 This is the SF Productions podcast network People used to tape shows. Let me see. There's a tape already in here. Let me hook this up here. Let me see what we got. Come back with us to the 60s and 70s dwelling place of the lost generation. An era whose heroes, role models, and very lives were molded and formed by weekly installments of favorite television programs. Welcome to the place your parents didn't understand. Welcome to the vast wasteland. Welcome home. I'm your host Mark Schmidbar along with Wilbur Neal and Marty Wiley. And we're here to talk about 60s and 70s television. And tonight we're going to talk about music shows and band shows. So another exciting episode. But before we jump into it, just want to tell you we're on Tuesdays at 6, Wednesdays at 10, and Thursdays at 3 p.m. on ACTV at cable 21. Also, if you want to write to us, you can write to W215. And now on to music shows and band shows. Of course, one of the earliest things on television because it was incredibly cheap to do. He basically hired some local band to come out or some local singer and basically stick a mic out there and do a show. One camera was incredibly cheap. So you saw a lot of it in the late 40s and early 50s and all that. I didn't see any of it. Well, that wasn't born. For those who were born then, you saw a lot of that. But later when we got into the 60s, they started to get more and more complex. Sophisticated. Sophisticated. Sophisticated TV. What was your first reference? I'm just going through my stuff. Well, probably the first recollectable one I'd say would be, well, American bandstand kind of came up through the 50s to the 60s. Right. That was on 57 all the way until 87. Exactly. And it was on for like two more years on like USA or something, one of the cable networks. But Dick Clark was gone by that point and pretty much sold everything. I don't know. Dick Clark never seemed to change. He always kind of looked the same there. His head got a little bigger, his forehead did. I always wonder about Dick Clark. He just kind of stayed the same, you know. I think maybe he's an alien or something. I don't know what the deal was. Well, his father's in the cosmetic business is what it is. Secret cosmetic. Exactly. Those same strange and secret cosmetic things. I'm just convinced he's going to be on some show sometime and they're going to, just in the middle of some show and all of the tucks and the poles and everything are all going to go at once. And he's going to instantly turn into like an 80 year old man in front of your eyes. Well, let's see the lights. The lights are going to be turned up so bright and all the stuff is just going to melt out of the stage. Blah blah blah blah blah. I'm picking on all the folks. Anyways. So, but I'd say Bandstand was easily the first recollectable one. Right. And then you jump into something like, although it would go more in the Variety Show kind of thing, I'd say Ed Sullivan. But that's more of the Variety Show kind of thing. Which, by the way, that's what we're doing next show. So we'll try not to venture too far into the Variety Show area. Exactly. Exactly. We're doing music shows this time. Well, I was kind of running alongside of Bandstand with Soul Train. Well, a little later. Yeah, but he did get into the ... Soul Train with Don Cornelius, the man with the biggest microphone on TV. And a beautiful boy. Maybe he did some radio or something before he did Soul Train. So he just had that wonderful speaking voice, like Don Cornelius read Shakespeare or something. But anyway, he did a wonderful speaking voice. And they did kind of pretty much the same kind of things, you know, on there. Except they had the Soul Train line on Soul Train where Bandstand just had like featured dancers or something. Radio record. Yeah. Well, they did a little of that on, no they didn't. No they didn't. I don't remember it. They had the scramble board. Right. Yeah. They had to figure it out. Sometimes it was real hard, like these things will do with three letters. Whatever could it be? And then of course they had the cartoons based on the popular bands of the time. Right. How many popular bands? Let's see. The Beatles had a cartoon. Right. The Hoffman had a cartoon. Yes they did. But that was after the Jackson 5 cartoon. The Jackson 5 which you could still catch sometimes on that. Oh yeah. But they think the Beatles would like always cart me up because it was like obviously not the Beatles. Yeah. Although it could have been Ringo's boys. Yeah. Oh yeah. Couldn't play the drums here. Ringo. Yeah I'd do that. Ringo. What in Ringo? They never got the whole G out. What in the heart of you? Ringo. It was just kind of a softy. All running together. Ringo. This is John Paul George and Ringo. Yeah. Yeah boy. Howdy. And they did a lot of great songs on there. It seemed like they edited down the songs too. