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Tuesday, June 05, 2012

June 5, 1964


It is time for another trip back through time with the Tuesday Timeline, the first edition for June 2012.  This week, we’re going to be going back to the 1960s, when the career of a well known singer first began.

Of course, before we do that, we always take a look back at some of the other events that took place on this date.

So, on June 5, the following events happened.

70 A.D. – Titus and his Roman legions breach the middle wall of Jerusalem in the Siege of Jerusalem

1817 – The first Great Lakes steamer, the Frontenac, is launched

1837 – The Republic of Texas incorporates the city of Houston

1849 – Denmark becomes a constitutional monarchy

1851 – Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” begins a ten-month run in abolitionist newspaper “National Era”

1883 – The first regularly scheduled Orient Express departs Paris, France

1888 – Rio de la Plata earthquake occurs

1915 – Denmark amends constitution to allow women’s suffrage

1942 – United States declares war on Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary during World War II

1946 – La Salle Hotel fire in Chicago kills 61 people

1956 – Elvis Presley debuts “Hound Dog” on The Milton Berle Show, mesmerizing the audience with his controversial hip movements

1963 – British Secretary of State John Profumo resigns following a sex scandal

1968 – Robert F. Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles by Sirhan Sirhan, dies one day later

1976 – Teton Dam collapses

1981 – The first cases of AIDS are reported in Los Angeles, California

1993 – Country singer Conway Twitty passes away at the age of 59

1998 – General Motors strike begins in Flint, Michigan, lasting seven weeks

2001 – Tropical Storm Allison hits Texas and causes $5.5 billion in damage, the costliest tropical storm in American history

2004 – Former U.S. President Ronald Reagan succumbs to complications from Alzheimer’s Disease, at the age of 93

That’s quite a lot of history on this particular date, wouldn’t you say?

Now let’s take a look at some celebrity birthdays for June 5th.  Matthew Lesko, Colm Wilkinson, Freddie Stone (Sly & The Family Stone), J.J. Bittenbinder, Suze Orman, Jill Biden, Richard Butler (Psychadelic Furs), Kenny G, Jeff Garlin, Rick Riordan, Brian McKnight, Mark Wahlberg, Chad Allen, Pete Wentz (Fallout Boy), and Sebastien Lefebvre (Simple Plan).

So, what date are we flashing back in time to this week?


June 5, 1964, that’s what.

As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, this week’s subject got his start in the music industry on this date.  This was the date that his first single was released in the United Kingdom.  Of course, he didn’t achieve this accomplishment alone.  He had help from the band that he was a part of, The King Bees.  And back in those days, he went under his given birth name.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet today’s blog subject.  Davie Jones!


Um...no, not that Davy Jones.  I already did an entry on him a few months ago, just after his February 29 passing.  I mean this guy.


Yes, today we’re going to do a spotlight on how this Davie Jones launched his way into stardom, though you probably know him better under the name of David Bowie.  And, yes, we’ll discuss how he ended up changing his name as we go ahead with this entry.

David Robert Jones was born on January 8, 1947 in Brixton, London, England.  He was the son of a movie usherette mother and a promotions officer father, and the family lived in a house near the border of Brixton and Stockwell.  It was said by a neighbour of the Jones family at the time that growing up in London during the 1940s was the worst possible time for a child to experience, which made sense, since London was still rebuilding from the damage it sustained during World War II bombings at the time that David was born.

Although David was widely considered by his teachers to be a gifted child, he gained the reputation of being a brawler in school.  And this reputation would end up leading to David sustaining an injury which would permanently alter his face forever.  But, I’m getting ahead of myself here.  It was right around this time that young David Jones discovered his musical talents.  He sang in his school choir, and he played the recorder so well that he was judged as having above-average musical ability.  When David began taking classes in music and movement when he was nine, his teachers became astounded by his vividly artistic moves.  Around this time, his father had gotten interested in music by American artists, and young David was often listening to music by Frankie Lymon, Fats Domino, Elvis Presley, and Little Richard.  By the end of the next year, David learned how to play the ukulele and tea-chest bass, began to play the piano, and even performed his own interpretations of Elvis Presley’s songs, complete with the same hip gyrations that Presley was known for.  When the crowd watched David perform, they described the experience as “mesmerizing”.

After flunking his eleven plus exam, David Jones started attending school at Bromley Technical High School, where he studied art, design, and of course, music.  His half-brother turned David onto jazz music around this time, and his mother bought David a plastic saxophone in 1961, eventually trading up for a real saxophone just one year later.

Now here’s where the story gets quite interesting.


In 1962, when David was fifteen, he found himself on the wrong end of someone’s fist.  It turned out that David and his friend, George Underwood had fallen for the same girl, and they decided to fight each other as a result.  During that fight, Underwood punched David square in the left eye.  Because Underwood was wearing a ring on his hand when he punched David, David’s eye was messed up as a result, and doctors feared that he would never recover from the injury.  David spent the next four months in and out of hospital, and underwent several surgeries to repair the damage that was caused to his left eye.  But the end result left David with a permanently dilated pupil, and faulty depth perception, and gave off the impression that he had two completely different coloured eyes.

Despite David’s serious injury, he must have forgiven Underwood, as they remained friends.

