50 Years Ago This Week And The Old Mixer is the size of a 7 lb., 12 oz. baby boy! Selections from Billboard's Hot 100 for the week: Leaving the chart: "Easy to Be Hard," Three Dog Night (13 weeks) "Everybody's Talkin'," Nilsson (12 weeks) "Make Believe," Wind (9 weeks) "This Girl Is a Woman Now," Gary Puckett & The Union Gap (11 weeks) "What's the Use of Breaking Up," Jerry Butler (10 weeks) "When I Die," Motherlode (13 weeks) "You, I," The Rugbys (11 weeks) New on the chart: "Volunteers," Jefferson Airplane (#65 US) "Kozmic Blues," Janis Joplin (#41 US) "A Brand New Me," Dusty Springfield (#24 US; #3 AC) "Heaven Knows," The Grass Roots (#24 US) "Eleanor Rigby," Aretha Franklin (#17 US; #5 R&B) "Someday We'll Be Together," Diana Ross & The Supremes (#1 US the week of Dec. 27, 1969; #12 AC; #1 R&B; #13 UK) And new on the boob tube: The Ed Sullivan Show, Season 22, episode 6, featuring Pearl Bailey, Buck Owens, Lucho Navarro, Petula Clark, David Frye, Trio Rennos, and the Band Mission: Impossible, "Commandante" Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, Season 3, episode 8 That Girl, "Write Is Wrong" Get Smart, "And Baby Makes Four: Part 1" Hogan's Heroes, "Bombsight" Adam-12, "Log 63: Baby" _______ They're definitely moving their sound forward at this point. A middling entry by the Seasons. Not bad but not one of their standouts. No love for this one, huh? It's not one of their stone-cold classics, but it's certainly enjoyable enough. I should take this opportunity to provide an addendum about the Beach Boys song "Wendy," which came up in a recently reviewed Sullivan. While it charted as a single, it was actually the lead track of an EP. As the EP was never a popular format in America, the song managing to get to #44 was a considerably greater achievement than if it had been an actual single release. Definitely a great, distinctive-sounding classic. What, no credit for an oft-referenced historic electoral landslide, or for Mr. Zimmerman's in-the-moment political commentary?
A future historian is born. Congrats and Happy Birthday. Not bad. Good old Janis. Very nice. Kind of catchy, which is the Grass Roots' forte. That's a different kind of "Eleanor Rigby," but pleasant to listen to. Sigh. Well, I wouldn't change the station.... Lost in the quoting! I think the landslide aspect of it was mostly about the assassination. Zimmerman's lyrics, of course, are brilliant and cutting and hilarious, as they almost always are. As for Goldwater, he probably couldn't get arrested today-- he'd be seen as pure evil by either of the dominant ideologies.
Happy birth day (yesterday)! I'm about a month and a half behind you, whatever item of produce that corresponds to.
55th Anniversary Viewing 12 O'Clock High "Pressure Point" Originally aired October 30, 1964 In the teaser, a bomber named April Showers, after the fiancee of one of its crew, April Barrett (Elen Willard), makes a crash landing on the field with its landing gear up as she and the group's meteorologist, Major Rosen (Jason Wingreen), watch. Fortunately April's beau, Sgt. Eddie Pryor (Robert Doyle), survived. Frustrated with recent losses, Savage learns that Generals Crowe and Pritchard will be escorting Senator Clay Johnson of the Appropriations Committee (Larry Gates, who'll go on to play In the Heat of the Night's Endicott) for a visit to Archbury. We learn that Johnson is an old adversary of Savage's going back to when Frank wanted to marry his daughter; and that the senator has a generally unfavorable opinion of using them thar newfangled aeroplanes in warfare. We first meet the senator while he's chatting up Pryor in the base hospital, where Johnson learns from Doc Kaiser that injured men who'd normally be getting leave are being rotated back into duty instead due to a manpower shortage. Savage's subsequent meeting with the senator puts the general under pressure to prove the effectiveness of long-range daylight bombing, but he learns from Rosen that they're due for a streak of bad weather. Savage then gets a visit from the Vicar of Archbury (Brendan Dillon), from whom he learns that April is in the family way and Pryor has been telling her that Savage turned down his request to marry her, though Savage never received such a request. Savage proceeds to give the reluctant prospective groom a talking-to. A window of opportunity opens up on the weather front, but only for some longer-range ports...and for some reason Savage actually doing his job and trying