Podcast appearances and mentions of Annette Funicello

This week Ken welcomes legendary warm up comic, and author of the essential memoir "Warm Up Guy", Bob Perlow to the show. Ken and Bob discuss the side of Rhode Island, Night of the Comet, Gary Marshall, being conscripted into warming up the audience, Newhart, falling into writing on Laveren and Shirley, discovering audiences want T-shirts, the power of sound queues, America's Host, the sequestered audience of a sitcom taping, how Friends tapings could take up to 8 hours, Dream On, the three hour limit, trying to keep the energy up, Full House, the unique weirdness of multi-cam sitcoms, being one of the elite few warm up comics, the 1978 -2008 sweet spot, Cheers, Night Court, Taxi, writing for Who's the Boss, Danny Arnold, being an extra on Barney Miller, torturing Jerry Lewis, Jimmy Stewart, Kirk Douglas, Ernest Borgnine, Vanity Plates, the horror of being famous and poor, seeing a former star now bartending, shows filmed outside during COVID, Oh! Madeline, the best sitcoms and the worst, The Single Guy, the classic mistake of not coming out and saying hello to the audience, how great Bob Newart is, the power of Robin Williams, how Tony Danza was absolutely the boss, photo mats, prank shows, getting hired as a writer having never written anything, being a tour guide, Angie, offering your services for free to get established, Robert Hayes, Makin' It, LA traffic, warming up the Tonight Show, Jay Leno, doubling up on gigs despite traffic, having a video to play if you're running late, Harry Anderson, getting fired from Home Improvement because Tim Allen is insecure, warming up a Michael Jackson video, warming up Susan Powter videos, 9 to 5, Major Dad, when actors take the part too seriously because they are wearing a uniform, Candid Camera, wanting to see some people get their competence, Grace Under Fire, Brett Butler, Cybill, getting photos with celebrities, aspirations to be on screen, how performers are not shy, Andy Kauffman on the set of Taxi, Annette Funicello, Growing Pains, Let Bob Do It, treating your audience with respect, Coach, Bob Saget, why you DO want to meet your heroes, why it's best to stay in a warm up gig for the long haul, being so you nobody can steal it, keeping souvenirs, giving away swag, keeping the diner sign from the Laverne and Shirley episode you wrote, running into people on the studio lot, Roseanne's late night show, how hard it is to make a living, being in Robin Williams improv group, The Larry Sanders Show, and getting out at the right time.  

"You're 40 years old!" Beach Blanket Bingo (1965) directed by William Asher and starring Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello, Harvey Lembeck, Jody McCrea, Linda Evans, Don Rickles, Paul Lynde and Buster Keaton Next Time: Little Caesar (1931)

Movie Miss and (former co-host) Nikki Flixx discuss the 1987 "turkey" Back to the Beach, starring Annette Funicello, Frankie Avalon, Connie Stevens, Lori Loughlin and Demian Slade. *SPOILERS DUH!* At the time this episode was recorded, you can WATCH BACK TO THE BEACH HERE: Amazon Prime.We're also on YouTube, Apple, Goodpods, Pandora, Amazon & Audible and ko-fi.com/letstalkturkeysA proud member of the Prescribed Film Podcast network #PFPNPlease take a moment to rate & review the show! Be part of our fun bad movie conversations (We Want To Interact With You and Hear Your Thoughts!) by following both our facebook discussion group and our official page Let's Talk Turkeys, on Instagram at letstalkturkeys (all one word), email us directly at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠letstalkturkeys@yahoo.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, we're on X (Twitter) @gobblepodcast, Bluesky @letstalkturkeys and check us out on Wordpress at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://letstalkturkeys150469722.wordpress.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Find Movie Miss on IG at movie_miss & Slasher*COVER ART by: Dave Carruthers*

The Ojay´s, Mark Ronson Ft Bruno Mars, Sensational Epics, Nick Waterhouse, The Velvet Underground, Jerry Keller, Elvis Presley, Annette Funicello, Frankie Avalon, The Hollywood Flames, Bruce Bruno, Jimmy Clanton, los Sonor, Cesar y Sus Senadores, Micky & Los Relámpagos, Betina, Ferrusquilla, Ennio Sangiusto, Anjos do Inferno, Dorival Caymmi, Joan Chamorro San Andreu Band ft Rita Payés y The Walton Dixieland Jazz Group.

John Malahy, author of the literal book on Summer Movies, joins us on the beach with Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello for a discussion on 1965's Beach Blanket Bingo. John, Emily and Kristen talk about what makes a summer movie, the power of Frankie and Annette, and why Harvey Lembeck is the world's oldest teenager. Buy John's book wherever you get books. Find Kristen and Emily's books wherever you buy books. Kristen's latest, Popcorn Disabilities, is available to pre-order now before it releases on November 13th!     •    Love T shirts, pins, and other merch? The merch shop is live!     •    ICMYI, the best way to support Ticklish Biz is to become a Patron.     •    Follow Emily's Instagram    •    Follow Kristen's Instagram This episode was created thanks to our Patrons: Ali Moore Danny David Floyd Gates McF Rachel Clark Shawn Goodreau A Button Called Smalls Chris McKay Jacob Haller Peter Blitstein Peter Bryant Reyna-Moya James Bridget M. Hester Cat Cooper Daniel Tafoya David Baxter Diana Madden Harry Holland Jamie Carter Karen Yoder Lucy Soles Nick Weerts Richard Silver Rosa Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you grew up in the 1960s or ‘70s, it seemed like many of the songs on the radio were answering other songs on the radio.Roger Miller sang, “King of the Road,” and Jody Miller answered it with “Queen of the House.” Barry McGuire sang “Eve of Destruction,” only to be called out by a group named The Spokesmen with their "Dawn of Correction.” Merle Haggard sang of the “Okie from Muskogee” and drew a prompt reply from The Youngbloods' “Hippie from Olema.”Big NamesSome famous songsmiths also penned answer songs. In 1966, for instance, Bob Dylan's “4th Time Around” was a rather famous response to The Beatles' “Norwegian Wood” of the previous year. And Bob's first hero, Woody Guthrie, is said to have written his greatest song, “This Land Is Your Land,” in 1940 as an answer to Irving Berlin's “God Bless America.” (In fact, Woody originally called his composition "God Blessed America for Me.”)In 1959, one of Carole King's first songs was one she wrote as a reply to Annette Funicello's “Tall Paul.” It contained a classic line, “You can keep Tall Paul / I'll take Short Mort."Meat Loaf wrote “Two Out of Three Ain't Bad” in 1977 as an answer to Elvis Presley's 1956 hit “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You.”And some artists even recorded answers to their own songs. In 1963, for instance, Lesley Gore released “It's My Party,” followed by “Judy's Turn to Cry.” Both of the tunes appeared on Gore's debut album I'll Cry If I Want To.Country artists can get a bit edgy with their call and response. Loretta Lynn's 1967 release of “Don't Come Home a-Drinkin' (With Lovin' on Your Mind)” prompted a quick retort from Jay Lee Webb, called, "I Come Home A-Drinkin' (To a Worn-Out Wife Like You).”And some answer songs turned into multi-player comic discourses. For instance, in 1972, The Last Poets' "When the Revolution Comes” inspired Gil Scott-Heron to wax “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” which in turn led to Roy Clark's recording “The Lawrence Welk-Hee Haw Counter-Revolution Polka.”The Flood's FavMeanwhile, in the Floodisphere, the best-loved answer song comes from a pair of tunes written more than a hundred years ago.As we reported here earlier, W.C. Handy's 1915 classic “Yellow Dog Blues” — a melodic mainstay that reaches from the glory days of Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong all the way to today's trad jazz standard bearers — was actually composed as an answer to Shelton Brooks' wonderful 1913 composition called, “I Wonder Where My Easy Rider's Gone.” In recent back-to-back weekly rehearsals, The Flood has revisited both tunes. First came the Brooks original two weeks ago, then, last week, the guys turned to Handy's dandy reply. In The Flood's estimation, “Yellow Dog Blues” is the best of the pair. There are a lot of train songs out there, but none of them takes its riders quite as far as this one. Come along to where “the Southern cross the Yellow Dog!”More, You Say?Finally, if blues is your bag and you want to extend your Friday foray into Floodery, tune in the Blues Channel on the band's free Radio Floodango music streaming service. Click here to give it a spin. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com

HELLEY FABARES & MIKE FARRELL answer MORE of your FAN QUESTIONS: Exclusive 3 episode interview!Mike Farrell and Shelley Fabares share heartfelt memories with John from their illustrious careers and personal lives. Mike reflects on his time on Providence, the creative input he brought to his role as B.J. Hunnicut on MASH*, and his involvement in the film Dominick and Eugene. He recounts memorable moments working on Bonanza, crafting ideas for MASH* episodes, and the poignant story behind his infidelity episodes on the show.Shelley discusses her love for working on One Day at a Time, her resemblance to Donna Reed not aiding her getting her role on The Donna Reed Show, and an emotional story about Donna Reed's kindness. She also shares fond memories of Annette Funicello and Maureen Reagan and reflects on the COACH episode she did with Mike. Mike and Shelley reveal the secret to their enduring 40-year marriage, weaving a rich tapestry of professional triumphs and personal connections. This the second episode in a 3 episode interview!Become a That's Classic! PATREON member including the opportunity to see Exclusive Bonus Footage:patreon.com/thatsclassicThat's Classic! Merchandise: http://tee.pub/lic/2R57OwHl2tESubscribe for free to That's Classic YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBtpVKzLW389x6_nIVHpQcA?sub_confirmation=1Facebook: facebook.com/thatsclassictvHosted by John Cato, actor, voiceover artist, and moderator for over 20 years for the television and movie industry. John's background brings a unique insight and passion to the podcast.

Producer/Writer/Director/Composer Jeffrey Sherman eagerly went into the family business, following his grandfather, Tin Pan Alley Songwriter Al Sherman and his Dad, Robert B. Sherman of the legendary Disney Songwriters, The Sherman Brothers. Jeff and his cousin Greg Sherman's film, The Boys, chronicles their fathers' Disney journey from Annette Funicello's hit single, Tall Paul, through The Disney Songbook of Mary Poppins, The Jungle Book, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and legendary Disneyland Park rides including It's A Small World (After All!)Jeff joins us along with HIS next-gen musical son Alex, who offers up one of his beautiful songs. Jeff talks about his remarkable childhood which found him on  sets with his Dad, at scoring sessions for Tom Sawyer and touring Disney Studios with Walt Disney! Jeff also describes the fraught relationship between his Dad and Uncle which somehow forged treasured tunes that have brightened the world.In celebration of its 60th anniversary, ABC and 20/20 recently aired 'The Untold Story of Mary Poppins, co-produced by Jeff and his cousin Greg. For this production, The ABC News archive doors swung wide open and the cousins discovered early drawings, backstage footage, archival interviews and the audio tape recordings of the Sherman Brothers attempting to win the hardened heart of the famously crusty Mary Poppins Author, P.L. Travers.The special also details how the Sherman Brothers both spotted Julie Andrews performing a scene from My Fair Lady on The Ed Sullivan. Each sensed that she would be a perfect Poppins but knew that the pick needed to be Walt's idea and so Broadway tickets were arranged and on cue, he walked backstage and offered Julie Andrews the part.The special also includes interviews with Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke and today's legends who have been moved and inspired by The Sherman Brothers including Lin-Manuel Miranda, Tom Hanks and Emily Blunt.Jeff shares that through the noise of his father and uncle's contentious relationship, they both loved him and were generous with lessons and opportunities to visit sets, sit in on recording sessions and ask questions of greats like John Williams and Irwin Kostal. Jeff received piano lessons from his Tin Pan Alley Tunesmith grandfather, Al Sherman and Jeff's polio vaccine inspired the beloved classic, A Spoonful of Sugar.All that plus Alex Sherman remembers his grandfather and performs an original tune!Path Points of Interest:Jeff on Facebook Jeff on YouTubeJeff on IMDBThe Untold Story of Mary PoppinsThe Boys: The Sherman Brothers' StoryEntrance by Jeffrey ShermanAlex ShermanRobert B. ShermanRichard M. ShermanBased on a True Story - PeacockSaturday Night Movie

Paul Petersen From The Donna Reed Show Is Back For More Fun And Personal Moments! Paul Petersen reflects on his career, from the timeless impact of his song My Dad to the life-changing experience of The Donna Reed Show and his special bond with Carl Betz. He shares stories about his hits like Lollipops and Roses, touring with Dick Clark, and a funny story about being in concert with Mickey Dolenz of The Monkees. Paul also discusses his health challenges with COPD, Annette Funicello's legacy, and working with Glenn Ford on A Time for Killing. Despite his fame, he remains connected to lifelong friends, even those from grade school. There is a second episode of this interview where Paul continues with even more great stories! Check out episode two as well! Paul Petersen's organization to protect child actors: www.aminorconsideration.org Become a That's Classic! PATREON member including the opportunity to see Exclusive Bonus Footage: patreon.com/thatsclassic That's Classic! Merchandise: http://tee.pub/lic/2R57OwHl2tE Subscribe for free to That's Classic YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBtpVKzLW389x6_nIVHpQcA?sub_confirmation=1 Facebook: facebook.com/thatsclassictv Hosted by John Cato, actor, voiceover artist, and moderator for over 20 years for the television and movie industry. John's background brings a unique insight and passion to the podcast. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/john-cato/support

National nut day. Entertainment from 1989. 1st parachute jump, FDA bans red M&M's, Scientists sentenced to prison for not predicting an earthquake in Itlay. Todays birthdays - Christopher Lloyd, Bobby Fuller, Annette Funicello, Jeff Goldblum, Shaggy, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Michael Fishman, Zack Hanson, Jonathon Lipnicki, Dylan Scott,Intro - Pour some sugar on me - Def Leppard     http://defleppard.com/I'm a nut - The KilboomersMiss you much - Janet JacksonHigh cotton - AlabamaBirthdays - In da club - 50 Cent      http://50cent.com/I fought the law - Bobby FullerTall Paul - Annette FunicelloIt wasn't me - ShaggyRoseanne TV themeMMM Bop - HansonMy girl - Dylan ScottExit - In my dreams - Dokken    https://www.dokken.net/Follow Jeff Stampka on facebook and cooolmedia.com 

Hear both Billy F Gibbons and Los Straitjackets (with Mark Lindsay) take on a Roy Head classic in our Head 2 Head segment on this hour of Catching A Wave! Beth Riley has an instrumental deep track from The Beach Boys in her Surf's Up- Beth's Beach Boys Break. We hear a tune from an album by The Hondells celebrating it's 60th anniversary in our Good Time segment and we drop a coin in the Jammin' James Jukebox for our selection of the week (Annette Funicello...written by Gary Usher & Roger Christian). Plus, there's NEW tunes from Herb Alpert, Aloha Screwdriver, Jack White, The Riptide Rats, Ichi-Bons, Humanga Danga, Bloodshot Bill, X, Marmalade Wake, The Del Roswells, That Green, The Me Gustas and Dirty Quarantine!   Intro music bed: "Catch A Wave"- The Beach Boys   Aloha Screwdriver- "Turducken Of The Sea" The Del Roswells- "Baltan" Herb Alpert- "Dancing Down 50th Street" That Green- "Heart Shaped Box" Jack White- "That's How I'm Feeling"   Good Time segment: The Hondells 60th anniversary of Go Little Honda (1964 Mercury Records) The Hondells- "Hon-Da Beach Party"   X- "Sweet Till The Bitter End" The Me Gustas- "Last Of The V8s"   Surf's Up- Beth's Beach Boys Break: The Beach Boys- "Carl's Big Chance"   Marmalade Wake- "Big Kahuna" Bloodshot Bill- "Slippy" Humanga Danga- "Western Sunset (The Outlaws)" Dirty Quarantine- "Sunglasses Gang"   Head 2 Head: Billy F Gibbons- "Treat Her Right" Los Straitjackets (with Mark Lindsay)- "Treat Her Right"   Jammin' James Jukebox selection of the week: Annette Funicello- "Custom City"   The Sentinals- "Latinia" Ichi-Bons- "Outsider" The Riptide Rats- "Reef Rumblin'"   Outro music bed: Eddie Angel- "Deuces Wild"

This D23: Ultimate Fan Event 2024 celebrated The Sherman Brothers in a big way. They have contributed so much to Disney's legacy, so we wanted to take this episode to pay our own special tribute to them. Walt Disney hired Richard and Robert Sherman in 1960 to be the Walt Disney Studios ONLY in-house composers, and they worked on such classics like Mary Poppins, The Jungle Book, The Parent Trap, “The Tiki, Tiki, Tiki Room”, “it's a small world after all”, and hundreds more. Richard and Sarah give a brief history of the Sherman Brothers and share our personal stories meeting Richard Sherman.    Then, sit back and listen to the entire “Road To Cherry Tree Lane: Walt Disney's Mary Poppins” panel, recorded at D23 2024. Disney music historian Randy Thornton hosted this panel in which he shares how Walt's daughters Diane and Sharon, Davy Crockett, Disneyland/Vista Records, and Annette Funicello were all crucial intersections on “The Road to Cherry Tree Lane ” and Walt Disney's Mary Poppins. You'll hear some great history, and also audio excerpts from the story meetings between the Sherman Brothers and P.L. Travers - writer of Mary Poppins books. If you watch this episode on YouTube, you'll see a slideshow of images to go along with the panel.   Prepare yourself, because the tributes continue! During the D23 Disney Parks Showcase panel at The Honda Center on 8/10/24, Meghan Trainor stepped onstage to sing "Feed The Birds", and we've included an excerpt here.   Today in Star Wars History - 8/19/1973   Happy Birthday Ahmed Best! For the Star Wars Prequels, Ahmed Best provided the motion capture and voice for Jar Jar Binks who was the first fully-computer-generated supporting character in a feature film.    He also provided the voice for Jar Jar in Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series and has a cameo as Achk Med-Beq in Attack of the Clones.    Ahmed returned to the Star Wars saga in a flashback to Order 66 in The Mandalorian episode, “Chapter 20: The Foundling,” He is the Jedi Kelleran Beq who saves Grogu. Best had previously appeared as Kelleran Beq when he hosted the children's game show, Jedi Temple Challenge.   SPONSORS   Small World Vacations is an official sponsor of Skywalking Through Neverland. Contact them for a no obligation price quote at www.smallworldvacations.com. Tell them Skywalking Through Neverland sent you.   SUPPORT THE SHOW   Find out how you can become a part of the Skywalking Force and unlock bonus content.   CONTACT US   Instagram: http://instagram.com/skywalkingpod   Twitter: https://twitter.com/SkywalkingPod   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/skywalkingthroughneverland   Send emails to share@skywalkingthroughneverland.com and follow us on Facebook.   If you dug this episode, click over to iTunes | Stitcher | YouTube and leave us a review!   Never Land on Alderaan!

