I've always preferred the Who over the Stones. I think Townshend is a better writer than Jagger-Richards. Their musicianship is better too.
_______ 50 Years Ago This Week And The Old Mixer is the size of a peapod. Selections from Billboard's Hot 100 for the week: Leaving the chart: "I'll Try Something New," Diana Ross & The Supremes and The Temptations (7 weeks) "The Letter," The Arbors (10 weeks) "Mendocino," Sir Douglas Quintet (15 weeks) "Proud Mary," Creedence Clearwater Revival (14 weeks) "Traces," Classics IV feat. Dennis Yost (12 weeks) "Try a Little Tenderness," Three Dog Night (12 weeks) New on the chart: "The Windmills of Your Mind," Dusty Springfield (B-side of "I Don't Want to Hear It Anymore"; #31 US; #3 AC) "Where's the Playground Susie," Glen Campbell (#26 US; #10 AC; #28 Country) "Everyday with You Girl," Classics IV feat. Dennis Yost (#19 US; #12 AC) "One," Three Dog Night (#5 US) "In the Ghetto," Elvis Presley (#3 US; #8 AC; #60 Country; #2 UK) "Bad Moon Rising," Creedence Clearwater Revival (#2 US; #1 UK; #355 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time) "Lodi," Creedence Clearwater Revival (B-side of "Bad Moon Rising"; #52 US) And new on the boob tube: The Saint, "The Man who Gambled with Life" _______ Now when I was younger I used to think it was nonsense, but it's grown on me with age. It's just fun to see the Beatles doing something like that, especially John in drag. But does it sound like its decade of origin? All that ground paved by other British acts at this point, and their American chart debut doesn't even manage to crack the Top 40? I have a hard time picturing an alternate universe in which they spark the Invasion. They made their rep playing at being the darker, edgier counterpart to the Beatles. The key ingredient to that formula was...the Beatles. But does it sound like the decade with which you usually associate material from that part of the decade that it actually comes from? Not a surprise in this case. We'll have to settle for it ending up on one of the greatest albums of all time, with the more conceptual part on the opposite side. I thought you avoided modern superhero adaptations like the plague. Now that one I gave up on a couple years ago. The only CW DC show I'm still watching is The Flash, and I'm on the fence about dropping it after this season. The proof is in the listening, not the reading. Most of us aren't hearing the brilliance in their work that you do.
The Beatles are without question, the gold standard when in terms of artistic, commercial excellence, and strength of legacy, of the rock era. There is no band that has cast a larger shadow over the entire era in as many areas as have the Beatles. Comparing the Beatles influence to that of entire sub-genres like soul and r&b, and entire recording companies like Motown and Stax, as you do here, on the surface, might not be as unfair as it seems. But only because it is the Beatles we're talking about. When the Beatles hit America they practically obliterated such American pop music institutions as Phil Specter, the Brill Building, etc., at least in terms of chart domination. But their arrival had little affect on the r&b and soul genres. And to top it off, the Beatles, who were greatly influenced by soul music (more so than r&b), paid homage early in their careers to the genre, covering the likes of Smokey, the Shirelles, the Mrvelettes, the Isley Bros, etc. So, when you compare the influence of the Beatles, a single band, to the genres of r&b and soul music, and to entire recording companies, like Motown and Stax/Volt, the genres and recording companies hold up rather well. BTW, I do agree with you about James Brown. I think Chuck Berry might be the only other single artist (as opposed to band) who can compare to The Godfather in terms of a tangible influence on the music AND performance. So, you think that statements that suggest that the Stones feeling like they failed to meet their own likely high performance standards made them a lesser performance band for their fans? I doubt any but the hard core music critics would have noticed. Also, just because they may not have been the best performers on a particular show, that meant they had lost it forever. From a purely musical standpoint, the Monkees were all but completely irrelevant. Their legacy as a faux band are TV shows like The Partridge Family and Hannah Montana. Dude, just call it a guilty pleasure and let it go.