And his eye injury didn’t stop him from continuing on with his dream of becoming a musician.  At the age of fifteen, David formed his first band, The Konrads, and they ended up playing gigs at youth halls and wedding receptions.  But David would learn that while his parents were supportive of him taking up music as a hobby, they felt differently about their son pursuing it as a career.  So when David informed his mother that he had chosen to pursue a career in pop music full-time, she immediately got him a job as an electrician’s mate.  But, even that wasn’t enough to stop David from achieving his dream.

Though David soon realized that if he was going to be a star in the music world, he couldn’t do it with The Konrads.  He got frustrated with the band’s limited aspirations, and he decided to leave the band to join another group, The King Bees.  Seeing the success that John Epstein had with the Beatles, David actually wrote a letter to washing machine entrepreneur John Bloom, asking him to help them become a success.  Bloom did not respond to the letter, but somehow, it was passed on to Leslie Conn, who became David’s first management contract.

With Conn’s help, David and his band were heavily promoted, but their singles failed to make an impression on the charts at all.  As a result of this, David left the group, and eventually would join two more bands before branching out on what would become his successful solo career.

One more thing that David would do was change his stage name.  Initially, he had gone by the name of Davie Jones.  Problem was that the Monkees were making a huge name for themselves at the time, and people were confusing him with the lead singer of the Monkees, Davy Jones.  So in 1967, Davie Jones became David Bowie, a name that David picked out himself.  The name came from the nineteenth century American frontiersman Jim Bowie.  The name was good enough to be used to name a knife, so for David Bowie, it was good enough for him to use for a stage name.

And the rest as we say, is history.  We know that David Bowie ended up making a huge name for himself, and the following words could be used to describe some of his successes.  “Fame”.  “Changes”.  “Ziggy Stardust”.  “Let’s Dance”.  “China Girl”.  And, that’s only scratching the surface.

So, what does this have to do with today’s trip back through time?  Well, I thought that I would end this blog off by posting David Bowie’s very first single release that came out on June 5, 1964.  It didn’t chart particularly high (in fact, I don’t think it charted at all here in North America.  But who would have guessed that it would have been the beginning of a remarkable career path?

So, with that, here’s a song to close off June 5, 1964.


ARTIST:  Davie Jones with The King Bees
SONG:  Liza Jane
DATE RELEASED:  June 5, 1964

Monday, June 04, 2012

Carrie


June is typically a month where old chapters close and new chapters open, and many celebrations are held during this month to commemorate this.  Whether you’re watching a couple exchanging wedding vows (June is reportedly one of the most popular months to get married), or getting a high school diploma, June can be a very busy month.

One activity that a lot of people are preparing for in June (or have already had) is the celebration known as the prom.  The event where teenage boys and girls rent their tuxedos and buy the perfect dress to dance the night away to mark the last few days of their high school career.  Whether the prom was held at a fancy hotel, a country club, or even the school gymnasium, it was an event that most people looked forward to.

Well, most people except me, that is.

I’m proud to say that I never went to my prom.  I skipped the event and chose to spend that night doing something else that I wanted to do instead.  The truth is that prom preparations can be overwhelming and stressful when they really needn’t be.  I’m not even talking about the stress that comes out of finding the perfect escort to bring either.  By the time you spend all that money on your clothes, your accessories, your make-up (well, for the ladies anyway), and not to mention the prom dinner if one is available, the prom can make your credit card go into severe traction.  When it came down to my prom, the cost just wasn’t worth me going.  It wouldn’t have mattered anyway, since I would have gone to the prom without a date anyway.

Here’s the thing.  I don’t regret skipping my prom at all.  I find it funny the way that some people take the prom way too seriously, as if they are going to be the social pariah of the whole school if they can’t find someone to take with them.  In the grand scheme of things, it’s just a dance.  There’s really not a whole lot of difference between the prom and the MuchMusic Video Dance Parties that you went to in the ninth grade.  The only difference is that the prom is more formal.  I mean, it’s not like you’re actually going to drop dead at the prom itself just because it doesn’t go the way you wanted it to.

Well, unless you were unfortunate enough to be in the same graduating class as Carietta White.


Today, we’re going to be taking a look at “Carrie”, a film that was released on November 3, 1976.  The movie was made with a modest budget of just under two million dollars, and ended up making thirty-three million at the box office.  I would call that a great success, wouldn’t you say?

The cast of the movie was also mighty impressive.  Sissy Spacek, Piper Laurie, Betty Buckley, Nancy Allen, John Travolta, William Katt, Amy Irving, P.J. Soles, and Priscilla Pointer all starred in the film, which was directed by Brian De Palma.  Both Spacek and Laurie earned Academy Award nominations for their roles in the film.


A lot of you probably know this information already, but for those of you who don’t, the movie “Carrie” was inspired by the book of the same name by Stephen King.  Although not exactly an exact representation of the book (some character names were changed, as well as some plot details), the film “Carrie” is widely considered to be one of the best movie adaptations of any of Stephen King’s works. 

The book was Stephen King’s fourth novel written, but it was the first one of his works to be published.  He was living in a trailer in Hermon, Maine with his wife Tabitha at the time.  “Carrie” initially began as a short story, and King wrote the story on a portable typewriter (the same one he used to write “Misery”).  But after writing the iconic opening scene in which Carrie experiences her first period in the showers of the girls locker room, he was incredibly dissatisfied with the draft, and threw it out.

