Soul & Revolver.  Beatles 65 made me a real fan \of the band.  It was when rock & roll became rock.  Even the lp cover pix were cool, with the umbrellas. The speed of The Beatles' musical evolution, while under  the incredible pressure  of  needing to produce more "hits,"  touring,  & making two movies, was proof of their genius. Because of The Beatles,  The Four Seasons  made better records, The Beach Boys made wonderful records. The Beatles inspired the creation of The Byrds,  making folk music palatable & hip.   & The Beatles turned Bob Dylan from a rock dabbler into the greatest white American rocker since Elvis.  The Stones would be along as soon as they finished urinating on the gas station attendant, or so the story went.  The Stones or maybe their fan club passed out buttons that said, "Let's Lock Loins."  It became getting more & more difficult for the profiteers to keep a handle on the teenybopper market. Ultimately it lead to the The Monkees. & even they became too uppity. But that was a long way ahead.

At the end of August 1964 I missed my one chance to see The Beatles live. Wasn't a sure thing, but it was a chance.  Another story.
I don't paint a clearly enough picture of the the "Kairos" of the cultural moment, the "right time", a "coming together" (a German theology termI learned three years later in a college religion class), which included John Coltrane; movies A Fistful of Dollars, Pink Panther, Goldfinger, Dr. Strangelove, The Masque of the Red Death; Cassius Clay Vs. Sonny Liston; debut of Terry Riley's "in C" (not released on LP until 1968); the 1965 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City; plus my dad's only political campaign, won against the Johnson landslide.

Labels: culture, growing up, music, Roselle Park, TV

Felix Unger was asked to remove himself from his place of residence. That request came from his wife. Deep down, he knew she was right, but he also knew that someday, he would return to her. With nowhere else to go, he appeared at the home of his (childhood) friend, Oscar Madison. Sometime earlier, Madison's wife had thrown him out, requesting that he never return. Can two divorced men share an apartment without driving each other crazy?

Labels: holidays, music, TV

Steve Allen Show as he is joined by Ann Sothern, Steve Lawrence, Eydie Gorme, Dinah Shore and a special mystery guest singing Steve's theme "This Could be the Start of Something Big". An incredible tracking shot from 1958, using a large, heavy TV camera on wheels with all kinds of wires connected to it.  It must have been very difficult to pull off. But Steve was a pioneer in those kinds of things.

 I watched two episodes of What's My Line" (a classy Sunday night show, came on I think at 10:30, I never got to see it until its final years in the Sixties) with Steve & Eydie as the Mystery Guests (panel blindfolded). The first episode, around this time, they were guessed fairly quickly, & on the way out they only shook the hands of the panelists. Host John Daly referred to them as "young people." A few years later,  1964, Steve headlining a Broadway show (& having been a panelist five times), both having had hit records,  they baffled the panel for a longer time;  as established show biz stars, Eydie & Steve cheek-kissed  Dorothy Kilgallen & Arlene Francis, & Eydie blew a kiss at the audience.

Steve & Eydie came  out of the old tradition, such as was available to them when big bands were going away, the night club & Catskills circuit shrinking, caught between the emergence of rock & roll on one side & on the other the novelty songs  fine singers like Patti Page, Dean Martin &  Rosemary Clooney were often made to record (the independent Peggy Lee composed her own). They used television to great advantage. Their big pop hits were good by the standards of the time, if not quite Great American Songbook material. Eydie had a special feel for Latin music. She spoke Spanish fluently from childhood. Not conventionally pretty, but very attractive, it was impossible to guess her heritage (Sephardic Jewish via Sicily, Turkey & The Bronx). If her passing results in a new appreciation of her talent - I'm just discovering her - it will make Steve Lawrence very happy.

Labels: music, obituary, TV, video

Wonderfully talented actor with a conscience.

Every character James Gandolfini played looked unhealthy, & he looked unhealthy in person, too. My first reaction to The Sopranos was a shock of recognition, that I had met & heard people like them many times in real life in New Jersey. I had. So had Gandolfini.

 When I saw him in Crimson Tide I thought, that's the guy from True Romance. I still didn't know his name. With Get Shorty, I wanted to know who he was, he played the part of  Bear so true to Elmore Leonard's written character.