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. That was always fun. Yeah. Because already we're already running into the three minute song thing here because no songs were supposed to go under over three minutes because of that time they just figured it won't sell. If it's over three minutes this song will not sell. So they put it on the cartoon. It had to be on a 45. Exactly. We had to go on a 45. And so when they get it on the cartoon they got to cut it down that much more so it's like you cut out half the instrumental stuff. They're singing too. Sometimes some of them are right in there and they'll be singing. And then it just fades right out. It was sad. But hey that was Saturday morning cartoons. Yeah. But that stuff was Shakespeare compared to stuff like came later. Some of the Hannibal Barras. This is true. This is quite true. Classic. Classic stuff. But some of the like well we'll mention the live action when first partridge family. The attempt to bring the family sitcom and the music show together. Well I'd often heard that the partridge family was loosely based on the the CalSyls. The CalSyls. Yeah. Who did have a special by the way there. It was light after they got to be real popular. Oh when was that. They had out that one album in their song Indian Lake and then they also did that cover version of Hair which was just real popular. So CalSyls were just really out there and then they had a special Buddy Ebson star was guest star on there. He got to dance with what's her name Susie CalSyl or whatever. Little CalSyl. Little little baby CalSyl. Yeah by golly they were just like a family of them. Just like a family. They were a family. The partridge family was neat. But the partridge family was cool. But they had that strange disease that seems to hit some shows where the youngest son will disappear and they get somebody else to fill in for and nobody seems to notice. The kid had dark hair and he turned up later. Boom! He's got blonde hair. What happened there? He was a little darker kid with big eyes and then he was a blonde hair kid that looked like everybody else. What happened there? And then they had little Ricky Siegel on the show too. There for a while. I think that's a little monitor kid. That's a little darker kid's name is some like Jeremy Golden Boots or something. I've been looking this up. I've been real well in the credits. But you know what the show's like? We don't have it now. So well maybe it's coming back now with the new squids on the block and stuff like that. David Cassidy with the teen idol. Yes. And you really don't have that a whole lot anymore like that. I don't think it sits as... The pre-packaged, solely designed to be teen idol. Well now what you have is the pre-packaged, solely designed to be toys on the market. Right. Yeah. Because that's where the new kids are. You can find them in your toy store. I don't look for them. I don't look for them, but they're there. I try to avoid them. I know they're there though. I make sure I miss them. I know they're there. This scares me. Here's Jeremy Gelblacks was Christopher Partridge. And then it became Brian Foster. Brian Foster even. Brian Foster. Jeremy was there for one year and then Brian was there for three years. Well that's unfair. The original guy, Boop, you're done. Here's this Ricky Stevens guy you were talking about. Ricky Siegel. Well it was played by Ricky Siegel in the story. His name was Ricky Stevens. Yeah, but his real name was Ricky Siegel. So I made my point. Okay. Here's Reuben Kincaid. Here's Alan Kincaid. What happened here? Probably after... And Alan Kincaid. Probably after he died I assume. And then the Brady tried to like copy. Reuben died? Yeah. No, say it again. And then like the Brady's tried to copy by it, tried to put out their own little pathetic... Brady things here. Yeah, there you go. And it didn't work with the Brady's. Because they were matched up for a long time on ABC. They were like paired up with the eight to nine slot I think. Something like that. Brady for years. Brady, Brady, Brady, Brady. Just two families with too many kids. And then comes this... I don't know what Hannah Barbera was on during the 70s. Some of the concepts they came up with. It was Partridge family 2200 A.D. Were there in space? What is the deal with that? I just don't know. Plain and simply I don't know. I don't know. What was the deal? What's the thing here? What's popular? What's popular? Space, space. We've got families. We've got family shows. We've got cartoons. We've got space. And a little animal. We'll put them all together. We'll put them out in space. And give them like a Jetsons car. They'll fly around in a big Jetsons kind of bus that's painted like their buses. I'm going to kick you. Oh my. This must be a relative of the old TV executive guy. It's a different