That is your opinion, not something handed down from the mountaintop as universal truth. The point is that this one group did not set the course for music of the 1960s. A segment of Baby Boomers of narrow tastes / experiences were primarily responsible for worshiping the Beatles, when popular music was already on the sea of creative, influential change before their 1st hit, and during their entire time as a group. "Obliterate?" Hardly. They did not stop the Supremes, The Four Seasons, The Beach Boys, and a host of other acts from releasing one hit after another. I'm not about to rewrite history and claim anything that would conclude that the Beatles held the tastes of most Americans. That's the sort of deliberately myopic view that had making the same claim about Elvis. You will get no disagreement there. When did they ever say they had high standards as a live act? They acknowledged that they were bad during the Rock n Roll Circus. In fact, this sloppy stage work would continue into 1969, with the everyone-not-on-the-same-page Hyde Park show, and the '69 tour of America, which ca be heard (unfortunately) at the Madison Square Garden shows all the way to the Altamont Free Concert. They were in top form in the studio in 1968 and '69, but were dreadful as a live act in those years. Nonsense not supported by history.
Joke clips do nothing to remove the erroneous heart from any claim/belief that the Beatles were the Gold Standard of 60s music, rock/pop, or anything else.
^^ To say nothing of the Honey Bees. The Stones and the Who are in completely different places in my head, but lyrically and musically the Who tower over the Stones. Aw, so cuuute. I forgot about this one. I like it. That was weird. Kind of funny. Classics IV is always pleasant to listen to. Great song. I love Three Dog Night. Also a great song. My favorite Creedence song. Not as well known as some of their other stuff, but still sounds great. I love Creedence. Normally I love Shakespeare homages. I once wrote a short story in the style of a Shakespearean play. But this kind of fell flat for me. It may have been the audience. If they had done it as a short film it might have worked better. Actually, no. "Not Fade Away" has a classic sound, but not really connected to any decade or fashion for me. Yeah, they were essentially the anti-Beatles. Yes... no... what? It doesn't sound like the 50s to me. In fact, I probably would have guessed late 60s. Okay, fine then. I don't avoid them so much as have little interest in them. I just started watching Legends this year at the nudging of Sci Fi Girl over at Ex Isle, and I'm enjoying it. It's kind of like SHIELD for me (a show that I also like), in that it's an original show that recycles some names and terminology from comics. In fact, it's less distracting on Legends because I'm less familiar with DC characters.
...or McCartney and the Fill-in Three! Fascinating opinion! Without question, the Who were superior as a live act, and as far as the albums of 1969 goes, Tommy was a revelation and revolutionary. Easily the greatest of any album from any British Invasion survivor groups, and one the best the year, overall. Shamefully underrated group. Easily dished out some of the most memorable songs of the 60s.
_______ 50th Anniversary Viewing _______ Mission: Impossible "The Interrogator" Originally aired April 20, 1969 And this is yet another episode with an implausibly tight ticking clock--the IMF has to accomplish its objective only two days from the time Jim listens to the tape! This time around we have not just a portfolio scene, but a prelude to it with Jim looking out the window contemplating over a drink. The Hartford Repertory Company, who play the roles of soldiers, are the reason for the portfolio being used...but as this is Rollin and Cin's last episode, it's kind of appropriate that he has to consider whether to use them. It would have been funny if their pictures had come up next season and he tossed them into the reject pile! The IMF nabs the interrogation convoy and make the interrogator, Spindler (Gunnar Hellstrom) think that he's in prison. From him they learn that Kruger's (Silva) country plans to launch nuclear missiles from submarines against the United States. Starting World War III is kind of a random thing for an enemy nation to decide in advance to do at a specific time for no particular reason. Meanwhile, with the help of a temporary amnesia drug, the IMF makes Kruger think he's the interrogator, in a location they've managed to set up to look like his house, I think. Cin plays his wife; Jim his doctor. The man he has to interrogate in three hours to save the lives of himself and his fake wife is Rollin. Dr. Jim convinces Kruger that he's projecting things for some reason. During one of his interrogations, Rollin goes inaudible when questioned to reveal the location of the submarines. Then Rollin starts asking the questions, and Dr. Jim explains that it was a case of the prisoner identifying himself with his interrogator, and that Kruger's seeming loss of hearing was psychological, and