This rescued video from the fabled 1971 NBC color spectacular is the only remaining example of the unique song-stylings of this all-male singing group. Leader Guy Gold would later attempt to recapture the magic with his 1985 outfit, Guy & the New Geldings, but the police quickly put a stop to that.
Enjoy.
Hal Kanter has died. The image above is not Hal Kanter. It is a lunchbox from the ground-breaking TV show he created, the first to star a black woman, the wonderful Diahann Carroll, later paramour of David Frost (but I digress).
Julia the TV show ran from 1968 to 1971. I never watched it. It was “important,” which also meant it was square. But somewhere in the mid-’70s, I found this promotional tie-in item in a small hardware store in Rockville, Md. No idea why it was there; the store didn’t carry other lunchboxes. Also don’t know why I was there. But I knew kitsch when I saw it — and “important” TV shows past their prime are generally kitsch — and picked it up for probably a pittance. And it has stayed in the Nuttycombe Archives ever since.
Many years later, I had the good fortune to interview Mr. Kanter, after reading his fascinating autobiography So Far, So Funny: My Life in Show Business. Kanter was a quintessential showbiz guy. He worked in radio, TV, and film, He wrote and directed Elvis Presley films, was one of Bob Hope’s gag men, wrote jokes for the Oscars for 33 years. And oh so much more.
My interview never ran. Either I was lazy or the editor wasn’t interested. It was a long time ago, when Kanter was already an old man. He was 92 when he passed. Somewhere in the Archives is the cassette tape of our phone conversation. I recall him being feisty and full of vim and vigor, relishing re-telling 50-year-old anecdotes for the umpteenth time. And I enjoyed hearing them for the first. In the years since I’d snagged that Julia lunchbox in a fit of smug irony, I’ve come to a better understanding of how and why things wind up on our television and movie screens. And I’ve come to realize that despite being square, Julia really was important.
Here’s but one of many funny stories from So Far, So Funny, concerning Kanter’s time working on Bing Crosby’s radio show:
During one visit to the Crosby show, [Al] Jolson told us he was going to Hawaii and said, “I’m gonna bring you a present, Bingy.” He boasted that he had a seamstress there who designed much nicer native shirts than the ones Bing wore. “I’m gonna have her make a couple for you.”
”Mighty considerate of you,” Bing said.
”I’m gonna bring shirts back for all of you,” Al promised John Scott Trotter, Ken Carpenter, Murdo, Bill and me. He instructed his one-armed aide, a man he called Lew, to write down everybody’s name and shirt sizes. When we finished reading the script around the table, they all went into the studio to rehearse the music and in a burst of largesse, Al instructed Lew to get the sizes of all the musicians in Trotter’s orchestra. Hawaiian shirts for all!
I remained in the rehearsal studio, polishing some of the script that needed attention. Jolson returned to make a phone call. As I sat there, Lew came in and handed Al a slip of paper.
”What’s this?”
”The names and sizes you want,” Lew told him. “For the Hawaiian shirts.”
Al looked at the list, crunched the paper into a ball and tossed it in the wastebasket.
Nobody got a shirt from the world’s greatest entertainer.
Sometime before I die, I will find that tape and post the interesting parts. Which might be everything Hal Kanter said.
PS: Yeah, I know that everyone else today is writing obits and appreciations for Joe Frazier. As much as I liked Smokin’ Joe, I will miss Hal Kanter more.
I humbly bring you the entire plot of the upcoming major motion picture, Twilight: Breaking Dawn. In song. You’re welcome.
Interesting side note: I have not seen any of the movies. Nor read any of the books. Same with the Harry Potter books/films. (Interesting side note side note: While, unlike the Twilight series, I was interested in reading the Potters, I didn’t get to the first book before the first film came out. Then the second book came and, and the second film, and I just got so far behind that I gave up. Until the final Potter movie. Was invited to an 11-year-old’s birthday party. Couldn’t say no. And though I know I missed a bunch of inside references, it was an entertaining affair. I’m sure I would have enjoyed all the others and maybe the books. Ah, well…)
Where was I? Oh, yeah, the Twilight saga. Though I have no first-hand knowledge of the works of Stepenie Meyer, it’s impossible to be active in the culture and not get sprayed with at least some of it. In fact, I got this idea when the trailer came on during Project Runway. (Oh, shut up!) Anyway, I must give Wikipedia a co-writing credit. And, of course, the great Chuck Berry. Another sad side note: The karaoke version of You Never Can Tell was listed first under Bob Seger’s name. Then Emmylou Harris. Then Chuck. Fine singers, all, but where’s the historical integrity?