This D23: Ultimate Fan Event 2024 celebrated The Sherman Brothers in a big way. They have contributed so much to Disney's legacy, so we wanted to take this episode to pay our own special tribute to them. Walt Disney hired Richard and Robert Sherman in 1960 to be the Walt Disney Studios ONLY in-house composers, and they worked on such classics like Mary Poppins, The Jungle Book, The Parent Trap, “The Tiki, Tiki, Tiki Room”, “it's a small world after all”, and hundreds more. Richard and Sarah give a brief history of the Sherman Brothers and share our personal stories meeting Richard Sherman.    Then, sit back and listen to the entire “Road To Cherry Tree Lane: Walt Disney's Mary Poppins” panel, recorded at D23 2024. Disney music historian Randy Thornton hosted this panel in which he shares how Walt's daughters Diane and Sharon, Davy Crockett, Disneyland/Vista Records, and Annette Funicello were all crucial intersections on “The Road to Cherry Tree Lane ” and Walt Disney's Mary Poppins. You'll hear some great history, and also audio excerpts from the story meetings between the Sherman Brothers and P.L. Travers - writer of Mary Poppins books. If you watch this episode on YouTube, you'll see a slideshow of images to go along with the panel.   Prepare yourself, because the tributes continue! During the D23 Disney Parks Showcase panel at The Honda Center on 8/10/24, Meghan Trainor stepped onstage to sing "Feed The Birds", and we've included an excerpt here.   Today in Star Wars History - 8/19/1973   Happy Birthday Ahmed Best! For the Star Wars Prequels, Ahmed Best provided the motion capture and voice for Jar Jar Binks who was the first fully-computer-generated supporting character in a feature film.    He also provided the voice for Jar Jar in Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series and has a cameo as Achk Med-Beq in Attack of the Clones.    Ahmed returned to the Star Wars saga in a flashback to Order 66 in The Mandalorian episode, “Chapter 20: The Foundling,” He is the Jedi Kelleran Beq who saves Grogu. Best had previously appeared as Kelleran Beq when he hosted the children's game show, Jedi Temple Challenge.   SPONSORS   Small World Vacations is an official sponsor of Skywalking Through Neverland. Contact them for a no obligation price quote at www.smallworldvacations.com. Tell them Skywalking Through Neverland sent you.   SUPPORT THE SHOW   Find out how you can become a part of the Skywalking Force and unlock bonus content.   CONTACT US   Instagram: http://instagram.com/skywalkingpod   Twitter: https://twitter.com/SkywalkingPod   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/skywalkingthroughneverland   Send emails to share@skywalkingthroughneverland.com and follow us on Facebook.   If you dug this episode, click over to iTunes | Stitcher | YouTube and leave us a review!   Never Land on Alderaan!

GGACP keeps the summer vibe alive with this ENCORE of a 2014 interview with singer-actor and star of the "Beach Party" movie series, Frankie Avalon. In this episode, Frankie talks about breaking into show business as a child prodigy, receiving 12,000 pieces of fan mail per week and working alongside Hollywood greats Jack Benny, Jackie Gleason, Buster Keaton, Lucille Ball, and Groucho Marx. Also, Frankie looks back at his humble beginnings in South Philly, his years as a teen heartthrob and his decades-long friendship with onscreen love interest Annette Funicello. PLUS: Remembering "Skidoo"! “Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine”! Dueling Draculas! The Duke makes Laurence Harvey cry! And Cesar Romero and Arnold Stang hit a strip joint! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Shelley Fabares, Star of Coach, The Brian Keith Show, Brian's Song and more! - Exclusive Interview Shelley talks with John about her fun times working on COACH with Craig T. Nelson and Jerry Van Dyke, the genius of Jerry Van Dyke and her favorite guest stars. Shelley gets personal about how she met Annette Funicello and became very dear friends, as well as working on Brian's Song with James Caan and working on the Brian Keith Show and its ultimate demise. Shelley talks extensively about her romantic and funny moments meeting Mike Farrell, the love of her life for the first time. Thank you Shelley!!! Don't miss the other episode with Shelley where we discuss the Donna Reed Show! Become a That's Classic! PATREON member including the opportunity to see Exclusive Bonus Footage: patreon.com/thatsclassic Subscribe for free to That's Classic YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBtpVKzLW389x6_nIVHpQcA?sub_confirmation=1 Facebook: facebook.com/thatsclassictv Hosted by John Cato, actor, voiceover artist, and moderator for over 20 years for the television and movie industry. John's background brings a unique insight and passion to the podcast. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/john-cato/support

Hosts Sonia Mansfield and Margo D. drink two Stunned Mullets and dork out about 1987's BACK TO THE BEACH, starring Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello, Lori Loughlin, Demian Slade, and Connie Stevens. Also discussed, HIT MAN, PERFECT MATCH, and THE FIRST OMENDork out everywhere …Email at dorkingoutshow@gmail.comSubscribe on Apple PodcastsSpreakerSpotify Tune In Stitcherhttp://dorkingoutshow.com/https://bsky.app/profile/dorkingout.bsky.social https://www.threads.net/@dorkingoutshow https://www.instagram.com/dorkingoutshow/ https://www.facebook.com/dorkingoutshowhttps://twitter.com/dorkingoutshow

In today's episode, we're riding a wave of Disney magic with the Beach Boys. Host Eric takes us on a journey through the intertwined history of the iconic surf rock band and the Disney empire, just in time for the debut of the Disney+ documentary about the band!. From their songs featured in Disney projects to their collaborations with Annette Funicello and appearances in TV shows like Home Improvement, the Beach Boys have left an undeniable mark on the Disney universe. So, grab your surfboard and get ready to catch some good vibrations as we explore the synergy between the Beach Boys and Disney. This is an episode you won't want to miss, so let's jump in and uncover the magic! Thanks for listening to Synergy Loves Company: How Disney Connects to Everything. https://www.synergylovescompany.com Donate to the show: https://ko-fi.com/synergylovescompany Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@synergylovescompany Twitter: https://twitter.com/EricHSynergy Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/synergylovescompany Instagram and Threads :https://www.instagram.com/synergylovescompany/ “Episode Music Music courtesy of Melodie Music melod.ie” Beach Boys pic Peter Chiapperino(CC BY 2.0)Read transcript

Friday, November 5, 2021 "Comedy vs. opera! Who will win? No one." Our old pal AMMON returns as a FULL guest with three movies from THIS year that are also OVER two hours LONG. The result is another pod over three hours. Sorry to everybody for the time commitment this requires. I think I forgot to mention that the 2021 Baron Harkonnen must have been based on Brando's Kurtz. Also we forgot to mention the interestingness of Paul Atreides as a messiah built by the people rather than descended from the divine. Also we forgot to mention that there is not just a 1984 version of Dune, but also a 1984 Green Knight movie with Sean Connery and Ator the Fighting Eagle and also there's a 1984 Annette Funicello movie. What a weird time warp.0:00 -- Intro (a few college flashbacks)6:45 -- Movie prologues16:59 -- The Green Knight1.00:23 -- Annette1.28:17: -- Dune2.05:35 -- Awards and rankings2.54:12 -- Future business3.06:45 -- Outro and outtakesHey! Be sure to watch Funny Face, Harold and Maude, and Shopgirl for next time! Hey! Hear Ammon on the first season of Hotel Bar Sessions!Hey! Hear Ammon on Black Mirror Reflections!Hey! Hear Ammon on Black Mirror Reflections again!Hey! See Ammon lecture about Jordan Peele's Us!Hey! See that Sparks documentary!Hey! See that Lynch Dune!Hey! Chewbacca is Luke's father!Hey! Krusty hates ladders!Hey! "Angst In My Pants" by Sparks!Hey! "Eaten By the Monster of Love" by Sparks!Hey! "Music That You Can Dance To" by Sparks!Hey! "This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us" by Sparks!Hey! "Tryouts for the Human Race" by Sparks!Hey! See the Dune prologue that was on TV in the eighties but wasn't in the 1984 Dune movie!Hey! Read the NEGATIVE Dune review that made me want to see it in the theater!Hey! Leave us a voicemail at (801) 896-4542!Hey! Subscribe in iTunes!Hey! Check out the Facebook page and vote on the next category!Hey! Check out Jon's YM&T Letterboxd list!Hey! Check out Roy's YM&T Letterboxd list!Hey! Email us at yoursminetheirspodcast@gmail.com! Send new topics! Send new theme songs!

Eddie and J.B. review the pilot of Mickey Mouse Club  - The theme song  - The start of the Mickey Mouse club in 1930  - Walt's return to Mickey   - Jimmie and Roy   - 1955. Most influential Disney year?   - The Disney Kid star  - Annette Funicello- beach movies   - Reinvented in 70s 90s and 2017.   - In the parks - Mickey / Minnie Mouse Ears And in Disney news:   - Eras Tour coming to Disney+  - Disney Parks price increase  - Bluey Film  - King Dynasty Decision  - Fantastic Four

On this episode of the podcast, Phillip is joined by Dave Lizerbram from Rock Docs Podcast and the Little Slugger Podcast. First though, Phillip promotes his friend Tim's new project, The Ones Across The Pond, and his older projects https://www.youtube.com/@indyfilmfanatics6248/videos So check those out. Dave then asks a question for the listeners; What is a good movie for his 6 almost 7 year old son to watch? He had his son watch Wizard of Oz and they tried to show him Jacques Tati's Playtime, but he didn't like the later. They talk a little about their New Beverly experiences. Phillip then reads a little of the surfer style production notes that he received from Erik Clapp. After playing a tv spot for Hardbodies from 1984, Phillip reads the general information about the movie. It's then time for Listener Opinions from Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Then the two of them discuss the movie and a little bit about the Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello beach movies. It's a silly and fun conversation. They then answer the question of whether they notice anything that Quentin may have liked or used in a film. Then it's time to individually rate the movie. It's then time to talk about whether they would buy, rent, or find this movie for free. Phillip gives his Phil's Film Favorite of the Week which is Poor Things. Dave then gives his favorite that he watched this week; The Greatest Night in Pop (2024) (Netflix). He also mentions a great documentary called Who is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin' About Him?) (2010). Then it's time to tell the listeners what's coming next week. Rob Papp from The Cinemigos Podcast and the Circle of Jerks Podcast will be back to discuss The Wrecking Crew (1968). So come back then. Thanks for listening. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/makingtarantinothepodcast/message