 The unveiling of The Sopranos, prior to the Radio City official debut, was at Union County Arts Center in Rahway. The Sopranos had the most buzz for a TV show since Twin Peaks. From my point of view, Steven Van Zant was the "name." My employer at the time, a close friend of one of Gandolfini's Rutgers roommates, managed to obtain an invitation. I walked over to the theater - I lived across the street - but  could not find a way into the event. They had that place locked down.

There are only two star-celebrities Jerseyans really embraced & owned, Springsteen & Gandolfini.

My friend Jim Ruggia posted this great tribute. I don't think he'll mind me using it:

I went to see Streetcar Named Desire with a then young Jessica Lang & Alec Baldwin as Stanley. Baldwin called in sick & Gandolfini, who was young and svelte then filled in. He brought all that power of impending explosion to the play. It was obvious he was much more than an understudy. There were times as Tony Soprano when he was able to fully communicate a terrifying vacuity in his gaze, that registered with me as what true nihilism actually looks like. He was a giant.

Labels: movies, New Jersey, obituary, TV

Why has Jodie Foster's rambling speech the other night generated so much controversy?  My immediate impression was that she had had a couple of cocktails & was having some fun with the audience. Do we really care if she's "out" out?

Has any star  ever led a truly secret life in "Hollywood"?  Is it ever a stretch for gay or lesbian actor to play a straight character?  Well, maybe Paul Lynde, who didn't try, even in Bye Bye Birdie. One of my favorite TV raconteurs,  the late, great Charles Nelson Reilly (also a genuine theater person, largely unnoticed by all except other actors & theater people), told hilarious stories on the Tonight Show about being gay in Hollywood without actually saying he was gay, & with less of Paul Lynde's bitch queen act.

Reilly astonished me one night long ago when he came on The Tonight Show to promote The Belle of Amherst, a wonderful one woman show he directed with Julie Harris as Emily Dickinson (& 14 other characters). Of course, he & Johnny didn't dwell on that subject for very long.

Labels: culture, sex, TV

Labels: culture, TV, video

Highly entertaining, humorous  "exotica" from 1959, arranged by Gerald Fried, who went on to score scores, maybe hundreds of TV show episodes  & movies, including "Star Trek" and "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." What I like about "exotica" is that good parodies of the genre are as highly regarded as the "serious" recordings. Perhaps an argument could be made that they are nearly all parodies.

Labels: music, TV, video

Funny, Carrie's Bar & Grill  just posted this video, & I posted same one a  few weeks ago for a friend's birthday.
The TV show is in Idaho (1958), only two couples know what to do when they pass through the line. In my town, where American Bandstand ruled, no teenage couple would join the stroll line unless they had some little dance step - or a whole routine - worked out.

Labels: culture, music, TV, video

One of the most famous cruise ships of the modern era, the former Pacific Princess, is heading to the scrapyard, according to Italy's La Repubblica.


The news outlet says the 40-year-old vessel, recognizable to millions of Americans as the "Love Boat" of 1970s television, has been sold to a Turkish demolition company for just over 2.5 million euro -- about $3.3 million at current exchange rates.

The ship is tiny by today's standards. & contemporary, informal "free style" cruises on giant cruise ships don't encourage the busy-body, gossipy relationship situations that were the staple of plots on The Love Boat - there were three stories in every show.  Also, you're no longer expected to pack evening clothes to attend the final night Captain's Gala Dinner/dance. Or maybe you are, but hardly anyone thinks that's cool anymore & actually goes. One of the few reasons I wanted to be wealthy was so I could own a tux & have occasions to wear it. (On The Love Boat, formal attire was worn in the ship nightclub.)

But The Love Boat was sort of the era's Dancing With the Stars, a place where fading movie & TV stars & other assorted  celebrities gathered for paychecks - definitely easier than DWTS. The Love Boat signed up these guest stars literally  by the hundreds for cruises on The Pacific Princess  (although only the two TV movie pilots were actually filmed on cruise ships). So many stars (check out this one intro, Elke Sommer is a totally hot 40 year old), so much love, the disco beat & trumpet intro to the cool theme song that pulled everyone into the  living room to see  the guest star mug shots inside the porthole, & Ted Lange mixing tropical cocktails as "Your Bartender." I'm bereft.

