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January 2012 • Vol. 1, No. 4
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Yo u r l i f e i n r e t r o
Julie Newmar’s Nine Lives
Lucie Arnaz: We Love Lucie (and Lucy)’s Legacy
Lionel’s Dangerous Toys Too Much Is Never Enough: “I Want My MTV”
Jagger Moves Like
This year, The Rolling Stones Turn 50
The Great A&P Reichen Lehmkuhl Is a Deadhead The Good Humor Truck • The Singing Nun • Follies
Kevin Sorbo’s True Strength
c ntents T h e M o d e r n — Yo u r l i f e i n r e t r o In this issue:
Reconnecting
Julie Newmar
One of Hollywood’s loveliest ladies purrs poetically on her nine lives.
Lucie Arnaz
The daughter of an American icon keeps the family legacy alive as the world continues to love Lucy (and Lucie).
Kevin Sorbo
While starring as Hercules, devastating medical setbacks reduced the beloved star to mere mortal status.
Picker/Grinner/Lover/Sinner Reichen Lehmkuhl Our favorite Renaissance Man shares his unlikely passion for The Grateful Dead.
Lionel When kids were kids and toys were dangerous: our favorite social commentator sheds light on the dark side of playtime.
Read This Retro Book I Want My MTV: A fascinating new oral history traces the birth and uneven life of a channel that changed the culture. The Great A&P: The Walmart of its day advanced the concept of the modern supermarket – and became a victim of its own success.
By Design Mark Mussari evaluates George Nelson. From bubble lamps to ball clocks — Nelson defined modern design. Instead, Try This Forget Freakin’ Citizen Kane. The Lady from Shanghai will shatter your perceptions of “great cinema.” Retro Night Out Jacob Schirmer tells us that Lucky Strike Lanes in Manhattan scores a perfect 300. On Broadway Follies: Our Tim Kraft takes a new look at the old Sondheim classic. The Kick-Ass List The Top Ten Kick-Ass Instrumental Movie Theme Songs of the Eighties From Batman to Terminator, find out which of your flicks hit the list. Retro Sports
Postcards From the Edge
I Get Around
Retro Merch
The New Oldies
Retro Tech
The Great Forgotten
Sing Your Heart Out
Girls Were Girls & Men Were Men
Dig This DVD
Parting Shot: Kiddie A Go Go: if you are serious about your Sixties dancing, you need to take a lesson from these twistin’ tots.
letter from the editor
Get Your Ticket to That Wheel in Space While There’s Time I realize we are now officially required to lovingly and easily embrace every new technology without even blinking. Any piece of equipment even five minutes old is considered laughable and hopelessly passé (think iPod compared to iPhone). Same goes for books (why drag around an actual book when you can virtually download one?) Seen with anything slightly stale, your George Jetson reputation will be damaged. Here’s a great prank: walk down a busy street pretending to talk on a Ninetiesera cell phone, or listening to a Walkman or transistor radio. Make note of the smug, superior looks you will receive! Watch the laughter build! Not that I don’t love my iPhone and Kindle, and I can be as much of a texting fool as anyone. Yet who is truly with me on this one: now technology is starting to move a little too fast (and yet still no flying cars). It’s all good, and it’s all miraculous, but in the last two years, we seem to be gunning the pedal into the future. Case in point: the desktop workstation computer is quickly becoming as outdated as bank checks and suntans. Nobody wants to be stationary anymore. Sitting at a desk is so yesterday. And even laptops — once the very symbol of the future — are earning a label of being antiquated. Living room TV sets too. Yet when I write, I don’t want to write from anywhere but my desk. It’s practically non-negotiable for me. As appealing as wireless, mobile freedom sounds, I don’t like to write from airports or Starbucks or park benches. It just doesn’t feel right. And TV? I do stream Two and a Half Men whenever I can on cbs.com, which I guess is better than being a couch potato. However, I do hold a sentimental place in my heart for the days of watching network TV in the living room. This I haven’t done in years, but soon it will no longer be an option. There was a time when TV was located in one room, not in the back of an SUV or in a restaurant. The world outside the living room was TV-free. TV was a destination, not a companion everywhere you go. Such is life, and it’s not exactly bad; just different and in need of our adjustment: better to have all your stuff sitting on a cloud than on CDs and DVDs on a dusty shelf. And I hear tell that our techie heroes are working on the miracle of operating only one remote control — as opposed to three or four — for all of your gadgets. Not too shabby. Life is but a stream. Ron Sklar Editor
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Yo u r l i f e i n r e t r o .