he should be able to remember the location that Rollin gave. Kruger's false time limit runs out and his fake superior (one of the repertory guys, IIRC) shows up. Kruger remembers the location of the submarines and blurts it out, and Barney quickly telegraphs the info to the people who need it. This one had an interesting if confusing premise that was undermined by the unlikely "countdown to nuclear Armageddon" scenario and highly implausible time frame. It's gonna be weird coming back to the show with Rollin and Cin gone, but I'm looking forward to seeing what the guy with the ears from Star Trek brings to the show. _______ The Avengers "Bizarre" Originally aired April 21, 1969 (US); May 21, 1969 (UK) Series Finale The episode opens with a woman (Sally Nesbitt) wandering in the snow barefoot in a nightgown and collapsing. I'm not sure why Mother's people would be involved in something like this before the woman, Helen, became lucid enough to tell her story, which involves having been pushed off a passenger train by a man who rose out of a coffin in the baggage compartment. This installment guests Roy Kinnear as Bagpipes Happychap, who runs the Happy Meadows cemetery, and grows increasingly fretful over all of the exhumations that Mother orders. Mother and Steed find that others have disappeared from their coffins as well, and that the connecting factor is that they're all financiers who've gotten in trouble, and would benefit from disappearing. An agent infiltrates the racket by pretending to be such a financier and, after his burial, winds up alive in an underground club. But the baddies sniff out that he's an agent and kill him, so his body turns up dead again, but with a new bullet hole in it. There's a fake Eastern mystic in charge (actually an Anglo in makeup), who picked up one genuine mystical trick--the ability to "suspend animation," allowing the financiers to fake their deaths and enjoy his club--located right under the cemetery plot and with access to the coffins--for a big cut of their ill-gotten gains. It's highly implausible how Steed "dies" and is buried without any notice or funeral--Tara doesn't even know about it until he's in the ground. Tara digs up Steed's grave and manages to communicate through the wall between the bottom of his grave and the club, and she breaks in to help him take down the culprits. If you want a surreal moment to end on, we have Tara leading a chain of club personnel and guests, handcuffed together, out of Steed's grave while the bewildered Happychap looks on. Steed decides to stay below with one of the club hostesses, "mopping up". Typical of TV of this era, the episode in general could have been any episode...but the coda, on the other hand, seems to have been made specifically with the end of the series in mind. It has Steed showing Tara and Mother the inside of a rocket ship that he's built--a standup affair that looks very Star Trek: Complete with artificial gravity, apparently...Steed and Tara have no more issues with G-forces than if they were riding in a balloon. Mother directly addressing the audience was a charming moment to end the series on. And he's right, Tara and Steed will be back, as I've got two more episodes to cover in my off-season catch-up viewing! One had originally aired as part of the 1967-68 American season, but I'd missed it in my initial recordings from Cozi and have since gotten it from This. The other apparently didn't air in America first-run, so I'll be watching it according to its UK airdate in sync with the other shows in my catch-up lineup. _______ The Saint "The Double Take" Originally aired November 3, 1968 (UK); April 25, 1969 (US) The foreseeable twist in this story was only my second guess...that there was no impostor, both versions of Eugene Patroclos (Gregoire Aslan) were actually the same man. (My first guess was that the Patroclos who hired Templar to find his impostor was in fact the impostor.) He was perpetuating the ruse of having an impostor so that he could get away with shipping arms to North Vietnam without damaging his American investments. His scheme involved both versions of himself having a secretary named Annabel--the original, played by Kate O'Mara, and the phony, whom we met first, played by Denise Buckley. _______ I just wish I'd thought of it a couple months sooner--I can follow my development in real time! (Swallowing amniotic fluid and peeing it out...ah, good times.) And this would be the biggest hit version of the song on this side of the pond...the Noel Harrison original from The Thomas Crown Affair not having charted here. It sounds like...one of those other Glen Campbell songs. And this is, alas, the last we'll be hearing from them around here, as it's their last Top 30 single. A major classic...and one that I would have thought was from the '70s, before I delved into the era in detail. Quite a turnaround from "Clambake". They stand out as one of the more enjoyably distinctive sounds of a great era. Now that's odd to me...that it's the Dave Clark Five fairly screams "British Invasion".