If you’d rather just listen to the song, here you go:
My second piece for the noted humor blog Splitsider is now online. I follow my report on Bob Einstein’s lost classic humor book with a close look at his brother Albert’s daring debut in the February 1971 Esquire magazine. As with Einstein’s Magic Book, “The Albert Brooks Famous School For Comedians” is another piece of overlooked comedy gold. Though the article made a splash at the time, today copies of the magazine are hard to come by—unless you visit the Nuttycombe Archives (Open daily 3-3:15 p.m.; call for appointment).
Please point your browser to Splitsider and learn something today! You’re welcome.
In case you missed it on your daily rounds of the Internet, my latest (and also first) piece has been published on the hot new comedy website, Splitsider. Mining the voluminous Nuttycombe Archives, I offer an insightful disquisition on one of the great lost humor books, Bob Einstein’s 1970 This Is My First Magic Book So I’m a Little Nervous.
I won’t spoil the fun here. Scamper on over to Splitsider, where you may see more photos. (But do come back, won’t you?) Thanks.
I’ve just finished reading Bill Carter’s fascinating book The War for Late Night: When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy. That title fairly sums up the sorry situation. Carter seems to have spoken with everyone even remotely involved in the shenanigans, but one thing I did not see in the index was the entry “O’Brien, Conan, ego of.” Because despite generally good behavior on Coco’s part—and horrible behavior on the part of nearly everyone else—the entire brouhaha would never have happened had not Conan felt in the pit of his soul that he “deserved” to host The Tonight Show. And sooner rather than later.
First, let me place myself squarely in the Team Coco camp. I’m a fan, enjoy watching whatever show he’s on. Conan’s humor is both smart and silly, often inspired, and it takes great talent to manage all that. His recent use of Twitter and the Internet demonstrates that he’s a talent for all media.
Jay Leno, on the other hand, is admittedly well past his prime. His phoned-in performance at the recent White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner was the definition of hack. I thought I was watching Georgie Jessel. However, I won’t stand with the Leno-bashers. I’m old enough to remember his breakthrough performances on David Letterman’s NBC show. And older enough to have been in the audience at the Improv on Melrose in Los Angeles when a then little-known Jay Leno was the house MC. He was killer live, even when introducing then-red-hot TV star Robin Williams.
And I’m also privy to an act of unmitigated generosity and kindness that Leno performed, reaching out to someone he barely knew to offer sincere comfort in a time of need. In a situation with absolutely no showbiz connection or professional benefit to him. So bonus points for that.
Thus I give Leno a fair amount of leeway. And in Carter’s account, Leno is really guilty of not much more than being a corporate toady. He was a guy doing his job, and doing it well in terms of ratings and revenue, who only wanted to keep on doing it. When he jokingly protests, “It’s not my fault,” he’s basically right. Even if many of his decisions were misguided and self-serving, well, we may not have a whole lot of sympathy for the guy, but Leno’s not the true villain.
Because the facts of the Late Night Wars remain: there was no good business reason for dumping Leno from 11:30. The only reason for promoting Conan was his threat to leave the network if he didn’t get his way. And the suits refused to do what they are paid to do: make difficult decisions. Instead, they took what was an uncomfortable situation and turned it into an impossible one, where nobody could win and everyone lost. Incompetence and venality at a supreme level. Further, Carter’s book makes clear that the highly-paid, highly-educated executives have little understanding or care for television’s traditions and history, or even what it means to put on a show. Fear of losing their jobs rules their days, and fear was the driving factor in all of their decisions. Thus, the sorry outcome.
Conan is quoted several times in the book to the effect that he “worked very hard” to earn that Tonight Show gig. Yes, he did. But I was reminded of the scene in The Social Network, where the Harvard President/Larry Summers character devastatingly dismisses the whining, entitled Winklevoss twins, who feel their honor as well as their idea has been besmirched by the conniving Mark Zuckerberg. Summers’ advice is simple: Too bad, suck it up, go on and make something else.
So if Conan O’Brien didn’t like the prospect of continuing to produce a beloved late-late-night television program for another 16 or more years—or whenever someone pried The Tonight Show chair from Jay Leno’s cold, dead ass—he should have in fact taken one of the generous offers from competing networks and, like Letterman, walked away and started another show.
