The Classic/Retro Pop Culture Thread

I think it was this song, more than "A White Shade Of Pale", that turned me onto Procol Harum. A few points of interest from the liner notes of the fifty-ish Anniversary CD reissue . . .

Procol Harum's equipment was impounded and dismantled by Canadian authorities looking for drugs/contraband. The equipment didn't arrive until 30 minutes before the day of the concert; meaning a day and a half worth of planned rehearsals with the orchestra had to be scrapped. A quick rehearsal was done before the audience filed into the auditorium. Guitarist's Dave Ball's speaker was damaged by the authorities and a replacement didn't arrive until the actual performance.

The rehearsal and the actual performance were recorded. The album is a combination of both. Not all of the songs played that night made the album. "Luskus Delph", "Shine On Brightly", "Simple Sister" and "Repent Walpurgis" were omitted from the final running order. Only "Repent Walpurgis" is missing from the CD anniversary re-issue; the tapes being too damaged to repair.

"Conquistador" was a last-minute addition to the concert; the decision made on the plane flight up from California, when the band realized they didn't have an up-tempo opening number. Gary Brooker wrote the score for the orchestra on the flight.

The album version is edit piece of the opening banter and a re-recording of the song after the audience went home; the band and producer Chris Thomas feeling that the performance was inadequately captured the first time. The single omits the opening banter.

This is guitarist Dave Ball's only Procol Harum album/tour, having replaced original guitarist Robin Trower. Ball left the band shortly after the conclusion of the tour and the start of the next album "Grand Hotel", finding the rock and roll lifestyle not for him. His replacement, Mick Grahbam, was the guitarist Dave Ball beat for the spot in the audition.

Drummer Barrie James "B.J." Wilson, was Jimmy Page's first choice to replace Jim McCarty as drummer in the Yardbirds (soon to be renamed Led Zeppelin), when Keith Relf and Jim left the Yardbirds to form Renaissance. "B.J." demurred and John "Bonzo" Bonham was chosen instead, on the suggestion of Robert Plant.

"B.J." was nicknamed "Octopus" by Gary Brooker. Unfortunately, there's very little footage of Procol Harum performances, but what there is of it, shows that "B.J." is an absolute beast behind the kit; probably rivaling Keith Moon and Bonham in terms of pounding the skins, but with much more control than those two.

 

Although I liked this song well enough, I always thought this song’s lyrics were hilariously on the nose, “she called you boy instead of your name.” Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers’ “Dows Your Mama Know,” covered the same subject matter in a much more lyrically subtle and melodic way a few years later.

For the most part, the mid-60’s British Invasion nearly missed the inner city entirely. The folk movement missed by an even wider margin with,1-2 exception, like, inexplicably, Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone, and …Along Comes Mary.

The Association played my high school back then. The response to the band’s mostly “unknown” songs like Wendy, was polite, but reserve$. Their final song was “Mary.” The response practically tore, the place down.

I’v often wondered if the band was aware of just how unlikely it was for a white folkish band to have any songs known by those kids, much less loved by them.

 

Oh, yeah. And I've still got them, too, sitting in my storage cave as a gift to future archaeologists.

When, in fact, he is Thor.

This is what happens when Jim Phelps declines a mission.

Ah, Poetry Rock, like the Moody Blues. Great stuff.

I don't think I ever heard this one. Kind of minor.

I love pro-drug songs.

This is a good one.

This one:


I love how the bottle is caught in mid burst.

I think it hit a nerve. There's a reason the church wanted that sort of thing to be illegal.

Looks like I'm going to have to buy the White Album again.

 

I think that the Moody Blues lyrics were a little more accessible than those of Procol Harum. With the Moody Blues you had five singer/songwriters, whereas Keith Reid was the primary lyricist for Procol Harum, while Gary Brooker provided the music. Sort of an Elton John/Bernie Taupin relationship. And Keith Reid's lyrics could be somewhat abstract/inscrutable. It took reading the liner notes to the deluxe editions to figure out what some of the songs were about.

 

Unfortunately, Procol Harum is one of those artists that doesn't get played on classic rock radio much anymore; unless the radio station is doing an 'A to Z' weekend, or 'Top something or other' and 'A Whiter Shade of Pale' gets played towards the end in the 'W's'.

 

Can you imagine all the crap that Nixon sent their way? "Good morning, Mr Phelps. Sorry about this one, Jim. He gets nuttier every day."

I thought there was something wrong with my speakers for a minute.

Very true, but I think they're still in the same category. Or at least they're linked in my head.

 

"Conventional law enforcement has proven to be no match for him."