For those who haven't heard the announcement I just posted , songs from this point on will sometimes be split among multiple episodes, so this is the first part of a multi-episode look at the Byrds in 1966-69 and the birth of country rock. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a half-hour bonus episode on "My World Fell Down" by Sagittarius. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources No Mixcloud at this time as there are too many Byrds songs in this chunk, but I will try to put together a multi-part Mixcloud when all the episodes for this song are up. My main source for the Byrds is Timeless Flight Revisited by Johnny Rogan, I also used Chris Hillman's autobiography, the 331/3 books on The Notorious Byrd Brothers and The Gilded Palace of Sin, For future parts of this multi-episode story I used Barney Hoskyns' Hotel California and John Einarson's Desperadoes as general background on Californian country-rock, Calling Me Hone, Gram Parsons and the Roots of Country Rock by Bob Kealing for information on Parsons, and Requiem For The Timeless Vol 2 by Johnny Rogan for information about the post-Byrds careers of many members. Information on Gary Usher comes from The California Sound by Stephen McParland. And this three-CD set is a reasonable way of getting most of the Byrds' important recordings. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript When we left the Byrds at the end of the episode on "Eight Miles High", they had just released that single, which combined folk-rock with their new influences from John Coltrane and Ravi Shankar, and which was a group composition but mostly written by the group's lead singer, Gene Clark. And also, as we mentioned right at the end of the episode, Clark had left the group. There had been many, many factors leading to Clark's departure. Clark was writing *far* more material than the other band members, of whom only Roger McGuinn had been a writer when the group started, and as a result was making far more money than them, especially with songs like "She Don't Care About Time", which had been the B-side to their number one single "Turn! Turn! Turn!" [Excerpt: The Byrds, "She Don't Care About Time"] Clark's extra income was making the rest of the group jealous, and they also didn't think his songs were particularly good, though many of his songs on the early Byrds albums are now considered classics. Jim Dickson, the group's co-manager, said "Gene would write fifteen to twenty songs a week and you had to find a good one whenever it came along because there were lots of them that you couldn't make head or tail of.  They didn't mean anything. We all knew that. Gene would write a good one at a rate of just about one per girlfriend." Chris Hillman meanwhile later said more simply "Gene didn't really add that much." That is, frankly, hard to square with the facts. There are ten original songs on the group's first two albums, plus one original non-album B-side. Of those eleven songs, Clark wrote seven on his own and co-wrote two with McGuinn. But as the other band members were starting to realise that they had the possibility of extra royalties -- and at least to some extent were starting to get artistic ambitions as far as writing goes -- they were starting to disparage Clark's work as a result, calling it immature. Clark had, of course, been the principal writer for "Eight Miles High", the group's most experimental record to date: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Eight Miles High"] But there he'd shared co-writing credit with David Crosby and Roger McGuinn, in part because that was the only way he could be sure they would agree to release it as a single. There were also internal rivalries within the band unrelated to songwriting -- as we've touched on, Crosby had already essentially bullied Clark off the guitar and into just playing tambourine (and McGuinn would be dismissive even of Clark's tambourine abilities). Crosby's inability to get on with any other member of any band he was in would later become legendary, but at this point Clark was the major victim of his bullying. According to Dickson "David understood when Gene left that ninety-five percent of why Gene left could be brought back to him." The other five percent, though, came from Clark's fear of flying. Clark had apparently witnessed a plane crash in his youth and been traumatised by it, and he had a general terror of flying and planes -- something McGuinn would mock him for a little, as McGuinn was an aviation buff. Eventually, Clark had a near-breakdown boarding a plane from California to New York for a promotional appearance with Murray the K, and ended up getting off the plane. McGuinn and Michael Clarke almost did the same, but in the end they decided to stay on, and the other four Byrds did the press conference without Gene. When asked where Gene was, they said he'd "broken a wing". He was also increasingly having mental health and substance abuse problems, which were exacerbated by his fear, and in the end he decided he just couldn't be a Byrd any more. Oddly, of all the band members, it was David Crosby who was most concerned about Clark's departure, and who did the most to try to persuade him to stay, but he still didn't do much, and the group decided to carry on as a four-piece and not even make a proper announcement of Clark's departure -- they just started putting out photos with four people instead of five. The main change as far as the group were concerned was that Hillman was now covering Clark's old vocal parts, and so Crosby moved to Clark's old centre mic while Hillman moved from his position at the back of the stage with Michael Clarke to take over Crosby's mic. The group now had three singer-instrumentalists in front, two of whom, Crosby and McGuinn, now thought of themselves as songwriters. So despite the loss of their singer/songwriter/frontman, they moved on to their new single, the guaranteed hit follow-up to "Eight Miles High": [Excerpt: The Byrds, "5D (Fifth Dimension)"] "5D" was written by McGuinn, inspired by a book of cartoons called 1-2-3-4 More More More More by Don Landis, which I haven't been able to track down a copy of, but which seems to have been an attempt to explain the mathematical concept of higher dimensions in cartoon form. McGuinn was inspired by this and by Einstein's theory of relativity -- or at least by his understanding of relativity, which does not seem to have been the most informed take on the topic. McGuinn has said in the past that the single should really have come with a copy of Landis' booklet, so people could understand it. Sadly, without the benefit of the booklet we only have the lyrics plus McGuinn's interviews to go on to try to figure out what he means. As far as I'm able to understand, McGuinn believed -- completely erroneously -- that Einstein had proved that along with the four dimensions of spacetime there is also a fifth dimension which McGuinn refers to as a "mesh", and that "the reason for the speed of light being what it is is because of that mesh." McGuinn then went on to identify this mesh with his own conception of God, influenced by his belief in Subud, and with a Bergsonian idea of a life force. He would talk about how most people are stuck in a materialist scientific paradigm which only admits to  the existence of three dimensions, and how there are people out there advocating for a five-dimensional view of the world. To go along with this mystic view of the universe, McGuinn wanted some music inspired by the greatest composer of sacred music, and he asked Van Dyke Parks, who was brought in to add keyboards on the session, to play something influenced by Bach -- and Parks obliged, having been thinking along the same lines himself: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "5D (Fifth Dimension)"] Unfortunately for the group, McGuinn's lyrical intention wasn't clear enough and the song was assumed to be about drugs, and was banned by many radio stations. That plus the track's basically uncommercial nature meant that it reached no higher than number forty-four in the charts. Jim Dickson, the group's co-manager, pointed to a simpler factor in the record's failure, saying that if the organ outro to the track had instead been the intro, to set a mood for the track rather than starting with a cold vocal open, it would have had more success. The single was followed by an album, called Fifth Dimension, which was not particularly successful. Of the album's eleven songs, two were traditional folk songs, one was an instrumental -- a jam called "Captain Soul" which was a version of Lee Dorsey's "Get Out My Life Woman" credited to the four remaining Byrds, though Gene Clark is very audible on it playing harmonica -- and one more was a jam whose only lyrics were "gonna ride a Lear jet, baby", repeated over and over. There was also "Eight Miles High" and the group's inept and slightly-too-late take on "Hey Joe". It also included a third single, a country track titled "Mr. Spaceman": [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Mr. Spaceman"] McGuinn and, particularly, Hillman, had some country music background, and both were starting to think about incorporating country sounds into the group's style, as after Clark's departure from the group they were moving away from the style that had characterised their first two albums. But the interest in "Mr. Spaceman" was less about the musical style than about the lyrics. McGuinn had written the song in the hopes of contacting extraterrestrial life -- sending them a message in his lyrics so that any aliens listening to Earth radio would come and visit, though he was later disappointed to realise that the inverse-square law means that the signals would be too faint to make out after a relatively short distance: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Mr. Spaceman"] "Mr. Spaceman" did better on the charts than its predecessor, scraping the lower reaches of the top forty, but it hardly set the world alight, and neither did the album -- a typical review was the one by Jon Landau, which said in part "This album then cannot be considered up to the standards set by the Byrds' first two and basically demonstrates that they should be thinking in terms of replacing Gene Clark, instead of just carrying on without him." Fifth Dimension would be the only album that Allen Stanton would produce for the Byrds, and his replacement had actually just produced an album that was a Byrds record by any other name: [Excerpt: Gene Clark, "So You Say You've Lost Your Baby"] We've looked at Gary Usher before, but not for some time, and not in much detail. Usher was one of several people who were involved in the scene loosely centred on the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean, though he never had much time for Jan Berry and he had got his own start in the music business slightly before the Beach Boys. As a songwriter, his first big successes had come with his collaborations with Brian Wilson -- he had co-written "409" for the Beach Boys, and had also collaborated with Wilson on some of his earliest more introspective songs, like "The Lonely Sea" and "In My Room", for which Usher had written the lyrics: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "In My Room"] Usher had built a career as a producer and writer for hire, often in collaboration with Roger Christian, who also wrote with Brian Wilson and Jan Berry. Usher, usually with Christian, and very occasionally Wilson wrote the songs for several of American International Pictures' Beach Party films: [Excerpt: Donna Loren, "Muscle Bustle"] And Usher and Christian had also had bit parts in some of the films, like Bikini Beach, and Usher had produced records for Annette Funicello, the star of the films, often with the Honeys (a group consisting of Brian Wilson's future wife Marilyn plus her sister and cousin) on backing vocals. He had also produced records for the Surfaris, as well as a whole host of studio-only groups like the Four Speeds, the Super Stocks, and Mr. Gasser and the Weirdoes, most of whom were Usher and the same small group of vocalist friends along with various selections of Wrecking Crew musicians making quick themed albums. One of these studio groups, the Hondells, went on to be a real group of sorts, after Usher and the Beach Boys worked together on a film, The Girls on the Beach. Usher liked a song that Wilson and Mike Love had written for the Beach Boys to perform in the film, "Little Honda", and after discovering that the Beach Boys weren't going to release their version as a single, he put together a group to record a soundalike version: [Excerpt: The Hondells, "Little Honda"] "Little Honda" made the top ten, and Usher produced two albums for the Hondells, who had one other minor hit with a cover version of the Lovin' Spoonful's "Younger Girl". Oddly, Usher's friend Terry Melcher, who would shortly produce the Byrds' first few hits, had also latched on to "Little Honda", and produced his own version of the track, sung by Pat Boone of all people, with future Beach Boy Bruce Johnston on backing vocals: [Excerpt: Pat Boone, "Little Honda"] But when Usher had got his version out first, Boone's was relegated to a B-side. When the Byrds had hit, and folk-rock had started to take over from surf rock, Usher had gone with the flow and produced records like the Surfaris' album It Ain't Me Babe, with Usher and his usual gang of backing vocalists augmenting the Surfaris as they covered hits by Dylan, the Turtles, the Beach Boys and the Byrds: [Excerpt: The Surfaris, "All I Really Want to Do"] Usher was also responsible for the Surfaris being the first group to release a version of "Hey Joe" on a major label, as we heard in the episode on that song: [Excerpt: The Surfaris, "Hey Joe"] After moving between Capitol, Mercury, and Decca Records, Usher had left Decca after a round of corporate restructuring and been recommended for a job at Columbia by his friend Melcher, who at that point was producing Paul Revere and the Raiders and the Rip Chords and had just finished his time as the Byrds' producer. Usher's first work at Columbia was actually to prepare new stereo mixes of some Byrds tracks that had up to that point only been issued in mono, but his first interaction with the Byrds themselves came via Gene Clark: [Excerpt: Gene Clark, "So You Say You've Lost Your Baby"] On leaving the Byrds, Clark had briefly tried to make a success of himself as a songwriter-for-hire in much the same mould as Usher, attempting to write and produce a single for two Byrds fans using the group name The Cookie Fairies, while spending much of his time romancing Michelle Phillips, as we talked about in the episode on "San Francisco". When the Cookie Fairies single didn't get picked up by a label, Clark had put together a group with Bill Rinehart from the Leaves, Chip Douglas of the Modern Folk Quartet, and Joel Larson of the Grass Roots. Just called Gene Clark & The Group, they'd played around the clubs in LA and cut about half an album's worth of demos produced by Jim Dickson and Ed Tickner, the Byrds' management team, before Clark had fired first Douglas and then the rest of the group. Clark's association with Douglas did go on to benefit him though -- Douglas went on, as we've seen in other episodes, to produce hits for the Turtles and the Monkees, and he later remembered an old song by Clark and McGuinn that the Byrds had demoed but never released, "You Showed Me", and produced a top ten hit version of it for the Turtles: [Excerpt: The Turtles, "You Showed Me"] Clark had instead started working with two country singers, Vern and Rex Gosdin, who had previously been with Chris Hillman in the country band The Hillmen. When that band had split up, the Gosdin Brothers had started to perform together as a duo, and in 1967 they would have a major country hit with "Hangin' On": [Excerpt: The Gosdin Brothers, "Hangin' On"] At this point though, they were just Gene Clark's backing vocalists, on an album that had been started with producer Larry Marks, who left Columbia half way through the sessions, at which point Usher took over. The album, titled Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers, featured a mix of musicians from different backgrounds. There were Larson and Rinehart from Gene Clark and the Group, there were country musicians -- a guitarist named Clarence White and the banjo player Doug Dillard. Hillman and Michael Clarke, the Byrds' rhythm section, played on much of the album as a way of keeping a united front, Glen Campbell, Jerry Cole, Leon Russell and Jim Gordon of the Wrecking Crew contributed, and Van Dyke Parks played most of the keyboards. The lead-off single for Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers, "Echoes", is one of the tracks produced by Marks, but in truth the real producer of that track is Leon Russell, who wrote the orchestral arrangement that turned Clark's rough demo into a baroque pop masterpiece: [Excerpt: Gene Clark, "Echoes"] Despite Clark having quit the band, relations between him and the rest were still good enough that in September 1966 he temporarily rejoined the band after Crosby lost his voice, though he was gone again as soon as Crosby was well. But that didn't stop the next Byrds album, which Usher went on to produce straight after finishing work on Clark's record, coming out almost simultaneously with Clark's and, according to Clark, killing its commercial potential. Upon starting to work with the group, Usher quickly came to the conclusion that Chris Hillman was in many ways the most important member of the band. According to Usher "There was also quite a divisive element within the band at that stage which often prevented them working well together. Sometimes everything would go smoothly, but other times it was a hard road. McGuinn and Hillman were often more together on musical ideas. This left Crosby to fend for himself, which I might add he did very well." Usher also said "I quickly came to understand that Hillman was a good stabilising force within the Byrds (when he wanted to be). It was around the time that I began working with them that Chris also became more involved in the songwriting. I think part of that was the fact that he realised how much more money was involved if you actually wrote the songs yourself. And he was a good songwriter." The first single to be released from the new sessions was one that was largely Hillman's work. Hillman and Crosby had been invited by the great South African jazz trumpeter Hugh Masekela to play on some demos for another South African jazzer, singer Letta Mbulu. Details are sparse, but one presumes this was for what became her 1967 album Letta Mbulu Sings, produced by David Axelrod: [Excerpt: Letta Mbulu, "Zola (MRA)"] According to Hillman, that session was an epiphany for him, and he went home and started writing his own songs for the first time. He took one of the riffs he came up with to McGuinn, who came up with a bridge inspired by a song by yet another South African musician, Miriam Makeba, who at the time was married to Masekela, and the two wrote a lyric inspired by what they saw as the cynical manipulation of the music industry in creating manufactured bands like the Monkees -- though they have both been very eager to say that they were criticising the industry, not the Monkees themselves, with whom they were friendly. As Hillman says in his autobiography, "Some people interpreted it as a jab at The Monkees. In reality, we had immense respect for all of them as singers and musicians. We weren't skewering the members of the Monkees, but we were taking a shot at the cynical nature of the entertainment business that will try to manufacture a group like The Monkees as a marketing strategy. For us, it was all about the music, and we were commenting on the pitfalls of the industry rather than on any of our fellow musicians." [Excerpt: The Byrds, "So You Want to be a Rock 'n' Roll Star?"] The track continued the experimentation with sound effects that they had started with the Lear jet song on the previous album. That had featured recordings of a Lear jet, and "So You Want to be a Rock 'n' Roll Star?" featured recordings of audience screams. Those screams were, according to most sources, recorded by Derek Taylor at a Byrds gig in Bournemouth in 1965, but given reports of the tepid response the group got on that tour, that doesn't seem to make sense. Other sources say they're recordings of a *Beatles* audience in Bournemouth in *1963*, the shows that had been shown in the first US broadcast of Beatles footage, and the author of a book on links between the Beatles and Bournemouth says on his blog "In the course of researching Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Beatles & Bournemouth I spoke to two people who saw The Byrds at the Gaumont that August and neither recalled any screaming at all, let alone the wall of noise that can be heard on So You Want To Be A Rock 'n' Roll Star." So it seems likely that screaming isn't for the Byrds, but of course Taylor had also worked for the Beatles. According to Usher "The crowd sound effects were from a live concert that Derek Taylor had taped with a little tape recorder in London. It was some outrageous crowd, something like 20,000 to 30,000 people. He brought the tape in, ran it off onto a big tape, re- EQ'd it, echoed it, cleaned it up and looped it." So my guess is that the audience screams in the Byrds song about the Monkees are for the Beatles, but we'll probably never know for sure: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "So You Want to be a Rock 'n' Roll Star?"] The track also featured an appearance by Hugh Masekela, the jazz trumpeter whose invitation to take part in a session had inspired the song: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "So You Want to be a Rock 'n' Roll Star?"] While Hillman was starting to lean more towards folk and country music -- he had always been the member of the band least interested in rock music -- and McGuinn was most interested in exploring electronic sounds, Crosby was still pushing the band more in the direction of the jazz experimentation they'd tried on "Eight Miles High", and one of the tracks they started working on soon after "So You Want to be a Rock 'n' Roll Star?" was inspired by another jazz trumpet great. Miles Davis had been partly responsible for getting the Byrds signed to Columbia, as we talked about in the episode on "Mr. Tambourine Man", and so the group wanted to pay him tribute, and they started working on a version of his classic instrumental "Milestones": [Excerpt: Miles Davis, "Milestones"] Sadly, while the group worked on their version for several days -- spurred on primarily by Crosby -- they eventually chose to drop the track, and it has never seen release or even been bootlegged, though there is a tiny clip of it that was used in a contemporaneous documentary, with a commentator talking over it: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Milestones (TV)"] It was apparently Crosby who decided to stop work on the track, just as working on it was also apparently his idea. Indeed, while the biggest change on the album that would become Younger Than Yesterday was that for the first time Chris Hillman was writing songs and taking lead vocals, Crosby was also writing more than before. Hillman wrote four of the songs on the album, plus his co-write with McGuinn on "So You Want to be a Rock 'n' Roll Star?", but Crosby also supplied two new solo compositions, plus a cowrite with McGuinn, and Crosby and McGuinn's "Why?", the B-side to "Eight Miles High", was also dug up and rerecorded for the album. Indeed, Gary Usher would later say "The album was probably 60% Crosby. McGuinn was not that involved, nor was Chris; at least as far as performing was concerned." McGuinn's only composition on the album other than the co-writes with Crosby and Hillman was another song about contacting aliens, "CTA-102", a song about a quasar which at the time some people were speculating might have been evidence of alien life. That song sounds to my ears like it's had some influence from Joe Meek's similar records, though I've never seen McGuinn mention Meek as an influence: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "CTA-102"] Crosby's growing dominance in the studio was starting to rankle with the other members. In particular two tracks were the cause of conflict. One was Crosby's song "Mind Gardens", an example of his increasing experimentation, a freeform song that ignores conventional song structure, and which he insisted on including on the album despite the rest of the group's objections: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Mind Gardens"] The other was the track that directly followed "Mind Gardens" on the album. "My Back Pages" was a song from Dylan's album Another Side of Bob Dylan, a song many have seen as Dylan announcing his break with the folk-song and protest movements he'd been associated with up to that point, and his intention to move on in a new direction: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "My Back Pages"] Jim Dickson, the Byrds' co-manager, was no longer on speaking terms with the band and wasn't involved in their day-to-day recording as he had been, but he'd encountered McGuinn on the street and rolled down his car window and suggested that the group do the song. Crosby was aghast. They'd already recorded several songs from Another Side of Bob Dylan, and Fifth Dimension had been their first album not to include any Dylan covers. Doing a jangly cover of a Dylan song with a McGuinn lead vocal was something they'd moved on from, and he didn't want to go back to 1964 at the end of 1966. He was overruled, and the group recorded their version, a track that signified something very different for the Byrds than the original had for Dylan: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "My Back Pages"] It was released as the second single from the album, and made number thirty. It was the last Byrds single to make the top forty. While he was working with the Byrds, Usher continued his work in the pop field, though as chart pop moved on so did Usher, who was now making records in a psychedelic sunshine pop style with acts like the Peanut Butter Conspiracy: [Excerpt: The Peanut Butter Conspiracy, "It's a Happening Thing"] and he produced Chad and Jeremy's massive concept album Of Cabbages and Kings, which included a five-song "Progress Suite" illustrating history from the start of creation until the end of the world: [Excerpt: Chad and Jeremy, "Editorial"] But one of the oddest projects he was involved in was indirectly inspired by Roger McGuinn. According to Usher "McGuinn and I had a lot in common. Roger would always say that he was "out of his head," which he thought was good, because he felt you had to go out of your head before you could really find your head! That sums up McGuinn perfectly! He was also one of the first people to introduce me to metaphysics, and from that point on I started reading everything I could get my hands on. His viewpoints on metaphysics were interesting, and, at the time, useful. He was also into Marshall McLuhan; very much into the effects of electronics and the electronic transformation. He was into certain metaphysical concepts before I was, but I was able to turn him onto some abstract concepts as well" These metaphysical discussions led to Usher producing an album titled The Astrology Album, with discussions of the meaning of different star signs over musical backing: [Excerpt: Gary Usher, "Leo"] And with interviews with various of the artists he was working with talking about astrology. He apparently interviewed Art Garfunkel -- Usher was doing some uncredited production work on Simon and Garfunkel's Bookends album at the time -- but Garfunkel declined permission for the interview to be used. But he did get both Chad and Jeremy to talk, along with John Merrill of the Peanut Butter Conspiracy -- and David Crosby: [Excerpt: Gary Usher, "Leo"] One of the tracks from that album, "Libra", became the B-side of a single by a group of studio musicians Usher put together, with Glen Campbell on lead vocals and featuring Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys prominently on backing vocals. "My World Fell Down" was credited to Sagittarius, again a sign of Usher's current interest in astrology, and featured some experimental sound effects that are very similar to the things that McGuinn had been doing on recent Byrds albums: [Excerpt: Sagittarius, "My World Fell Down"] While Usher was continuing with his studio experimentation, the Byrds were back playing live -- and they were not going down well at all. They did a UK tour where they refused to play most of their old hits and went down as poorly as on their previous tour, and they were no longer the kings of LA. In large part this was down to David Crosby, whose ego was by this point known to *everybody*, and who was becoming hugely unpopular on the LA scene even as he was starting to dominate the band. Crosby was now the de facto lead vocalist on stage, with McGuinn being relegated to one or two songs per set, and he was the one who would insist that they not play their older hit singles live. He was dominating the stage, leading to sarcastic comments from the normally placid Hillman like "Ladies and gentlemen, the David Crosby show!", and he was known to do things like start playing a song then stop part way through a verse to spend five minutes tuning up before restarting. After a residency at the Whisky A-Go-Go where the group were blown off the stage by their support act, the Doors, their publicist Derek Taylor quit, and he was soon followed by the group's co-managers Jim Dickson and Eddie Tickner, who were replaced by Crosby's friend Larry Spector, who had no experience in rock management but did represent Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper, two young film stars Crosby was hanging round with. The group were particularly annoyed by Crosby when they played the Monterey Pop Festival. Crosby took most lead vocals in that set, and the group didn't go down well, though instrumentally the worst performer was Michael Clarke, who unlike the rest of the band had never become particularly proficient on his instrument: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "So You Want to be a Rock 'n' Roll Star (live at Monterey)"] But Crosby also insisted on making announcements from the stage advocating LSD use and describing conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassination: [Excerpt: David Crosby on the Warren Commission, from the end of "Hey Joe" Monterey] But even though Crosby was trying to be the Byrds' leader on stage, he was also starting to think that they maybe didn't deserve to have him as their leader. He'd recently been spending a lot of time hanging out with Stephen Stills of the Buffalo Springfield, and McGuinn talks about one occasion where Crosby and Stills were jamming together, Stills played a blues lick and said to McGuinn "Can you play that?" and when McGuinn, who was not a blues musician, said he couldn't, Stills looked at him with contempt. McGuinn was sure that Stills was trying to poach Crosby, and Crosby apparently wanted to be poached. The group had rehearsed intensely for Monterey, aware that they'd been performing poorly and not wanting to show themselves up in front of the new San Francisco bands, but Crosby had told them during rehearsals that they weren't good enough to play with him. McGuinn's suspicions about Stills wanting to poach Crosby seemed to be confirmed during Monterey when Crosby joined Buffalo Springfield on stage, filling in for Neil Young during the period when Young had temporarily quit the group, and performing a song he'd helped Stills write about Grace Slick: [Excerpt: Buffalo Springfield, "Rock 'n' Roll Woman (live at Monterey)"] Crosby was getting tired not only of the Byrds but of the LA scene in general. He saw the new San Francisco bands as being infinitely cooler than the Hollywood plastic scene that was LA -- even though Crosby was possibly the single most Hollywood person on that scene, being the son of an Oscar-winning cinematographer and someone who hung out with film stars. At Monterey, the group had debuted their next single, the first one with an A-side written by Crosby, "Lady Friend": [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Lady Friend"] Crosby had thought of that as a masterpiece, but when it was released as a single, it flopped badly, and the rest of the group weren't even keen on the track being included on the next album. To add insult to injury as far as Crosby was concerned, at the same time as the single was released, a new album came out -- the Byrds' Greatest Hits, full of all those singles he was refusing to play live, and it made the top ten, becoming far and away the group's most successful album. But despite all this, the biggest conflict between band members when they came to start sessions for their next album wasn't over Crosby, but over Michael Clarke. Clarke had never been a particularly good drummer, and while that had been OK at the start of the Byrds' career, when none of them had been very proficient on their instruments, he was barely any better at a time when both McGuinn and Hillman were being regarded as unique stylists, while Crosby was writing metrically and harmonically interesting material. Many Byrds fans appreciate Clarke's drumming nonetheless, saying he was an inventive and distinctive player in much the same way as the similarly unskilled Micky Dolenz, but on any measure of technical ability he was far behind his bandmates. Clarke didn't like the new material and wasn't capable of playing it the way his bandmates wanted. He was popular with the rest of the band as a person, but simply wasn't playing well, and it led to a massive row in the first session: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Universal Mind Decoder (alternate backing track)"] At one point they joke that they'll bring in Hal Blaine instead -- a reference to the recording of "Mr. Tambourine Man", when Clarke and Hillman had been replaced by Blaine and Larry Knechtel -- and Clarke says "Do it. I don't mind, I really don't." And so that ended up happening. Clarke was still a member of the band -- and he would end up playing on half the album's tracks -- but for the next few sessions the group brought in session drummers Hal Blaine and Jim Gordon to play the parts they actually wanted. But that wasn't going to stop the bigger problem in the group, and that problem was David Crosby's relationship with the rest of the band. Crosby was still at this point thinking of himself as having a future in the group, even as he was increasingly convinced that the group themselves were bad, and embarrassed by their live sound. He even, in a show of unity, decided to ask McGuinn and Hillman to collaborate on a couple of songs with him so they would share the royalties equally. But there were two flash-points in the studio. The first was Crosby's song "Triad", a song about what we would now call polyamory, partly inspired by Robert Heinlein's counterculture science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land. The song was meant to portray a progressive, utopian, view of free love, but has dated very badly -- the idea that the *only* reason a woman might be unhappy with her partner sleeping with another woman is because of her mother's disapproval possibly reveals more about the mindset of hippie idealists than was intended. The group recorded Crosby's song, but refused to allow it to be released, and Crosby instead gave it to his friends Jefferson Airplane, whose version, by having Grace Slick sing it, at least reverses the dynamics of the relationship: [Excerpt: Jefferson Airplane, "Triad"] The other was a song that Gary Usher had brought to the group and suggested they record, a Goffin and King song released the previous year by Dusty Springfield: [Excerpt: Dusty Springfield, "Goin' Back"] Crosby was incandescent. The group wanted to do this Brill Building pap?! Hell, Gary Usher had originally thought that *Chad and Jeremy* should do it, before deciding to get the Byrds to do it instead. Did they really want to be doing Chad and Jeremy cast-offs when they could be doing his brilliant science-fiction inspired songs about alternative relationship structures? *Really*? They did, and after a first session, where Crosby reluctantly joined in, when they came to recut the track Crosby flat-out refused to take part, leading to a furious row with McGuinn. Since they were already replacing Michael Clarke with session drummers, that meant the only Byrds on "Goin' Back", the group's next single, were McGuinn and Hillman: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Goin' Back"] That came out in late October 1967, and shortly before it came out, McGuinn and Hillman had driven to Crosby's home. They told him they'd had enough. He was out of the band. They were buying him out of his contract. Despite everything, Crosby was astonished. They were a *group*. They fought, but only the way brothers fight. But McGuinn and Hillman were adamant. Crosby ended up begging them, saying "We could make great music together." Their response was just "And we can make great music without you." We'll find out whether they could or not in two weeks' time.