voice now. Then there were the shows that were like the Banana Splits which was like Beatles for Little Kids. Yeah, all Beatles and Monkeys for Little Kids. Beatles and Monkeys for Little Kids. Because they're bananas. Monkeys, bananas. Yeah, we really connected. And then the Monkeys. Nobody's seven-year-olds are like, wow, the deep significance. Oh, wow. I contemplated it for days. Cosmic, man. Right. And then these guys came along. And this was like what, the only band put together just for television. Exactly. Yeah, pretty much. They wouldn't have got together if it wasn't for the show. They would just put together to do a show. Well, because they had the Beatles out here and you got like all these other English pop groups basically and there was nothing American really. And so some TV and record company executives got together and said, hey, open auditions. Anybody come in and we'll try out. We just want some wacky kids to come in. I didn't know. Charles Manson. Charles Manson. Charles Manson tried out. He could have been a monkey. No. Steven Still? It was either Steven Still or Graham Nash. One of them was going to try out but they told their friend. Their friend Peter. Peter about it. And I think they lent him a guitar. So the legend goes and Peter went on to be a famous movie. Maybe that's another legend. I don't know. Manson tried out. Manson was connected with the Beach Boys actually. But the Beach Boys didn't try anything. They just tried to be as popular as they could for however long. They didn't have a TV show either. That's true. They just had specials like Bob Hope. Who still has specials. Yeah, that's special. And then, well, the cartoons still had quite a few. This guy here, the Archie guy. How many cartoons did they have? There was like everything's Archie. There was the spin-off Sabrina and the Teenage Witch which had its own house band, the Groovy Goolies. Which later got their own show. Yeah. I never really realized there were different shows. Well, they did it kind of a minute ago. It's like they had on Archie for one season and then they expanded it to like an hour and they introduced Sabrina. And then Sabrina got her own show which introduced the Groovy Goolies. But you know, the Archies like had hits. Well, yeah. Because they were another show, I mean another group that was put together. They got a group to sing for them. And that group went ahead. You mean cartoons can't sing by themselves? No. Oh, no. But they did. They got a group to sing. And I still have not to this day found out who that group is. They haven't seen it. The Archies. Well, yeah. Some of the Archies. It's one of those great mysteries of TV. Who were the Archies? Who was the Archie band? It could be anybody by golly. Somebody famous. And from the Archies also, that's where Josie and the Pussycats came on to. Yeah, Josie. They came on. They had a hit or two themselves, I guess. And that's another group. Who were they? Nobody knows. Nobody knows. It was the same group that was doing the Archie. They later went on to do the Jim. Can't have our house band. Jim, yeah. The Jim. The Jim show. Pretty much the same show. Which is funny because the group, the things for Jim and the Holograms, the same group, the things for the Misfits on the show. Oh, well, they're slongs of this long. I mean, the Archies had real bang shangles, sugar. Ah, not just sugar. Sugar, sugar. Sugar, sugar, honey, honey, all that. Ah, honey, honey. I mean, I remember these. I'm a candy girl, and you got me wanting you. And you could get an Archie record off the back of some cereal. Alphabet. It was post. It was post cereal. Alphabet of post cereals. Yeah. Alphabet of sugar, Chris. You had cut off this record off the back of the cereal box, and you put it on your record player, and you put a piece of currency on it. You're a little way down. Yeah. Or you just take that sucker down to the turntable there. Make sure the edges don't curl up after you cut it out there. And you wouldn't know what the record was until you played it. You had a choice of four, but you wouldn't know which one it was. You got the same one, and you didn't want it, and you wanted to get bang shangling, but you always got sugar sugar. Sugar sugar. What you did? And so what do you do? You end up going to the store, and you had cut them records off the back of the cereal box all over the place anyway. So it's just. Oh, that's your limitations is up, I guess. Yeah, I guess it's up. That's it. I would tell. Bye, golly. Bye. Bye, golly. Those records in place. Fun, fun, fun. In the stores with knives all hard. Oh, yeah. Yes. Today's technology wouldn't let you do the miracle of the record on the back of the cereal box. You just see the CD in the back of the cereal box. You'd probably have the CD inside the cereal box. Free CD inside, yeah. Of course, the cereal