to prove his group's effectiveness is now verboten by Pritchard and Johnson. He nevertheless takes a small formation of bombers that have been upgraded with new guns, which are referred to as "porcupines." The Lily isn't available either because she hasn't been upgraded or is under repair, so Savage takes Cobb's bomber, and winds up getting stuck with Pryor in the crew against his wishes. It turns out that Pryor is a ball turret gunner--In an episode that's already featured a bomber having to crash-land with inoperative gear, you can see where this is going. Sure enough, in a dust-up with German fighters, the gear and the turret mechanism are damaged, so Pryor winds up stuck in the turret. The engines are also damaged, with the last one threatening to fail, so the smart thing for the rest of the crew to do would be to bail over the Channel, but that would mean certain death for Pryor. Instead Savage tries to make it to England while the rest of the crew try to get the landing gear working...but as they approach the coastline their efforts have been unsuccessful with one of the gear, and that's still bad news for Pryor. As the last engine looks ready to give, Savage has the rest of the crew bail, though his wounded co-pilot stays so that the general can go back and work at that last gear himself. Savage manages to get it unstuck, but is uncertain if it's locked in place. They take their chances, and the gear holds. Between the fate of Savage's bomber being initially uncertain, Savage's heroic saving of Pryor, and the formation having suffered no casualties in the mission, the attitudes of both Pritchard and Johnson completely turn around, and the senator does a sudden 180, becoming an advocate of long-range daylight bombing despite his feelings about airpower. The whole adversarial senator angle fell flat for me, as it was handled in a very hamfisted manner. I got tired real fast of the episode constantly cutting back to the senator either at the base or wing command, always making some threat to end Savage's career over whatever Savage happened to be doing at the moment. And it made no damn sense with anything else I've seen to this point in the series that Savage was suddenly getting in trouble for flying missions. Also, the subject of the porcupines was kind of blink-and-miss-it, though it's possible a scene regarding them was cut from the version I watched. _______ Thank you, both! And that's 50 years ago this week...sometime between the 2nd and the 8th. I'll narrow that by one day and volunteer that I'm still in my '40s today.... Pretty groovy...and the album bearing the single's name will be coming up in review business. This one hasn't really grabbed me yet. I read that fans of the time were a bit put off by Janis's turn away from psychedelic rock toward more of a blues/soul sound. Decent, but not finding it memorable yet. This will be Dusty's last Top 40 hit until she teams up with the Pet Shop Boys in 1987.... Not as strong as some of their hits, but enjoyable. It sounds nice, but I have an issue with how she goes first person as Eleanor for the opening verse, which doesn't work with the other, third-person verses that cover Father McKenzie and Eleanor's death. Changing the perspective of a song worked really, really well for her with "Respect," but here it's half-baked at best. A very noteworthy entry, as it's both the last #1 single of the '60s and Diana's swan song with the Supremes. Sounds like you'd be somewhere in the vicinity of the cantaloupe.
I mean, what keeps them up?! That must have been fun to watch. Suddenly he's not so sure about these aeroplane thingies either. Brace yourself. Fans are a cowardly and superstitious lot.
Not one of their stronger songs, musically speaking. Probably my favorite Joplin song, if not tied with "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)," and "Maybe" [LEFT][SIZE=4][COLOR=rgb(20, 20, 20)] [/COLOR][/SIZE][/LEFT] Eh. Both do not meet that level of a distinctive (good) track. Not a favorite from Franklin, and I've never been fond of most Beatles remakes, other than Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66's covers of "With A Little Help From My Friends", "Fool on the Hill" and Earth, Wind and Fire's ever-listenable "Got To Get You Into My Life" from the 1978 soundtrack to the Sgt.Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band movie. Perfect song--another classic of the decade, and certainly one the best of the 60's final year.