Editor • Ron Sklar Art Director • Jennifer Barlow Copy Editor • Patty Wall
Contributing Writers: Barrie Creedon • Desiree Dymond • Jay S. Jacobs • Tim Kraft Reichen Lehmkuhl • Lionel • Mark Mussari • Ron Passaro • Jack Rotoli Jacob Schirmer • Cassie Stevens • Gregory Vrecenak • Art Wilson
Contact us: info@themodern.us The Modern | December 2011
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reconnecting: julie newmar
Thanks for Everything,
Julie New One of Hollywood’s loveliest ladies purrs poetically on her nine lives B
“It was a heavenly experience,” Julie Newmar says of her most recognized role, that of Catwoman on the Sixties series Batman. “It fit me well. The character had to be part animal. In an acting class, one of the first exercises I learned was to portray an animal. It really works. But in my case, it was the ballet classes I took that The Modern | January 2012
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made all my joints move like a cat. It’s just putting myself into the skin of another. And that helps you be nicer to people, because you can walk up to somebody and just sense the state of where they are. I can put myself in someone else’s feelings and feel with them. I can talk to them about how they are at that moment. And when
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it’s really necessary, they know that you are in the same boat with them. They know that you are in full sympathy, that you are under their sail. You’re going with the wind in the same direction that they are. But that’s what an actor does. He becomes this other person by jumping into their skin.” Nevertheless, Julie Newmar’s skin is not so bad a skin to be in. An actress, dancer, singer businesswoman, and now, writer, Newmar has lead at least nine lives since she came into the world as Julia Charlene Newmeyer in Southern California. In addition to her famous role on TV’s Batman, she’s also starred as one of the brides in the film version of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. On Broadway, her leggy turn as a sex bomb named Stupifyin’ Jones in the musical Li’l Abner lead to a reprise of the role in the film version. In 1961, she won a Tony award (Best Supporting Actress) for The Marriage www.themodern.us
wmar Go Round. Her name has also become famously synonymous with a film in which she was named but never appeared: To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar. “I was a little apprehensive,” she says about finding out about her name appearing in the 1995 transvestite comedy, “but it turned out to be lovely. It was just full of love and funniness. It’s a movie that is very dear to the hearts of many people, as odd a scene as it is. It’s all about making people’s lives happier and lighter. That’s what the film is about. And three very straight guys [Wesley Snipes, Patrick Swayze and John Leguizamo] playing three very fluffy transvestites! Hello?! That’s modern!” Her TV and movie work include such diverse projects as Columbo, Star Trek and The Monkees. She says, “All actors will probably tell you that they appreciate the stage the most because you are in direct contact with the audience. They are right there with you, having the experience there with you. On film, the camera looks inside your head, inside to what your intentions are. It goes right through your skin. And if you are unable to make that transparent for the good of the
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character, then you don’t have a rapport with the audience.” Another of her passions, writing, has lead to her best-selling self-help book, The Conscious Catwoman Explains Life on Earth, in which she ruminates on such topics as physical quirks, (“Tall girls,
thing and then say it in the shortest, most compact way that I can. I would probably write one sentence on a page if I could get away with it. I like the compactness.” Speaking of words, does she have any words to live by? “I never let myself get depress–
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I live in the area of maximum life that I have to live. I maximize every moment. I think the word ‘joy’ is what most
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describes me.
Julie Newmar
don’t slump. Think of how many short guys out there would love to have your offspring. Stand up for them.”) and karma, (“Words, thoughts, eventually have a life of their own. Never say something you don’t want to be true.”) “I am madly in love with words,” she says. “I have this beautiful leather-bound, gold-trimmed dictionary with onion-skin paper. And I love to go into it and look up words and look up the meaning of some-
ed,” she says. “I never criticize anymore. I’m going to qualify that and say that I’m very discriminating. But I hold that as a fast rule. No depression. It’s not a challenge anymore. I live in the area of maximum life that I have to live. I maximize every moment. I think the word ‘joy’ is what most describes me.” To find out more about Ms. Newmar, go to julienewmar.com and julienewmarwrites.com. January 2012 | The Modern
reconnecting: lucie arnaz
Lucie Here’s
The daughter of an American icon keeps the family legacy alive as the world continues to love Lucy (and Lucie).