However, Tabitha was not happy with this move, and fished the crumpled up pages out of the bin.  She encouraged him to finish the story, and with her support, the story became the novel “Carrie”.  Long story short, Carrie ended up being a huge hit for King, and put his name out there in the literary world.

The movie was fantastic as well, and it certainly had lots of moments that kept you on the edge of your seat.

Carietta White (Spacek) is the poster child for a depressed high school student.  It was bad enough that the kids at her high school made fun of her and abused her for being the weird kid.  Carrie’s home life was just as horrific as the one she had at school.  Her mother Margaret (Laurie) is a Christian fundamentalist who believes that Carrie is damaged, and that she has committed sins, and frequently abuses her at home as well.


We certainly see this in action right at the very beginning of the film.  Remember that locker room scene that I was describing earlier?  The one that King thought was so terrible, he threw it away?  We get to see the scene unfold within the first few minutes of the movie.  Carrie ends up getting her first period inside the shower, and having a mother who is completely off her rocker, she never really learned about the menstruation cycle from anyone.  So, when a frantic Carrie runs out of the shower screaming that she is dying, the other girls are less than sympathetic, screaming insults at her while throwing tampons at her, Chris Hargensen (Allen) being the most viscious of the group.  It isn’t until the gym teacher, Miss Collins (in the book, she is known as Miss Desjardins) steps in to help that the rest of the girls back off.  During Miss Collins’ (Buckley) attempts to diffuse the situation, Carrie’s reaction to being bullied causes an overhead light to explode above them, the first evidence of Carrie’s telekinetic powers.

Miss Collins called Margaret White at home to inform her of the bullying incident inside the locker room, believing that she was doing a good deed, thinking that Carrie’s mother would be able to help her more than she could.  Of course, Miss Collins couldn’t possibly know just how insane Carrie’s mother really was, and when Carrie came home, her mother locked her inside a closet, forcing her to pray away the sins she committed.  Later that night, Carrie manages to shatter a bedroom mirror simply by staring at it, definitely proving to the viewer that Carrie has some serious powers that not even she understands.


The following day, Carrie is mocked yet again when she praises the poem of Tommy Ross (Katt), calling it beautiful.  This time, though, Carrie is stunned when Tommy defends Carrie to the rest of the class, slightly aggravated that the class thought so little of his poem.  Tommy’s girlfriend, Sue Snell (Irving) watches the scene unfold, and begins to feel incredible remorse over her part in the locker room incident.  Sue talks to Tommy, and convinces him to take Carrie to the prom.  Of course, when Tommy does offer up the invitation to Carrie, Carrie is naturally skeptical, thinking that it was yet another cruel joke.  But after a pep talk from Miss Collins, Carrie realizes that his intentions were genuine, and accepts his offer. 


Miss Collins actually does Carrie one better.  She gives the girls who took part in the locker room incident a week long detention, and threatens to suspend them from school if they don’t attend the detention.  To the girls credit, all of them serve their detention, and some even feel remorseful for their actions against Carrie.

Well, all except Chris Hargensen, who openly opposes being punished, and throws a fit, leading to Miss Collins striking Chris across the face (something that would likely put Miss Collins in jail had this been 2012), and Chris being banned from attending the prom.  A vengeful Chris soon has one thing on her mind...get revenge on both Carrie and Miss Collins.  She enlists the help of her boyfriend, Billy Nolan (Travolta) and a couple of friends to ruin the prom for Carrie.  Knowing that Tommy has asked Carrie to the prom, they scheme to stuff the ballot box to elect Tommy and Carrie prom king and queen.  Then, once the two of them are on stage, a bucket of pig’s blood would tip over, and drench poor Carrie.  To Chris, it was the ultimate act of revenge against the one girl she hated more than anybody else in the world.


On the flipside, Carrie is more than ecstatic to go to the prom with Tommy, even wearing a brand new white dress to the occasion.  But, Carrie’s mother believes that the prom is a celebration of sin, and she opposes Carrie attending the prom, even cruelly telling Carrie that the kids at the prom will all laugh at her.  But Carrie stands up to her mother, telling her that she is going to the prom whether she likes it or not.  As Carrie gets angrier, the windows in the house slam shut, and Margaret White soon realizes that her daughter has telekinesis, which frightens her to death.  But before Carrie’s mother can stop her, Carrie is already on her way to the prom.

At first, the prom is fantastic for Carrie.  Tommy treats Carrie the way that a man should treat his date, and Carrie seems to have a genuinely good time.  Although Sue manages to sneak into the prom to keep an eye on Tommy and Carrie, she is relieved to see that Carrie is enjoying herself.  Most of Carrie’s classmates are quite civil to her as well, and for the first time in her whole life, Carrie finally felt like she fit in.

Which makes the nasty trick that Chris and Billy pulled seem even more disgusting and cruel. 

Just as Chris and Billy planned, Carrie and Tommy won the vote for prom king and queen (thanks to their colleagues stuffing the ballot box), and Carrie proudly wore her crown and sash with a huge smile on her face.  But then this happened, and all hell broke loose.


In a devastating turn of events, Carrie’s anger over being made a fool in front of the entire school went into overdrive, and her telekinesis turned the Bates High School Gymnasium into a furnace, incinerating everyone who was unlucky enough to still be inside the gym, of which there was a lot, as Carrie mentally locked every way out of the school to trap everyone inside.