_______ 50th Anniversary Viewing _______ The Ed Sullivan Show Season 22, episode 5 Originally aired October 26, 1969 As represented in The Best of the Ed Sullivan Show The band's first number is "Persuasion," one of the vocal-centric original songs that I wasn't very impressed with on the album. The visuals are pretty groovy, though: This segues into "Jingo," which is identified onscreen as "Jingo - Jingo". This is the quite good shadow puppeteer whose routine in what must have been a different installment included doing the profiles of various presidents. Here he's only shown doing some animals. Also in the original episode according to tv.com: _______ Mission: Impossible "Fool's Gold" Originally aired October 26, 1969 Jim's again engaged in some research before he breaks out the portfolio, but he only has to pick out the photo of this week's guest agent, Beth, as the usual suspects are already laid out on the table. In the briefing, Barney demonstrates his indirect means of destroying the counterfeit drona using the same "Destruct" switch that Jim used to detonate his car last week. Horn-Rimmed Baron Jim, the fake envoy from Bahkan--the nation whose economy Is threatened by the counterfeit money--meets with the man behind the scheme, Finance Minister Stravos (Nehemiah Persoff) of the Federated People's Republic, ostensibly to exchange the nation's gold reserves for the cash. Under that pretense he has Paris along as an expert in spotting counterfeits to inspect the currency. Meanwhile Barney's doing his thing in the guise of a maintenance man replacing light bulbs. Beth plays Jim's Baroness, who manufactures an opportunity to share some juicy gossip with Stravos about Paris, including that he's a counterfeiter himself. Paris subsequently approaches Stravos with knowledge that all of the paper money is counterfeit, and of a fake weakness in Stravos's plan...that Bahkan's gold reserve is twice as large as he thought. Paris also offers that Stravos will need a means of blackmailing the seemingly viceless Baron into releasing the additional gold under the table--without the FPR knowing about it, so that Paris can get his cut--and to that end an encounter is arranged at an irreputable nightclub between Swinging Counterfeiter Paris, Baron Jim, who's checking up on him, and the Baroness, whom Baron Jim is shocked--shocked!--to find there with Stravos. Following up on this, Paris later suggests to Stravos that he could film Paris and the Baroness enjoying a liaison. Currency Courier Willy scopes out the combination of the vault using special glasses to see mirrors that Barney installed in the light fixtures, and places a fake dial front over the inside combination dial that will cause the time lock to be set for a time of their choosing. The liaison takes place and Stravos shows the film to the scandalized Baron Jim. Paris offers to bring in a couple of associates to help with the additional counterfeiting. He then goes to the vault at the prearranged time, using the combination to get in and a special headset to survive the ultrasonic waves protecting a corridor in the vault, in order to swap out Stravos's plates; but the headset doesn't fully protect him, and he has difficulty getting out of the vault conscious and unvegitized before its 10-ish-minute power pack goes out entirely...a good jeopardy moment. Back in character, Paris proceeds to bring in his men...Barney and Willy, who else? Barney uses the destruct switch to activate the extending, flame-shooting device that was hidden in a bundle of bills planted in the original counterfeit stash by Paris, which activates the sprinkler above, after the pipes have been rigged by Barney and Willy to have the sprinkler spray something other than water...acid, I presume...reducing the stash to a pile of charred pulp. Stravos learns of this just as Sir Malcolm from the World Monetary Commission (Ronald Long) inspects the new counterfeit stash in front of the FPR Premier (David Opatoshu) and spots the imperfection that was deliberately put in the swapped-in plates and artfully hidden from Stravos in previous inspections. Baron Jim leaves without having to turn over Bahkan's gold reserves, and once they're alone, the Premier implicitly orders Stravos to shoot himself. Mission: Accomplished. _______ Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In Season 3, episode 7 Originally aired October 27, 1969 There's a vaudeville opening, which I couldn't find a clip of. One early skit consists of bloopers of Ruth and Joanne repeatedly flubbing a scripted exchange. A more pointless than usual Uncle Al skit: Not actually announced as a Quickies segment: The news intro song is Halloween themed. The segment includes mention of Tiny Tim getting married (coming on the December 17 episode of The Tonight Show). The Fickle Finger of Fate goes to shipyard employees: Pamela: Goldie, what has six legs and a bra? Goldie: Peter, Paul and Mary. Jack Riley is back as LBJ in a fews bits, including this one: If Sammy Davis Jr. was in the episode, I completely missed him. _______ "The Snow Must Go On" Originally aired October 30, 1969 It seems kind of early in the season for a story about a major