 

Oddly enough Mission: Impossible 1980, the first of a series of proposed Made-For-TV movies would have opened with Jim Phelps being released from prison after serving a six-year prison sentence for conspiracy, burglary, wiretapping and refusing to testify before a Congressional committee. Phelps is called '. . . the last of the Watergate era', by a reporter who interviews Jim about the IMF.

I'll talk more about the Mission: Impossible Made-For-TV movies that never got the ground once The Old Mixer gets through with the season seven rewatch.

 

I look forward to that. I had no idea they tried to revive MI at that point. Sounds like it would have been good-- at least, kicking off with Phelps in jail and the IMF exposed is a fascinating way to go.

 

Dealing with government restrictions might have become an ongoing theme. Or they may have gone completely off the grid. I wonder if anyone else, including the Voice, went to jail.

What I would have done, though the network probably wouldn't have gone for it, is have Phelps turn down a mission from Nixon-- and then he sets them up on the next one. That's just the sort of thing that the bastard would have done.

 

Alright then - Instead of one long post dealing with the various attempted 'Mission: Impossible' revivals, I'll break it down into a couple of smaller posts over the next couple of days.

Starting with the first attempt at bringing 'Mission' back to the small screen.

In 1978 Paramount executives Arthur Fellows and Terry Keegan approached president of Paramount Television Gary Nardino with the idea of a 'Mission' reunion tv movie, which would have reunited the 'Classic' line-up with new, younger characters and served as a backdoor pilot for a possible new series.

CBS was approached, and agreed to air the movie, with a commitment to a new series, if the rating were good; however, by the time the script was ready, there had been a regime change and CBS passed on the movie.

NBC picked up the option, and the script was retitled "Mission: Impossible 1980".

As previously mentioned, the tv movie would have opened with Phelps being released from prison. Phelps is approached by Control (the book doesn't mention if Robert Johnson, the voice of Control, would have appeared; or another actor would take his place).

Control offers Jim one last mission to clear the IMF name - recover the remains of "Peking Man", stolen from the Smithsonian by Rollin Hand and Cinnamon Carter, sold to a Chinese tycoon and hidden in San Francisco's Chinatown District. Feeling responsible for Rollin and Cinnamon being disavowed years ago, Phelps agrees to take the mission.

Phelps recruits Barney, now a professor, and his protege, an Amerasian woman to the mission, but Willy, now a successful gymnasium entrepreneur and star of his own tv show, "Workin' It Out With Willy" refuses to go. (As an aside, I can't help but think that Willy's tv show sounds like the title of an adult film.)

Once Rollin and Cinnamon are located, it is discovered that they had nothing to do with the theft, and, in fact, it was Control who had Peking Man stolen in an attempt to break down Sino-American relations.

(It appears that the theft of Peking Man is tied to a summit meeting between the President and the Chinese Premier, with the President handing over the remains as a show of good will between the two nations; as it is mentioned in the book that this is what happens at the end of the movie. No bones, no meeting.)

Phelps quickly prepares a counterplot in which Control is "hospitalized" in a "car crash" and supposedly rendered unconscious for a week. Control panics, thinking that a timer set to destroy the Peking Man has gone off, and rushes to retrieve the fossil; which is what Jim intended. Control is arrested, the remains recovered, and Phelps and the IMF are cleared of any past wrongdoing.

Thanks to the substantial amount of money Phelps has hidden away over the years, Jim takes the IMF private, with the ability to pick and choose whichever mission the IMF feels best benefits the people they're helping.

It should be pointed out that the idea of Control being a rogue agent using the IMF for his own nefarious ends was the most often proposed and rejected story idea during the course of the series.

NBC rejected this script and asked for a more traditional "Mission: Impossible" plot.

End Part One

 

Does it say what went wrong for Phelps? I know the Voice threw him under the bus, but does it give the mission details?

The Voice shows up in person? Wow. The exploding model tape player must have been recalled.

Love the idea of Peking Man figuring into the plot. Hate the idea of heroes going rogue.

Was this the same incident that put Jim in the pokey?

I thought the same thing. And now I have that song by The Sweet in my head.

Whew for Rollin and Cinnamon, and WTF for Control. Does it ever reveal what Control's motivations are? Did he go rogue or was he a Bond Villain all along?

Presumably because Control confesses to wrongdoing on that mission too? But why would Control want the IMF out of commission six years ago?

So that "if you choose to accept it" thing was all hogwash? This new format sounds a lot like that show Leverage, if I'm not mistaken-- I never watched it, but a friend of mine did.

I have to agree that was a bad idea. I don't like the idea of heroes going rogue. One of the reasons I never bothered with the first Mission Impossible movie (aside from Tom Cruise) was that they made Phelps the bad guy.

Too bad. There's some good stuff in there. If they had just made Bad Control Guy an imposter, it would have been fine.

 

Unfortunately, no. I'd like to know if Control set the IMF to fail or if they were legitimately caught by the authorities.