So, you’d think that was the end of the movie, wouldn’t you?  Think again.  The fire that eventually destroyed the school and the graduating class of Bates High was just the beginning.  By the end of the film, the prom disaster would have at least one survivor, who would be the only original cast member to appear in the 1999 sequel “The Rage: Carrie 2”.  Chris and Billy were watching the disaster unfold from outside, so clearly they were out of harm’s way.  But when Chris makes one last ditch effort to rid the world of Carrie, will all go to plan?  And then there’s Carrie’s mother.  How do you think she’ll feel about what Carrie ended up doing at the prom?  It’s a confrontation that you cannot miss.

You know, by all accounts, Carrie White was what everyone believed her to be.  She was quite the unusual girl.  And it’s easy to dismiss her as being evil...after all, she charbroiled her classmates at the prom.  But was she truly bad to the bone?  I don’t think so.  I think that had her classmates, teachers, and her own family treated her with respect and friendliness from the very beginning, then perhaps this whole situation could have been avoided.  All Carrie wanted was to have someone in her corner, who believed in her, and who wanted genuine friendship with her.  And, although she only had it for a few moments, she did have that with Tommy (and Sue to a lesser extent), and I’m sure that before everything went to hell in a handbasket, those moments meant the world to her.


I’m certainly not saying that if you treat someone with cruelty that they’re going to burn down your house with you inside of it.  But, when it comes to the choice of treating someone with respect, and treating someone like dirt, doesn’t the first choice just seem more appealing?

Just something to ponder this Monday.

Sunday, June 03, 2012

How Huey Lewis Made Me A "Sports" Fan


I'm going to offer a bit of a warning to all of you at this time. I'm not really in the greatest of moods today. As I type out this entry tonight (well, I guess by the time you read this, it'll technically be LAST night), I am trying my best not to launch into a rant filled with language that would make a sailor blush. I won't be going into too much detail about why I'm not in the best of moods, because I would need a whole week of blog entries to try and get all of my feelings out.

Instead, I'm going take the opportunity to use this Sunday Jukebox entry to work the bad mood out of my system by talking about one of my favourite groups of the 1980s.

In fact, I'm going to do something for the Sunday Jukebox entry that I haven't done since December 25, 2011. In most cases, I use the Sunday Jukebox to talk about a specific song that a band or an artist. But this week, I'm going to focus on a whole album that the band did.

And, I'm doing this for two reasons.

First, I love this band so much that I found it incredibly difficult to narrow my choice down to just one song. Three of my favourite songs by this band actually appear on the same album, so I thought it just made sense to talk about the album in general rather than do three separate entries.

And secondly, one of the best ways for me to improve my mood is to just listen to an album that I absolutely love listening to, cranking it up as loud as it can go (without causing the neighbours to complain), and losing myself to the music. I owned the cassette tape of this album, and played it so many times, the tape wore out! Let's just say that my teen years was filled with a lot of angst, and a lot of tape rewinding (I didn't own a CD Player until I was 17).

So, my goal for today is to do an entry on one of my favourite albums in hopes that my mood will improve.

So, let's take a look at our featured album for today.



ARTIST: Huey Lewis And The News
ALBUM: Sports
DATE RELEASED: September 15, 1983
NUMBER OF SINGLES RELEASED: 5
PEAK POSITION ON THE BILLBOARD 200: #1 for 1 week

I know what you're thinking. It seems a bit crazy that one of my favourite albums was released when my musical tastes included that of Raffi and Sharon, Lois, & Bram. The truth is that I was always surrounded by Huey Lewis & The News growing up. They also happened to be one of my sister's favourite bands in high school, and whenever I was in her car back in those days, I always heard this tape blaring out of the car radio. I know it's been almost thirty years since this album was first released, but some of my earliest memories always had this album for a soundtrack.

I eventually became a fan of this band myself. I think at some point, I listened to every single one of their albums. “Fore!” was a decent album that I also wore out. “Picture This” was another album that I particularly liked. Even their 1980 debut album was a great album, even though none of the singles from the album did particularly well on the charts.

TRIVIA: Would you believe that when Huey Lewis & The News formed in San Francisco in 1979, they went under the name of “Huey Lewis & The American Express”? The name was changed in January 1980 after Lewis worried that they could be sued by the American Express credit card company for using their name. Funny what you learn from the Internet, isn't it?

Certainly, Huey Lewis & The News had tons of success throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. With a total of nineteen Top 10 hits on three different music charts (Hot 100, Adult Contemporary, Mainstream Rock), the band made their mark on the music industry. And as of 2012, the band is still together, performing concerts all over North America, and releasing hits for movie soundtracks.



TRIVIA: In addition to contributing two songs for the 1985 feature film, “Back To The Future”, they also performed the theme song for the 2008 film “Pineapple Express”.



But, I think if I had to name the album that best defined this group, it would be “Sports”. The album spawned five Top 20 singles, one of which hit #1 on the Top Rock Charts, between 1983 and 1984, and the album hit the #1 position during the first week of July 1984.