When I listen to stuff like "Baba O'Riley" and "Won't Get Fooled Again," even my musically illiterate ears can tell that there's much more going on than in most popular music. In every episode. I hear he has a superior alternative to the TV Fu chop. And to somehow avoid the embalming process for his clients. Nice. And Mother survives the rocket exhaust without a singe. We know that Steed at least returns, since he's back with some new Avengers a few years later. That space flight seems an obvious and interesting epic for someone like Big Finish to tackle. Cool. I like this gimmick. It's too bad they only keep medical records for seven years. Well, they're only required to keep them for seven years. When I was at St. Margaret's, there were records in the basement of St. Mary's Home going back to the 1930s. Everything's gone now, of course, and I really regret not stealing them, but I would have had no place to put them. Hah! See? It's not just me. In this case, I have strong associational memories of Star Trek and Dorchester that tell me it's from the late 60s. They are quite unique. At one point, a record label claimed to own the copyright on their style, if I remember correctly. And then sometimes those associational memories are misleading.
I remember being disappointed when rediscovering the series a couple of decades ago, knowing that this was the series finale. By this point in the series, Macnee and Thorson really gelled, and Thorson's Tara King was no longer the "replacement" for Peel. Its too bad the series did not last another season, but I suppose it was better off ending at that time, considering the public's fading appetite for the spy genre. By 1969, the spy craze was close to dead as a major sub-genre with the one exception being James Bond. The irony of The Avengers ending this year is that its former co-star--Diana Rigg--would make her memorable turn as the ill-fated Tracy di Vincenzo in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, released in December. Bond carried on, but other spy productions had been or were soon to say bye-bye; Dean Martin's Matt Helm spy spoofs produced the fourth and final installment--The Wrecking Crew--that same year. On TV, spies most associated with the craze had left the airwaves in the last few years: The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. was cancelled in 1967, with I Spy, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and The Prisoner all ending in '68, and Get Smart barely limped into its 5th and final season on CBS in the fall of '69. While the spy craze burned bright for a time, most of the productions most associated with it have not aged well at all--some are downright horrible. At least The Avengers did not have that problem, as it has its own voice, one that can be revisited every few years or so. Agreed. Those are not only brilliant songs, but there's not wasted note--every part of those songs (like the rest from Who's Next) all build a musical story that would not work if even one of those members had been absent or replaced. Despite the occasional internal conflicts, this was a band at the near-zenith of artistic achievement.
Yes, I know. But I thought I'd throw down a few declarations like you always do, just for the hell of it. Setting the tone for the 60's and beyond is EXACTLY what the Beatles did. Why do you think great American bands like the Beach Boys broke out of their Surfin' USA rut, and American bands like the Beau Brummels started popping up with thier hair combed down over their foreheads? Yes, there were American bands like the Four Seasons, who still had "hits", but with regard to the charts, NO ONE "ate" before the Beatles. In other words any time the Beatles released new material, it shot straight up the charts without regard for who was in the way. Others artists went up the charts only after the Beatles' songs had had their time at the top. Oh, yeah, there was SO much creativity going on in pop music before the Beatles. Recording artists like Bobby Vee, James Darren, Bobby Rydell, Fabian, Jimmy Dean, and others, dominated the charts before the Beatles, who actually brought American made rockabilly back to America. Most of the aforementioned pre-Beatles artists became practically extinct post Beatles. Even a real innovator like Phil Spector, felt the sting. Wait, you're dragging the musical tastes of Boomers? Dude, you think the Monkees are this great and influential band. Yeah, already acknowledged that soul music held it's own against Beatlemania, and already discussed the Four Seasons and Beach Boys earlier in this post. And let me add, because of their love for soul music, the Beatles actually helped that music along by covering soul songs and thereby introducing that music to a new audience. That the Beatles, on more than one occasion since their debut, held the numbers 1-5 positions on the Billboard Hot 100, is proof positive that the band held the tastes of MOST Americans. That's kinda what the charts meant back then. What with the diversification of access to music, the argument that BB HOT 100 doesn't represent "most" Americans might actually make sense if it was made about a current artist. Yeah, you keep saying this. Doesn't change my belief that the Stones set high standards for themselves on stage and may have felt that they had delivered some performances that fell below their standards. Their live performances now are not good, but back when I saw them live in the mid-60's, they were TIGHT. I also don't think they would have survived as a touring band for 50 years or so, if they really didn't care about their performances.