The Modern | January 2012
“It never gets old, and there is a reason for that,” Lucie Arnaz says about the half-century-plus staying power of her parents’ iconic sitcom, I Love Lucy. In 1951, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz created a situation comedy that was forever adored as well as technically innovative. Its ratings were blockbuster, and the program itself was filmed, with three cameras, in front of a studio audience. We take this for granted today, but this concept was Desi Arnaz’s brainstorm, and it paved the way for thousands of sitcoms to come. Of course, the brilliant comedy chops of the cast didn’t hurt to seal the deal. “We really need to relieve stress with laughter,” Lucie says. “If I had to be a part of any legacy that won’t die, this is one that is actually healing people.” True that. At any given time of the day anywhere on the planet, the series continues to flicker and tickle. New generations of fans are laughing at the very same antics that had drawn in millions of
first-time television owners in the Fifties. It was one of the young industry’s first stunning megahits, and its perennial reruns have only enriched the universal fondness. The big bang, though, originally combusted from a rather modest wish of the main stars. “[Mom and Dad] just wanted to work together,” Lucie says, “so that he wouldn’t be on the road and they could have a family. And the only way for them to do that was for them to stay in California. They were told that they had to go to New York to do this kind of show, but they said no. They couldn’t do it on film because Lucy had to work in front of a live audience. And you can’t shoot film with a live audience and moving cameras. So Dad found people who found a way to make that work. And I just think that’s so cool.” So do millions of others. The daily, ongoing love that Lucie gets for her parents’ work also goes on and on. She says, “It’s not always goofy www.themodern.us
stories. It’s also stuff like, ‘Your mother got me through the hardest time of my life;’ ‘I had cancer or I was going through a divorce and I couldn’t laugh at anything. And the show came on and I found myself hysterically laughing. So if I can laugh at that, I guess I’ll be okay.’” The logical outcome, of course, is that a series this ancient should eventually just play itself out and be lost to the ages. However, like The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the www.themodern.us
Wind, Lucy refuses to go quietly into the dark night. “The generational scan is amazing,” Lucie says. “Just when you think, okay, [it’s over], I have seven-year-olds coming up to me, saying, ‘I have all the DVDs and I watch the show!’” Why the obsession? Lucie has
a theory. “It was about a woman who did not want to give up her passion,” she says. “Was Lucy Ricardo ever seriously going to be a performer? Probably never, ever. But she never stopped trying to do what made her happy. And I think that’s a great thing for us all to think about.” The real Lucy – Lucille Ball – January 2012 | The Modern
reconnecting: lucie arnaz was not all that different from her TV alter ego in ambition, charm and drive. However, when the Arnaz marriage broke up in 1960, Lucy found herself having to take on the role of one of America’s first truly liberated women: not only did she star in a weekly series, but she had to run a studio. “My mother absolutely hated being a businesswoman,” Lucie says. “She was so appreciative that my father was taking care of all that. All she needed to do was be Lucy the character, and then run home as quick as she could, which was never quick enough for me, to take care of the kids. It was all good until it wasn’t, and then they weren’t getting along. She had to take over the studio. She had to deal with the suits. She hated it. She didn’t like being that person. She was a smart lady. She could do it. But she didn’t want to do it.” Daughter Lucie knew from early on that she wanted to follow in the family business and be a performer. She has since grown into her own,
with tons of credits from film (including the 1980 hit The Jazz Singer), Broadway (They’re Playing Our Song, among others) and CDs and cabaret. Of course, challenge #1 was dancing away from her mother’s extensive shadow. “Well, I’m still doing it,” she says. “It’s always a challenge. It’s been interesting to just keep going in different directions from television to theater to film, and producing. I like this business. I like so many elements of it. I’m never really happy just in one. And now I spend a lot of time doing concerts, my music. It’s delightful. It’s a part of me that I never really trusted as much as I do now. I think that’s where I am happiest. And it was a good way for me to take the best of what I watched growing up and seeing which parts of that fit me. And make my own animal.” She also co-starred on her mother’s other hit series Here’s Lucy, which ran from 1968 to 1974. She played, of all things,