Harvey Brownstone conducts an in-depth Interview with Founding Member of The Four Preps, Bruce Belland About Harvey's guests: Today's guest, Bruce Belland, is a founding member of one of America's most popular and beloved vocal groups, commonly referred to as America's First Boy Band, The Four Preps.   As young teenage students at Hollywood High in 1954, our guest, along with singing partners Glen Larson, Ed Cobb and Marv Ingram, entered a high school talent show, and they kept on performing at high schools until that fateful day in 1956, when they were signed to a recording contract at Capitol Records, making them the youngest vocal group in history to ever sign with a major record label.   They recorded dozens of classic songs and produced 8 gold singles and 3 gold albums featuring their signature tunes, “Dreamy Eyes”, "26 Miles (Santa Catalina)," "Big Man," "Lazy Summer Night," “Down By the Station”, “More Money for You and Me”, and many more.   In 1957, Cashbox Magazine named The Four Preps the Most Promising Newcomer of the Year.  They made numerous appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, American Bandstand and many other TV variety shows, in addition to singing backup for Ricky Nelson for 4 years on “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet”.  And of course, they appeared with Sandra Dee in the 1959 movie, “Gidget”.  And they sang the theme song from the 1957 Clark Gable movie, “Band of Angels”.   The Four Preps headlined at nightclubs, concert halls and college campuses across the country, and toured with everyone from Tennessee Ernie Ford, George Burns and Carol Channing to Henry Mancini, Johnny Mathis, Buddy Rich and Glen Campbell.  They received an official commendation from the Air Force for their extraordinary contribution to National Guard Recruitment.  And in 2007, they were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame.    And now, our guest has released a fascinating and highly entertaining memoir entitled, “Icons, Idols and Idiots of Hollywood:  My Adventures in America's First Boy Band.”   This delightful book details our guest's remarkable show business journey, full of great anecdotes, many colourful adventures, and poignant memories of pop culture history.  And let me tell you, the chapter about his hilarious experience filming a TV commercial with Annette Funicello at Disneyland is easily worth ten times the price of the book.    For more interviews and podcasts go to: https://www.harveybrownstoneinterviews.com/ To see more about Bruce Belland, go to:https://www.brucebelland.com/ https://the4preps.wixsite.com/thefourprepshttps://www.facebook.com/BruceBelland https://www.facebook.com/the4prepshttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9J0TACPReX2IRCFPgDStZwhttps://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/the-four-preps/19280148https://open.spotify.com/artist/5MsnoFODDc5nxWrjm99Zew https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the+four+preps #BruceBelland   #TheFourPreps  #harveybrownstoneinterviews

Hey Full House Fans, Angela Bowen here, the host of Oh Mylanta Holy Chalupas: An Unofficial Full House Fuller House Podcast. Today, I covered the next episode in Joey's Comedy Career Series, Full House S4E23: Joey Goes Hollywood, which aired on March 29, 1991. In this episode when Joey leaves for Los Angeles to begin filming his new television series with a prolific actor, the rest of the Tanner family decides to join him. I thought this was a good episode. Joey and the family get to meet Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello. Stephanie being teased about her name at school decides to change it to Dawn Ariel Tanner. Someone loves The Little Mermaid (1989) After hearing Michelle call Annette "Annette Funny-jello", I can't unhear it. Speaking of Michelle, she racks up DJ's phone bill by calling Tokyo (well hear about this city in Japan again in Season 6, Road To Tokyo) constantly since the person on the other end and her are on a first name basis. All she's doing is attempting and failing to count to 100. In Joey's "I'm Famous and a BIG Star fantasy" Kimmy is his biggest fan and she jumps on him and starts kissing his neck. I'm not okay with this scene even if it is for a funny bit in a TV Show. Join me next week when I conclude Joey's Comedy Career Journey with, Full House S5E6: The Legend of Ranger Joe, which aired on October 22, 1991. In this episode In this episode, Joey hits a string of great luck! He gets free cable, concert tickets and job interviews, he even gets a date with a hot girl, but then his luck runs short when his interview comes along. Michelle learns to tap and really annoys Stephanie, who taught her to tap. She annoys her so much that one day the shoes go missing...who do you think took them? Jesse debates what to name his twins, when they are born, and accidentally reveals to DJ that he has a secret about his past. We later find out that he got his name changed in kindergarten. Have a great week and I hope you enjoy the Podcast Episode!

Hey Full House Fans, Angela Bowen here, the host of Oh Mylanta Holy Chalupas: An Unofficial Full House Fuller House Podcast. Today, I covered the next episode in Joey's Comedy Career Journey Series, Full House S4E23: Joey Goes Hollywood, which aired on March 29, 1991. In this episode when Joey leaves for Los Angeles to begin filming his new television series with a prolific actor, the rest of the Tanner family decides to join him. I thought this was a good episode. Joey and the family get to meet Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello. Stephanie being teased about her name at school decides to change it to Dawn Ariel Tanner. Someone loves The Little Mermaid (1989) After hearing Michelle call Annette "Annette Funny-jello", I can't unhear it. Speaking of Michelle, she racks up DJ's phone bill by calling Tokyo (well hear about this city in Japan again in Season 6, Road To Tokyo) constantly since the person on the other end and her are on a first name basis. All she's doing is attempting and failing to count to 100. In Joey's "I'm Famous and a BIG Star fantasy" Kimmy is his biggest fan and she jumps on him and starts kissing his neck. I'm not okay with this scene even if it is for a funny bit in a TV Show. Join me next week when I conclude Joey's Comedy Career Journey with, Full House S5E6: The Legend of Ranger Joe, which aired on October 22, 1991. In this episode In this episode, Joey hits a string of great luck! He gets free cable, concert tickets and job interviews, he even gets a date with a hot girl, but then his luck runs short when his interview comes along. Michelle learns to tap and really annoys Stephanie, who taught her to tap. She annoys her so much that one day the shoes go missing...who do you think took them? Jesse debates what to name his twins, when they are born, and accidentally reveals to DJ that he has a secret about his past. We later find out that he got his name changed in kindergarten. Have a great week and I hope you enjoy the Podcast Episode!

Hey Full House Fans, Angela Bowen here, the host of Oh Mylanta Holy Chalupas: An Unofficial Full House Fuller House Podcast. Today, I covered the next episode in Joey's Comedy Career Series, Full House S4E23: Joey Goes Hollywood, which aired on March 29, 1991. In this episode when Joey leaves for Los Angeles to begin filming his new television series with a prolific actor, the rest of the Tanner family decides to join him. I thought this was a good episode. Joey and the family get to meet Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello. Stephanie being teased about her name at school decides to change it to Dawn Ariel Tanner. Someone loves The Little Mermaid (1989) After hearing Michelle call Annette "Annette Funny-jello", I can't unhear it. Speaking of Michelle, she racks up DJ's phone bill by calling Tokyo (well hear about this city in Japan again in Season 6, Road To Tokyo) constantly since the person on the other end and her are on a first name basis. All she's doing is attempting and failing to count to 100. In Joey's "I'm Famous and a BIG Star fantasy" Kimmy is his biggest fan and she jumps on him and starts kissing his neck. I'm not okay with this scene even if it is for a funny bit in a TV Show. Join me next week when I conclude Joey's Comedy Career Journey with, Full House S5E6: The Legend of Ranger Joe, which aired on October 22, 1991. In this episode In this episode, Joey hits a string of great luck! He gets free cable, concert tickets and job interviews, he even gets a date with a hot girl, but then his luck runs short when his interview comes along. Michelle learns to tap and really annoys Stephanie, who taught her to tap. She annoys her so much that one day the shoes go missing...who do you think took them? Jesse debates what to name his twins, when they are born, and accidentally reveals to DJ that he has a secret about his past. We later find out that he got his name changed in kindergarten. Have a great week and I hope you enjoy the Podcast Episode!