Nope. But I will let you continue to ignore history, and how there is no Beatles (or what would come in the 60s) without those they so liberally imitated / ripped such as Little Richard and Paul's beloved Buddy Holly, to name only a few. Funny you should mention the Beach Boys, since we all know how the Beatles were so flummoxed by the creative tour de force that was Pet Sounds, like a person seeing a U.F.O. land on their rooftop, that they--in typical fashion--tried to clone it. McCartney on the influence of Pet Sounds: "..it was Pet Sounds that blew me out of the water. First of all, it was Brian's writing. I love the album so much. I've just bought my kids each a copy of it for their education in life---I figure no one is educated musically 'til they've heard that album. I was into the writing and the songs." "Without Pet Sounds, Sgt. Pepper wouldn't have happened... Pepper was an attempt to equal Pet Sounds." "If records had a director within a band, I sort of directed Pepper. And my influence was basically the Pet Sounds album." This is not even touching how before that, they (like Donovan) tried to clone Bob Dylan's sound. Or the sounds of other artists at nearly every stage of the band's existence. . Another of near-endless examples: McCartney admitted how "Helter Skelter" came to life thanks to reading an article (in Melody Maker) about one of The Who's songs lauded as being the "most raucous rock n roll, the dirtiest thing they've ever done" as Paul remembered it, so he set off to try his hand at cloning that: There's a difference between innovation and imitation. You should have stopped there, as its clear you think the Beatles pretty much invented creative, innovative markers in music. Its such a patently false idea (and utterly disrespectful offensive to the creators and true innovators of rock/pop) that it instantly invalidated anything you have or ever will post on the subject, but I will continue to pick apart the rest. They did it to themselves with their tendency to create false idols, particularly in music. Enough with the Beatles fanboy hysteria. Your statement is not only false, but offensive in the extreme, and its similar to what many black artists in early rock said of Pat Boone and the erroneous claims that black music "needed" white artists to popularize their music, when it was already reshaping culture in North America and beyond. No, that's a chart which was never reflective of true American tastes. Ask a Quincy Jones (for one) about the near segregation of charts in the 60s, which did not always recognize the sales / success of black artists to the level they actually reached. Waiting for the evidence that the Rolling Stones of 1968 had these high standards as stage performers, and if that were the case, surely they would have worked to improve before taking to the NME Poll Winners' stage in the spring of that year, or Hyde Park and the U.S. tour of '69, where in each case, they were a mess.