At the time of the album's release, the band was made up of Huey Lewis (main vocals, harmonica), Sean Hopper (keyboards), Bill Gibson (percussion), Johnny Colla (guitar, saxophone), Mario Cipollina (bass), and Chris Hayes (guitar). And here's some trivia about the album cover. It was taken at the 2 A.M. Club, in Mill Valley, California (not to be confused with Hill Valley, of “Back to the Future” fame).

Let's take a look at each of the singles that charted from this album (five of the nine original tracks hit the charts which was very good for an album), because there's a lot of trivia that can be found with each release.

This was the first song released from “Sports”, which also happens to be my favourite song of the whole album as well.



HEART AND SOUL
Released August 30, 1983
Peak Position on the Billboard Charts: #8
Peak Position on Top Rock Tracks: #1

The first release from “Sports” was a strong one from the very beginning. Former band member Chris Hayes once stated that he didn't know why “Heart and Soul” sounded so good from the beginning. According to Hayes, the band often had to record and re-record the guitar parts of each song, but for that particular song, the band was lucky enough to get the riff on the very first try. Listen to the song up above, and you'll see what I mean. It's a great song! Here's a bit of trivia about this song's music video as well. You see the woman that Huey is dancing with in the club? If you're a fan of soap operas, you might recognize the woman as actress Signy Coleman, who had roles on both “Guiding Light” and “The Young and the Restless”. And this isn't the first Huey Lewis & The News video that she makes an appearance in either...



I WANT A NEW DRUG
Released January 3, 1984
Peak Position on the Billboard Charts: #6
Peak Position on Top Rock Charts: #7

I Want a New Drug” was the second release from “Sports”, and just like the first video that was released, Signy Coleman makes a cameo in this video as well (actually, several cameos). It also happens to be the highest charting single from “Sports”, just missing the Top 5 on the Billboard Charts. But despite its success, it was also the subject of some controversy. A few months after “I Want a New Drug” was released, artist Ray Parker Jr. released the song that he had done for the 1984 film “Ghostbusters”, and there was something about it that made Huey Lewis see red. Have a listen to Ray Parker Jr. song HERE, and then compare it to “I Want a New Drug”. There's a bit of a similarity, don't you think? Well, as it turns out, there's a lot more to the story than just that. At first glance, it might seem like just a bit of a wacky coincidence. Lots of songs sound the same. Just listen to Madonna's “Express Yourself” and Lady Gaga's “Born This Way” for another example. But what if I told you that Huey Lewis & The News had been approached to do the theme song for “Ghostbusters” first? Unfortunately, the band had already made a commitment to “Back To The Future”, and had to turn the offer down. Because of this, as well as the similar sounding song that Ray Parker Jr. recorded, Lewis sued Parker in 1984. The case was eventually settled out of court, but it certainly left a sour note on an otherwise fantastic tune.



THE HEART OF ROCK & ROLL
Released April 10, 1984
Peak Position on the Billboard Charts: #6

The song was written by Lewis and Colla, and was the third release off of “Sports”. What was unique about this song was that several versions of the song were recorded specifically for various radio stations. You know the part of the song where Huey Lewis was shouting the city names of Cleveland and Detroit towards the end of it? He recorded several versions of the song with different place names that fit with the geographic area of the radio station. It was a neat idea. The song lyrics themselves had changed a bit from the original version when the song was being recorded. Initially, the song chorus was going to go “The Heart of Rock & Roll is in Cleveland”, after the band performed a successful and enjoyable concert in the town (though considering that Cleveland is the home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the original lyrics were a double entendre of sorts). Somehow, the lyrics were changed to “The Heart of Rock & Roll is still beating.” The music video was also problematic to shoot, in particular with the New York City shooting locations. The video was filmed during the winter of 1984, where temperatures were well below zero degrees, and the band was dressed lightly. Huey Lewis' wife was also pregnant at the time, which also made the shoot dicey, as Lewis was constantly checking to see if she was doing all right. To add salt to the wound, although the song was a decent hit, it admittedly isn't one of my favourites. Apparently, Blender magazine agreed with me. In 2009, they listed the song at #6 on their list of 50 Worst Songs Ever! Ouch.



IF THIS IS IT
Released July 10, 1984
Peak Position on the Billboard Charts: #6
Peak Position on the Adult Contemporary Charts: #5
Peak Position on Top Rock Tracks: #19

This is also a song that I absolutely love of Huey Lewis & The News...even if the music video seems to be composed of gouda, bleu cheese, and limburger by 2012 standards. I suppose that back in '84, it worked enough for the band to score yet another #6 hit (this seems to be a recurring number for this particular album). This song is also notable in the United Kingdom, as it was the band's first Top 40 single in that nation. Mind you, the song only peaked at #39 on the charts there, but hey, a Top 40 hit is a Top 40 hit. Not much else can be said about this video except that in the part where five of the six band members had their heads sticking out of the sand, the members claimed that they really were buried! If that was the case, it must have taken a lot of work to get that particular shot!



