Do you remember the Sgt. Pepper movie? I am sorry for dredging such material up before Christmas.
Mario Mirarchi | 12.24.06 - 1:09 am | #

A shucks! It wasn't all that bad...was it? Liked the part where the mustachioed lead sings "Got up, got out of bed, dragged a comb acoss my head," and then he pushes his fingers through his hair.
Ray Matthew | 12.24.06 - 1:23 am | #

Having lived through all that, I always find it interesting to view it from today's perspective. We're in an era where we can really do that for the first time.

The dancing strawberry plants were rather cringe-inducing/funny.
Jim C. | 12.24.06 - 1:35 am | #

The dancing strawberry plants were rather cringe-inducing/funny.

They reminded me of a scene from Peter Cook and Dudley Moore's "Not Only But Also" that parodies Tom Jones' variety show, with Dudley as Ludwig van Beethoven in the Jones role. The special guest is Cook as Wordsworth, reading his poem about daffodils, surrounded by chorusgirls dressed as the flowers. When he gets to "and dances with the daffodils," he does just that.
Dawn Eden | Homepage | 12.24.06 - 1:39 am | #

For the looongest time, it seemed I was better off with hands held over my ears, just squinting a little whenever I flinched. Then came the invasion of Nixon's Oval Office and I realized I needed more hands.

Fortunately, It doesn't *have* to last 15 minutes, you know. I think I zipped right through in maybe a minute forty-five. And I still love the Beatles. Not so sure about Steve Martin, though.
Linda Morgan | 12.24.06 - 2:44 am | #

That may have been the most excruciating fifteen minutes of my life.

How is it possible to have so much talent wrapped up in something so gawd-awful?

I'm so glad I missed that the first time around. I must have been watching this instead.
Robert N G | Homepage | 12.24.06 - 10:13 am | #

I kept waiting for cool Jesus to say something cool Jesus-ish.
Dennis | Homepage | 12.24.06 - 10:28 am | #

Dawn,
A few "Random comments":
* I had forgotten how insipid most of "pop culture" really is. Especially the 70's.
* Richie Havens WAS cool. Who was the girl singing with him-Melanie?
* I feel really sorry for Ted Neely because THAT monstrosity exists for posterity and there is little he can ever do about it. Of course he might actually be proud of it. He did have nice looks and great pipes back then.
* I love the Beatles when THEY sang their songs but when others did…EWWWWW....
* Man, were the 1960's pretentious or what?
* Maybe it is the intervening 30+ years but I find it really hard to look back at Nixon with the fear and loathing that the Left felt for him then.
* Its scary to realize that there are some Hollywood dancers who had this on their resume for a long time and were proud of it.
* What was Jann Wenner thinking?

I could go on and on and on… but this thing already did.
King Tiger | Homepage | 12.24.06 - 10:34 am | #

I think that was Yvonne Elliman with Richie Havens...Yvonne, of course, played Mary Magdalene in Jesus Christ Superstar opposite Ted Neely.

www.forgotten-ny.com
Kevin Walsh | Homepage | 12.24.06 - 10:42 am | #

If it's any relief, Ted Neely is a genuine and fine actor and guy.

I still won't look at this. And while it is impossible to underrate Rolling Stone, everything the overrated Steve Martin has done since his Carl Reiner movies (including his unreadable novel and last 15 years of movies) practically demands that everyone see this and exclaim into the dust "Ecce Bozo"

Other than that, while the malady lingers on, it seems (so far) that after a gruesomely yummy chemo week, heavin' can wait once more.
Jim | 12.24.06 - 10:48 am | #

Mario, I second your disappointment with the sacrilege that was Sgt. Pepper

Who in the world was in charge at Apple Corp? Was it Neil Aspinal? How was this allowed to happen?

I feel sorry for Peter "Billy Shears" Frampton, he was a very good guitarist who got caught up in the pretty-boy marketing machine and lost all credibility.

It was a barren decade.
Geoff | 12.24.06 - 11:22 am | #

Well, somebody needs to come to the defense of the 70s (even with all the smelly hippies) --

I defy anybody to say that the 90s were musically better than the 70s as a whole. I double defy anybody to say that the 00s have been better than the 70s. If you think that, there is definitely something funny in that bong water you've been drinking. Except for a couple of throwbacks to earlier eras, the music-culture died sometime in the early 90s.
Bender | Homepage | 12.24.06 - 11:40 am | #

The 70s were only better than the 90s because they were coasting along on the fumes of the 60s.
Steve Harvey | Homepage | 12.24.06 - 1:05 pm | #

Quick, Bender which is better - U2, or K.C. and the Sunshine Band...

Bzzzz.

I win.
Geoff | 12.24.06 - 1:12 pm | #

I'll take K.C. any day of the week, even without Paul Hewson, a.k.a. His Most and Highest Holiness Lord Bono, Savior of the World.
Bender | Homepage | 12.24.06 - 3:38 pm | #

Can't top Gary Oldman dancing to Get Down Tonight just before the taxi picked him in Sid and Nancy. But what do I know, I got a Melanie CD as a gift and actually like it.
Pat Patterson | 12.24.06 - 9:50 pm | #

Bender, my friend, you have to learn to separate the artist from the silly things they say.