blizzard. Ann and Donald are at the airport dropping the Maries off for a vacation flight. Mr. Marie is pretending to be a mortician who's attending a convention in order to get a travel discount, but the Maries' flight is suspended by the weather . When he hears that the airport restaurant is out of food, Mr. Marie tries to hoard by ordering 40 ham sandwiches at the snack bar and putting them in a locker. He later finds that he's lost his key and can't remember the locker number, so he sniffs out the correct locker with the help of an actual undertaker's son. Then Lew gets found out and has to pass around the sandwiches. Ann is able to audition over the phone, but still has to get to a live audition the next day, but the blizzard is threatening to last long enough to put the kibosh on that. The next day Donald tries to cash in a favor by getting Ann a ride back into Manhattan via an ABC news helicopter, but their seats are taken by the mortician and his son, the latter of whom is suffering a "medical emergency" from having eaten a few too many of the sandwiches. When Ann learns that the ABC newsman is interviewing stranded passengers, she gets the zany idea of giving an interview in-character as the tough-talking Mary Thatcher so that the producer, Mr. Howard (John Stephenson) can watch. I got some good laughs out of this. Happy ending: Ann gets the part...and Donald writes up her experience as his story about the blizzard. "Oh, Donald" count: 10 "Oh, Daddy" count: 2 "Oh, Mother" count: 2 "Oh, Mom" count: 1 "Oh, Mr. Howard" count: 1 _______ Ironside "Seeing Is Believing" Originally aired October 30, 1969 The detective investigating the bar fight in which Frankie Baum was seriously injured is Lieutenant Haines (Norman Fell). The composite sketch of the witnesses' descriptions doesn't look so much like Ed that Haines should recognize him right away. Ed had busted Haines once, and he was on a solo fishing trip for the weekend while he was trying to work on a freelance magazine article about the Chief, so he doesn't have much of an alibi. The witnesses pick Ed out in the lineup, then Frankie himself semi-consciously indicates Ed from his hospital bed. Not long after, Frankie dies from his injuries. (The victim who lives just long enough to implicate his assailant has definitely come up before on the show.) The team takes the Ironsidemobile for a road trip to a gas station 70 miles away, which Ed was at close to the time of the beating. The attendant is initially unhelpful and asks for a bribe when he realizes that a cop needs an alibi, but Mark takes him aside for a brother-to-brother talk that changes his attitude. Nevertheless, the attendant honestly can't remember having seen Ed. Upon returning to town, Ed is arrested, and recites his own rights. The rest of the team then go to Frankie's home town for leads, thinking that the killer may be from there. They talk to his mother and a girl whom he was seeing, and find that the latter, Julie, is pregnant with Frankie's child and has a brother, Bobby Joe, who generally matches Ed's description. With their new theory being that Bobby Joe was good-naturedly trying to persuade Frankie to marry Julie and that he's still in Frisco, they lure him to a hospital room by making him think that his sister's been taken there when he calls to check on her. Warren Hammack does bear a vague resemblance to Don Galloway, but it's hardly a striking one. Anyway, the Chief persuades Bobby Joe to do the right thing and he turns himself in. Ed actor Don Galloway co-wrote the episode. The look on the Chief's face when he hears the title of the article that Ed was trying to write--"Robert T. Ironside: Cop and Human Being"--is priceless. _______ Get Smart "Smart Fell on Alabama" Originally aired October 31, 1969 It sounds like the premise may be a spoof of The Dirty Dozen, which I haven't seen yet. The reason Max doesn't get the codebook is because it's taped to the chest of an unconscious KAOS agent named Bohrman, who turns out to be a woman (Diahn Williams). Visually, Colonel Kyle K. Kirby (John Dehner) is more of a straight-up spoof of Col. Sanders than the Slim Pickens character on That Girl was. And I have to think those initials on a Southern aristocrat weren't a coincidence...particularly as they make a joke of how he supposedly still has a slave in his attic, handed down as a family heirloom. Everyone on Max's team--Simmons, a safecracker (Stanley Clements); Murphy, a strongman (Don Megowan); and Farley, a pickpocket (Larry Vincent)--proves their expertise, but Max flubs the training exercises. During the mission, the safecracker has to talk Max through opening the safe after Max steps on his hand. This episode they're setting up that 99 is ready to drop any time...as was my mother when the episode aired...to say nothing of Jean Reed the following night.... _______ Hogan's Heroes "The Kommandant Dies at Dawn" Originally aired October 31, 1969 Hogan gets a message in a cucumber from a vegetable vendor at the camp's gate, and needs to pass the message back out, but Field Marshal Kesselring (Ned Wertimer) is coming for a visit; so the prisoners plan to smuggle it out via Klink when he