_______ Dragnet 1968 "The Big High" Originally aired November 2, 1967 From there it goes straight to the opening theme; there's no pre-credits announcement of the date, weather, the division they're working in, and the names and the detectives and their captain of the week. A man named Porter (Ed Prentiss) has come to the police to do something about his 22-year-old honor student daughter being on marijuana, out of concern for his two-year-old granddaughter, Robin. They go to the house of the daughter, Jean Shipley (Brenda Scott). The house is in a nice neighborhood and the daughter is well-spoken and mannered, but her arguments in defense of marijuana are pretty much there to set her up as a straw woman for Friday's rebuttal, which basically comes down to the ol' "it leads to harder things". Her husband Paul comes home (Timothy Donnelly, who'll come to sport a mustache and play Chet Kelly on Emergency!), and we go through the same thing with him and Friday. Jean ends their visit with some scripture that has a nice sign o' the times vibe... Interesting thing about this quote...I Googled it for verification, and the first three results are for the Dragnet episode. It turns out that only the first sentence is actually from the Bible! It kind of hurts the show's authenticity that they'd resort to making up quotes from the Good Book! Anyway, in-story Friday has a counter-quote, of course. The detectives talk to Dorothy Miller, who's now working Juvenile Division, but she can't get too worked up over the Shipley case from the way Friday describes it, and shows him why--photos of children whose cases she's working on, who are being abused and live in squalor, unlike the Shipley girl. She nevertheless says that she'll look into it. Two months pass and we finally get a date out of Friday: Thursday, November 12 (1964?). An unnamed officer played by Kent McCord brings in a man for possession of marijuana. Friday questions him and finds out that he got the joints from Jean Shipley, and that she's holding a wild party even as they speak. The detectives rush to the address and, smelling weed from outside, bust down the door. They find a number of adults lying around acting like they're strung out on heroin or something. I'd expect more talking, giggling, and eating at a Mary Jane-fueled party...there isn't even any music playing. The detectives notice the empty playpen in the room and ask Jean where her daughter is. Paul repeats the question, several times, and the intensity builds as the horrifying realization comes over Jean. She rushes into the bathroom to find Robin drowned in an overflowing bathtub. This was exactly the episode I was afraid it was, having seen it many years ago. For me, this is where the show earns its reputation for being totally wrong when it comes to their take on '60s youth culture. I'd like to give them some benefit of the doubt that this was based on an actual incident, but they really seem to be taking the wrong end of the stick of this issue (and they're making up Bible quotes). We do get a nice bit of closing business from Gannon, though... Gannon: Joe, you can handle this for a minute, can't ya? Friday: You all right? Gannon: First time since I've been on the job... Friday: Yeah? Gannon: I think I'm gonna be sick. [Gannon hastily hands a bag of evidence to Friday and rushes out of the room.] Then, of course, they have to hit us over the head again by doing a dramatic closeup of Friday crushing the bag of marijuana in his fist as if it were the root of all evil in the world. Why does the husband stand trial? It was obviously the wife who'd left the girl in the tub. "The Big Ad" Originally aired November 9, 1967 Monday, March 20 (1967!): Friday and Gannon are working the day watch out of Homicide Division when they're sent out to Venice to talk to Steve Deal (Don Dubbins), a youthful ex-con who's turning over a new leaf. He put out an ad in a hippie newspaper that he was willing to do anything for $1,000, and received a postcard in response offering him an opportunity to "make a killing". I'd have taken it figuratively, but he didn't, though he acknowledges the possibility. Capt. Brown's plan is to have Friday play Deal and respond to the offer. Friday sets up a rendezvous with the suspect, with Gannon staking the spot out from afar and a couple of undercover police cars roving nearby. The man who comes to Friday's car (Anthony Eisley) coyly describes the job as stealing a $200 locket from his wife...and leaving no witnesses. When Friday gets it straight from the man that he wants his wife killed, his response is to haggle over the price. They arrange for the time and circumstances of the killing, but the suspect is careful enough that the undercover cars aren't able to tail him. The suspect starts arranging a series of false rendezvouses to test Friday by leaving pages of the phone book with addresses circled on the seat of Deal's car. Once the pattern is established, one of the undercover cars is able to tail him and learns his name, Harvey Forrester, and address. Eventually Forrester leaves a page for his own address. Near the address, Friday meets up with Gannon, who's been staking out the area and reports that Forrester is still in the house--a red flag that he plans to kill Friday once Friday kills his wife. Friday cautiously enters the house, finding Mrs. Forrester lying drunkenly unconscious on the couch as planned. He makes a point of going for the hidden money first, then approaches the couch and hits the back of it a couple of times with his iron pipe. Upon hearing this, Forrester comes out with a gun drawn on Friday. Friday identifies himself as a police officer and tells Forrester that the place is surrounded, and we see the silhouettes of a couple of officers outside a patio door to prove it. Forrester surrenders. _______ But he'll still have to use TV Fu while working with the IMF, because Prime Directive. That too. He's a very fast roller. Alas, it felt very padded to me, like they were stretching out the mystery of the situation while nothing much was really happening, which is why I didn't have a lot to say about it.
