History's Dumpster = GLORIOUS trash! Kitsch, music, fashion, food, history, ephemera, and other memorable and forgotten, famous and infamous pop culture junk and oddities of yesterday and today. Saved from the landfill of time...
There are some records you just can't make up even if you tried.
Whoever thought combining an aging Broadway singer like a then 71 year old Ethel Merman, who's star had largely faded by this time and disco music would be a smashing crossover success probably has been court-ordered to stay away from recording studios for life.
Her last big hit up until then was 20 years earlier and she was mostly
doing variety and talk show TV appearances by the late '70s.
12" inch Ethel Merman single from the album.
The vocals are definitely vintage Ethel Merman. But the disco arrangements and instrumentation are by-numbers and nowhere do Merman's vocals and the disco interpretation of the music gel in any way. At all. Donna Summer's crown as Queen of Disco was secure.
But not for long, as the disco backlash was well underway at the time of this album's release. And to the cut-out budget bins this record went.
"Milk",
starring Sean Penn and Josh Brolin is about San Fransisco City
Supervisor Harvey Milk, an openly gay businessman who had gotten sick of
not only watching other gay people being harassed and bullied by a
stiff city establishment but other minorities such as African Americans,
the poor, elderly and people with disabilities being used as scapegoats
and the first to suffer in any major city decision of that time. He not
only stood up for the underdog, but he championed them. He put PEOPLE
first - something a lot of politicians only pay lip service to. Milk
actually did something about.
Milk transcends
being a mere gay bio-film. While Milk's sexuality is never too far off,
the real gist of the movie is how he gave the system a major wake up
call and how he paid the ultimate price for standing up for what he
believed in. From his beginnings as a flamboyant camera store owner in the Castro
district of San Fransisco to the political battles he fought against the
city and self-righteous anti-gay crusaders such as Anita Bryant to
finally being elected city supervisor of San Fransisco and the turmoil
that followed, especially from his biggest opponent, Dan White who assassinated Milk and San Fransisco Mayor George Moscone.
The
story of Harvey Milk is a fascinating one for me, having read The Mayor
Of Castro Street by Randy Shilts several years ago.
HIGHLY recommended reading!
I always loved his
appeal to the social outcasts and how he worked to level the playing
field for all people. We sure as hell could use a guy like him today.
One
could only wonder what could have been had he not been assassinated. He
most likely would have ended up mayor of San Fransisco and would
probably have made it to Washington DC by now. I'd take Harvey Milk anyday over Diane Feinstein.
Harvey Milk never
got the recognition he truly deserves for not only breaking down a LOT
of doors and glass ceilings for gays and lesbians, but for inspiring all
of us that the underdog can lose many battles, but still win the war in
The Good Fight. The people know a true hero when they see one.
Someone asked me a question the other day "Who is Cristy Lane?"
Well, damn good question really. It seems like the only place people ever know her from is her TV ads. And one might even compare her to a vanity act like Dora Hall. But even though that wouldn't be totally accurate, there's no denying the ubiquitous TV direct marketing campaigns she's had over the last few decades.
But a primer.....
Cristy Lane was a country singer from the '70s. And while she's considered a one hit wonder, peaking with her only #1 in 1980 with a cover of a song called "One Day At A Time", she actually had a few other lesser country hits.
But then she began marketing her gospel music side on TV. And that seemed to be where the money was, as she only had 11 studio albums and 26 compilation albums.
Most of which were sold on these TV ads. All of them featuring "One Day At A Time", either her original recording or a re-recording
But here's another fact, the original version of that song is by Marilyn Sellars, who made it famous in 1974 (the song was actually written by Kris Kristofferson.)
Most people assume Cristy Lane made the original version. But after Cristy Lane had her #1 with it with her relentless TV promotions of that song, that's probably to be expected.
It's not the only song she's covered and promoted to the point of confusion. She covered ABBA's "I Have A Dream", retitled "I Believe In Angels".
She owns a theater in Branson, Missouri and continues to perform today.
In the early days of cable TV, there weren't many channels. In fact, they were mostly your local over the air TV stations (with a few from the hinterlands, or over the border if you lived near Canada or Mexico.) The places where cable TV at that time was most frequently used were in areas too distant from cities with TV stations, where signals were too snowy and ghosty to watch - if they could be received at all.