Labels: culture, TV, video

Davy Jones & Frank Zappa

Davy Jones, actor, singer, member of The Monkees.
The Monkees TV show was aimed at a slightly younger audience than me. I thought it was good show whenever I had a chance to watch it. I really liked them as a comedy team.  But I wasn't hanging around the house much evenings. Probably watched it most often at girlfriend Karen's, who had younger sisters susceptible to Davy Jones' charms. You could say The Beatles were the  Monkees for my age group, the model, & the industry looked for the "next Beatles" for decades afterward.  By Sept. 1966, The Beatles were a mature group with very little teenybopper appeal. Although the idea of a manufactured Beatlesque band didn't appeal much to me, "Last Train to Clarksville" was an outstanding debut single.*  It was difficult to think of it as The Monkees rather than Mickey Dolenz & studio musicians. But the British music invasion had brought silly groups like Gerry & The Pacemakers, Herman's Hermits, & Freddy & the Dreamers. The initial image of the Beatles with those collarless suits & neat haircuts was manufactured.

The Monkees did a great service by exposing the fact that many bands routinely used studio musicians, by choice or ordered to do so by the record label to save time & money & make records better. It was more cost effective to hire an expensive group of studio cats like The Wrecking Crew for a few hours or days than to let inexperienced bands diddle around in the studio for weeks. The weakness of The Monkees was that the four members had almost nothing in common musically & never would have formed a band independently (How many albums did Blind Faith record?). They were glued together only when they were united in fighting for more control over their recordings. Once they got it, they  began squabbling over what to do with the control.

Michael Nesmith was a polished musician & competent songwriter. But more to the reality of The Monkees, only Davy Jones saw himself as an "entertainer," meaning he knew he was in show business & would do whatever it required. Oddly, this gave him more in common with James Brown than with Buffalo Springfield & The Byrds. When the four Monkees were cast, Davy most fit the need. He had the acting experience & the singing experience. He was a really good front man because he knew how to play the part, knew it was a part.  Reminded me of Eddie Brigati in The Rascals.

* Strangely, my 19 tear old sister bought the first Monkees LP. I don't think she had purchased an album since The  Beach Boys Today in 1965. Someone bought the great Beach Boys lp & it wasn't me. I viewed her very much as a pre-Beatles,  American Bandstand in Philly sort of person. But she'd had a definite weakness for Teen Idols at age 13, apparently she still had it.

Labels: culture, music, obituary, TV

Watching some of the Tony Bennett Duets II special on PBS.  During the fundraising break, Tony, in TV studio, said Amy Winehouse was the best singer of her generation,  comparing her to Billie Holiday  & Ella Fitzgerald. Now think on that, & who said it. Tony's a nice guy, but not so nice he'd lie & say that about Carrie Underwood or Lady Gaga or Beyoncé. Tony fell silent  & the host quickly realized Amy's death troubled him very much & changed the subject. Winehouse wasn't the first tormented great female singer Tony had known, & in getting to know  Amy he likely sensed she wasn't headed toward a good end,  that she  was more Billie than Anita O'Day - who overcame years of addiction with voice largely intact.  Tony is a fundamentally positive person.

& then there's Amy herself, with demons we can't understand. Except that here & there, throughout her brief career, she dropped hints that she believed she couldn't satisfy her father, a frustrated singer. A telling remark by Amy in the duets special, recounted that when she told  her father she was recording "Body & Soul" with Tony Bennett, a dream gig for Amy, her father said  it was his favorite song &  snidely suggested Amy had never heard it, although she had been a natural musical sponge her entire life - soaking up  jazz, American songbook, girl groups, northern soul, & had even taken her father to see Bennett at Royal Albert Hall.