Bruce Belland's new book is called Icons, Idols and Idiots of Hollywood: My Adventures in America's First Boy Band and boy, did he have adventures! Bruce founded The Four Preps while still in Hollywood High School. They became Ricky Nelson's backup band, co-starred in Gidget and The Adventures of Ozzy & Harriet and went on to score massive hits with 26 Miles Across The Sea, Big Man, and Down By The Station. In his book and on this episode, Bruce's storytelling is engaging and enlightening. He shares teen idol road stories, his Disneyland dream date with Annette Funicello (that devolved into a nauseous nightmare) his day on the set of a TV special with Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney and Louis Armstrong, exactly why a wholesome boy singer would include in his book a chapter titled, One Dead Junkie and a Masturbating Monkey, how the love and wisdom of his minister father and sharp witted mother fortified his remarkable journey, and the powerfully poignant night of President Kennedy's assassination when The Preps gave voice to heartbreak at Ohio State University. Through it all, Bruce remains a student. He confides what he learned from Gene Kelly, Ozzy Nelson and George Burns and just how he embraces the blessing of encountering someone who knows more than you and opening yourself up to new lessons.Plus, Fritz and Weezy are recommending Killers of the Flower Moon, in theaters and Desperately Seeking Soulmate: Escaping Twin Flames Universe, a doc series on Prime.Path Points of Interest:Bruce BellandIcons, Idols, and Idiots of Hollywood: My Adventures in America's First Boy Band by Bruce BellandThe Edsel ShowThe Four Preps on WikipediaKillers of the Flower Moon - In TheatersDesperately Seeking Soulmate: Escaping Twin Flames Universe

National nut day. Entertainment from 1956. 1st parachute jump, FDA bans red M&M's, Scientists sentenced to prison for not predicting an earthquake in Itlay. Todays birthdays - Christopher Lloyd, Bobby Fuller, Annette Funicello, Jeff Goldblum, Shaggy, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Michael Fishman, Zack Hanson, Jonathon Lipnicki, Dylan Scott,Intro - Pour some sugar on me - Def Leppard http://defleppard.com/I'm a nut - The KilboomersHound dog - Elvis PresleyDon't be cruel - Elvis PresleyBirthdays - In da club - 50 Cent http://50cent.com/I fought the law - Bobby FullerTall Paul - Annette FunicelloIt wasn't me - ShaggyRoseanne TV themeMMM Bop - HansonMy girl - Dylan ScottExit - It's not love - Dokkenhttps://coolcasts.cooolmedia.com/

DJ & Toppie discuss the trivia behind the 1987 Comedy, Musical "Back to The Beach" starring Frankie Avalon & Annette Funicello with a special appearance by Paul Reubens as Pee-Wee Herman. Join us again Live on YouTube as we continue Season Six on Fri 10/06 at 9pm EDT Write to DJ & Toppie at matineeminutiae@gmail.com Leave a comment on our page at matineeminutiae.com Follow the show on Twitter. View our our videos on YouTube. Friend DJ on Facebook This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Wes and Nick watch this James Bond spoof that is ridiculous and campy 60s fun that might offend you!Plot:Dr. Goldfoot plans on taking over the world with his beautiful female robots, who seduce rich and powerful men. Robot #11/Diane is sent after millionaire Todd Armstrong. Secret agent Craig Gamble tries to stop the plot but ends up in the torture chamber with Armstrong. The parody of "The Pit and the Pendulum" is the highlight of the film which also includes bits by Annette Funicello, Harvey Lembeck, and Deborah Walley.Support the show:

It's 2013. A pope resigns for the first time ever (he hated robes that hid his buff figure), the Boston Marathon is bombed by a couple of crazy kids, Grand Theft Auto 5 is published, Chrissy Amphlett dies, as does the last surviving member of The Andrews Sisters, Annette Funicello, and Lou Reed, ... and the robo-boys of Daft Punk release this groovy thang. What are the meanings, the messages, the attitudes, the life and times of this song? Our wide-ranging investigation includes: (00:00) Briefest ever introduction (00:41) Song details, writers and lyricist(s?) (02:09) How many time is "up all night to get lucky" repeated (02:30) Robot sounds, robot looks, robot news (05:40) Song meaning - "cycles" (06:21) Mixing legends/myths and science (11:34) Pheonix - myth? legend? Japanese cartoon? 80s video game? (19:20) Theories of the universe (22:59) Nihilism, limitations or infinite richness (24:36) Are we letting the universe down? Be Best? (28:02) Cups full or empty? (30:20) "Happy" songs (31:01) Human courtship and toxic men (33:20) Gambling addiction? (33:56) The odds of life in the universe (34:30) More toxic men (35:45) More cosmic gifts (37:10) A reminder of what girls do for fun (38:44) Vampires again? (41:15) Theories from randoms on the internet (47:18) A shock to new English speakers (50.07) Misheard lyrics in this song (52:03) Notable Trivia (56:55) The deceitful music video? (58:15) In conclusion Would you like to appear (well, vocally) on the show? Do you have a pop song or ear-worm from the SMOOTH FM genre that's infested your mind and needs to be investigated? Visit this page ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://speakpipe.com/lyrics⁠⁠⁠⁠ to record us your own voicemail hot-take on your specific smooth song of suckiness. You could be on a future episode! (you can always email sound files or text your thoughts to ⁠⁠⁠⁠poidadavis@gmail.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ if that's easier). Cheers! Find us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc @LyricsPodast ... and we're on all your favourite podcasting platforms. Check out our ⁠⁠merchandise shop⁠⁠ just for a laugh! Sound clips are included for educational reference, criticism, satire and parody in fair use. Clips remain the property of the respective rights holder and no endorsement is implied. All information and opinion is performed and expressed in-character and does not reflect reality or genuine commentary on any persons (living or dead), bands or other organisations, or their works, and is not recommended listening for anyone, anywhere.

The manipulation of reality, online vitriol, Ryan Gosling's work with Annette Funicello, and the millionaires versus the billionaires are just a few of the things Amber and Sean touch on in this wide-ranging, hilarious, and deeply personal conversation. Music: "Aside From Your Hair" by Jake McKelvie & the Countertops

Tons of Disney fans are also Tiki fans.  I don't know much about Tiki culture at all! Luckly Kevin Quigley author of the brand new book: New England Tiki, knows tons.  Not only does he know Tiki he also knows Disney as a cohost of the 3028 Podcast!  Kevin serves as my liaison between the worlds of Disney and Tiki helping me sort it all out! From the Disney Parks and attractions like The Enchanted Tiki Room to Disney Music like Annette Funicello's Pineapple Princess, we'll delve into the intricacies of how Disney and Tiki Culture have crossed paths throughout the years. As the conversation progresses, Kevin gives me a better grasp on the ins and outs of what Tiki is from a Disney perspective Join us for an enlightening discussion on the intersection of two massive fandoms that often coalesce symbiotically and other times are at odds with each other. So make yourself a complex tiki Drink put on your favorite Hawaiian shirt, sit back, and enjoy this episode of Synergy Loves Company. Find Kevin Quigley online at https://kevinquigleydesign.com/ and on most socials @kevidently Thanks for listening to Synergy Loves Company: How Disney Connects to Everything. https://www.synergylovescompany.com Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@synergylovescompany Twitter: https://twitter.com/EricHSynergy  Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/synergylovescompany/Read transcript

Braves win in Miami, Acuña somersault, Elder gem, Albies HR, CFB big changes to playoff schedule, Super Bowl tv ratings best ever, Bryce Young not too happy with Panthers pick, Tiger Woods caddy switches to Cantlay's bag and no this is not a euphemism, Pete's Tweets, This Day in Sports History. Come for Yogi Berra movie, stay for broadcaster saying a bad word. Plus maybe some justice at last in the Henry Ruggs III car crash death case in Vegas that killed a woman and her dog, bad day in Falcons history, John Collins for Ben Simmons trade rumor, Trevor Bauer back on the mound (also not a euphemism), and a little "Back to the Beach" film talk about Annette Funicello. And no rubber snakes for Nolan Ryan 

Speaking at the TCM Classic Film Festival, the legendary star of late '50s/'60s rock 'n' roll and beach movies reflects on his path from trumpeter to teen idol, his experiences off screen and on with Annette Funicello and what his life is like today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The season eight playoffs continue with the final match in the Altair IV Division. We love us some adaptations, so we start round one by quizzing our returning players Ilan, Gal, and Mike about book-to-screen adaptations that changed their titles. Then, things get wild in round two as we return to the world of very real, but thankfully forgotten movie sequels. The lightning round caps it all off, as one player heads to the season finale! NOTES ⚠️ Inline notes below may be truncated due to podcast feed character limits. Full notes are always on the episode page.

"Tiny D" thought he'd puff up his chest to go after Mickey Mouse — only to get outflanked. Plus, loony GOP state legislators, Wisconsin's $45 million judicial seat, the very un-elite cabal in the Manhattan grand jury, and the torment of not knowing about Annette Funicello. Tim Miller joins Charlie Sykes today.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

"Tiny D" thought he'd puff up his chest to go after Mickey Mouse — only to get outflanked. Plus, loony GOP state legislators, Wisconsin's $45 million judicial seat, the very un-elite cabal in the Manhattan grand jury, and the torment of not knowing about Annette Funicello. Tim Miller joins Charlie Sykes today.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Eric Bauza (voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Marvin the Martian, Tweety Bird and more) joins us to discuss going from Looney Tunes fan to Looney Tunes voice actor. Plus, Looney Tunes at Six Flags and parks around the world!Annette Funicello's Music Career episode up at The Second Gate: Patreon.com/PodcastTheRideListen to Podcast: The Ride Ad-Free on Forever Dog Plus:http://foreverdogpodcasts.com/plusWATCH THIS EPISODE: https://youtu.be/gka2u8eUm_MFOLLOW PODCAST: THE RIDE:https://twitter.com/PodcastTheRidehttps://www.instagram.com/podcasttherideBUY PODCAST: THE RIDE MERCH:https://www.teepublic.com/stores/podcast-the-ridePODCAST THE RIDE IS A FOREVER DOG PODCASThttps://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/podcast-the-ride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Eric Bauza (voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Marvin the Martian, Tweety Bird and more) joins us to discuss going from Looney Tunes fan to Looney Tunes voice actor. Plus, Looney Tunes at Six Flags and parks around the world! Annette Funicello's Music Career episode up at The Second Gate: Patreon.com/PodcastTheRide Listen to Podcast: The Ride Ad-Free on Forever Dog Plus: http://foreverdogpodcasts.com/plus WATCH THIS EPISODE: https://youtu.be/gka2u8eUm_M FOLLOW PODCAST: THE RIDE: https://twitter.com/PodcastTheRide https://www.instagram.com/podcasttheride BUY PODCAST: THE RIDE MERCH: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/podcast-the-ride PODCAST THE RIDE IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/podcast-the-ride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It continues to be NOT ON DISNEY+ MONTH on Escape From Vault Disney! For our third week of Not On Disney+ Month, the randomizer goes all the way back to 1984 to pick a home video compilation of content made for a fledgling young premium cable channel called The Disney Channel, specifically the series borne out of someone saying "Hey, y'know those newfangled 'music-videos' all the kids seem to like? What if we made our own using cheap-to-license oldies and footage from Disney's vast library of animation? A sort of 'animated music video' if you will." And at that moment, millions of future 2006-era YouTubers' ears perked up and they didn't know why. Join Tony Goldmark, Kyle Kallgren, Randee Martin and Shoebox as they try to decide whether or not they want their DTV: GOLDEN OLDIES! Watch DTV: Golden Oldies on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMgbLwBRlV4   Check out my guests' stuff! KYLE KALLGREN YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/oancitizen  Theatre Company: https://worlds-elsewhere.com RANDEE MARTIN Podcast: https://anchor.fm/krt-trio  TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@daleearnhardtsfursona Twitter: https://twitter.com/cosmicr3wind   SHOEBOX Website: http://wormquartet.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/wormquartet And check out this show on social media! Twitter: https://twitter.com/efvdpodcast Host's Twitter: https://twitter.com/tonygoldmark Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/972385353152531 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/tonygoldmark Hear new episodes a day early by supporting this show on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/tonygoldmark 

Ryan Perez (The Tonight Show) returns to the show and we look at some of our favorite Oscar skits and songs before Hollywood's big night! Annette Funicello's Music Career episode up at The Second Gate! Patreon.com/PodcastTheRide Listen to Podcast: The Ride Ad-Free on Forever Dog Plus: http://foreverdogpodcasts.com/plus WATCH THIS EPISODE: https://youtu.be/V24HhC8yWzQ FOLLOW PODCAST: THE RIDE: https://twitter.com/PodcastTheRide https://www.instagram.com/podcasttheride BUY PODCAST: THE RIDE MERCH: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/podcast-the-ride PODCAST THE RIDE IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/podcast-the-ride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ryan Perez (The Tonight Show) returns to the show and we look at some of our favorite Oscar skits and songs before Hollywood's big night!Annette Funicello's Music Career episode up at The Second Gate! Patreon.com/PodcastTheRideListen to Podcast: The Ride Ad-Free on Forever Dog Plus:http://foreverdogpodcasts.com/plusWATCH THIS EPISODE: https://youtu.be/V24HhC8yWzQFOLLOW PODCAST: THE RIDE:https://twitter.com/PodcastTheRidehttps://www.instagram.com/podcasttherideBUY PODCAST: THE RIDE MERCH:https://www.teepublic.com/stores/podcast-the-ridePODCAST THE RIDE IS A FOREVER DOG PODCASThttps://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/podcast-the-ride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Set sail on Episode 23, Season 1 of the Love Boat, the worlds greatest romantic comedy drama television series of all time! In this episode we follow an all star cast that includes Jayne Meadows Allen, Morey Amsterdam, Michael Callen, Jack Carter, Annette Funicello, Christopher George, Caren Kaye, Rose Marie and Jessica Walter as they deal with dark pasts, high school crushes, second chances, crash diets, new beginings and most importantly we celebrate and salute the Captain finally getting lucky! We also encourage everyone to find our Instagram page Lovin' The Love Boat to enjoy the super cool video messages from Isaac himself Mr. Ted Lange! And much more. Thanks for listening to the podcast and joining us on this voyage and by all means consider subscribing to the show as well as Paramount+ so you can watch the episode with us. We promise you'll be glad that you did. * Attention passengers! If you'd like to see the show continue please consider contributing to our new GoFundMe so we can sail into Season 2 with wind in our sails and allow us to make good on our promise to have exciting new guests join us on future episodes. It means a lot and will also allow us to keep the show commercial free. Visit our page HERE and give whatever you can. Thank you! *If you enjoy the show and would like to contribute quickly please tip our crew any amount via Venmo: @istvansongs * Be sure to check out Istvan's other amazing podcast for kids and families, Istvan's Imaginary Podcast available everywhere podcasts are found. * Find and Follow our new Instagram profile here: @lovin_the_love_boat * And follow Istvan on Instagram: @iamistvan or on his website: www.istvansongs.com