Jerry Seinfeld sums it up best in The War for Late Night. Discussing a dinner conversation he had with the sainted Johnny Carson, after the King of Late Night retired, Seinfeld notes the constant speculation over the years among comics wondering who would eventually take over from Carson. “And the one thing none of us realized,” Seinfeld says he told Carson, “was that, once you left, you were taking it with you.”
Indeed. The Tonight Show is dead. Long live The Tonight Show!
I made this film because I could no longer remain silent. This was a statement that needed to be made—for myself and for the world. Please take a moment to watch this (full-screen, of course). It will be the most important two minutes of your life.
You’re welcome.
I originally wrote this as a short book review for Washington City Paper, but the paper was in the process of being sold, then bankrupted, with various editors—and finally myself—leaving. So the piece got lost in the shuffle and I post it here because I still think it’s an interesting look at the supposed true history of punk rock and standup comedy in Washington, D.C.
The book that started the argument is I Killed: True Stories of the Road From America’s Top Comics (Crown, 264 pps. $23.95), co-authored by Ritch Shydner and Mark Schiff. It’s a heartily amusing Whitman’s Sampler of odd, outrageous, and inexplicable human behavior as experienced by traveling comedians. (Jay Leno gettin’ freaky—who knew?) The generally brief anecdotes may be savored piecemeal. Taken as a whole, the book is a horrifyingly hysterical tour of America after hours.
Shydner’s entry stands out, and is what started this investigation into D.C.’s comedy and punk-rock past. Titled “They Weren’t Sedated,” the piece concerns the comedian’s 1978 gig opening for the Ramones at “a big pub off Dupont Circle.” In an phone interview from California, Shydner confirms that the club was the Childe Harold. “I lived right around the corner at 17th & N,” he said. “I really hung out at the Childe Harold a lot.” Shydner was a George Mason student at the time, studying to be a lawyer. That career path veered wildly when Shydner got caught up in D.C.’s comedy boom.
As with the punk explosion in music, standup comedy also freed itself from the hegemony of “professional” show biz in the ’70s. Kids realized you didn’t need a tux and a spot on Ed Sullivan to tell jokes. Shydner credits Saturday Night Live, which began in 1975, with igniting the boom. Because before SNL, “you just didn’t see people your age or close to it doing comedy on TV,” he notes. “You just didn’t see it in a sensibility that you related to. SNL kinda popped it. And everybody starts doing comedy.”
The CBGB’s of D.C. comedy was a tiny dive bar on Pennsylvania Avenue in Anacostia called El Brookman’s. Future comedy stars such as Lewis Black and Rich Hall started there. And before venues dedicated to comedy appeared—places like Garvin’s on Connecticut Ave. and the Comedy Cafe on K Street NW—the eager young jokesters caught the attention of local booking agents seeking low-cost fodder for music shows—someone to fill time while the roadies set up the gear. Thus, the young Shydner’s early work was mostly in rock clubs, opening for bands. Here’s how he describes his Ramones show in I Killed:
“When the room was filled with two hundred people, all smoking and spilling beer, it was possible to experience the sense of death by suffocation with a stale gym towel.”
Shydner paints a very funny picture of an unnamed, coked-up bar manager betting the fledgling comic $100 he wouldn’t last five minutes in front of the overly-excited crowd. “I was not far removed from my high school and college jock mind-set,” Shydner writes, “so I tended to view each performance as an athletic event, a game to be won or lost.” He happily took the bet, and then the stage.
“The audience booed so loud I didn’t even hear my first joke,” Shydner writes. “Seconds later, someone threw a beer in my direction. It didn’t hit me, but there was no time to determine whether it was thrown as a warning or simply to gauge distance, because the next one DID hit me. Once they saw I wouldn’t move and they wouldn’t get tossed, the crowd had themselves a new sport.”
The beer barrage continued, with the plucky Shydner valiantly holding fast for the full five minutes. The manager paid up and one of the Ramones even offered congratulations as the band made its way to the stage: “You’re good man. Fucking good.”
A funny story, and one that contains a certain truth about the life of a performer. Shydner’s portrait of standup-as-gladiator is compelling. “I won the game,” he writes. Much of I Killed chronicles similar experiences, not always victories.
However, I mentioned the anecdote to Washington City Paper’s former music critic emeritus Mark Jenkins, who instantly snorted that the story couldn’t possibly be true. “It’s wasn’t a rowdy scene at all,” he insists, further explaining that he was at all three shows that the Ramones played here. “I never saw a comedian open for the Ramones in D.C.,” he says flatly.
Turns out, Jenkins was not only at the Ramones’ first D.C. show, he was instrumental in getting the band booked here.
