This Egyptian commercial makes its point very clear: don’t fuck with the Panda, buy her cheese!

 
Manhattan cable television in the late 70s/early 80s was a viaduct for some of the wildest shit to ever invade the American airwaves. From porn to rock and roll to goofy infomercials and call-in shows, it was some of the most fun to be had at 2 a.m in the morning in NYC. If you weren’t actually in the clubs, bars and sex pits of Manhattan, you were watching it on cable.

Paul Tschinkel’s Inner Tube may have been low rent, but it was one of the grooviest TV rock shows in the history of the medium. On a zero budget, Paul managed to capture the raw energy of what is arguably the last great era in rock and roll. He filmed seminal performances from musicians like Klaus Nomi, Lydia Lunch, DNA, The Contortions, Johnny Thunders, The Blessed, The Cramps and many many more.

Here’s 12 minutes of great footage of The Cramps at the Mudd Club in 1981. If you were living in Manhattan at the time, you could’ve watched it on the tube.

Lux, Kid Congo, Nick Knox and Ivy.

Warning; this kicks in loud, so adjust your speakers or risk waking up the neighbors.

 
In 1956 hipster humorist Lord Buckley appeared on TV game show You Bet Your Life hosted by Groucho Marx. This was a meeting of two brilliant minds and it’s hard to believe that it actually occurred on network television. But, Buckley was so underground that the viewing audience was clueless as to who he was. While he’s rather low-key on the program, he still manages to slip some of his bebop prose into the mix. The ‘housewife’ Buckley’s teamed up with is a pretty cool broad herself. In contrast to the two contestants, Groucho comes off a bit square.
 
As an added attraction, I’ve included a rare clip of Buckley’s appearance on TV’s Club 7 circa 1949.

 
more Buckley after the jump…

 
In this news clip from the Dallas ABC news affiliate we see the borderline hysterical coverage of The Sex Pistols gig at cowboy dancehall The Longhorn.

I love the marquee with ‘The Sex Pistols’ hovering over Merle Haggard’s name. That would have been one hell of a double bill.

It’s amusing to hear people complain that they had to pay $3.50 to see what was in effect a historic piece of music history. The date was January 10, 1978.

Texas punk band The Nervebreakers opened for The Pistols that night and recently re-united to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their once-in-a-lifetime gig. I’ve included some video footage of them playing in Dallas last year.
 

 
See footage of the Pistols Longhorn show and a recent Dallas performance by The Nervebreakers after the jump…

 
Technology in your face! BAAAAAM!
 
(via Dooby Brain)

 
In 1971 Los Angeles television station KTTV refused to air this 60 second commercial for Captain Beefheart’s album Lick My Decals Off, Baby.

Conceived by Beefheart and directed by Larry Secrest and Jon Fizdali, the ad was considered to be ‘crude and unacceptable” by KTTV management. They also deemed the album obscene and refused to air the spot on that basis as well.

The National Association of Broadcasters banned the ad on their member stations, stating the commercial didn’t fit into their standards, which were to…

[...] enlarge the horizons of the viewer, provide him with wholesome entertainment, afford helpful stimulation, and remind him of the responsibilities which the citizen has towards his society.

Beefheart’s record label, Warner/Reprise, stood by the Captain and declared the spot…

[...] really different, it does everything a commercial is supposed to do. It begins with a cigarette flipping through the air in slow motion several times with Beefheart singing ‘Woe-is-a-me-bop.’ There are long silences, Beefheart finally appears doing his famed Hand and Toe Investment. Rockette Morton, one of the guys in Beefheart’s Magic Band, crosses the screen with a black sack over his head working an egg beater. The Captain kicks over a bowl of white paint in slow motion. It is non sequitur stuff that’s funny, attention getting, and pure Beefheart. It’s unfortunate that the station should be so frightened by it.”

In watching the commercial, one has to think that David Lynch had to have seen it at one point in his early development as a filmmaker. It’s a bold and surreal piece of film making that would have certainly baffled and spooked American audiences of the time. It’s still provocative.
 

 
I first heard the baroque folk group Pentangle’s song Light Flight on the British equivalent to TV Toons, a sprawling 2 CD set of 60s and early 70s television themes with Diana Rigg as Emma Peel on the cover. Because the songs were all so short, there were about 50 per CD, but one song stood out among them and it was the Pentangle track. The other day I stumbled across a clip of the group playing the song in front of a studio audience and I also found a clip of the show Light Flight was the theme for, a series called Take Three Girls, a 1969 BBC drama that followed the lives of three young women living together in a flat in London. It was the first series to be broadcast in color on the BBC. From the looks of things here, this appears to be a swinging 60s antecedent to Sex and the City. I’d really love to see this! It says on Wikipedia that of the 26 episodes all but ten of them are thought lost.

Does anyone out there have a copy? It doesn’t hurt to ask…
 

 
Brooklyn’s Gregory Brothers, who’ve done dozens of these, have done it again, a little remix masterpiece. They’ve auto-tuned a news report into a song that actually holds up as a song. The keyboard ending is a bit lame, but otherwise this is both funny and kind of moving.

After Antoine Dodson, a young hero from Huntsville, AL, saves his sister from an attack, he sings an important message both to his community and to the attacker himself. Evan Gregory then proceeds to play a heartfelt cover of the resulting song.

he’s climbin in your windows
he’s snatchin your people up
tryna rape em so y’all need to
hide your kids, hide your wife
hide your kids, hide your wife
hide your kids, hide your wife
and hide your husband
cuz they’re rapin errbody out here

 
New “eye candy” from Dangerous Minds fave Jason Mecier showing in San Francisco, with work from his partner, Adam J. Ansell, in an exhibit called We Like to Watch TV, opening August 1 and running through September 30.

I just love this portrait of “Dexter” done in licorice!

Celebrity mosaic portrait artist Jason Mecier and longtime partner, painter Adam J. Ansell, have teamed up to create a new body of work inspired by their favorite pastime… watching TV! Expect to see many faces from TV, movies, reality shows, sitcoms, documentaries, music videos and even commercials.

Adam’s edgy, high fashion, expressionistic paintings, ironically capture eccentric television personalities from The Real Housewives, Tabatha’s Salon Takeover, True Blood, and The Wendy Williams Show, to Millionaire Matchmaker, Larry King and many others.

Jason’s new works are striking and delicious, made entirely out of licorice! Thousands of fat free red and black licorice vines have been carefully glued into the likenesses of Mo’Nique, Judge Judy, Dexter, Freddy Krueger, Nomi Malone, Taylor Lautner, and others.

GLAMA - RAMA, 304 Valencia Street, San Francisco 415.861.4526
Opening Reception Sunday August 1, 6-9pm

 
Something deeply silly from Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, which ran on U.S. TV from 1979-1981. Evidently the disco music of 400 years from now will be a sort of fusion of The Residents and Weather Report. I never would have guessed !

 
Thanks Ned Raggett !