Episode one hundred and fifty-six of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “I Was Made to Love Her", the early career of Stevie Wonder, and the Detroit riots of 1967. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-minute bonus episode available, on "Groovin'" by the Young Rascals. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources As usual, I've put together a Mixcloud playlist of all the recordings excerpted in this episode. The best value way to get all of Stevie Wonder's early singles is this MP3 collection, which has the original mono single mixes of fifty-five tracks for a very reasonable price. For those who prefer physical media, this is a decent single-CD collection of his early work at a very low price indeed. As well as the general Motown information listed below, I've also referred to Signed, Sealed, and Delivered: The Soulful Journey of Stevie Wonder by Mark Ribowsky, which rather astonishingly is the only full-length biography of Wonder, to Higher Ground: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield, and the Rise and Fall of American Soul by Craig Werner, and to Detroit 67: The Year That Changed Soul by Stuart Cosgrove. For Motown-related information in this and other Motown episodes, I've used the following resources: Where Did Our Love Go? The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound by Nelson George is an excellent popular history of the various companies that became Motown. To Be Loved by Berry Gordy is Gordy's own, understandably one-sided, but relatively well-written, autobiography. Women of Motown: An Oral History by Susan Whitall is a collection of interviews with women involved in Motown. I Hear a Symphony: Motown and Crossover R&B by J. Andrew Flory is an academic look at Motown. The Motown Encyclopaedia by Graham Betts is an exhaustive look at the people and records involved in Motown's thirty-year history. How Sweet It Is by Lamont Dozier and Scott B. Bomar is Dozier's autobiography, while Come and Get These Memories by Brian and Eddie Holland and Dave Thompson is the Holland brothers'. Standing in the Shadows of Motown: The Life and Music of Legendary Bassist James Jamerson by "Dr Licks" is a mixture of a short biography of the great bass player, and tablature of his most impressive bass parts. And Motown Junkies is an infrequently-updated blog looking at (so far) the first 694 tracks released on Motown singles. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript A quick note before I begin -- this episode deals with disability and racism, and also deals from the very beginning with sex work and domestic violence. It also has some discussion of police violence and sexual assault. As always I will try to deal with those subjects as non-judgementally and sensitively as possible, but if you worry that anything about those subjects might disturb you, please check the transcript. Calvin Judkins was not a good man. Lula Mae Hardaway thought at first he might be, when he took her in, with her infant son whose father had left before the boy was born. He was someone who seemed, when he played the piano, to be deeply sensitive and emotional, and he even did the decent thing and married her when he got her pregnant. She thought she could save him, even though he was a street hustler and not even very good at it, and thirty years older than her -- she was only nineteen, he was nearly fifty. But she soon discovered that he wasn't interested in being saved, and instead he was interested in hurting her. He became physically and financially abusive, and started pimping her out. Lula would eventually realise that Calvin Judkins was no good, but not until she got pregnant again, shortly after the birth of her second son. Her third son was born premature -- different sources give different numbers for how premature, with some saying four months and others six weeks -- and while he apparently went by Stevland Judkins throughout his early childhood, the name on his birth certificate was apparently Stevland Morris, Lula having decided not to give another child the surname of her abuser, though nobody has ever properly explained where she got the surname "Morris" from. Little Stevland was put in an incubator with an oxygen mask, which saved the tiny child's life but destroyed his sight, giving him a condition called retinopathy of prematurity -- a condition which nowadays can be prevented and cured, but in 1951 was just an unavoidable consequence for some portion of premature babies. Shortly after the family moved from Saginaw to Detroit, Lula kicked Calvin out, and he would remain only a peripheral figure in his children's lives, but one thing he did do was notice young Stevland's interest in music, and on his increasingly infrequent visits to his wife and kids -- visits that usually ended with violence -- he would bring along toy instruments for the young child to play, like a harmonica and a set of bongos. Stevie was a real prodigy, and by the time he was nine he had a collection of real musical instruments, because everyone could see that the kid was something special. A neighbour who owned a piano gave it to Stevie when she moved out and couldn't take it with her. A local Lions Club gave him a drum kit at a party they organised for local blind children, and a barber gave him a chromatic harmonica after seeing him play his toy one. Stevie gave his first professional performance when he was eight. His mother had taken him to a picnic in the park, and there was a band playing, and the little boy got as close to the stage as he could and started dancing wildly. The MC of the show asked the child who he was, and he said "My name is Stevie, and I can sing and play drums", so of course they got the cute kid up on stage behind the drum kit while the band played Johnny Ace's "Pledging My Love": [Excerpt: Johnny Ace, "Pledging My Love"] He did well enough that they paid him seventy-five cents -- an enormous amount for a small child at that time -- though he was disappointed afterwards that they hadn't played something faster that would really allow him to show off his drumming skills. After that he would perform semi-regularly at small events, and always ask to be paid in quarters rather than paper money, because he liked the sound of the coins -- one of his party tricks was to be able to tell one coin from another by the sound of them hitting a table. Soon he formed a duo with a neighbourhood friend, John Glover, who was a couple of years older and could play guitar while Stevie sang and played harmonica and bongos. The two were friends, and both accomplished musicians for their age, but that wasn't the only reason Stevie latched on to Glover. Even as young as he was, he knew that Motown was soon going to be the place to be in Detroit if you were a musician, and Glover had an in -- his cousin was Ronnie White of the Miracles. Stevie and John performed as a duo everywhere they could and honed their act, performing particularly at the talent shows which were such an incubator of Black musical talent at the time, and they also at this point seem to have got the attention of Clarence Paul, but it was White who brought the duo to Motown. Stevie and John first played for White and Bobby Rodgers, another of the Miracles, then when they were impressed they took them through the several layers of Motown people who would have to sign off on signing a new act. First they were taken to see Brian Holland, who was a rising star within Motown as "Please Mr. Postman" was just entering the charts. They impressed him with a performance of the Miracles song "Bad Girl": [Excerpt: The Miracles, "Bad Girl"] After that, Stevie and John went to see Mickey Stevenson, who was at first sceptical, thinking that a kid so young -- Stevie was only eleven at the time -- must be some kind of novelty act rather than a serious musician. He said later "It was like, what's next, the singing mouse?" But Stevenson was won over by the child's talent. Normally, Stevenson had the power to sign whoever he liked to the label, but given the extra legal complications involved in signing someone under-age, he had to get Berry Gordy's permission. Gordy didn't even like signing teenagers because of all the extra paperwork that would be involved, and he certainly wasn't interested in signing pre-teens. But he came down to the studio to see what Stevie could do, and was amazed, not by his singing -- Gordy didn't think much of that -- but by his instrumental ability. First Stevie played harmonica and bongos as proficiently as an adult professional, and then he made his way around the studio playing on every other instrument in the place -- often only a few notes, but competent on them all. Gordy decided to sign the duo -- and the initial contract was for an act named "Steve and John" -- but it was soon decided to separate them. Glover would be allowed to hang around Motown while he was finishing school, and there would be a place for him when he finished -- he later became a staff songwriter, working on tracks for the Four Tops and the Miracles among others, and he would even later write a number one hit, "You Don't Have to be a Star (to be in My Show)" for Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr -- but they were going to make Stevie a star right now. The man put in charge of that was Clarence Paul. Paul, under his birth name of Clarence Pauling, had started his career in the "5" Royales, a vocal group he formed with his brother Lowman Pauling that had been signed to Apollo Records by Ralph Bass, and later to King Records. Paul seems to have been on at least some of the earliest recordings by the group, so is likely on their first single, "Give Me One More Chance": [Excerpt: The "5" Royales, "Give Me One More Chance"] But Paul was drafted to go and fight in the Korean War, and so wasn't part of the group's string of hit singles, mostly written by his brother Lowman, like "Think", which later became better known in James Brown's cover version, or "Dedicated to the One I Love", later covered by the Shirelles, but in its original version dominated by Lowman's stinging guitar playing: [Excerpt: The "5" Royales, "Dedicated to the One I Love"] After being discharged, Clarence had shortened his name to Clarence Paul, and had started recording for all the usual R&B labels like Roulette and Federal, with little success: [Excerpt: Clarence Paul, "I'm Gonna Love You, Love You Til I Die"] He'd also co-written "I Need Your Lovin'", which had been an R&B hit for Roy Hamilton: [Excerpt: Roy Hamilton, "I Need Your Lovin'"] Paul had recently come to work for Motown – one of the things Berry Gordy did to try to make his label more attractive was to hire the relatives of R&B stars on other labels, in the hopes of getting them to switch to Motown – and he was the new man on the team, not given any of the important work to do. He was working with acts like Henry Lumpkin and the Valladiers, and had also been the producer of "Mind Over Matter", the single the Temptations had released as The Pirates in a desperate attempt to get a hit: [Excerpt: The Pirates, "Mind Over Matter"] Paul was the person you turned to when no-one else was interested, and who would come up with bizarre ideas. A year or so after the time period we're talking about, it was him who produced an album of country music for the Supremes, before they'd had a hit, and came up with "The Man With the Rock and Roll Banjo Band" for them: [Excerpt: The Supremes, "The Man With The Rock and Roll Banjo Band"] So, Paul was the perfect person to give a child -- by this time twelve years old -- who had the triple novelties of being a multi-instrumentalist, a child, and blind. Stevie started spending all his time around the Motown studios, partly because he was eager to learn everything about making records and partly because his home life wasn't particularly great and he wanted to be somewhere else. He earned the affection and irritation, in equal measure, of people at Motown both for his habit of wandering into the middle of sessions because he couldn't see the light that showed that the studio was in use, and for his practical joking. He was a great mimic, and would do things like phoning one of the engineers and imitating Berry Gordy's voice, telling the engineer that Stevie would be coming down, and to give him studio equipment to take home. He'd also astonish women by complimenting them, in detail, on their dresses, having been told in advance what they looked like by an accomplice. But other "jokes" were less welcome -- he would regularly sexually assault women working at Motown, grabbing their breasts or buttocks and then claiming it was an accident because he couldn't see what he was doing. Most of the women he molested still speak of him fondly, and say everybody loved him, and this may even be the case -- and certainly I don't think any of us should be judged too harshly for what we did when we were twelve -- but this kind of thing led to a certain amount of pressure to make Stevie's career worth the extra effort he was causing everyone at Motown. Because Berry Gordy was not impressed with Stevie's vocals, the decision was made to promote him as a jazz instrumentalist, and so Clarence Paul insisted that his first release be an album, rather than doing what everyone would normally do and only put out an album after a hit single. Paul reasoned that there was no way on Earth they were going to be able to get a hit single with a jazz instrumental by a twelve-year-old kid, and eventually persuaded Gordy of the wisdom of this idea. So they started work on The Jazz Soul of Little Stevie, released under his new stagename of Little Stevie Wonder, supposedly a name given to him after Berry Gordy said "That kid's a wonder!", though Mickey Stevenson always said that the name came from a brainstorming session between him and Clarence Paul. The album featured Stevie on harmonica, piano, and organ on different tracks, but on the opening track, "Fingertips", he's playing the bongos that give the track its name: [Excerpt: Little Stevie Wonder, "Fingertips (studio version)"] The composition of that track is credited to Paul and the arranger Hank Cosby, but Beans Bowles, who played flute on the track, always claimed that he came up with the melody, and it seems quite likely to me that most of the tracks on the album were created more or less as jam sessions -- though Wonder's contributions were all overdubbed later. The album sat in the can for several months -- Berry Gordy was not at all sure of its commercial potential. Instead, he told Paul to go in another direction -- focusing on Wonder's blindness, he decided that what they needed to do was create an association in listeners' minds with Ray Charles, who at this point was at the peak of his commercial power. So back into the studio went Wonder and Paul, to record an album made up almost entirely of Ray Charles covers, titled Tribute to Uncle Ray. (Some sources have the Ray Charles tribute album recorded first -- and given Motown's lax record-keeping at this time it may be impossible to know for sure -- but this is the way round that Mark Ribowsky's biography of Wonder has it). But at Motown's regular quality control meeting it was decided that there wasn't a single on the album, and you didn't release an album like that without having a hit single first. By this point, Clarence Paul was convinced that Berry Gordy was just looking for excuses not to do anything with Wonder -- and there may have been a grain of truth to that. There's some evidence that Gordy was worried that the kid wouldn't be able to sing once his voice broke, and was scared of having another Frankie Lymon on his hands. But the decision was made that rather than put out either of those albums, they would put out a single. The A-side was a song called "I Call it Pretty Music But the Old People Call it the Blues, Part 1", which very much played on Wonder's image as a loveable naive kid: [Excerpt: Little Stevie Wonder, "I Call it Pretty Music But the Old People Call it the Blues, Part 1"] The B-side, meanwhile, was part two -- a slowed-down, near instrumental, version of the song, reframed as an actual blues, and as a showcase for Wonder's harmonica playing rather than his vocals. The single wasn't a hit, but it made number 101 on the Billboard charts, just missing the Hot One Hundred, which for the debut single of a new artist wasn't too bad, especially for Motown at this point in time, when most of its releases were flopping. That was good enough that Gordy authorised the release of the two albums that they had in the can. The next single, "Little Water Boy", was a rather baffling duet with Clarence Paul, which did nothing at all on the charts. [Excerpt: Clarence Paul and Little Stevie Wonder, "Little Water Boy"] After this came another flop single, written by Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Janie Bradford, before the record that finally broke Little Stevie Wonder out into the mainstream in a big way. While Wonder hadn't had a hit yet, he was sent out on the first Motortown Revue tour, along with almost every other act on the label. Because he hadn't had a hit, he was supposed to only play one song per show, but nobody had told him how long that song should be. He had quickly become a great live performer, and the audiences were excited to watch him, so when he went into extended harmonica solos rather than quickly finishing the song, the audience would be with him. Clarence Paul, who came along on the tour, would have to motion to the onstage bandleader to stop the music, but the bandleader would know that the audiences were with Stevie, and so would just keep the song going as long as Stevie was playing. Often Paul would have to go on to the stage and shout in Wonder's ear to stop playing -- and often Wonder would ignore him, and have to be physically dragged off stage by Paul, still playing, causing the audience to boo Paul for stopping him from playing. Wonder would complain off-stage that the audience had been enjoying it, and didn't seem to get it into his head that he wasn't the star of the show, that the audiences *were* enjoying him, but were *there* to see the Miracles and Mary Wells and the Marvelettes and Marvin Gaye. This made all the acts who had to go on after him, and who were running late as a result, furious at him -- especially since one aspect of Wonder's blindness was that his circadian rhythms weren't regulated by sunlight in the same way that the sighted members of the tour's were. He would often wake up the entire tour bus by playing his harmonica at two or three in the morning, while they were all trying to sleep. Soon Berry Gordy insisted that Clarence Paul be on stage with Wonder throughout his performance, ready to drag him off stage, so that he wouldn't have to come out onto the stage to do it. But one of the first times he had done this had been on one of the very first Motortown Revue shows, before any of his records had come out. There he'd done a performance of "Fingertips", playing the flute part on harmonica rather than only playing bongos throughout as he had on the studio version -- leaving the percussion to Marvin Gaye, who was playing drums for Wonder's set: [Excerpt: Little Stevie Wonder, "Fingertips (Parts 1 & 2)"] But he'd extended the song with a little bit of call-and-response vocalising: [Excerpt: Little Stevie Wonder, "Fingertips (Parts 1 & 2)"] After the long performance ended, Clarence Paul dragged Wonder off-stage and the MC asked the audience to give him a round of applause -- but then Stevie came running back on and carried on playing: [Excerpt: Little Stevie Wonder, "Fingertips (Parts 1 & 2)"] By this point, though, the musicians had started to change over -- Mary Wells, who was on after Wonder, was using different musicians from his, and some of her players were already on stage. You can hear Joe Swift, who was playing bass for Wells, asking what key he was meant to be playing in: [Excerpt: Little Stevie Wonder, "Fingertips (Parts 1 & 2)"] Eventually, after six and a half minutes, they got Wonder off stage, but that performance became the two sides of Wonder's next single, with "Fingertips Part 2", the part with the ad lib singing and the false ending, rather than the instrumental part one, being labelled as the side the DJs should play. When it was released, the song started a slow climb up the charts, and by August 1963, three months after it came out, it was at number one -- only the second ever Motown number one, and the first ever live single to get there. Not only that, but Motown released a live album -- Recorded Live, the Twelve-Year-Old Genius (though as many people point out he was thirteen when it was released -- he was twelve when it was recorded though) and that made number one on the albums chart, becoming the first Motown album ever to do so. They followed up "Fingertips" with a similar sounding track, "Workout, Stevie, Workout", which made number thirty-three. After that, his albums -- though not yet his singles -- started to be released as by "Stevie Wonder" with no "Little" -- he'd had a bit of a growth spurt and his voice was breaking, and so marketing him as a child prodigy was not going to work much longer and they needed to transition him into a star with adult potential. In the Motown of 1963 that meant cutting an album of standards, because the belief at the time in Motown was that the future for their entertainers was doing show tunes at the Copacabana. But for some reason the audience who had wanted an R&B harmonica instrumental with call-and-response improvised gospel-influenced yelling was not in the mood for a thirteen year old singing "Put on a Happy Face" and "When You Wish Upon a Star", and especially not when the instrumental tracks were recorded in a key that suited him at age twelve but not thirteen, so he was clearly straining. "Fingertips" being a massive hit also meant Stevie was now near the top of the bill on the Motortown Revue when it went on its second tour. But this actually put him in a precarious position. When he had been down at the bottom of the bill and unknown, nobody expected anything from him, and he was following other minor acts, so when he was surprisingly good the audiences went wild. Now, near the top of the bill, he had to go on after Marvin Gaye, and he was not nearly so impressive in that context. The audiences were polite enough, but not in the raptures he was used to. Although Stevie could still beat Gaye in some circumstances. At Motown staff parties, Berry Gordy would always have a contest where he'd pit two artists against each other to see who could win the crowd over, something he thought instilled a fun and useful competitive spirit in his artists. They'd alternate songs, two songs each, and Gordy would decide on the winner based on audience response. For the 1963 Motown Christmas party, it was Stevie versus Marvin. Wonder went first, with "Workout, Stevie, Workout", and was apparently impressive, but then Gaye topped him with a version of "Hitch-Hike". So Stevie had to top that, and apparently did, with a hugely extended version of "I Call it Pretty Music", reworked in the Ray Charles style he'd used for "Fingertips". So Marvin Gaye had to top that with the final song of the contest, and he did, performing "Stubborn Kind of Fellow": [Excerpt: Marvin Gaye, "Stubborn Kind of Fellow"] And he was great. So great, it turned the crowd against him. They started booing, and someone in the audience shouted "Marvin, you should be ashamed of yourself, taking advantage of a little blind kid!" The crowd got so hostile Berry Gordy had to stop the performance and end the party early. He never had another contest like that again. There were other problems, as well. Wonder had been assigned a tutor, a young man named Ted Hull, who began to take serious control over his life. Hull was legally blind, so could teach Wonder using Braille, but unlike Wonder had some sight -- enough that he was even able to get a drivers' license and a co-pilot license for planes. Hull was put in loco parentis on most of Stevie's tours, and soon became basically inseparable from him, but this caused a lot of problems, not least because Hull was a conservative white man, while almost everyone else at Motown was Black, and Stevie was socially liberal and on the side of the civil rights and anti-Vietnam movements. Hull started to collaborate on songwriting with Wonder, which most people at Motown were OK with but which now seems like a serious conflict of interest, and he also started calling himself Stevie's "manager" -- which did *not* impress the people at Motown, who had their own conflict of interest because with Stevie, like with all their artists, they were his management company and agents as well as his record label and publishers. Motown grudgingly tolerated Hull, though, mostly because he was someone they could pass Lula Mae Hardaway to to deal with her complaints. Stevie's mother was not very impressed with the way that Motown were handling her son, and would make her opinion known to anyone who would listen. Hull and Hardaway did not get on at all, but he could be relied on to save the Gordy family members from having to deal with her. Wonder was sent over to Europe for Christmas 1963, to perform shows at the Paris Olympia and do some British media appearances. But both his mother and Hull had come along, and their clear dislike for each other was making him stressed. He started to get pains in his throat whenever he sang -- pains which everyone assumed were a stress reaction to the unhealthy atmosphere that happened whenever Hull and his mother were in the same room together, but which later turned out to be throat nodules that required surgery. Because of this, his singing was generally not up to standard, which meant he was moved to a less prominent place on the bill, which in turn led to his mother accusing the Gordy family of being against him and trying to stop him becoming a star. Wonder started to take her side and believe that Motown were conspiring against him, and at one point he even "accidentally" dropped a bottle of wine on Ted Hull's foot, breaking one of his toes, because he saw Hull as part of the enemy that was Motown. Before leaving for those shows, he had recorded the album he later considered the worst of his career. While he was now just plain Stevie on albums, he wasn't for his single releases, or in his first film appearance, where he was still Little Stevie Wonder. Berry Gordy was already trying to get a foot in the door in Hollywood -- by the end of the decade Motown would be moving from Detroit to LA -- and his first real connections there were with American International Pictures, the low-budget film-makers who have come up a lot in connection with the LA scene. AIP were the producers of the successful low-budget series of beach party films, which combined appearances by teen heartthrobs Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello in swimsuits with cameo appearances by old film stars fallen on hard times, and with musical performances by bands like the Bobby Fuller Four. There would be a couple of Motown connections to these films -- most notably, the Supremes would do the theme tune for Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine -- but Muscle Beach Party was to be the first. Most of the music for Muscle Beach Party was written by Brian Wilson, Roger Christian, and Gary Usher, as one might expect for a film about surfing, and was performed by Dick Dale and the Del-Tones, the film's major musical guests, with Annette, Frankie, and Donna Loren [pron Lorren] adding vocals, on songs like "Muscle Bustle": [Excerpt: Donna Loren with Dick Dale and the Del-Tones, "Muscle Bustle"] The film followed the formula in every way -- it also had a cameo appearance by Peter Lorre, his last film appearance before his death, and it featured Little Stevie Wonder playing one of the few songs not written by the surf and car writers, a piece of nothing called "Happy Street". Stevie also featured in the follow-up, Bikini Beach, which came out a little under four months later, again doing a single number, "Happy Feelin'". To cash in on his appearances in these films, and having tried releasing albums of Little Stevie as jazz multi-instrumentalist, Ray Charles tribute act, live soulman and Andy Williams-style crooner, they now decided to see if they could sell him as a surf singer. Or at least, as Motown's idea of a surf singer, which meant a lot of songs about the beach and the sea -- mostly old standards like "Red Sails in the Sunset" and "Ebb Tide" -- backed by rather schlocky Wrecking Crew arrangements. And this is as good a place as any to take on one of the bits of disinformation that goes around about Motown. I've addressed this before, but it's worth repeating here in slightly more detail. Carol Kaye, one of the go-to Wrecking Crew bass players, is a known credit thief, and claims to have played on hundreds of records she didn't -- claims which too many people take seriously because she is a genuine pioneer and was for a long time undercredited on many records she *did* play on. In particular, she claims to have played on almost all the classic Motown hits that James Jamerson of the Funk Brothers played on, like the title track for this episode, and she claims this despite evidence including notarised statements from everyone involved in the records, the release of session recordings that show producers talking to the Funk Brothers, and most importantly the evidence of the recordings themselves, which have all the characteristics of the Detroit studio and sound like the Funk Brothers playing, and have absolutely nothing in common, sonically, with the records the Wrecking Crew played on at Gold Star, Western, and other LA studios. The Wrecking Crew *did* play on a lot of Motown records, but with a handful of exceptions, mostly by Brenda Holloway, the records they played on were quickie knock-off album tracks and potboiler albums made to tie in with film or TV work -- soundtracks to TV specials the acts did, and that kind of thing. And in this case, the Wrecking Crew played on the entire Stevie at the Beach album, including the last single to be released as by "Little