Why, a few weeks ago I attended the Barbra Streisand concert.

Perhaps it was the wine, but I melted like wax. She's gorgeous, and man! - can she sing. And she's a funny girl.

Someone requested she sing Stony End, so she ad libs it, and she comes to the line: "I was raised on the good book Jesus" she punctuates the line "- oy!" like she's talking to the audience, me? the good book Jesus?

After she's done, she confesses she has no idea what the song is about.

Sigh.
Geoff | 12.24.06 - 10:14 pm | #

For a few months now, I've felt this overwhelming nostalgia for the 70s. I think this just killed it! :)
Denise | Homepage | 12.25.06 - 12:01 am | #

Oh come on, it wasn't THAT bad. The glory of the Beatles' music was not obscured, and the whole thing was staged live so appropriate allowances have to be made. This is a part of 70's culture I can stand -- there was an innocence and an energy there, without either the degeneration into insipidity exemplified by "Muskrat Love", or the degeneration into nihilism exemplified by the later "punk" movement. There was a lot of great music in the 70's (not the Beatles' music in this clip, which was from the 60's), for example Led Zeppelin, The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, Jethro Tull, CCR, Steely Dan, Linda Ronstadt, Pink Floyd, Bruce Springsteen, Blondie, etc.

By comparison, the 80's were impoverished (U2, The Police, 10,000 Maniacs, and Pat Benatar are good and there are a few others, but for every act from the 80's you can name I can give you 3 better ones from the 70's), and the 90's were a complete wasteland (at least for me, and probably for other Dawn Patrollers too; though I know many younger adults who would disagree, I think this is from their lack of exposure to earlier great music rather than from my lack of exposure to 90's music).
Joseph | 12.25.06 - 4:10 am | #

Sheesh. Who doesn't love "Muskrat Love"? It should be an anthem for the era.

[ha ha. Now you won't be able to get it out of your heads unless you start singing "The Sun Will Come Up Tomorrow."]
Robert N G | Homepage | 12.25.06 - 1:40 pm | #

11 months and 14 days into the 70's and it crashed - November 14, 1970 ... just saw the movie about it a couple of days ago - it was called "Marshall".

the entire football team, the coaches and staff, some school board members, some fans ... all on the same plane - and it crashed.

no survivors.

but, out of the ashes came a power house a decade later - and thru the 80's and 90's a team of national prominence was built.

unfortunately, the music industry hasn't been able to pull-off the same miracle. but someday there may be a swing of the pendulum and somebody's music will start the fire that burns down chicago again - let's hope so.

i wonder how the 90's and 00's will be judged?

of course, we can always go back to Pachelbel's Canon in D ... variations to the 30th power ad infinitum.

but then, the 06's have StK and Dawn - perhaps that will turn the trick.
uncle jim | 12.25.06 - 4:07 pm | #

Oh, this is too tragic.

Drugs really WERE rampant at this time, weren't they? (and I was in college around then, so I know). I recently saw the cartoon "Heavy Metal" on cable for the first time since it was released -- even watching it at fast speed, it was too darn long and too full of "Oh wow, heavy!" moments. Just like this clip.

On the wall facing me is a big corkboard I call my "iconostasis" -- it has pictures of people I look to for my own idiosyncratic inspiration. Christ Pantocrator (3 versions) on the top, four icons of St Joseph, pictures of JP the Great, Brother Andre, Henry Nouwen, Reinhold Niebuhr, etc. The "creativity corner" has C.S. Lewis, Tolkein, Bach, Philip Jose Farmer, Harvey Pekar, and Mason Williams. I now have to seriously rethink his place there!
Tragic Christian | Homepage | 12.26.06 - 3:17 am | #

There is lots of good music that was made in the 90s and in this decade as well. You just have to work harder to find it. You can't really find it on regular radio.

I guess what I'm saying is that it's not necessarily music that's gotten worse, but rather music radio.
Susan B. | Homepage | 12.26.06 - 10:08 am | #

Susan B., you may well be right about music radio, but music radio and the bestselling records are closely correlated, so what you are saying is that the good music stopped being popular in the 90's. Why would that be?

I'd be interested in your opinion of the "top 10 albums of the 90's", since my collection has so little from that era.
Joseph | 12.26.06 - 11:49 am | #

Tragic Christian, I feel your pain. I own three or four Mason William LPs, plus a couple of CDs, plus "The Mason Williams Reading Matter."
Dawn Eden | Homepage | 12.26.06 - 12:28 pm | #

Dawn dearest, I not only have three LPs (including the one with "Them Poems"), "Reading Matter," "Colors," a compilation CD, AND his book of sheet music (I can play about the first two measures of "Classical Gas.") I've been a fan since I was ten.