Again, the outline doesn't say, but I'm assuming it was. Since we don't have a copy of the script, maybe Phelps took the fall for everyone in an arrangement for leniency for the rest of the IMF.

Personally, I've always assumed that when a character was replaced on the show, that person had been "disavowed" and removed from the team. Since Rollin and Cinnamon vanished between the end of the third and the start of the fourth season, there might have been an unseen mission that resulted in their being "disavowed".

It would bring into question some of the missions that the IMF went on. Were they for Control's own personal gain?

Maybe Control was close to being caught, so he set the IMF up to throw suspicion off of himself?

It really is quite good. It's sort of "Mission: Impossible - Lite", with Timothy Hutton as the Phelps-type. The plots aren't nearly as complex as "Mission", but it's made up for by the cast. Mark Sheppard was a recurring antagonist and Jeri Ryan filled in for a season when Gina Bellman left to give birth to her child.

Yeah, I never made it past the first movie. "Mission: Impossible" isn't about stunts and explosions, it's about "How are the IMF gonna catch the bad guy; and, how are the various plots set in motion at the beginning going to come together in the end to get him?"

 

Part Two - After NBC rejected "M:I '80", Keegan and Fellows approached Harold Livingston to write a new script.

"Mission: Impossible 1981" opens with the IMF having been transformed into what Phelps calls "a ponderous think tank" full of "accountants and attorneys and PhD candidates".

Phelps and Barney have been secretly training a new set of candidates reminiscent of the old team. They are called into action when billionaire D.W. Snow threatens to explode a neutron bomb in an unknown location unless the President accedes to his demands. Jim calls on Willy (again a health magnate), Cinnamon (now a physician) and Rollin (an antique dealer) plus his four young proteges.

En route to Las Vegas, Snow watches an IMF news bulletin of impending international trouble. Snow sees "Vegas" (an IMF movie) blown to bits and is rendered unconscious. Snow awakens "ten months later" in the "ruins" of Las Vegas, to find himself a prisoner of war, bearded and crippled, thanks to a Cinnamon who has implanted a device in his spine which has left him temporarily paralyzed.

The Soviet Union has "invaded" the United States and everything West of the Mississippi and East of the Rockies is under Soviet control. (Shades of 'Red Dawn' and several other Soviet invasion movies of the Cold War era.)

Snow and fellow prisoner Barney escape in an attempt to join a resistance movement outside of Vegas. Along the way they are attacked and captured by Soviet forces led by General Phelps. Barney is "killed" but Snow escapes capture thanks to the resistance. Snow tells the resistance the location of the neutron bomb, so that they might have a weapon with which to defeat the Soviets. The IMF locate the bomb, defuse it, and Snow is arrested.

NBC liked the script, but not the proposed budget; a little over two million dollars. NBC asked for a rewrite to bring the budget down, but once the revised script, now titled "Mission: Impossible 1982" was ready, there had been a regime change at NBC, and the new studio head rejected many of the proposed series commissioned by the previous management, including "Mission".

Paramount then looked to turning "Mission" from a made for tv movie into a full-length feature film.

End Part Two

 

That would explain what Barney and Willy were up to, and it's definitely something he'd do.

Interesting, and probably likely. That's something that never occurred to me.

Makes sense.

My friend was a big fan. She also had a big crush on that cowboy guy who was also in The Librarians.

Very much agreed.

Less interesting than the last opening, and one wonders how it came to be.

I like the idea of Rollin as an antique dealer.

More of a classic IMF scam than the previous one, that's for sure.

There is no Hippocratic Oath on the IMF clock.

Yeah, loved the Reagan years.

Nice.

I'm beginning to think that Control is behind these "regime changes."

I remember this, if vaguely. Roxbury is adjacent to Dorchester, where we lived in those days.

He's not going to win an Oscar or a Tony for this one. Haha.

Unnecessary, but good.

I love this one.

Decent one from Petula.

OMG! How can one human be so talented? Actually, I do like this, if only for the nostalgia.

Charles Laquidara probably would have done it. He had aspirations to be an actor. He actually auditioned for the part of Albert DeSalvo that eventually went to Tony Curtis.

Good thought. It would have been cool to bring Briggs back into it somehow-- and, being a character that the audience is less invested in, has potential for going rogue.

Just a gigolo.

They'd also be constrained by limited resources, but these could be presented as new challenges.

I'm not going to say it isn't, but it's not easy to do well.

Heh. I was thinking about it later and I decided that the movie would have been perfect if it had ended with Control being captured and his rubber, Rollin-style mask being ripped off to reveal-- Richard Nixon! "I am not a villain!"

I forget if I mentioned that Hulu has TCM now-- unfortunately it's in their $80 tier. I'm so torn.