probably cost like $20, but hey, you got a free CD in there. What a deal. That'll probably happen here in the next five years. Oh, yeah. I'm looking for the new kids on the block cereal, you know. Yeah. The free CD inside. Or wait, new kids cards with free CDs. Get off the new chair. Well, they're like the only people that would probably consent to do something like that. And it's like going to put out like a MC Hammer set of cards. MC Hammer cereal. Hammer time cereal, you know. It's not breakfast time anymore. Hammer time. But then I got together. I mean, the difference between those is like the monkeys and the, we'll put together. And then the show grew. Yeah. And I actually still have my monkey's comic book, which I couldn't find, which I don't know how I ever got it, cost me a whole 12 full cents and how I ever got 12 cents together at the age of seven. Wow. Looks like those were those great gold key comics. Yeah, yeah. There you go. Gold key, who were the great people that did all the comics. Thanks for TV shows and movies back then. It was gold key. Interesting. They were the monkeys, though, was the fact that rather quickly the members kind of started like we're professional musicians, you know, rather than we're people who were put together by. Wait a minute. There were only two professional musicians. But they all acted. Like as the show went on, they started having these serious sessions at the end of the show. It was like, well, obviously they were like, oh, we edited the show and there's like two minutes. Oh, like Frank Zappa would come on with Mike Nessner. And we all took their talk, you know. Wow. What was the deal with that? Yeah, the Zappa Nessner. Well, see, Mike was the actual musician. Peter was an actual musician. Yeah. And David Jones was actually a stage actor from England. Mm-hmm. And Mickey Dolan, of course, was brought up on TV. As circus boy. As circus boy. Yes. He learned, I guess he was a guitar player. And they said, no, no, you look like a drummer here. Yeah. And he learned how to play the drums. And well, of course, they had good writers backing them up on. Sure. I mean, who was it? Hart, what was his name? Boyce and Hart? Boyce and Hart wrote a lot of their tunes. Ness Smith wrote some of them. Right. And somebody like Neil Diamond. Neil Diamond, yeah, he wrote them. Carol Kane, they're not Carol King. Carol King. Neil Diamond wrote I'm a believer. Should we write Pleasant Valley Sunday? Something. Let's see. Yeah. Carol King and Jerry Goffin wrote Pleasant Valley Sunday. Here in the status of the land. Step a stone, Boyce and Hart. Okay. Not just step a stone. Boyce and Hart pretty much wrote a lot of it. That's because they didn't have their own show. I guess not. The Boyce and Hart show. Boyce and Hart show, yeah. Well, didn't, didn't, no, that's Jan and Dean. Okay. Yeah. Never mind. I think who went around that, that curve there and got messed up. Okay. Then we got, then we got older and I see you've got like the show that we grew up to. Those of us who, who like grew up on the monkeys and whatnot. Don Kirschner. Don Kirschner's rec answer. Well, before that was midnight special. Right. Yeah, but those kind of, those kind of grew up together. Yeah. It was like midnight special was, was I don't know, it was more fun. Don Kirschner was just Don Kirschner. There was, there was nobody else there, but Don Kirschner was just around the different places and record different groups in action. And I'm a Weasel record producer. When I'm laughing all the way to the bank. Thank you very much. And then midnight special, they would have like guest hosts and things. Oh man! That was one of them. Wolfman back. All right baby baby, Wolfman back. I got his That guy has a gravelly his voice and you know I'm radio and now he's doing country He's on the national channel That could be his own fault Too much 70s for And that was basically the Yes Okay, I'm not I can't because I love he's a great guy That was basically the predecessor When midnight special ended which according to this so shoot where is it? 81 that's basically when Friday night video started Somewhere around there, you know video. It's not the same yeah, even if it's a band live band video It's still a video. Yeah, it's like when it's Exactly Gonna miss a note. It's just too polished now. There's no there's no thing or two drunk to go on tonight There's no margin for error. It's all it's all it's a done deal I mean the only thing I think the closest you can come to like live music on stage is still one Saturday night live has band Yeah, and they always had some like real if only Lauren would learn Michaels would get a better idea is Some of the stuff he picks is like well. These are interesting. This is Great stuff, and they've also had some stuff that I think only Lauren might like Oh, that's much better