Lost '80s Pop Classic Week: "Everybody Dance" Ta Mara & The Seen (1985)

I remember first hearing this song on "C-89" KNHC 89.5 FM Seattle back in 1985 and I could have sworn the lyrics went:

Everybody`s dancing

In the nude across the nation

I'll bet you didn`t know

Which left my teenage male mind in 1985 wondering "Where?!...WHERE??!! FILL ME IN!! WHAT DOES THIS CHICK KNOW THAT THE REST OF US DON'T??"

What a drag when I finally pull up the lyrics online almost 20 years later to find the actual lyrics were:

Everybody`s dancing

With a new determination

I bet you didn`t know

Ta Mara & The Seen came out at a lucky time in rock 'n roll history. When Minneapolis was the Seattle of it's day (just like Seattle in the early '90s, ANYTHING that was big in Minneapolis, preferably connected to Prince in some way, got signed to a record deal in 1984/85. Ta Mara & The Seen were produced by Jesse Johnson of The Time, who also was Prince's band in the movie Purple Rain.)

Nothing was heard from Ta Mara & The Seen again.....But they left behind an instant '80s party classic....

The CBS One Sided Single

In 1983, the generic brand craze had extended into the record business. And CBS Records test marketed a new type of no-frills single in the Seattle area.

They sold for 69¢, in a plain, no-frills stock sleeve. They still played at 45 RPM, but the spindle hole was the same as a standard LP. And there was no B-Side. Just a stamped CBS logo imprint in the vinyl.

 They're extremely rare and VERY collectible today.......

Western Family

Still very much around, but remember the CLASSIC cans?

The History of FM Radio

FM radio was invented in 1933 by Edwin Armstrong. It was developed initially as an experiment to solve the problems that plagued AM radio, such as static and skywave interference that morphed into the creation of an entirely new radio transmitting system.

(Armstrong Tower in Alpine, NJ. Built in 1938, it was the very first radio tower specifically designed for FM radio. Armstrong DELIBERATELY  designed it with room to spare for as many FM stations as possible. It's STILL in use to this day - note all the cell phone antennas! Several FM stations still use it and after 9/11 when the World Trade Center buildings collapsed, all of New York City's TV stations quickly relocated to this trusty old tower.)

But development was stalled by the Depression, then by RCA and NBC chairman David Sarnoff, who was a friend of Armstrong and later bitter rival who felt threatened by Armstrong's fledgling FM radio network. Sarnoff, who's entire NBC network was built on AM radio and it's use of national radio lines provided by AT&T soon realized a network that could be relayed wirelessly in sparkling clean, crystal clear high fidelity at that time and to anyone could singlehandedly DESTROY his entire empire. Many other AM radio networks such as Mutual and CBS felt the same way. So they quickly cut off all ties to Edwin Armstrong and lobbied the FCC to make radical changes to FM radio, namely to stall the inevitable public reaction if FM ever gained a strong enough foothold.

And then World War II. All applications for new radio/TV stations were instantly frozen. After WWII, the FM radio band was moved from 42 to 50 MHz to 88-106 MHz, then it's present 88-108 MHz band about a year later.

The reason for the move up in part, due to Sarnoff and his compadres lobbying efforts, but also because radio signals below 54 MHz were prone to the tropospheric skip effect, which can cause interference on stations hundreds of miles away on the same frequencies (On the 88-108 MHz, it still occurs sometimes, but much less frequently.) But Edwin Armstrong took the decision as a devastating blow. This meant his few listeners and stations would have to upgrade to newer and expensive equipment just a few short years after he unveiled them. Many of the earliest FM stations did not make the upgrade because of the staggering cost it would make the switch to the new FM band for both his stations and the listeners. He committed suicide in 1954.

The 88.1 - 91.9 MHz portion of the FM dial was specifically reserved for non-commercial, educational interests, such as colleges, high schools and community radio groups.

In the '40s to the early '60s, FM was nicknamed "Forgotten Medium" because in part, the band change. Few people were willing to pay so much money for brand new FM radios and as a direct result, so few people were listening to it. In fact, so few were listening to FM in the '40s and '50s, many AM station owners, who also owned many of these fledgling early FM stations, actually returned their original FM licenses to the FCC!

AM was still the dominate radio band and would be until about 1975. But there was a niche audience for FM, mostly classical music fans and High Fidelity buffs.

(The Scott 350 was the world's first FM Stereo receiver. Manufactured in 1961.)

Stereo FM was introduced in 1961 and slowly FM stations began adopting it and FM started gaining a slow, but steady new interest. At the time, most FM stations were still owned by AM broadcasters who often simulcasted their AM programming on their FM stations. The rules were changed in 1966 ending that practice. So these station owners scrambled for alternate programming of some kind. Actually, any kind.

Many went with tape automated Middle Of The Road, classical or instrumental pop radio formats. But others began leasing time to enterprising former AM Top 40 jocks. Who didn't play the traditional Top 40 singles and instead, played longer length album versions of these songs or sometimes full rock albums or non-single cuts from different albums.  They were called free-form rock or underground stations and programmed the stations with a decidedly countercultural lean

(KOL-FM 94.1 Seattle, WA 1970. KOL-FM was Seattle's answer to free-form stations like KSAN in San Fransisco.)

And FM finally had new life.