There's no greater authority  than Tony Bennett alive today on the subject of great singers. In a rational world  his endorsement & respect  would have eclipsed in Amy's mind Mitch Winehouse's opinion on anything. Now Daddy Winehouse is preoccupied with protecting his late daughter's "image," even criticizing Jean Paul Gaultier's recent fashion tribute to Amy, as if "fashion" matters one way or another. The art of great singing isn't about fashion.  In fact it never mattered to Amy's real fans if she looked like she had spent the night sleeping under a bridge. & her appearance  wasn't always an indicator of her emotional state. Some nights she may have wanted to look like Ronnie Spector in a rain shower.  What counted what was came out of her when she sang.

Tony Bennett understands what the world lost.

Labels: music, TV

From the Indian TV show, Are You Ready? I wasn't quite ready for this.

Labels: culture, TV

There's two general points-of-view toward  the show Jersey Shore. One is  that it's terrible for New Jersey & the Jersey Shore. The other is that it typifies one aspect of boardwalk town sleaziness. I pretty much go with the latter. I don't like how it inflates the its particular sleaziness, but the characters are not inauthentic.  They aren't caricatures; they only play them on TV.   The semi-fictional "reality" show drives some Jerseyans into spasms of denial, just as the totally fictional but plausible The Sopranos did. New Jersey grows plenty of the  types from both programs. A lot of Jerseyans want the state's image to be the one projected by a slick magazine, New Jersey Monthly; affluent middle-class; hip, expensive restaurants; fashionable boutiques; classical music & jazz that musicians play without breaking a sweat; features listing the state's best & most exclusive divorce lawyers & cosmetic surgeons.  Well, that's true, too. I can draw you a map for a tour of Jersey that avoids everything sleazy or potentially offensive to easily-bruised sensibilities. It can start or end at a Victorian bed & breakfast in Cape May City. Seaside Heights is not for those who need to control their environment & like everything muted. On a good summer evening, a good boardwalk is the "11" setting on the Marshall amp.

A boardwalk store displaying  cheaply made pink bikini bottoms with "Kiss Snooki's Ass" printed on the rump is just offering the more topical version of the  timeless "Italian Bitch" tee shirt hanging on the racks inside.  Of course, a motel with no pool that relies on nightly walk-ins to light the "No Vacancy" sign will put "C Snookies Room" on the letter board marquee. Seaside Heights attracts people who want to "C Snookies Room" because Snooki Polizzi  herself would want to see it & stay at that motel if she weren't Snooki. Doing business on & around the boardwalk is about selling some stuff different from  what you sold last year  & yet the same.  People that return to Seaside Heights & Wildwood boardwalks year-after-year (proportionally few of whom stay for a week in Seaside Heights & Wildwood proper -  most  stay in towns north & south of the boardwalk) are just as adverse to radical change as the readers of New Jersey Monthly.

Jersey Shore didn't create a culture, it just branded one that already existed & will continue to exist when the show is over. Jerseyans resent, with some justification, the branding of the entire shore with a culture that exists in only some of the towns.  On shore vacations, I center myself in convenient proximity to the big, raucous Wildwood boardwalk, but I also spend an afternoon in sedate downtown Stone Harbor, have dinner at an affordable outdoor restaurant on the Cape May Mall,  enjoy  the county zoo, prefer a beach at the Hereford Inlet end of North Wildwood, take a cruise on the Lewes ferry, & visit two lighthouses, My favorite tacky shell/souvenir shops aren't even on the boardwalk. & I've always  avoided the bars where people like the cast of Jersey Shore hang out. Those bars have lousy DJs.

Labels: boardwalks, Cape May, culture, jersey shore, TV

I suspect that those who pay professional happy people to teach them how to be happy were never really miserable to begin with.
 ***
Wayne Dyer hasn't convinced me he was ever unhappy, even when he was in an orphanage, going through a divorce, or being sued for plagiarism.   Yet, he's the biggest name-dropper on TV. A typical sentence might begin, "Last night, during dinner with His Holiness, The Dalai Lama, I asked Tenzin......"  I used to have a friend like that; he was a compulsive liar, & we put up with it for years just to see how outrageous he would get.

Labels: mental health, TV

My reaction to the Black Eyed Peas Super Bowl performance:

• They've been better. Much better.
• The robot thing is kind of cold - & old.
• Haven't I seen this Super Bowl halftime show before?