goes into town for an event with the marshal. For this they need to switch his belt with one that has the message planted in it (not sure why they couldn't just plant it if they could switch the entire belt), so Newkirk removes Schultz's belt literally right under his nose to swap it for Klink's. But at a Stalag 13 reception for the field marshal, Klink tries to impress a fraulein (Inger Stratton) with knowledge of the weaknesses of Luftwaffe planes, which Hogan had just been telling him. Fraulein Ziegler turns out to be a Gestapo agent, and immediately reports Klink to her superior, Major Feldkamp (Ben Wright)...so the kommandant finds himself in the cooler. Hogan is visiting Klink to try to get the belt back when Schultz comes in to announce Klink's pending execution, and reports that every man in the camp volunteered for the firing squad...including two deserters who came back just for the occasion. Schultz tries to hatch a plan to help Klink escape to Switzerland with the prisoners' help; Hogan suggests some modifications but otherwise humors him, having a plan of his own to piggyback off of it. When "Laurel and Hardy," as Hogan aptly refers to the German duo, carry out the plan in their bumbling way, the prisoners help them to get the field marshal's car going with a push, causing it to roll away into an obstacle, which detonates a bomb they've planted in the car. Hogan sells it up to Kesselring and Feldkamp as a heroic attempt by Klink to save the field marshal's life, and all charges are dropped. Thus Klink is free to go into town with the message-carrying belt after all. DIS-missed! _______ Adam-12 "Log 103: A Sound Like Thunder" Originally aired November 1, 1969 In the opening Reed and Malloy are bringing an elderly gentleman who's lost his way (Ralph Moody) into Central Receiving Hospital, where Malloy's girlfriend of the week, Sally Fisher (Barbara Baldavin), works as a nurse. Once they hit the ghost town of Silver Lode, the officers are in their civvies for the rest of the episode. This is Mikki Jamison's first of three appearances as Jean Reed. The character pops up again toward the end of the series, played by a different actress of a different type. I prefer original Jean...she was really cute, though her acting was unconvincing. When they hear the bikers riding in, the foursome take refuge in the saloon. But they have to leave their car in plain sight, and their precautions soon prove to be warranted from the attention that the armed bikers give it. The outlaws are also able to deduce a few things from what they find in the car--that there's at least one woman, as they find her sweater, and that the men are off-duty fuzz, from a pair of handcuffs. (Not the only possibility, but I guess that was 1969's TV-friendly option.) Pete and Jim have their guns on them, so while the ladies hide behind the bar, they surround the door and capture a biker who rides into the saloon. Tension mounts as Bach (clearly written on his bike but pronounced "Batch," played by future Bond baddie Bruce Glover) makes threats, then there's a shootout with a biker who tries to sneak up on the place on foot, and gets one in the leg for his trouble. After that, another two wave flags and ask for a truce, but when they get in the saloon, one of them tries to sucker punch Malloy, and they get taken down--all while Sally holds Bach's luger on him. Then the rest of the group bugs out, and at Jean's behest, Reed rides out to get help on Bach's bike. When we come back from what had originally been a commercial break, Jean is being taken out on a stretcher, though the doctor says that she could drop in an hour or a week. I'm gonna go out on a limb and bet on a week. _______ Thanks for the cheery regards! Let us never speak of this here.
Promoting the title song to her film The Sterile Cuckoo, which was released just four days earlier. Of course, The Sandpipers would record some of the film versions, along with the single that became a big hit on the Easy Listening charts (and quickly thereafter, the oldies charts), but has been a regular addition to numerous compilation albums and CDs for decades. Just a few weeks into the fifth and final season of I Dream of Jeannie. Ahh! You feel that way about the movie! Interesting!
I remember that guy. He was pretty amazing. Those episodes were really chock full. It's too bad they are not all available in their entirety. That's a clever gimmick. They neglected to account for those Vulcan ears. This show can be a little harsh. It's possible, especially in those days. My Brother got married on Halloween in the middle of a big blizzard. Which is when we find out that the so-called morticians are really a cult of cannibalistic ghouls. That's a good one. That's about one every 90 seconds. It's always weird seeing Norman Fell in a dramatic role. Bobby Joe's middle name is Shinzon. No shootouts or mortal combat? Nice. That wouldn't have stopped Bond, James Bond. Wow. Kind of a Baby Boom that year. Aww, good old Schultz. It seems like I've just seen this title recently. I seem to remember seeing this one not too long ago. I'm already girding my loins for the big 6-0 and that's still about 18 months away.