But through the '70s and most of the early '80s, the dominating FM radio format was called "Beautiful Music" (later called "Easy Listening"). These stations often played "cover" versions of pop songs as rendered by orchestras with lush string arrangements, perky trumpet solos and occasional quiet vocal groups. In any given major US city, it was not uncommon to have as many as FIVE stations on the dial with this format on FM radio.

(WJBR-FM 99.5, Wilmington, DE Early 1970s - The music you hear here is exactly what you would have heard on thousands of these "Beautiful Music" FM radio stations around the country in the 1970s)

The rest were classical, jazz and a few, now more commercialized album rock stations. Country and '50s oldies music on FM was still very rare in most US cities.

But beginning in the late '70s, Top 40, Country and more specialized rock formats, including oldies began crossing over to FM and soon FM became the radio band for music. The Beautiful/Easy stations soon began dying out as their listeners aged and became an undesirable demographic in the eyes of many corporate advertisers. And AM radio concentrated on news and talk programming or oldies.

Today, FM itself is sadly becoming obsolete with the advent of online/mobile web music alternatives catering to an increasingly fragmented music audience and the narrowing of music format options by corporately programmed radio chains that cater to the most musically unsophisticated listener, including a dependence on news/talk programming, once the exclusive realm of AM radio.

Add the increasing numbers of "translator" and repeater stations (most of them from religious radio networks such as K-Love, Air-1 and CSN/Effect Radio, who flagrantly abuse the translator loophole that allows non-commercial stations to use satellite, cable or even web-based feeds to relay their programming to areas FAR beyond their main regional areas - usually across the country in most cases.), often causing interference to independent, locally programmed stations and what you get is a noisy, interference filled radio band

A total reversal of what made FM so attractive in it's early rise in popularity.

Sad.....


 

Remembering J.P. Patches

Today, a part of my childhood died.

Chris Wedes (pronounced WEE-DUSS), better known as JP Patches passed away this morning at the age of 84.

People in Western Washington and Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island areas of British Columbia, Canada grew up watching The JP Patches Show regularly in the '60s and '70s. He was a staple of Seattle's KIRO-TV 7 until 1981 when the station dropped the program in favour of an expanded morning newscast. A move that was LOUDLY protested, but to no avail.

Every weekday morning, JP Patches was watched by thousands. His characters, including (from Wikipedia)  Sturdley the Bookworm, Esmerelda (portrayed by a Raggedy Ann doll), Ketchikan the Animal Man (a sort of Jack Hanna character), Boris S. Wort (the "second meanest man in the world"), LeRoy Frump (a character obviously based on Art Carney's Ed Norton), Tikey Turkey (a rubber chicken), Grandpa Tick Tock (a grandfather clock with an elderly face where the pendulum would be), The Swami of Pastrami, Ggoorrsstt the Friendly Frpl (a one-eyed shag carpet), Miss Smith (a motorcycle riding delivery woman who told mostly awful jokes), Superclown (a JP like superhero), J.P.'s evil counterpart P. J. Scratches, and J.P.'s girlfriend, Gertrude 

They were all portrayed by show producer and sidekick, Bob Newman) and rounded out the show. The shows viewers were Patches Pals.

The show was interspersed with Warner Brothers cartoons between acts. JP Patches was also a favourite for adults. JP Patches' humour was filled with sly double entendre, but it was NEVER filthy.


Every morning, he would read off his viewers birthdays on a segment he called ICU2 TV. 

(This was custom recorded last year for somebody else. But it comes very close to what the original ICU2 TV segment looked like.)

I remember having my name read on my 7th birthday (my mom had sent in a postcard with my name and birthday a month earlier and I'll never forget how he stumbled all over my last name!) He eerily "knew" where a birthday present of mine was hidden (The oven. Great place mom!)

14 years later. I met Chris Wedes personally (out of the JP Patches costume and makeup) and I mentioned it to him. To my surprise, he actually remembered it! "Oh, you're the one with that crazy last name!" he joked. He mentioned that before the ICU2 TV segment that he was figuring out how to pronounce it. "And that's why yours was the very last name I read that morning." And it was!

He then added "Plus it was at the bottom of the list anyway"


I told him to break it down into syllables Wald-Bill-Ig

"And now you finally tell me this!" he replied with a big laugh. "What other secrets have you been hiding from me?"

I could barely keep it together, I was laughing so hard.

In costume and out, Chris Wedes himself was just as funny as his beloved character. He was JP Patches. 

My favourite JP Patches episode was the one on the SUPER chilly morning in 1975 (it was 12 degrees!) when Ggoorrsstt the Friendly Frpl (rhymes with "purple") had a dilemma. He needed fresh frpl fodder from Fife (an area closer to Seattle) for food. But he got the frozen frpl fodder flown in from Ferndale (90 miles to the north). Far from fresh!

They still have it on video.....It was one of his best.

But sadly, KIRO-TV only saved a few episodes on tape (professional video tape at that time was incredibly expensive.) And we never had a home VCR (there were very few home models at that time and they were also incredibly expensive in the '70s.) Barring any lucky finds on YouTube that somebody else may have recorded, the rest of JP Patches shows are sadly forever lost to time. 

But they will forever be in our memories.......

Thank You JP Patches. It's hard to hold back the tears because laughter is your legacy. And sometimes in this crazy world today, I think we need you now more than ever.

Forever a Patches Pal,

Larry Waldbillig