Eventually, I think the consensus will be that the whole event was less than memorable. Christina Aguilera's national anthem gaff wasn't scandalous. The game wasn't so exciting; Green Bay never trailed, & it's not easy to feel sentimental about Vince Lombardi. None of the commercials had the stuff of legend. Most viewers didn't care who won.

For all its popularity, power & profit, professional football still lacks the cultural prestige of major league baseball, & I suspect it always will lack it. It's basically a sport of bullying behemoths with few unlikely heroes. Every World Series delivers an over-achiever or two, & it's possible for the average person to follow a baseball season (& a game) without giving it one's full attention. Baseball is paced differently. It's o.k. to become distracted or bored during a baseball game, & do other stuff with the game in the background. The language of baseball, as George Carlin & Abbott & Costello demonstrated, is something everyone can enjoy. But the language of football - if callers to sports talk radio shows are typical - seems designed to make unintelligent men sound smart.

Labels: baseball, culture, sports, TV

WTF?

Nothing I'm reading really explains it. Keith has to explain it, & I think he will.

The guy is a big, profitable media star with a huge ego. He carried MSNBC for years. Being treated in such a subordinate, public manner by his bosses over a few campaign contributions - prohibited by contract, not by law - infuriated him. Comcast purchasing MSNBC brings with it a byzantine tangle of corporate relationships that include FOX. Keith may have felt increasingly trapped in his show's format & the part he was expected to play. He's now wealthy enough & famous enough to believe he has some career options.

When he looks at his right wing counterparts, he sees guys like Bill O'Reilly - numbingly shrill & repetitive, & Glenn Beck - whose demogogic over-reaching is losing audience & markets (including New York & Philly radio).

He might have looked at Rachel Maddow, with her generally calm demeanor & the intimate relationship she has with her viewers - the lovely smile that shifts ever-so-subtly into a smirk, & who isn't expected to produce mighty You Tube-ready sermons of moral indignation.

If Keith wanted to exact some revenge, denying MSNBC the ratings & ad revenue bonanza of "farewell shows" is a pretty good.

Labels: media madness, TV

Frankie Ortega & Sy Oliver

Classy imitation TV soundtrack music.

Labels: music, TV

ShopRite veggie section is o.k., but the bananas are always very green, & they still look like the person who unpacks them bounces each bag off the wall before putting it in the display bin, every bag has bruised bananas. & speaking of bananas, I pay small attention to the rantings of Fox news personalities, but this is priceless:



A few days ago, sports radio station WFAN ran a promo for Fox TV business channel that ultra-right nutcase rocker Ted Nugent would be a guest that evening - I think he  lives in a luxury cave in Michigan & eats raw meat  - & among other topics Ted would be offering his opinions on the Gulf oil catastrophe. I doubt Ted took a beating on BP stock; he probably has his fortune invested in gold bullion & diamonds  he keeps in a secret vault somewhere, the same place he ages his moose steaks.

Labels: in the news, media madness, shopping, TV, video

The Masters - the only golf major all sports fans pay attention to - went with the best script & multiple story-lines. Tiger came back without much controversy & played well. Fred Couples & Tom Watson had their moments. 16 year old amateur Matteo Manassero made the cut. Journeyman pro Lee Westwood likely earned himself some endorsement deals. & popular Phil Mickelson won. Although Phil's one of the finer all time pros, only 39, he's appealed to duffers ever since he drove a ball into a garbage can at the 2006 U.S. Open.

Labels: sports, TV

Craig Ferguson just won a deserved Peabody Award for his interview with Bishop Tutu last year. Last week he had a couple of good guests on one night, Robin Williams & professor of ethics. Most shows now, If I'm watching at all, I turn him off during or right after the monologue. No skits, no Rather Late Programme with Prince Charles, rarely a song with puppets. & nobody like Bishop Tutu, or Ellen Johnson Sirleaf the President of Liberia, or Madeline Albright. Once in awhile an author, Lawrence Block or Laura Lippman, interviews he throws away anyway. Maybe Craig's getting tired of the grind.

Labels: TV