Stevie Wonder", "Castles in the Sand", which was arranged by Jack Nitzsche: [Excerpt: Little Stevie Wonder, "Castles in the Sand"] Apparently the idea of surfin' Stevie didn't catch on any more than that of swingin' Stevie had earlier. Indeed, throughout 1964 and 65 Motown seem to have had less than no idea what they were doing with Stevie Wonder, and he himself refers to all his recordings from this period as an embarrassment, saving particular scorn for the second single from Stevie at the Beach, "Hey Harmonica Man", possibly because that, unlike most of his other singles around this point, was a minor hit, reaching number twenty-nine on the charts. Motown were still pushing Wonder hard -- he even got an appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in May 1964, only the second Motown act to appear on it after the Marvelettes -- but Wonder was getting more and more unhappy with the decisions they were making. He loathed the Stevie at the Beach album -- the records he'd made earlier, while patchy and not things he'd chosen, were at least in some way related to his musical interests. He *did* love jazz, and he *did* love Ray Charles, and he *did* love old standards, and the records were made by his friend Clarence Paul and with the studio musicians he'd grown to know in Detroit. But Stevie at the Beach was something that was imposed on Clarence Paul from above, it was cut with unfamiliar musicians, Stevie thought the films he was appearing in were embarrassing, and he wasn't even having much commercial success, which was the whole point of these compromises. He started to get more rebellious against Paul in the studio, though many of these decisions weren't made by Paul, and he would complain to anyone who would listen that if he was just allowed to do the music he wanted to sing, the way he wanted to sing it, he would have more hits. But for nine months he did basically no singing other than that Ed Sullivan Show appearance -- he had to recover from the operation to remove the throat nodules. When he did return to the studio, the first single he cut remained unreleased, and while some stuff from the archives was released between the start of 1964 and March 1965, the first single he recorded and released after the throat nodules, "Kiss Me Baby", which came out in March, was a complete flop. That single was released to coincide with the first Motown tour of Europe, which we looked at in the episode on "Stop! In the Name of Love", and which was mostly set up to promote the Supremes, but which also featured Martha and the Vandellas, the Miracles, and the Temptations. Even though Stevie had not had a major hit in eighteen months by this point, he was still brought along on the tour, the only solo artist to be included -- at this point Gordy thought that solo artists looked outdated compared to vocal groups, in a world dominated by bands, and so other solo artists like Marvin Gaye weren't invited. This was a sign that Gordy was happier with Stevie than his recent lack of chart success might suggest. One of the main reasons that Gordy had been in two minds about him was that he'd had no idea if Wonder would still be able to sing well after his voice broke. But now, as he was about to turn fifteen, his adult voice had more or less stabilised, and Gordy knew that he was capable of having a long career, if they just gave him the proper material. But for now his job on the tour was to do his couple of hits, smile, and be on the lower rungs of the ladder. But even that was still a prominent place to be given the scaled-down nature of this bill compared to the Motortown Revues. While the tour was in England, for example, Dusty Springfield presented a TV special focusing on all the acts on the tour, and while the Supremes were the main stars, Stevie got to do two songs, and also took part in the finale, a version of "Mickey's Monkey" led by Smokey Robinson but with all the performers joining in, with Wonder getting a harmonica solo: [Excerpt: Smokey Robinson and the Motown acts, "Mickey's Monkey"] Sadly, there was one aspect of the trip to the UK that was extremely upsetting for Wonder. Almost all the media attention he got -- which was relatively little, as he wasn't a Supreme -- was about his blindness, and one reporter in particular convinced him that there was an operation he could have to restore his sight, but that Motown were preventing him from finding out about it in order to keep his gimmick going. He was devastated about this, and then further devastated when Ted Hull finally convinced him that it wasn't true, and that he'd been lied to. Meanwhile other newspapers were reporting that he *could* see, and that he was just feigning blindness to boost his record sales. After the tour, a live recording of Wonder singing the blues standard "High Heeled Sneakers" was released as a single, and barely made the R&B top thirty, and didn't hit the top forty on the pop charts. Stevie's initial contract with Motown was going to expire in the middle of 1966, so there was a year to get him back to a point where he was having the kind of hits that other Motown acts were regularly getting at this point. Otherwise, it looked like his career might end by the time he was sixteen. The B-side to "High Heeled Sneakers" was another duet with Clarence Paul, who dominates the vocal sound for much of it -- a version of Willie Nelson's country classic "Funny How Time Slips Away": [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder and Clarence Paul, "Funny How Time Slips Away"] There are a few of these duet records scattered through Wonder's early career -- we'll hear another one a little later -- and they're mostly dismissed as Paul trying to muscle his way into a revival of his own recording career as an artist, and there may be some truth in that. But they're also a natural extension of the way the two of them worked in the studio. Motown didn't have the facilities to give Wonder Braille lyric sheets, and Paul didn't trust him to be able to remember the lyrics, so often when they made a record, Paul would be just off-mic, reciting the lyrics to Wonder fractionally ahead of him singing them. So it was more or less natural that this dynamic would leak out onto records, but not everyone saw it that way. But at the same time, there has been some suggestion that Paul was among those manoeuvring to get rid of Wonder from Motown as soon as his contract was finished -- despite the fact that Wonder was the only act Paul had worked on any big hits for. Either way, Paul and Wonder were starting to chafe at working with each other in the studio, and while Paul remained his on-stage musical director, the opportunity to work on Wonder's singles for what would surely be his last few months at Motown was given to Hank Cosby and Sylvia Moy. Cosby was a saxophone player and staff songwriter who had been working with Wonder and Paul for years -- he'd co-written "Fingertips" and several other tracks -- while Moy was a staff songwriter who was working as an apprentice to Cosby. Basically, at this point, nobody else wanted the job of writing for Wonder, and as Moy was having no luck getting songs cut by any other artists and her career was looking about as dead as Wonder's, they started working together. Wonder was, at this point, full of musical ideas but with absolutely no discipline. He's said in interviews that at this point he was writing a hundred and fifty songs a month, but these were often not full songs -- they were fragments, hooks, or a single verse, or a few lines, which he would pass on to Moy, who would turn his ideas into structured songs that fit the Motown hit template, usually with the assistance of Cosby. Then Cosby would come up with an arrangement, and would co-produce with Mickey Stevenson. The first song they came up with in this manner was a sign of how Wonder was looking outside the world of Motown to the rock music that was starting to dominate the US charts -- but which was itself inspired by Motown music. We heard in the last episode on the Rolling Stones how "Nowhere to Run" by the Vandellas: [Excerpt: Martha and the Vandellas, "Nowhere to Run"] had inspired the Stones' "Satisfaction": [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"] And Wonder in turn was inspired by "Satisfaction" to come up with his own song -- though again, much of the work making it into an actual finished song was done by Sylvia Moy. They took the four-on-the-floor beat and basic melody of "Satisfaction" and brought it back to Motown, where those things had originated -- though they hadn't originated with Stevie, and this was his first record to sound like a Motown record in the way we think of those things. As a sign of how, despite the way these stories are usually told, the histories of rock and soul were completely and complexly intertwined, that four-on-the-floor beat itself was a conscious attempt by Holland, Dozier, and Holland to appeal to white listeners -- on the grounds that while Black people generally clapped on the backbeat, white people didn't, and so having a four-on-the-floor beat wouldn't throw them off. So Cosby, Moy, and Wonder, in trying to come up with a "Satisfaction" soundalike were Black Motown writers trying to copy a white rock band trying to copy Black Motown writers trying to appeal to a white rock audience. Wonder came up with the basic chorus hook, which was based around a lot of current slang terms he was fond of: [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder, "Uptight"] Then Moy, with some assistance from Cosby, filled it out into a full song. Lyrically, it was as close to social comment as Motown had come at this point -- Wonder was, like many of his peers in soul music, interested in the power of popular music to make political statements, and he would become a much more political artist in the next few years, but at this point it's still couched in the acceptable boy-meets-girl romantic love song that Motown specialised in. But in 1965 a story about a boy from the wrong side of the tracks dating a rich girl inevitably raised the idea that the boy and girl might be of different races -- a subject that was very, very, controversial in the mid-sixties. [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder, "Uptight"] "Uptight" made number three on the pop charts and number one on the R&B charts, and saved Stevie Wonder's career. And this is where, for all that I've criticised Motown in this episode, their strategy paid off. Mickey Stevenson talked a lot about how in the early sixties Motown didn't give up on artists -- if someone had potential but was not yet having hits or finding the right approach, they would keep putting out singles in a holding pattern, trying different things and seeing what would work, rather than toss them aside. It had already worked for the Temptations and the Supremes, and now it had worked for Stevie Wonder. He would be the last beneficiary of this policy -- soon things would change, and Motown would become increasingly focused on trying to get the maximum returns out of a small number of stars, rather than building careers for a range of artists -- but it paid off brilliantly for Wonder. "Uptight" was such a reinvention of Wonder's career, sound, and image that many of his fans consider it the real start of his career -- everything before it only counting as prologue. The follow-up, "Nothing's Too Good For My Baby", was an "Uptight" soundalike, and as with Motown soundalike follow-ups in general, it didn't do quite as well, but it still made the top twenty on the pop chart and got to number four on the R&B chart. Stevie Wonder was now safe at Motown, and so he was going to do something no other Motown act had ever done before -- he was going to record a protest song and release it as a single. For about a year he'd been ending his shows with a version of Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind", sung as a duet with Clarence Paul, who was still his on stage bandleader even though the two weren't working together in the studio as much. Wonder brought that into the studio, and recorded it with Paul back as the producer, and as his duet partner. Berry Gordy wasn't happy with the choice of single, but Wonder pushed, and Gordy knew that Wonder was on a winning streak and gave in, and so "Blowin' in the Wind" became Stevie Wonder's next single: [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder and Clarence Paul, "Blowin' in the Wind"] "Blowin' in the Wind" made the top ten, and number one on the R&B charts, and convinced Gordy that there was some commercial potential in going after the socially aware market, and over the next few years Motown would start putting out more and more political records. Because Motown convention was to have the producer of a hit record produce the next hit for that artist, and keep doing so until they had a flop, Paul was given the opportunity to produce the next single. "A Place in the Sun" was another ambiguously socially-aware song, co-written by the only white writer on Motown staff, Ron Miller, who happened to live in the same building as Stevie's tutor-cum-manager Ted Hull. "A Place in the Sun" was a pleasant enough song, inspired by "A Change is Gonna Come", but with a more watered-down, generic, message of hope, but the record was lifted by Stevie's voice, and again made the top ten. This meant that Paul and Miller, and Miller's writing partner Bryan Mills, got to work on his next  two singles -- his 1966 Christmas song "Someday at Christmas", which made number twenty-four, and the ballad "Travellin' Man" which made thirty-two. The downward trajectory with Paul meant that Wonder was soon working with other producers again. Harvey Fuqua and Johnny Bristol cut another Miller and Mills song with him, "Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday": [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder, "Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday"] But that was left in the can, as not good enough to release, and Stevie was soon back working with Cosby. The two of them had come up with an instrumental together in late 1966, but had not been able to come up with any words for it, so they played it for Smokey Robinson, who said their instrumental sounded like circus music, and wrote lyrics about a clown: [Excerpt: The Miracles, "The Tears of a Clown"] The Miracles cut that as album filler, but it was released three years later as a single and became the Miracles' only number one hit with Smokey Robinson as lead singer. So Wonder and Cosby definitely still had their commercial touch, even if their renewed collaboration with Moy, who they started working with again, took a while to find a hit. To start with, Wonder returned to the idea of taking inspiration from a hit by a white British group, as he had with "Uptight". This time it was the Beatles, and the track "Michelle", from the Rubber Soul album: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Michelle"] Wonder took the idea of a song with some French lyrics, and a melody with some similarities to the Beatles song, and came up with "My Cherie Amour", which Cosby and Moy finished off. [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder, "My Cherie Amour"] Gordy wouldn't allow that to be released, saying it was too close to "Michelle" and people would think it was a rip-off, and it stayed in the vaults for several years. Cosby also produced a version of a song Ron Miller had written with Orlando Murden, "For Once in My Life", which pretty much every other Motown act was recording versions of -- the Four Tops, the Temptations, Billy Eckstine, Martha and the Vandellas and Barbra McNair all cut versions of it in 1967, and Gordy wouldn't let Wonder's version be put out either. So they had to return to the drawing board. But in truth, Stevie Wonder was not the biggest thing worrying Berry Gordy at this point. He was dealing with problems in the Supremes, which we'll look at in a future episode -- they were about to get rid of Florence Ballard, and thus possibly destroy one of the biggest acts in the world, but Gordy thought that if they *didn't* get rid of her they would be destroying themselves even more certainly. Not only that, but Gordy was in the midst of a secret affair with Diana Ross, Holland, Dozier, and Holland were getting restless about their contracts, and his producers kept bringing him unlistenable garbage that would never be a hit. Like Norman Whitfield, insisting that this track he'd cut with Marvin Gaye, "I Heard it Through the Grapevine", should be a single. Gordy had put his foot down about that one too, just like he had about "My Cherie Amour", and wouldn't allow it to be released. Meanwhile, many of the smaller acts on the label were starting to feel like they were being ignored by Gordy, and had formed what amounted to a union, having regular meetings at Clarence Paul's house to discuss how they could pressure the label to put the same effort into their careers as into those of the big stars. And the Funk Brothers, the musicians who played on all of Motown's hits, were also getting restless -- they contributed to the arrangements, and they did more for the sound of the records than half the credited producers; why weren't they getting production credits and royalties? Harvey Fuqua had divorced Gordy's sister Gwen, and so became persona non grata at the label and was in the process of leaving Motown, and so was Mickey Stevenson, Gordy's second in command, because Gordy wouldn't give him any stock in the company. And Detroit itself was on edge. The crime rate in the city had started to go up, but even worse, the *perception* of crime was going up. The Detroit News had been running a campaign to whip up fear, which it called its Secret Witness campaign, and running constant headlines about rapes, murders, and muggings. These in turn had led to increased calls for more funds for the police, calls which inevitably contained a strong racial element and at least implicitly linked the perceived rise in crime to the ongoing Civil Rights movement. At this point the police in Detroit were ninety-three percent white, even though Detroit's population was over thirty percent Black. The Mayor and Police Commissioner were trying to bring in some modest reforms, but they weren't going anywhere near fast enough for the Black population who felt harassed and attacked by the police, but were still going too fast for the white people who were being whipped up into a state of terror about supposedly soft-on-crime policies, and for the police who felt under siege and betrayed by the politicians. And this wasn't the only problem affecting the city, and especially affecting Black people. Redlining and underfunded housing projects meant that the large Black population was being crammed into smaller and smaller spaces with fewer local amenities. A few Black people who were lucky enough to become rich -- many of them associated with Motown -- were able to move into majority-white areas, but that was just leading to white flight, and to an increase in racial tensions. The police were on edge after the murder of George Overman Jr, the son of a policeman, and though they arrested the killers that was just another sign that they weren't being shown enough respect. They started organising "blu flu"s -- the police weren't allowed to strike, so they'd claim en masse that they were off sick, as a protest against the supposed soft-on-crime administration. Meanwhile John Sinclair was organising "love-ins", gatherings of hippies at which new bands like the MC5 played, which were being invaded by gangs of bikers who were there to beat up the hippies. And the Detroit auto industry was on its knees -- working conditions had got bad enough that the mostly Black workforce organised a series of wildcat strikes. All in all, Detroit was looking less and less like somewhere that Berry Gordy wanted to stay, and the small LA subsidiary of Motown was rapidly becoming, in his head if nowhere else, the more important part of the company, and its future. He was starting to think that maybe he should leave all these ungrateful people behind in their dangerous city, and move the parts of the operation that actually mattered out to Hollywood. Stevie Wonder was, of course, one of the parts that mattered, but the pressure was on in 1967 to come up with a hit as big as his records from 1965 and early 66, before he'd been sidetracked down the ballad route. The song that was eventually released was one on which Stevie's mother, Lula Mae Hardaway, had a co-writing credit: [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder, "I Was Made to Love Her"] "I Was Made to Love Her" was inspired by Wonder's first love, a girl from the same housing projects as him, and he talked about the song being special to him because it was true, saying it "kind of speaks of my first love to a girl named Angie, who was a very beautiful woman... Actually, she was my third girlfriend but my first love. I used to call Angie up and, like, we would talk and say, 'I love you, I love you,' and we'd talk and we'd both go to sleep on the phone. And this was like from Detroit to California, right? You know, mother said, 'Boy, what you doing - get off the phone!' Boy, I tell you, it was ridiculous." But while it was inspired by her, like with many of the songs from this period, much of the lyric came from Moy -- her mother grew up in Arkansas, and that's why the lyric started "I was born in Little Rock", as *her* inspiration came from stories told by her parents. But truth be told, the lyrics weren't particularly detailed or impressive, just a standard story of young love. Rather what mattered in the record was the music. The song was structured differently from many Motown records, including most of Wonder's earlier ones. Most Motown records had a huge amount of dynamic variation, and a clear demarcation between verse and chorus. Even a record like "Dancing in the Street", which took most of its power from the tension and release caused by spending most of the track on one chord, had the release that came with the line "All we need is music", and could be clearly subdivided into different sections. "I Was Made to Love Her" wasn't like that. There was a tiny section which functioned as a middle eight -- and which cover versions like the one by the Beach Boys later that year tend to cut out, because it disrupts the song's flow: [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder, "I Was Made to Love Her"] But other than that, the song has no verse or chorus, no distinct sections, it's just a series of lyrical couplets over the same four chords, repeating over and over, an incessant groove that could really go on indefinitely: [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder, "I Was Made to Love Her"] This is as close as Motown had come at this point to the new genre of funk, of records that were just staying with one groove throughout. It wasn't a funk record, not yet -- it was still a pop-soul record, But what made it extraordinary was the bass line, and this is why I had to emphasise earlier that this was a record by the Funk Brothers, not the Wrecking Crew, no matter how much some Crew members may claim otherwise. As on most of Cosby's sessions, James Jamerson was given free reign to come up with his own part with little guidance, and what he came up with is extraordinary. This was at a time when rock and pop basslines were becoming a little more mobile, thanks to the influence of Jamerson in Detroit, Brian Wilson in LA, and Paul McCartney in London.  But for the most part, even those bass parts had been fairly straightforward technically -- often inventive, but usually just crotchets and quavers, still keeping rhythm along with the drums rather than in dialogue with them, roaming free rhythmically. Jamerson had started to change his approach, inspired by the change in studio equipment. Motown had upgraded to eight-track recording in 1965, and once he'd become aware of the possibilities, and of the greater prominence that his bass parts could have if they were recorded on their own track, Jamerson had become a much busier player. Jamerson was a jazz musician by inclination, and so would have been very aware of John Coltrane's legendary "sheets of sound", in which Coltrane would play fast arpeggios and scales, in clusters of five and seven notes, usually in semiquaver runs (though sometimes in even smaller fractions -- his solo in Miles Davis' "Straight, No Chaser" is mostly semiquavers but has a short passage in hemidemisemiquavers): [Excerpt: Miles Davis, "Straight, No Chaser"] Jamerson started to adapt the "sheets of sound" style to bass playing, treating the bass almost as a jazz solo instrument -- though unlike Coltrane he was also very, very concerned with creating something that people could tap their feet to. Much like James Brown, Jamerson was taking jazz techniques and repurposing them for dance music. The most notable example of that up to this point had been in the Four Tops' "Bernadette", where there are a few scuffling semiquaver runs thrown in, and which is a much more fluid part than most of his playing previously: [Excerpt: The Four Tops, "Bernadette"] But on "Bernadette", Jamerson had been limited by Holland, Dozier, and Holland, who liked him to improvise but around a framework they created. Cosby, on the other hand, because he had been a Funk Brother himself, was much more aware of the musicians' improvisational abilities, and would largely give them a free hand. This led to a truly remarkable bass part on "I Was Made to Love Her", which is somewhat buried in the single mix, but Marcus Miller did an isolated recreation of the part for the accompanying CD to a book on Jamerson, Standing in the Shadows of Motown, and listening to that you can hear just how inventive it is: [Excerpt: Marcus Miller, "I Was Made to Love Her"] This was exciting stuff -- though much less so for the touring musicians who went on the road with the Motown revues while Jamerson largely stayed in Detroit recording. Jamerson's family would later talk about him coming home grumbling because complaints from the touring musicians had been brought to him, and he'd been asked to play less difficult parts so they'd find it easier to replicate them on stage. "I Was Made to Love Her" wouldn't exist without Stevie Wonder, Hank Cosby, Sylvia Moy, or Lula Mae Hardaway, but it's James Jamerson's record through and through: [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder, "I Was Made to Love Her"] It went to number two on the charts, sat between "Light My Fire" at number one, and "All You Need is Love" at number three, with the Beatles song soon to overtake it and make number one itself. But within a few weeks of "I Was Made to Love Her" reaching its chart peak, things in Detroit would change irrevocably. On the 23rd of July, the police busted an illegal drinking den. They thought they were only going to get about twenty-five people there, but there turned out to be a big party on. They tried to arrest seventy-four people, but their wagon wouldn't fit them all in so they had to call reinforcements and make the arrestees wait around til more wagons arrived. A crowd of hundreds gathered while they were waiting. Someone threw a brick at a squad car window, a rumour went round that the police had bayonetted someone, and soon the city was in flames. Riots lasted for days, with people burning down and looting businesses, but what really made the situation bad was the police's overreaction. They basically started shooting at young Black men, using them as target practice, and later claiming they were snipers, arsonists, and looters -- but there were cases like the Algiers Motel incident, where the police raided a motel where several Black men, including the members of the soul group The Dramatics, were hiding out along with a few white women. The police sexually assaulted the women, and then killed three of the men for associating with white women, in what was described as a "lynching with bullets". The policemen in question were later acquitted of all charges. The National Guard were called in, as were Federal troops -- the 82nd Airborne Division, and the 101st Airborne from Clarksville, the division in which Jimi Hendrix had recently served. After four days of rioting, one of the bloodiest riots in US history was at an end, with forty-three people dead (of whom thirty-three were Black and only one was a policeman). Official counts had 1,189 people injured, and over 7,200 arrests, almost all of them of Black people. A lot of the histories written later say that Black-owned businesses were spared during the riots, but that wasn't really the case. For example, Joe's Record Shop, owned by Joe Von Battle, who had put out the first records by C.L. Franklin and his daughter Aretha, was burned down, destroying not only the stock of records for sale but the master tapes of hundreds of recordings of Black artists, many of them unreleased and so now lost forever. John Lee Hooker, one of the artists whose music Von Battle had released, soon put out a song, "The Motor City is Burning", about the events: [Excerpt: John Lee Hooker, "The Motor City is Burning"] But one business that did remain unburned was Motown, with the Hitsville studio going untouched by flames and unlooted. Motown legend has this being down to the rioters showing respect for the studio that had done so much for Detroit, but it seems likely to have just been luck. Although Motown wasn't completely unscathed -- a National Guard tank fired a shell through the building, leaving a gigantic hole, which Berry Gordy saw as soon as he got back from a business trip he'd been on during the rioting. That was what made Berry Gordy decide once and for all that things needed to change. Motown owned a whole row of houses near the studio, which they used as additional office space and for everything other than the core business of making records. Gordy immediately started to sell them, and move the admin work into temporary rented space. He hadn't announced it yet, and it would be a few years before the move was complete, but from that moment on, the die was cast. Motown was going to leave Detroit and move to Hollywood.