By Raymond Chandler. It's an alternate universe. God was a little more long winded there. And marijuana effects people differently. It reminds me of the urban legend that I was told by my Mother as a cautionary tale around that same time, of the woman who was high on marijuana and washed her turkey in the bathtub while her baby was cooking in the oven. That gave me freakin' nightmares. I was wondering that, too. The penalties for hiring a hit man seem pretty light. Damn it. I think he's kind of a high roller.
Probably considered complicit in the crime, since he was the other parent, and both were getting high while the child drowned? Paul Shipley was portrayed by Tim Donnelly--brother of frequent Webb series director Dennis Donnelly. Tim Donnelly is well remembered as Stanley Stover, the nerdy subject of the infamous March 6, 1969 episode, "Burglary (DR-31)" (with Donnelly as the "Captain Lightning" fan who stole comic books, movie posters, stills, etc., to feed his obsession) and later as firefighter Chester "Chet" Kelly (and regular irritant to John Gage) on Emergency! (NBC, 1972 - 1977) --
_______ Dragnet 1968 "The Missing Realtor" Originally aired November 16, 1967 Monday, June 29 (1964?): Friday and Gannon are working the day watch out of Homicide Division when they're sent to investigate the disappearance of the realtor, Lillie Birnam. The first place they go is to her agency, where they talk to the secretary (Ena Hartman) and another realtor, played by Scatman Crothers--with hair! Or is that a piece? They point the detectives in the direction of Lillie's boyfriend, a bartender named Terry Williams (Gene Boland), whom they question. Lillie's car is also found. Checking various listings she's been working on, they find her body in one of them, a vacant house. They revisit Williams at his apartment and, when they find several beads that match those on a broken necklace that Birnam was wearing, they arrest him. Questioning him at the station results in several inconsistencies in his story, but a polygraph test indicates that he's not reacting to the right subjects, and thus isn't a good suspect. That and the Coroner's narrowing down of the time of death result in Williams being let go. Shortly after, the secretary determines that the victim had a number of charge cards that hadn't been found in her purse; and also that a charge for an expensive diamond wrist watch had been made the day after her death. The M.O. enables the detectives to dig up info on a likely suspect, one Carl Keegan, who has a want out on him in Phoenix. Also, they talk to an uncredited William Boyett as his third character on the show, Sgt. Jack Williams of Robbery Division, who relates to them a similar incident involving another real estate agent, who wasn't killed but determined later that her cards had been stolen, after which one of them was used for an expensive purchase. After Friday and Gannon have been on the case for over three weeks, a report they'd circulated in a trade journal turns up a tip from another realtor who's showing a house to a man fitting Keegan's description. They go to the home and confront Keegan (Jeff Burton), and find this realtor's (Juanita Moore) cards already on his person. The uncredited female accomplice kind of came out of nowhere. I guess she must have been the one shopping with the cards or something. "The Big Dog" Originally aired November 23, 1967 Here's another episode with no pre-credits intro of the date, weather, department, and characters. Friday and Gannon are assigned to investigate a dog responsible for seven purse-snatching jobs in two weeks. Victims have given varying descriptions of the animals, including one who insisted it was a wolf. They talk to the latest victim, a hippie flower shop proprietor (Luana Anders) who acts pretty "out there," and then to various other victims...all played up for humor. All the while, the detectives are working on the assumption that there's only one dog involved...I'd think they would have picked up on the multiple dogs angle sooner. In what is perhaps an attempt at lampshading, Friday makes a point by proving that Gannon can't accurately describe his own former dog. On Wednesday, June 9 (1965?), the detectives see a theatrical agent (Phil Arnold) to get a short list of show biz dog trainers capable of training dogs to perform such a task. The agent doesn't think the M.O. makes sense, as a trainer capable of this could make more money in the business. The next day, they go to see another victim (Bonnie Hughes), who snapped a picture with a camera she was holding, showing the purse snatcher as a police dog. The day after that, undercover teams each consisting of two male detectives and one female officer playing a potential victim stake out the area of the crimes, with Dorothy Miller as the bait of Friday and Gannon's team. Another woman at the bus stop they're staking out has her purse snatched by a Lab. Friday and Gannon pursue the station wagon that the dog gets into and, when it's forced to stop by patrol cars blocking its routes, they discover that it has four dogs in it, each of a different breed. We learn that the man responsible is Ingo Burry (Bart Burns), who was in the service; two of his dogs, the shepherd and a Doberman, are Army dogs that he stole before they were fully trained for guard duty. His main concern is the welfare of the dogs, and he explains that he resorted to purse snatching because they cost so much to feed well. Friday and Gannon see that the dogs find good homes...including the Collie being taken in by Gannon, and the Lab by Dorothy. _______ Now that sounds more like an acid thing. If that were the case, then she should have stood trial as well. They were treating him as the primary offender and her more as a victim.