“This is how it happened,” he says, explaining that he and Howard Wuelfing—a member of such seminal D.C. punk bands as the Nurses and Slickee Boys—were seeking a place to get New York bands to play in D.C. “We went looking for the names of the managers of all these bands, Television, Talking Heads. We said, those bands are fine for the Childe Harold, but you don’t want the Ramones.” But the clubowners wanted a band with an album out and at that point only the Ramones qualified.
Jenkins also puts the Childe Harold show in ‘76 or ‘77. “It wasn’t that mad any times that I was there,” Jenkins contends, who characterized the group’s act as “performance art.” He recounts how at the same spot in every show, the band would stop. “Then Johnny and Dee Dee would take off their jackets—and then they would start again.”
Jenkins recalls the audience as mostly “curiosity seekers. Not many Ramones fans in the audience, it seemed to me.”
Jenkins’ timeline also has the Ramones graduating from D.C.’s small rooms early, making a Childe Harold gig in ‘78 unlikely. “They were in the Warner [Theater] pretty quickly, with the Runaways, ’cause I ran into them at the Burger King at the Greyhound station on New York Avenue before the show,” he remembers.
Over the phone, Wuelfing wracks his brain a moment, then declares, “I don’t remember a comedian at all.” Wuelfing now runs Howlin Wuelf Media, a music PR firm out of Morrisville, Pa.
“I do remember going to maybe all the shows, if not all the shows. And it was pretty well-behaved. My main memory of the show was how big a PA they brought in.” The “huge” sound equipment dwarfed the “teeny” stage. “And there they were, crammed in between these huge, huge PA speakers, with [manager] Danny Fields sitting at a table—when I say right in front of it, I mean with his head was up against the speaker.”
Wuelfing recalls a scene much like the infamous 1976 Sex Pistols gig in Manchester, England, that inspired the creation of the Smiths, the Fall, Joy Division, etc. “I do remember the folks that wound up being the early D.C. punk scene were all there,” he says.
“To say it was a regular Ramones concert—well, none of us knew what a regular Ramones concert was,” he continues. “Well, I guess I did. Because I’d seen them play at CBGBs in a 15-minute set on a 10-band bill maybe a year before. But, yeah, I don’t remember there being any mayhem of beer-bottle-throwing. And I’m not sure how that could have happened. Because the original punk crowd was kind of an older crowd, for the day. It wasn’t a bunch of 16-year-olds. It was people more in their 20s and kind of on the intellectual side. And seeing the Ramones was a big deal. People were not there to start shit.
“The comedian thing is really throwing me,” Wuelfing says.
After more brain-wracking, Wuelfing becomes more convinced that Shydner’s story is wrong. “It sounds great, getting bottled off the stage at a Ramones show,” he says. “It’s what you’d expect. Because it’s in keeping with the punk mythology that arose down the line, but was kind of not like what it was. The whole idea of there being punk violence came around when you had kids, teenagers, getting into it. The guys like Minor Threat—not that Minor Threat were like that, but a lot of the dumber kids in that scene. Like the guys in Iron Cross and stuff. As more dopey people showed up at punk shows, the jocks and stuff like that.
“But the first batch of punk-rock people were music freaks and they tended to be smart from what I saw,” he continues. “And they just didn’t misbehave. The people who started misbehaving were people like fucking Henry Rollins. I don’t mean that facetiously; that’s what he did. He was a pain in the ass. ‘Cause he would get these places closed down. When [punk music venues] would open in Georgetown, he’d be in there and some off-duty Marine would make some crack or punch some kid, and notoriously Henry was the first to go in wailing. Which is really funny because now you hear [Rollins say], ‘Oh, yeah, it was tough being a punk kid and the Marines would come after us.’ Dude—yeah, good story. That’s not what was going on. He was the one who was doing it.”
Wuelfing also recalls the difficulty the early D.C. punks had in creating and maintaining any kind of scene, calling it “a pretty tentative thing.” Once a venue agreed to host a show, “the last thing people would want to do is start shit,” he says. “Because there you go—there’s a venue down. People wanted to see music. Nobody’s gonna go and throw a bottle at a stuffy place like the fucking Childe Harold and put that in jeopardy.”