Not their Model 14 duty pieces, though. Apparently Pete and Jim have invested in snub .38's for off-duty. Understandable when the issue sidearm has a 6-inch barrel.
Honestly I've never watched it, though my sister had the soundtrack album. It just looks pretty godawful. I shoulda thought of that! OTOH, let's talk about the '70s Sgt. Pepper movie.... That year? That week! Maybe in last week's 50 Years Ago This Week post? You're not gonna start going into great details about your retirement plan, are you? When the ex does that I want to hang myself. Alright, now you're just showin' off!
I knew it was pretty recent. Oddly enough, I was just working on that this past weekend. All I'll say is that I'll be able to access my money in eleven months, three weeks, and two days.
Well I really liked that show when I was a kid. Wait till they get the Safety Speed clamshell holsters.
55th Anniversary Album Spotlight Another Side of Bob Dylan Bob Dylan Released August 8, 1964 Chart debut: September 19, 1964 Chart peak: #43, December 5, 1964 I, for one, was happy to read that this one deviated from Dylan's humorless previous album. And I found that it contained several songs that I was already familiar with from covers done by other artists (mainly the Byrds). Alas, I was disappointed to find that only two of its songs are available on Dylan's Vevo. Because of this, I'm taking the unusual step of also including some of the covers. The album opens on a very non-serious note with "All I Really Want to Do," which Bob performs in an exaggerated country style, complete with yodeling, and punctuated with both harmonica and outbreaks of laughter. The more commercially successful cover of the song was an early single by Cher (charted July 3, 1965; #15 US; #9 UK), which stays relatively close to Dylan's original but with a straight face. My preference is the Byrds' version, which rocks it up in their genre-fusing 12-string style: (also charted July 3, 1965; #40 US; #4 UK) Following the awkward intro that is Dylan's original, the saloon-style piano-driven "Black Crow Blues" is a nice change of pace. Next is "Spanish Harlem Incident," which evocatively describes a gypsy girl with whom the narrator has become infatuated. Dylan's acoustic original is nice and better conveys the song's imagery, but this is another that I was primarily familiar with from the Byrds' version: "Chimes of Freedom" is a little more in the vein of Bob's previous work, reminding me of the likes of "The Times They Are a-Changin'" and "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall". Once again I think I get more out of the song's poetic imagery from Dylan's original, but I was originally familiar with... "I Shall Be Free No. 10" is a sequel to "I Shall Be Free," which closed Bob's breakout 1963 album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Like the original, it's a fun, rambling story song. This version references Cassius Clay, the Space Race, Barry Goldwater, Cuba, and "somethin' that I learned over in England". Alas, no YouTube clip. Side one closes with "To Ramona," which Wiki describes as a "folk waltz". Wiki also claims that it alludes to Dylan's relationship with Joan Baez. Side two opens with "Motorpsycho Nitemare," a humorous story song that riffs on farmer's daughter jokes while heavily alluding to the film Psycho. The gist of the story is that the narrator wants an excuse to get away from the farm before succumbing to the temptation of the very forward daughter, so he incites the farmer to chase him away by yelling something pro-Castro. One might also interpret it more literally as the narrator thinking the daughter plans to kill him, but that's not how I was reading it. Either way, the punchline has the narrator crediting freedom of speech for saving his life. This woulda been a good one to have an audio clip of, Bob Dylan Vevo…. Next is the Dylan original of another very familiar song, "My Back Pages," a showcase of Dylan's lyrical deftness: This song is commonly interpreted as a musical declaration of what Bob was doing with this album in general, turning his back on the folk protest scene. And as I'm sure everyone knows, this one was also covered by the Byrds (charted Apr. 1, 1967; #30 US). (Or if you didn't know that, you're probably in the wrong thread.) "I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)" is a perfectly decent listen in its own right, but suffers a bit following a heavyweight like the above track. It expresses the narrator's bewilderment when a woman whom he just spent the night with subsequently denies knowing him. The longest song on the album at over eight minutes (though "Chimes of Freedom" noteworthily clocks in at over seven), "Ballad in Plain D" lamentfully relates the circumstances of Dylan's breakup with Suze Rotolo. Critics reportedly felt that this was perhaps an example of Bob getting too self-indulgently personal, and he later seemed to agree with them... The album closes on a higher note, the source of a cover that made the Top 10, "It Ain't Me Babe": In this case, the cover in question was The Turtles' debut hit (charted Aug. 7, 1965; #8 US). Prior to that Johnny Cash had scored some chart success with his version (charted Oct. 31, 1964; #58 US; #4 Country; #28 UK). This song may also have been inspired by Rotolo, but in this case Dylan clearly strikes a more universal chord. So we kinda got a preview of folk rock there...the Byrds's debut album, Mr. Tambourine Man, in particular, which will be coming up as album spotlight business in its own good time. As for the Dylan album that we're currently covering...a good listen in general, preferable to its predecessor, and hinting at what's to come with Dylan's much-vaunted rock trilogy.... Next up: 50th Anniversary Album Spotlight--Abbey Road, The Beatles _______ An odd bit of 50th anniversary business...in its last issue with a '60s cover date (#71), The Avengers gives us a preview of a series that will be coming in the mid-'70s: Roy Thomas and Sal Buscema were on a roll.