That changed in the early '70s with the introduction of HBO and Showtime premium movie channels. By the late '70s cable began adding "super stations", over the air TV stations that offered their programming to nationwide cable (WTBS Atlanta - now known as simply TBS - the original Atlanta TV station was sold in the mid '80s. And WGN-TV Chicago and a few short-lived channels.)
The lineup was vastly expanded by 1980. And along the way, there were countless startup channels that grew and morphed into household names we know today: Lifetime, Fuse, MSNBC, Bloomberg, ABC Family and so on.
And now, let's take a look at the cable TV grid of yesteryear.......
- Cable Health Network (1982): Featured mostly medical and health related programming with some programming aimed towards women. Became Lifetime in 1984.
- SPN (Satellite Program Network, 1980-1988): Really low budget affair, ran mostly old public domain films from the '30s and '40s, some foreign programming and low budget, often politically biased programming. changed it's name to Tempo before being bought by NBC and relaunched as CNBC.
- The Video Music Channel (early '80s): One of the few pre-MTV video music channels and seen on selected cable TV systems as well. The VMC, like WTBS and CNN was based in Atlanta (but unrelated.) And it was one of a few major market over the air UHF TV stations that ran all music videos (others were in Boston and New York.) It's been said the original plan for Seattle's KTZZ-TV (now KZJO-TV) was to run primarily music videos, but the idea was scuttled after Viacom threatened to not carry the station on it's vast Seattle area cable system, lest it harm it's precious MTV.
- The Nashville Network: Cable TV's first video music channel aimed primarily at country music fans. The Nashville Network had some modest success, but later expanded into programming for men, adding wrestling, action movies and other fare and briefly rebranded as The National Network before becoming Spike TV. The Nashville Network however has been relaunched in 2012 as an over the air DTV sub-channel network.
- The CBN Family Channel: Launched by evangelist Pat Robertson as a "family friendly" TV channel Initially all religious, it moved towards mainstream classic TV with sitcoms and westerns from the '50s. It was eventually sold to Fox and later Disney/ABC. But as a precondition, the network MUST to this day carry Robertson's own show, The 700 Club. Why? Because Pat Robertson owns the word "Family" (as trademarked/marketed as a TV network.)
- FNN (Financial News Network) An early business news channel. A pretty interesting one I must say - you never saw Frank Zappa hosting a show on CNBC did you?
- Alpha Repertory Television Service (ARTS): One of the first highbrow fine arts cable TV channels (along with Bravo and The Entertainment Channel.)
One of the early predictions of the expanding cable TV boom of the early '80s was these channels would be so successful, there would be no need for government-funded PBS (which the Reagan administration and all Republicans afterward absolutely HATED.)
Unfortunately, advertisers for these channels were hard to come by. Commercial advertisers were never big on classical music, opera, ballet and the fine arts to begin with and most finicky arts-oriented viewers resented the whole idea. Period. ARTS merged with The Entertainment Channel to form - what else, Arts & Entertainment or simply, A&E.
Originally, ARTS aired on Nickelodeon's channel after Nick signed off. After A&E was formed, the evening hours formerly used by ARTS became Nick at Nite, originally running rerun sitcoms from the '60s and '70s.
- Kaleidoscope: A channel for those with disabilities. Looked like a great idea, but disabilities are far too wide ranging for one channel to specialize in.
- MuchMusic USA: MuchMusic (or simply Much) is a Canadian video music channel that stepped into the American market. with limited success. It rebranded as fuse in 2003 and has for the most part replaced MTV as the primary TV source of music videos, which the original MTV ended in the early 2000s to focus on solely on teen oriented "reality" shows.
- Fine Living Network: A network targeted to upscale viewers. It was replaced by The Cooking Channel.
- The International Channel: Became AZN, targeting Asian Americans. AZN folded in 2008.
- Trio: An unusual cable network. A joint venture of the CBC (yep, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) and NBC, this channel specialized in American TV shows that were largely forgotten or unseen in most of America and Canadian and UK TV programs such as The Littlest Hobo, Follyfoot and Coronation Street and then-current Australian programs such as The Blue Heelers. It also showed the infamous American Pink Lady & Jeff show for the first time in nearly 25 years in 2002.
This is likely to be the first in a series. So many cable TV channels have come and gone, it's hard to name them all.
There's fewer sights sadder than an abandoned theater.
Buildings that were once the source of so much joy for so many people
only to be forgotten to time and ignorance. And depending on building condition could be restored and used
again to showcase so much new and exciting talent to new generations.
It's a shame what happens when we ignore
and take for granted a beautiful old building....