And about that clip, all I can say is, "Only mediocre people are at their best all the time!"
Tragic Christian | Homepage | 12.26.06 - 7:29 pm | #

It takes real talent to make such colossal blunders, as anybody else would be afraid to try to pull it off!
Ron | Homepage | 12.27.06 - 2:17 am | #

Hi Joseph,

...but music radio and the bestselling records are closely correlated, so what you are saying is that the good music stopped being popular in the 90's. Why would that be?

I don't know. Perhaps the record companies -- which hold more influence over what gets played on the radio than they should -- are simply pushing the same old crap rather than taking a chance on fresher sounds.

As for naming my top ten albums of the 90s, that would take more time than I have right now. Instead, let me just run through my iPod and pick out some of my favorite 90s artists:

16 Horsepower
Beck
Fleming & John
Innocence Mission
Morphine
Over the Rhine
Pixies
Portishead
Self
The Tories
Weezer
Susan B. | Homepage | 12.27.06 - 11:35 am | #

let me just run through my iPod and pick out some of my favorite 90s artists

Well, I've heard of Beck, and the Pixies are faintly familiar, but as for the rest, and any thing that any of them have done . . . . a complete and total blank.

It used to be (up until the very early 90s) that every week we would have one or two good and memorable brand new songs being played, and today . . . . (sound of crickets chirping) . . . we have perhaps a handful of good songs a year, and those are from, as I said before, throwbacks to early times, singers and groups and writers that have returned to a 60s-80s musical style.

But as for hip-hoppin' rappers, ganstas, and Britney/Christina hos, and as for monotone, melody-free and harmony-free music of other so-called rock-pop-whatever groups, they are all a waste of good CD plastic and memory space.
Bender | Homepage | 12.27.06 - 12:39 pm | #

Bender,

...but as for the rest, and any thing that any of them have done . . . . a complete and total blank.

That's what I mean...you have to look a little harder for the good music. Although, Weezer are fairly popular...I'm sure you've heard stuff by them.
Susan B. | Homepage | 12.27.06 - 1:21 pm | #

Weezer are fairly popular...I'm sure you've heard stuff by them.

Perhaps. I can sing-along to a thousand songs, but am practically clueless when it comes to knowing the titles of songs or the names of the groups that sing them. Thank you FM deejays.
Bender | Homepage | 12.27.06 - 2:44 pm | #

Just how bad is this clip? Well, it might be the only video that could be improved by adding William Shatner's version of "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds." Nuff said (but thanks for sharing Dawn...oh the memories this brings back)
LarryK | 12.28.06 - 1:09 pm | #

I graduated from high school in 1976, and while disco, wide ties, and bellbottoms were pretty rank, we had nothing anywhere near as bad as hip hop or rap (Or, whatever you want to call that crap) and nobody close to as trashy and insipid as Paris Hilton and/or Brittany Spears (Initials B.S.: Coincidence? I don't think so).

I used to smoke dope with Ritchie Havens, and I'm absolutely positive he was baked to within an inch of his life in that video. You'd kinda have to be, wouldn't you? ;^)
Hucbald | Homepage | 12.28.06 - 2:34 pm | #

It is difficult for me to see a huge difference between this and a large Broadway production number. You either go for that sort of thing or you don't.

And, frankly, Patti LaBelle ROCKS in this video.
Awbnid | 12.28.06 - 4:12 pm | #

One is reminded at just how truly incompetent both the dancing and choreography of the seventies was. The mugging is particularly impressive, each little actor/dancer vying desperately for a bit of attention in order to get cast in the next awful revue.

My favourite part is the balloons at the end. The plantiveness of the music completely fails to match this wretched festive touch.

Insipid genius.
Earl Fando | 12.28.06 - 5:08 pm | #

Me born 1946. Swim coach high school girls swim team, overheard conversation on school bus circa 1986:
"It's no fair!"
- "What's no fair?"
"Our music. It sucks. The 1960s were much better"
-"You're right...."
Fred Fagal | 12.28.06 - 9:00 pm | #

This reminded me of the recent Bob Dylan musical on Broadway where everything on stage was a literal translation of Dylan's lyrics. Numbers like this killed the variety show on tv.

During the Helter Skelter number I was looking for Charles Manson to pop up directing Leslie Van Houten or Squeaky Fromme to kill someone - maybe the audience.

Watching the Elvis comeback special, the set pieces (as opposed to the live songs in front of the audience) were so schmaltzy that only Elvis' charisma and star power made them watchable. Unfortunately, none of the singers in this number can approach Elvis.
CPA78 | 12.28.06 - 10:21 pm | #

Well, I'll crawl across coals for a viewing of Richie Havens, but that was too much.

Go back and rewatch the Helter Skelter segment... see the Arabs running around with guns?

You mean they knew about this back in the '70's?

I blame George Bush.
Paul A'Barge | 12.29.06 - 12:12 am | #

Sorry but I loved the music in the 80's...

Phil Collins, INXS, Jon Bovi, Queen, U2, Journey, AC/DC, Michael Jackson (before he became weird), Dire Straits, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, ZZ Top, The Police, The Eagles...

Of course some of them might be carryovers from the 70's and some folks might look at my list and bletch...
Fred | 12.29.06 - 7:10 pm | #