But let's see Well, so we had oh a hullabaloo well hullabaloo now here Well, hey, if you're gonna mention hullabaloo, you got to mention shindig there you go pretty much the same It was like we we were driving around we're heading south one time going to Somewhere south we passed by where they did one of those shows. It was either hullabaloo or shindig It was the old studio. It was like old No, we just pass. Hey look It's like this old concrete building there and I said this was where we did that show It's like they're big claim to fame. This is like 79 or 80 and the show was on only back in the 60s Yeah, I used to watch Bobby Goldsboro shows kind of syndicated deal. Oh, yeah There's a lot of syndicated stuff in the 70s Bobby Goldsboro show kind of spun off of the Glenn Campbell show, which kind of spun off of the Link Cal Bell show Spun off of the part done with the Smothers Brothers, right? Well Bobby Goldsboro show was like a half hour. It's pretty cool show if you like country poppish music Oh, yeah, but it did growing up where I grew up. You watched he ha and the country kind of show That was kind of all that was really on at that time. I mean any of the music shows were kind of the Because I've got taken over the the that was that was the height of the whole the whole country The folky Everyone's getting their cb's and putting them in their car and here we go. Oh, you're talking tom t. Haughton. Yeah There you go. Got a mighty convoy I see uh, Nashville on the road, which was on until 83 pop goes the country so 74 and 82 and um Music hall america, which is only in 76. Mm. And uh, of course the granddaddy of all those country shows I used to be subjected to was the porter wagner show Nothing ran Dolly and her box is a brain It was like breeze would alternate you get towels. You'd get glasses. Which one is it gonna be we're gonna get towels We're gonna get glasses. It's surprising every box. So we just really don't have Once again, okay Well, now we'll see that's the thing now. We uh, uh have videos that's pretty much the planet I mean you look at these references and almost every single one was right The the ones that lasted the longest Basically was right when mtv kicked in It was like boom and that's the end of the whole thing. You're done. You don't need any of these shows They got the mtv 20 hours a day. Here you go So then they they decided to come in here with their own Nashville channel Oh, yeah, should they to get the Nashville channel? That's where wolfman jack is now You know in a way the monkeys those kind of shows kind of gave birth to the video. Oh, sure Definitely. Oh surely easily. Of course the monkeys blatantly ripped off Beatles But I mean as far as their style of Videos but they didn't call them that then There were I mean help and songs in music Music music and music and songs in music songs in movies, right Songs on tv shows with lots of little benny hill type bits of running around fast Bouncing people and going cross streets Things like that. Yeah And then mike is probably he's considered mike nesbeth is considered one of the pioneers of modern video Sure, it's not the pioneer of modern videos like him. I'm Todd rungren Bowie Frank zappa also I mean he's even though he wasn't actually in on doing the actual video that he was in under production of a lot of Those are considered the but mike I mean springing from the monkeys here. So certainly we've We've gone again now gotten to the point that videos have Pretty much permeated the whole the whole medium now. Exactly. I mean and I think and that's one of the reasons that I And this is I don't want to get too much into this because that well because we have one minute for one thing And the other reason is we're going to be doing variety shows next week I'm going to get into this and how videos have an effective variety shows But anyways Just a couple notes before we're out of here Again, we're on Tuesdays and six Wednesdays at 10 and Thursdays at three and just a little note for People who like to watch old tv shows. Just wanted to tell you about This is not an ad by the way, but the comedy channel And ha which are the two comedy networks now Fighting it out. Well, they're not fighting it out anymore because they're now going to be merged into comedy tv sometime next year And you can see one of those great other great bands that was on a show on the comedy channel What? Lance link and the evolution revolution Parents listen to those lyrics listen to those lyrics real close. It's monkey It's monkey's playing the band but listens to those lyrics. That's right. That's another group who sings these songs We just don't know so right in and tell us who are singing these songs But anyways, I think we're about out of here. So for all of us at bass wasteland We'll see you next time with variety shows. Good night everybody