Looks like a piece. Or maybe it's just too weird to see him with hair. So was the murder an accident or something? Seems like his normal gig is just credit card theft. Actually, I was expecting a woman to be the killer when they found out about the purchase, since a woman's name would be on the cards. That's kind of a clever plot. He is the Fagin of Puppydom. I don't think they knew the difference. It's drugs!
_______ Dragnet 1968 "The Pyramid Swindle" Originally aired November 30, 1967 Monday, March 13 (1967): Friday and Gannon, working the day watch out of Frauds Division, Bunco Section, attend a sales seminar being held by Bonnie Bates (Virginia Gregg yet again), the widow of a man known to have been running a pyramid scheme. At the seminar, Friday prevents an elderly woman from plunking down her $200 without blowing his cover by confidentially giving her a false tip about a half-off special the next week. After presenting the evidence of a recording of a similar seminar that they bought there, the detectives get the OK from the City Attorney via their captain to bust Bates. The second half of the episode takes place in court. The lawyer for the defense tries to make it look like Friday and the department statistician don't know what they're talking about because they're not experts in the mathematics of probability, chance, and whatnot. When the defense attorney brings in just such an expert witness to testify that the scheme is theoretically feasible, the prosecuting attorney turns the tables by getting the witness to tell the jury the number of participants it would take for the scheme to work as advertised: 360 million...roughly 160 million more people than the entire population of the United States. "The Phony Police Racket" Originally aired December 7, 1967 Thursday, November 15 (1966?): Friday and Gannon are working the day watch out of--you guessed it--Frauds Division, Bunco Section, when they're sent to talk to an irate tavern keeper (Eddra Gale) who know she's been conned, but thinks it's the police who conned her. The detectives gradually learn from her that the scheme involves selling local small business owners ads in the magazine of a fake police organization called NALE (National Association for Law Enforcement), with the incentive of getting a membership card that supposedly bestows special privileges with the police force. The business proprietor next door (Stuart Nisbet) thinks that the card has been working like a charm for him, because he's been tearing up traffic tickets without consequence (yet), as one of the fake officers told him he could. Another victim whom they talk to is able to provide the detectives with a copy of the NALE magazine, which carries the address of the printer, whom they find has been conned as well, having printed thousands of issues of the magazine that haven't been picked up so that "Sgt." Densmore could obtain the preview copies. Their next break comes from a traffic violator who's been brought to the station for tearing up his ticket in front of...Officer Jim Reed! Yes, it's Kent McCord...Friday calls him Reed, and we get his first name in the end credits, but this clearly presents continuity issues with Adam-12, since he'll be a rookie fresh out of the academy a year later (and here he comes off as an officer who's already been on the job for a while). Anyway, the violator, Mr. Emerson (Don Ross), has a meeting scheduled with Densmore to pay for another ad. Friday and Gannon arrange to be at the meeting, posing as fellow construction men. Friday expresses an interest to Densmore (G.D. Spradlin) in getting one of the cards, and Densmore goes through his sales pitch about NALE being a charity for widows and orphans. When the transaction is complete, Friday and Gannon drop cover and arrest him. He offers to take them to the top man, "Captain" Fremont, for a good word to the judge. Densmore takes them to a run-down house where Fremont (Ben Hammer) is running a room full of hustlers working the phones, all claiming to be the phony captain. The detectives pretend to be interested in working the job, and when Fremont hands them a script, they arrest him. _______ They speculated that the victim must have caught him in the act and he silenced her.