Frankie Avalon was one of the original teenage heartthrob idols of the 1960's/70's. The star of many films of the 60's like Beach Blanket Bingo and Beach Party, he is forever identified with his co-star Annette Funicello. Avalon is perhaps best known to a later generation for his role in the 1970s musical film Grease as Teen Angel, in which he sings "Beauty School Dropout" to Frenchy. He had 31 charting U.S. Billboard singles from 1958 to late 1962, including number one hits, "Venus" and "Why" in 1959. Little known was his lucky break in December 1952, when Avalon made his American network television debut playing the trumpet in the Honeymooners "Christmas Party" sketch on The Jackie Gleason Show. In his 80's, and looking 30 years younger, Avalon still performs in Vegas and elsewhere and credits his youthful looks and energy to a line of Health Products he sells that you can learn more about on his website www.frankieavalon.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Darlene Gillespie is one of the original Mouseketeers on The Mickey Mouse Club. The most popular cast member in the first season, her popularity was usurped by Annette Funicello in the second season and thereafter. Darlene enjoyed a medical career before becoming a petty criminal and even did some jail time before retiring to a respectable life. This is her intriguing tale. Podcast Show Notes: https://ancestralfindings.com/darlene-gillespie-the-mickey-mouse-club-part-4/  

Annette Funicello is perhaps the best known of the original Mouseketeers on The Mickey Mouse Club TV show. In addition to being a Mouseketeer and appearing in guest spots in several Disney movies and TV shows, she also had a career as a singer and as the popular star of a series of beach movies in the 1960s. This is Annette's intriguing stardom story. Podcast Show Notes: https://ancestralfindings.com/annette-funicello-the-mickey-mouse-club-part-2/  

Join Disney's Ike Eisenmann, and author, Jonathan Rosen, as they chat with singer Donna Loren from Beach Blanket Bingo!Donna talks about working on the Beach movies with Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello, being the original Dr. Pepper girl, being the featured singer on the musical program, Shindig, and much more!

Beverly Hills, what a thrill! Take a trip back to the golden days of childhood when you were forced to interact with nature and coveted a sash with badges celebrating achievements like "Science" and "Friendship" and "Describing Fashion to Blind People". Was Shelly Long a secret fashion icon? Was Jenny Lewis THE unsung child star of the '90s? Does anyone today remember half of the people with cameos in this movie? And was anyone really clamouring to see Craig T. Nelson shirtless? Get ready to glamp in style and do the Freddie with us as we enjoy some khaki wishes and cookie dreams with our favorite Wilderness Girls and Troop Beverly Hills.Read Randall's full episode notes at yourenofun.com.And follow us on Instagram , Facebook and Twitter.

Mousetalgia's Best Ear Ever No. 12: Kevin Kidney on Annette Funicello from Jan. 13, 2013 Kevin Kidney returns to the show to share some of his personal stories about Disney Legend Annette Funicello, and he discusses Annette's Place, a fundraiser for the Annette Funicello Research Fund for Neurological Diseases. But first, Dave and Becky visit Disneyland for the first Limited Time Magic experience of 2013, the Three Kings Day Celebration. From rarely seen character appearances to special dances and performances, Disneyland pulled out all the stops for this traditional holiday, and Mousetalgia reports. Next, we share some "Pictures of Annette," featuring some articles, news bits, and memories of her career with Disney as a Mouseketeer and pop icon. Renowned Disney Artist Kevin Kidney discusses the recently opened online store to benefit Annette's foundation featuring some of his artwork, and shares some inspirational stories about America's Sweetheart. Plus - a hotel report, Carthay Circle tips, our Limited Time Magic dreams... and more! Contact us at comments@mousetalgia.com.