WALKING ON A THIN LINE
Released October 1984
Peak Position on the Billboard Charts: #18
Peak Position on Top Rock Tracks #16

By now, you've seen that the songs of Huey Lewis & The News are light-hearted, and the music videos are whimsical, fun, and happy. But this song was quite serious in nature. The song itself was written by Andre Pessis and Ken Wells, and was about the Vietnam War, and what soldiers and veterans were thinking while they were serving in the war. When the band performs the song live, Lewis often dedicates the song in memory of the casualties of the Vietnam War, and in some cases, the band would be joined onstage by ESPN personality Chris Berman, who has appeared as a surprise guest. The song was written with a strong message, but it was also the lowest charting song to be released from “Sports”, and also the song that got the most mixed reaction from critics. But it is a decent song, and it was a great final release for “Sports”.

That's our look back on the most successful album that Huey Lewis & The News released, and would you believe it? My bad mood has improved greatly since. Funny how music tends to make even the saddest people feel better, huh?

BONUS QUESTION: How do you deal with the after-effects of a stress-filled day?

Saturday, June 02, 2012

Rocky and Bullwinkle's Backstory


Do you remember when your family first got hooked up to cable television?

Provided that you’re old enough to remember a time when the television dial only went up to channel 13, I imagine most of us remember when we finally got cable television hooked up.  In my case, it was shortly after my parents got their television and VCR combo for their 23rd wedding anniversary in August 1988.  One morning, I woke up, headed downstairs, and there were thirty additional channels to choose from.  It was absolutely incredible to a seven-year-old boy the number of choices there were. 

Of course, there were some channels that were generally useless.  Five of them were French language only (Canada is a bilingual country after all), and the Weather Channel can only be entertaining for all of five minutes.  Most of them were fantastic, and I’d say that most of the topics that I have brought up in this blog have been a direct result of watching cable television.

And my siblings and I all had our favourite networks.  My eldest sister was glued to A&E, while the middle sibling was into MuchMusic.

My favourite channel was this one.


YTV (or, Youth Television) actually debuted on September 1, 1988, which was maybe about a week before we got cable television.  As far back as I can remember, it was (and still is) on channel 16 in our listings, and when we first got cable, I was constantly watching it.  The network aired some wonderful Canadian kids programs, as well as popular American cartoons and live-action shows such as Garfield, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Nick Arcade.  Even their evening programming was suitable for families, as they aired British sitcoms, Australian dramas, and Canadian classics such as “The Edison Twins” or “You Can’t Do That On Television”.

Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, YTV was one of the only channels that I watched.  But as I grew older, I tuned into YTV less and less.  Nowadays, I don’t even recognize the station anymore.  But those first few years of YTV are ones that I’ll always treasure.

I think one of the reasons why I enjoyed YTV in its early years the most was because it was a brand new network.  It was very much in an experimental phase the first few years, and I think by 1991, they had found a formula that worked.  Before, their programming was a collection of hodge-podge.  There was a lot of contemporary cartoons, but there were a lot of cartoon classics that aired as well.

And, for today’s blog topic, I thought we’d discuss one of the classic cartoons that I watched on YTV all those years ago.  Take a look below.


And now for something we hope you’ll really like...The Rocky & Bullwinkle blog entry!


Rocky &  Bullwinkle of course details the adventures of Rocket J. “Rocky” Squirrel and Bullwinkle J. Moose.  Rocky was a flying squirrel, and Bullwinkle was good-natured, but a bit thick in the head.  They both lived in the fictional town of Frostbite Falls, Minnesota, and both of them lived relatively peaceful lives...well, aside from having to deal with the antagonistic Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale.


And just because the show was called “The Rocky & Bullwinkle Show” didn’t mean that Rocky and Bullwinkle were the only characters we saw in the program.  Much like “Bugs Bunny & Tweety” and “Tiny Toon Adventures”, the show also had a slew of guest characters appearing in their own segments.  In addition to the moose and the flying squirrel, we had Dudley Do-Right, Peabody & Sherman, and a segment known as “Fractured Fairy Tales”.  I’m sure that at some point, I’ll be dedicating a blog entry to each of these minor segments, because they are all interesting enough on their own.

For now, we’ll just focus on the moose and the squirrel, as well as some of the trivia that is associated with this program.

The show is one of the few cartoons out there that have aired on more than one network, and under more than one title.  When the show first debuted on November 19, 1959, it was on ABC under the title of “Rocky and His Friends”.  And, the show initially didn’t air on Saturday mornings.  It aired twice a week on Tuesday and Thursday after “American Bandstand”.  Believe it or not, the show was highly successful on ABC, and it was once ranked the highest rating daytime television program at the time.  It stayed on ABC until 1961, when it was moved to the NBC network on September 24 of that year.  It was a revolutionary move for two reasons.  One, it was moved to a Sunday night time slot (just before Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color), and secondly because it was the first time that the cartoon was broadcast in color television.  The name of the show changed as well, to simply “The Bullwinkle Show”.

While the show was huge on ABC, The Bullwinkle Show struggled in the ratings upon its move to NBC...mostly because of the fact that it often competed head to head with a show about another animal, “Lassie”.

The show was almost moved to CBS around 1963, but NBC still wanted to broadcast the program, and rescheduled it to Saturday and Sunday afternoons.  This move wasn’t enough to keep the show running, and it was cancelled in 1964.  However, the show itself continued on in syndication, and was once a regular fixture of ABC’s Saturday morning line-up during the 1981-1982 season.  Currently, the program can be seen on the Boomerang channel, and once aired on Nickelodeon during the 1990s.