What good is changing the world if you don't enjoy it? I was familiar with Cher's version first, so I was surprised to find that the original was a parody. It's a great song. This is some beautiful poetry. Another great anthem. Indeed, because I'm not familiar with it at all. The refrain indicates that he's come to the point where he knows the difference between acting grown up and being grown up. In more general terms, it's about the difference between being right and being self-righteous. And if he felt that way about the protest scene of the 60s, I can imagine how he feels about the SJW scene of the 21st century. Maybe she was upset about him leaving the protest scene. Also Peter, Paul and Mary. This is another great song. Roy Thomas's contributions to Marvel can't be underestimated. What Stan created, he grew and cultivated. It was a huge blow to the Bullpen when he left and they were lucky to have recovered somewhat in the 80s (thanks to Jim Shooter, of all people). But they never really had anyone who was a worthy successor to Roy, like he was a worthy successor to Stan.
_______ 50th Anniversary Viewing (Part 1) _______ The Ed Sullivan Show Season 22, episode 6 Originally aired November 2, 1969 As represented in The Best of the Ed Sullivan Show With Best of obviously cutting in mid-performance, Pearl has Ed, who's already next to her onstage, sing along for a bit to "You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You," following which she punctuates her performance with spoken comments, including a few early ones at Ed's expense. ("They'll be talkin' about you tomorrow!") The current single by the co-host of Hee Haw (which I've verified started in the summer of '69, hence the barbs at it in Laugh-In's new season), which topped the US and Canadian country charts, is a decent-sounding uptempo number, though a bit out of my wheelhouse. Here's the single version. The comedian's routine involves describing an Indy 500 race while providing all of the sound effects, which are quite good. There's a really crappy video of this on YouTube that somebody shot off their TV screen. Yes, Petula's still with us, though her singles aren't cracking the Top 40 at this point. She's singing a cover of the 1967 Beatles song "The Fool On The Hill," which will appear on her upcoming album, Just Pet. It starts as a pretty good rendition adapted to her vocal style, despite its trad pop backing, but gets a little too OTT in its refrain, including a cringey attempt at sounding psychedelic: One of the other songs she was there to sing, "No One Better Than You," was her current single (charts Nov. 29, 1969; #93 US; #18 AC). Pearl solo-performs a lower-tempo Bacharach/David composition, "Whoever You Are, I Love You," which she identifies as being from Promises, Promises, Dionne Warwick's late-1968 album. Frye's impressions includes David Susskind, host of a show called Open End, interviewing Nelson Rockefeller and Richard Nixon. And the only video available was from the same guy's TV screen. The comedic portion shown is done while the smallest member of the trio balances on two poles held by the others on their shoulders, then he does multiple backflips from a narrow board that looks like one of the poles from its side. The only video for this one is from a different user's TV screen. The group gives us a solid, studio-quality live performance of their new single "Up on Cripple Creek"...and here we go, a watchable video! The Best of edit didn't include the Band going over to shake hands with Ed and being introduced individually by him. Also in the original episode according to tv.com: _______ Mission: Impossible "Commandante" Originally aired November 2, 1969 This week we go straight from the tape to the briefing...there's no female guest agent. Jim has a meeting with outside revolutionary leader Commandante Acero (Lawrence Dane) on behalf of the Friends of Religion Society, a group that Acero believes to be a front for American intelligence, which plays into his scheme to discredit local revolution head Father Dominguin (Arthur Batanides) as a puppet of the Americans in the eyes of his followers before they execute him. To that end he wants Jim to provide them with guns in exchange for Dominguin's freedom, which Willy delivers. His real contraband, though, are Barney and the parts for a helicopter that Barney assembles out in the desert like a dad on Christmas