Wuelfing suggests that Shydner is “misremembering.” The bottle-throwing scenario sounds to him more like a Bayou gig, the Bayou being the storied Georgetown waterfront club that closed in 1998 after nearly 60 years of hosting everyone from U2’s first U.S. gig to frat-rock jam bands. “That strikes me as that would be more logical,” says Wuelfing, who characterizes the Bayou crowd as “It’s Friday night, let’s go out. Hey, we’re at a punk rock show, we’re punk rockers, let’s throw beer bottles at the comedian.” And I’m saying that kinda facetiously, but at the same time trying to recall the zeitgeist then and who acted like what. That’s a much more logical scenario. And it’s a long time ago, it could be that the guy is conflating a couple memories. Which is what you do when you make movies or write [books].
For his part, Shydner laughs off the complaints. “I was there that night,” he insists from outside an LA hospital where he’s taken his daughter for a checkup. (”Nothing serious.”) “I have a buddy who was there that night who had to walk me home.”
Shydner also discounts the idea that the show was actually at the Bayou. “I opened up for a lot of people at the Bayou,” he says. “I have a story about opening up for Rick Danko there.” (Shydner later sends the story, which is also quite funny and may wind up in a second edition of I Killed.)
Shydner will admit that the Ramones gig may not be “the absolute first time they came to town,” but insists that the crowd was not sitting quietly. “I never saw any show [at the Childe Harold] where they sat quietly. It’s not a symposium hall, it’s a little bar.”
And it was definitely the Childe Harold, of this Shydner is certain.
“I don’t know what [Jenkins and Wuelfing] saw, man, but I got crushed before I got up there,” he laughs. “Believe me, they would have remembered my show. They might have sat back down after they doused me. Trust me, they would have remembered my show. Sitting there quietly at a punk show—that’s hilarious.”
So, a stalemate of memories. Maybe it was the Bayou. Maybe it wasn’t the Ramones. Truth becomes slippery over time. And a comedian’s job is to tell stories that aren’t technically true. But there is truth within the jokes. And sometimes the truth hurts. Like a bottle to the head.
As the Internet continues destroying once-thriving industries, it helpfully creates tiny new ones, such as the make-your-own animation site xtranormal.com. This web utility proclaims, in imploring uppercase, “IF YOU CAN TYPE, YOU CAN MAKE MOVIES.”
While a glance at the multiplex listings suggests this is in fact true, what xtranormal actually offers is more akin to the old song-poem business, whose tiny ads in the back of tawdry magazines enticed amateur poets to turn their writings into amateur-sounding music.
Presenting Hanna-Barbera-style limited animation, xtranormal users may choose a variety of stock characters and backgrounds to create their movies. While not yet embraced at Facebook levels, enough savvy users have taken to xtranormal to create a noticeable trend. Call it the Versus Meme. The Versus Meme pits an expert against an idiot debating some modern concern. In itself, this matchup is pretty much always comedy gold. Computer-generated voices add a satisfying layer of off-kilter post-modern wackness.
Joining this Net fad is simple. First, type out your rant: “I hate X because Y,” “This new thing is stupid because…” Whatever pisses you off at the moment. Shouldn’t be difficult.
Now boil down the opposing viewpoint to it’s most minimal absurdity. Alternate these sentences, pro and con, paste them into the template and click Publish. You are on your way to viral celebrity.
Here are some of the better Versus videos. Some are answer-videos and some answer-videos are by the same creator. And yes, these are basically the same joke. But one of them can be YOUR joke.
(I originally wrote this as a submission to the fab new comedy/entertainment blog Splitsider, but as soon as I hit “send,” the Comic’s Comic blog posted a similar piece (“Two makers of xtranormal comedy insider videos talk about their creations”). So I’m posting my version here. You’re welcome.)
Happened to hear that great old Tammy Wynette/David Houston song, My Elusive Dreams, and realized in an instant that it needed to be updated for our modern world. The original tune’s sad sense of yearning is a perfect commentary on the plugged-in generation’s lemming-like behavior — constantly racing from site to site, app to app, Web 2.0 to Web 3.0, new thing to newer thing, always searching for…whatevs.
And, yeah, me, too.
So I enlisted the mighty musical skills of Honky Tonk Confidential (Diana Quinn, vocals/guitar; Mike Woods, lead guitar/vocals; Sam Goodall, (bass); and Mark Lindamood, drums), booked time with the inestimable Marco Delmar at Recording Arts studio, talked partner-in-crime Tom Welsh into shelling out a few bucks, and, voila! Weird Al, eat your heart out!
Here is a video version of the tune you will be singing for the foreseeable future. If you feel you can make a better video, by all means do.
And here is the MP3 file for your listening and downloading pleasure.
Now, should you be moved enough by this unselfish gift of catchy music, feel free to click the button below. You’re welcome.