And, of course, it aired on YTV for a brief period in the late 1980s and early 1990s as well.  J

That’s about all that I have to say about the broadcast history of the show.  Now, let’s talk a bit about how the show was produced.

The idea for Rocky & Bullwinkle was conceived in the mid-1950s by Jay Ward and Alex Anderson, who previously worked together on “Crusader Rabbit”.  The original concept of the show was to have a group of forest animals running a television studio.  Now, some aspects of the show carried over into the show which would become “Rocky & Bullwinkle”, such as the character of Rocky itself.  But there were some other characters that were created that didn’t make the final cut.  Amongst these creations were Oski Bear, Sylvester Fox, Floral Fauna, and Blackstone Crow.

Oh, and Bullwinkle was there as well, only his original name was going to be “Canadian Moose”.  And, given that Bullwinkle was designed to be a character that wasn’t very bright, I don’t know whether I should be insulted or not!  Regardless, Canadian Moose was changed to Bullwinkle after being inspired by the name of a Berkeley, California car dealership named “Bullwinkel Motors”.


The voice cast was hired in early 1958, and the cast of characters included Paul Frees, William Conrad, Bill Scott, and the legendary voice actress June Foray.  Shortly after, General Mills signed on to be the cartoon’s sponsor on the condition that the program air in a late afternoon time slot, in which their ads would most certainly be seen by their target audience.  Children.

All that was left to do was hire the production staff for the cartoon, and Jay Ward was responsible for hiring the writers and designers.  Curiously, no animators were hired, which was unusual, given that it was a cartoon show.  But there was a reason behind that.  Ward had convinced some friends on his from an advertising agency to buy an animation studio located in Mexico called Gamma Productions to do the animation for the show.  This decision had its pros and cons.  The move to outsource the work to Mexico was a financially economical solution for the sponsors of the program.  But Mexico wasn’t exactly known as being the animation capital of the world, and their work was filled with mistakes.  Certainly the animation cels were churned out quickly, but due to the lack of quality control, there were colour and design discrepancies, and the final result was choppy and inconsistent animation during the show’s entire run.

In spite of this though, the show’s writing saved the program, as the writing was quite witty and satirical in nature.  The show was marketed for children, but there was a lot of humour and inside jokes for adults to enjoy as well, and some critics actually called the show a well-written radio program with pictures!

So, let’s end this blog with a couple of Rocky & Bullwinkle episodes, courtesy of YouTube!



Friday, June 01, 2012

America's Funniest Videos...Behind The Lens Cap


Welcome to the first day of June, everyone!  You know something?  2012 is going incredibly fast!  We’re just a month away from the halfway point of this year.  I guess it’s true what adults say.  Time flows quicker as you get older.

Fortunately, I am only adult in size.

Looking back on the month of May, I’ve definitely had a lot of ups and downs.  I turned 31, I kicked off a contest (which is still open until the end of this month, by the way), and I wrote some of my most heartfelt entries to date (or, so I’d like to think, anyway).

On the downside, I’ve had a bit of a struggle bringing traffic to the site this month, particularly due to the fact that I can no longer use Facebook directly to promote my work (at least, not without some ingenuity on my part anyway).  But, with a brand new look for the blog, and a new month on the horizon, I think that I’ll survive anything thrown my way.

It’s all about staying focused and staying positive about everything that happens.  It’s so easy to fall into the pit of negativity, and it’s so easy to get in a bad mood when things get out of your control, or when the people closest to you are determined to spread their negativity.  So, for the first entry of June, I’m going to post a blog entry about a show that has made people laugh for over two decades.  After all, laughter IS the best medicine for bad moods.

Or, so Reader’s Digest always told me.

So, how many of you out there have a video camera in your home?  I imagine most of you probably do.  Heck, about 99% of all mobile phones made these days have a built in video camera inside of them. 

But, how many of you had them in the 1980s?


You know the ones I mean?  The big and bulky black cameras, where you had to record by using a big, bulky VHS tape?  My family never owned one because back in those days, video cameras were quite expensive.  Could you imagine paying $400 for a video camera these days?  It seems bizarre...until you realize that VCR’s cost at least half that price alone.  I even remember when DVD players were first released, and the asking price was $500 in 1999.  Now, you can find DVD players for as little as $25!

Growing up, I remember going to various events where people often had video cameras filming everything that went on.  Weddings, school carnivals, family picnics, funera...well, okay, maybe scratch that last one. 

And I’m sure that we all have been witness to watching an old family home video and seeing something happen on the tape that just made everybody laugh out loud.  Something like...these clips for example.


Now, I imagine that in the days in which video cameras first started appearing in households, people never imagined that their video of Grandpa losing his dentures biting into a candied apple would net them a huge cash prize.

That is until a man by the name of Vin de Bona decided to come up with an idea for a show, which was inspired by a Japanese program that was airing at the time.

That show was a program known as “Fun TV with Kato-chan and Ken-chan”.  On that particular show, there was a segment that had home viewers sending in video clips from their collection of home movies.  The concept was a simple one, but de Bona believed that he could create a television show from this idea.  Teaming up with Todd Thicke and Michele Nasraway, de Bona developed a show where people from all over the United States and Canada could send their funny videos in, and the winning video would win a cash prize.

