Ancient Music Videos
Here are two memory lane type videos from the world of music. Don't like
external links, but these work better this way, linking over to "zippyvideos".
The first is a Beach Boys thing. Interesting to hear the music, which hasn't
aged at all, but see the faces of these young kids, including Brian Wilson, who looks
so incredibly young. (I want in the comments, the story of my brother John who is rumored to have mixed for them back then. )
6 comments:
One of the best and true Beach Boy stories ,I remember comes from Tom Sperry ,who while working at Wilson's House of Suede (scott worked there as well) made a delivery to Brian's house on a canyon road and got to see the infamous grand piano in a sand box that he worked in , while totally bonkers. My only meeting with a Beach Boy was at the airport in Rochester , when Sperry and I flew in for a reunion and saw Mike Love waiting for luggage, and neither of us recognized him at the time becuase he was dressed like a professional golfer.Too bad the best Beach Boy is dead. I loved Carl's voice. John
I just remembered another Beach Boy meeting. The missing member of the original band. David Marks .The Beach Boys dad fired him after the first album, he was 17 I think ,just because he didnt like him . Years later, my friend Buzz Clifford "Babysittin Boogie 1960" introduced me to him in Burbank . Alcoholic. Living with his mom , and living off the royalties of that 1st album.He and Buzz cut some songs together.
Fast forward to after Carl's death, the remaining Beach Boys decide to give David another shot and hire him for a tour. He is such a prick that they fire him after two weeks. No happy ending .John
The first time I heard "We've Only Just Begun" I was living in a squalid apartment along the beach outside of L.A. I remember it, to this day--even where I was standing. The song was being used in a bank commercial. I don't think the song had been on the radio yet (but I didn't listen to pop music radio, so I don't know). A young couple drove down the road as the song played; ending with "Crocker Bank" supered over the scene. I was stunned by that voice. God! She was delicious. And later I out found out, beautiful!
But I couldn't see her beauty then. She was too straight! But she didn't seem truly straight to me--she seemed crooked! She was an enigma. A musician of my generation who chose to look like that. And, her obsession to look like that did her in.
But I have great sympathy for her now. In those times, and in my youth, there seemed to be so little appreciation of the variety of options available to us all. And to her too, there was only that choice between skinny:good and fat:bad. There were not enough options. Not enough tolerance.
We sang "All You Need is Love" but, we'd only just begun!
-smb
Oh, Bob--please don't say these videos are "ancient!" I remember watching this exact Karen Carpenter segment in real time on Ed Sullivan. Yes, the whole anorexic and white bread/ultra straight vibe was weird even then. Note that even Ed Sullivan feels compelled to have long sideburn by then. But what got me was the brief era of long, maxi, granny/faux-country dresses for women and girls, circa 1970. I graduated 6th grade that year and I have awful memories of trying on dresses just like Karen's in shops along Ventura Blvd. Ugh. But sometime in the late 80s, Leah and I saw an amazing documentary about Karen Carpenter that has since been pulled from the market for legal reasons: it was entirely shot with Barbie and Ken dolls. But with realistic voices and their real songs. As she lost weight, the director kept scrapping away the plastic on the Barbie doll. Something about that kind of funky animation--bizarre!!--got everyone past the "Karen Carpenter is NOT hip" and then told you her story. We all loved her and felt very smypathetic after the movie. I know it sounds strange to say this--but it was an amazing, accomplished movie.
--Barb
Now, on to the Beach Boys:
The whole thing about VH1 and MTV in the 80s was how they went back to televsion and edited these new "music videos" from much older film stock and outtacks.
But I did get to meet Dennis Wilson in person. One summer in the late 70s, I was working at my Dad's office in Century City. Oh, so boring. Bunch of lawyers, corporate offices. Lunch was the best part of the day. One summer afternoon I was coming back and got into an elevator and saw Dennis Wilson inside. He reeked of alcohol, had a heavy beard, seemed kind of messy and was wearing a t-shirt that had a b&w picture of a baby. I totally knew who he was. Since it was just us two going up, I said something like, "is that your kid?" And he smiled and say yeah, I'm the luckiest guy in the world. I love my son." He died by drowning a couple months later. I always felt bad for the kid.
Barb,
Thou dost protest too much!. Ancient knows ancient. I am surprised to hear from people that Karen had contemporaneous effects on people. I just knew her singing, not her image, till later on when I hear her story. Scott notes that he thought at the time that she was so unabashedly "establishment" or something, and he was confused by that. Others emulated her style, and sadly her weight. Celebrities play a strange role in people's mindsets, that's for sure, even if it is tangential. I remember being OK with our first car, a Plymouth Valiant, partly because I had read that some famous politician owned one. How crazy is that?
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