Eve. Meanwhile Paris pays the Commandante a visit as Major Shen of the Far Eastern People's Republic, who installed Acero to take over the local revolution...so yeah, Nimoy in pretty unconvincing yellowface. And if not for the name and the attempt at making him look Asian, I'd have no idea what accent he was going for. Anyway, his role in the mission is to play Acero and local revolutionary Major Martillo (Sid Haig) against one another, fueling an existing rivalry between them. (That sort of situation seems to have become a formula element in these schemes.) To that end Fake Shen expresses more confidence in Martillo, who just wants to have Dominguin executed regardless of the potential for uprising. Acero's men find Barney building the copter, which they assume is for Dominguin's escape, and arrange a distraction so that one of them can attempt to sabotage it. Acero now plans to make a show of letting Dominguin go while secretly planting evidence of his involvement with American intelligence in the wreckage of the copter, so that Dominguin dies in what appears to be an accident and is still discredited. The copter crashes as planned after Acero watches Jim and Dominguin board it, but his men find no bodies in the wreckage. Fake Shen accompanies Acero and Martillo back to the site, where he "finds" the concealed hole where Jim and Dominguin hid and controlled the copter remotely. Between their escape and Paris covertly detonating the explosives-laden ammo that the Friends of Religion provided, Fake Shen disavows Acero, after which Martillo promptly shoots Acero in the back, only to find that he doesn't have the support of the men under him, who feel that Dominguin should lead them now. Mission: Accomplished. _______ Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In Season 3, episode 8 Originally aired November 3, 1969 Still no Sammy Davis Jr., whoever's writing those Wiki guest lists. This one has an opening cocktail party. Everyone's wearing what look like brightly-colored patterned pajamas. There's another cocktail party in the middle. The news intro is superhero themed, with Buddy Hackett in costume. They've brought back some of the overt Tonight Show spoofery in Dick's segment the past couple of episodes. This week's Robot Theater skit: Mod, Mod World takes a look at the world around us: Bull Wright on foreign influence: Uncle Al with a taffy pull. _______ I don't know if I'd describe it as a parody, but Dylan definitely seemed to be performing it in a tongue-in-cheek manner. Could be... I discovered today that I've lost my This TV channel. Whether it's an affiliate change or cable company change, it's now Court TV.
Pryor should've considered cable (HBO) and had his specials/show there, but he didn't, because he felt he needed a wider audience, so he had to be on a network. Of course, we know how that turned out.... ''One week of truth on TV could just straighten out everything. One hundred and twenty-seven million people watch television every night; that's why they use it to sell stuff. They've misused it a long time so now it's just a business, that's all. They're not going to write shows about how to revolutionize America. The top-rated shows are for retarded people." The Richard Pryor Show, by Billy Ingram Exactly, which is why it's lasted this long up to now. There are a bunch of deluded morons on YouTube who love this classic '70's Canadian sketch comedy show to bits and think that it's better than SNL because it satirizes TV. But it isn't, even though I love said show a lot; I understand that nothing beats SNL. You might not be so supportive of Wenner and his antipathy towards the Monkees if you read this list of Rolling Stone's worst reviews.
Ah, thank you. Of course, nobody I encountered in those days would have had anything close to a 1968 model car. Ed's a good sport. Indeed. We have a real problem with video piracy: Incompetent pirates! "I'd like to introduce The Band. This is The Singer, The Guitarist, The Drummer...." Hopefully better than that. Lives are at stake! Well, if they have different languages in that universe, they probably have different accents. Too bad he didn't have Facebook. Soon. You have to say his name three times. Hey, it's the 60s. Either way, it didn't suit the lyrics. I don't like to criticize Bob, but.... Uh oh, I better check mine. I think This is the one that shows Sea Hunt. Or is that Cozi?[/QUOTE]