Beginning in the summer of 1989, de Bona took out advertising space in TV Guide magazine, asking people to send in their funniest home videos to a specific address within the ABC Television Network.  The program was supposed to be a one-off television special, airing on November 26, 1989.  But to everyone’s surprise, the show ranked #9 in the Nielsen ratings scale for that night.  This huge reaction caused ABC to take the special and air it as a half-hour television program.  The show began airing as a regular television series on January 14, 1990, and as of 2012, has now finished its twenty-second season, and is renewed for a twenty-third!


That show is America’s Funniest Videos (previously known as America’s Funniest Home Videos). 

Now, the show itself has some interesting history behind it, and I thought that I would best explain the history of the show in a bullet point list, peppering it along the way with examples of some of the videos that the show has aired over its 23-year-history.  There’s been some host changes, lots of prize money given away, and believe it or not, the show was almost cancelled!  There is a lot to talk about, so let’s get started.


1 – The first episode of America’s Funniest Home Videos aired as an hour-long special.  In addition to Bob Saget hosting the show, he had a guest co-host, Kellie Martin.  At the time, Martin was starring in the ABC show “Life Goes On”, which aired directly before the program.

2 – The grand prize for America’s Funniest Home Videos has changed slightly since it debuted.  The first prize winner of the show’s pilot won $5,000, while the second and third place winners would take home a brand new television and video camera.  As the show went on, the prize increased to $10,000 for the first prize video, $3,000 for second, and $2,000 for third.  All the winning videos of the season would come back on the show to compete for the $100,000 grand prize at the end of the season.

3 – Would you like to know what the very first grand prize winning video was on America’s Funniest Home Videos was?  Have a look.


4 – The show’s success and relatively low cost to produce have spawned versions in other countries, including the UK, Australia, and Canada (well, Quebec, Canada, anyway).


5 – The show spawned a couple of spin-off programs that also aired on ABC.  “America’s Funniest People” aired on the network from 1990-1994, and “World’s Funniest Videos” aired during 1996.  Strangely enough, both shows had Saget’s “Full House” co-star Dave Coulier as one of the co-hosts.


6 – The show changed hosts three times during its entire run.  Bob Saget was the programs original host from the beginning of the series to May 1997.  In 1998, the show was hosted by the duo of Daisy Fuentes and John Fugelsang, but they only managed to last a couple of years.  Finally, in the summer of 2001, Tom Bergeron assumed hosting duties, the longest-serving host of America’s Funniest Home Videos thus far.


7 – In 1999, after the departure of Fugelsang and Fuentes as hosts, ABC considered pulling the plug on the program.  It was decided that the show would air sporadic specials throughout 2000 hosted by then ABC sitcom stars Richard Kind and D.L. Hughley.  The show returned as a weekly series in 2001.

8 – At one point during the show’s hiatus as a weekly program from 1999-2001, future “The Office” star Steve Carell would host a one-off special entitled “America’s Funniest Home Videos: Deluxe Uncensored”.

9 – At the end of each episode during Saget’s tenure, he would utter the catchphrase “Keep those cameras safely rolling!”.

10 – The “Assignment America” segment, a segment which asked viewers to send in videos surrounding a specific theme such as weddings, trampolines, and sports disasters, was born midway through season one, and is the only feature that has remained constant throughout the show’s entire run.


11 – America’s Funniest Home Videos expanded into an hour-long program in 1995, following the cancellation of the short-lived ABC sitcom “On Our Own”.

12 – Bob Saget left the program in May 1997, but had expressed desire to leave the show at least two seasons prior.  But because de Bona reminded him that he still had time left on his contract, Saget would often act out of character during his final few seasons, and made lots of blunt puns in relation to his contract negotiations.


13 – When Saget hosted his final show in May 1997, it doubled as a “Full House” reunion (the show aired its last episode in 1995).  With the exception of the Olsen Twins, the entire cast dropped by the soundstage to help Bob Saget say goodbye to America’s Funniest Home Videos.


14 – Bob Saget would return to co-host America’s Funniest Home Videos with Tom Bergeron in 2009, to help ring in the show’s 20th anniversary episode.

15 – America’s Funniest Home Videos also changed its show announcer three times.  The first one was Ernie Anderson, who served as announcer from 1989-1995 (he returned briefly in 1997 just before he passed away).  Gary Owens became the announcer in 1995 and stayed until the end of Saget’s tenure as host.  From 1998 onwards, the position has been filled by Jess Harnell.  And for those of you who are into voice acting credits, you may be surprised to know that Harnell voiced the character of Wakko in the cartoon “Animaniacs”.

16 – The winners of each episode were chosen by the studio audience.  They would press the button that corresponded with the finalist they liked best.  The video with the most votes won.

17 – The voting has undergone some changes over the years, particularly during the $100,000 shows.  Initially, the voting process incorporated anywhere from two to five ABC affiliates all across the country, where audiences were joined via satellite with Los Angeles to cast their votes simultaneously.  These days, viewers can now vote from home, using the ABC website.

18 – As of 2008, viewers can now upload their videos from camera phones and digital cameras onto the ABC website itself, in addition to sending in VHS tapes and DVD’s.

19 – The show has aired over 450 episodes during its entire run.

20 – The show’s original theme song was recorded by Jill Colucci.  It ran during the show’s first seven seasons on air, and once more during Saget’s 2009 guest appearance.  To conclude this blog entry, why not have a listen?