I Love Licensing Lucy! Bruce Bronn of Unforgettable Licensing Develops, Manages and Protects Lucy Merch “We’re on eBay multiple times a week, knocking people off,” says Bruce Bronn, president of Unforgettable Licensing. Policing the internet for illegal Lucy knockoffs is only part of his job. Since 1995, he has been the exclusive Lucy licensing agent for everything from calendars to clocks. “[Lucie and Desi, Jr.] did not want to be in this business,” he says. “They had their own income, their own success. They didn’t want to The Modern | January 2012
Lucy’s daughter. It was there where she received her intense show business education, and how, to quote Shakespeare, to be or not to be. “I was like a sponge,” she says of that experience, “and a calculator in my mind determined that you can learn from all these people. You can learn what not to do the same as you can learn what to do. Who influences you can be either way. You learn from the greats like Carol Burnett and Bob Hope. They’re always prepared and they do what they are asked to do. I was influenced by every single person who ever walked on that stage. I also listened to every cast album, every Broadway show. And I listened to Top 40 and Lesley Gore and Helen Reddy and The Beatles. Today, I am a mixture of so many cultures and so much influence. My father, believe it or not, was a huge influence because he was always singing and always creating music. Music has always been an enormous part of my life. And here I am focusing on it, primarily.”
make money off their mother and father. It made them very uncomfortable. But they wanted to get an agent who would not only get out the quality [Lucy] product, but also to police the illegal products that are out there, which we do.” Unforgettable Licensing seeks out partnerships with reputable manufacturers, develops new products and extends the distribution channels for Lucy merchandise. Of course, there are the products that wouldn’t surprise you, like lunchboxes, refrigerator magnets and dolls, but there are also some unexpected items bearing Lucy’s name. “One of our top products is slot machines,” Bronn says. “We’re in over 220 casinos across the country with more than 900 I Love Lucy slot machines. And if you’ve ever heard www.themodern.us
Lucie’s brother, Desi, Jr., also started out in the family business, but has since shied away from the scene and currently lives a very quiet and private life. Lucie says of her brother, “Desi
roll. But he came through that magnificently. He became a mentor to thousands of others. He and his wife Amy, and their daughter Hailey, live very happily outside of Las Vegas. They have a house in
ny dedicated to preserving, managing and protecting Lucy-related projects]. I think he got the better end of the deal.” Now that Lucie’s three children are grown and on their own, she spends a good deal of her time working with Desilu Too, in addition to performing. “I truly look hard to find things to complain about,” she says. “but I have the best life. Sure, I have a life like everybody has. I have crazy days, and stuff you have to deal with constantly. But I have a good attitude toward it. I’m very grateful for everything. And I have a lot of abundance in my life. I love my work and I have a great family and a great heritage. I’m very proud of where I came from. And it’s been an exciting year. I had no idea how much love and admiration is truly out there for my folks. It’s been delightful to sit back and soak it up. And it still exists like it never left.”
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I truly look hard to find things to complain about, but I have the
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best life.
is a terrific musician and producer and actor but he chooses to do little with that. He doesn’t really have that ambition. He likes his family and more of a simple lifestyle, which I think is kind of healthy and good for him. There was a time there when we weren’t too sure, because he was all involved in sex, drugs and rock and
Lucie Arnaz
Oregon and they go down to my dad’s place in Baja. He’s got a great life. I envy him and I admire him tremendously. He’s a very smart, savvy guy who knew this business inside out. We made a deal a long time ago that Desi would take care of the beautiful house that my father left us in Mexico. And I would run Desilu Too [a compa-
To find out more about Lucie Arnaz, go to http://luciearnaz.com.
mother and father life size. It was too crazy for of the store Forever 21, we just had an Your Kids Will them. We also never did a rubber duckie. We exclusive product in there [T-shirts and And So Will Their Kids! would have to put a beak on [Lucy’s] face.” tops]. And another one of the hottest Still, the existing merchandise, as diverse items: Lucy sneakers [via The Bradford as it is, is doing just fine thank you. And why? Exchange].” “The show has not been off the air in over The Lucy look is popular with all Pass it down on dVd 60 years,” Bronn says. All over the world, you’ll generations, and the merchandise stays find Lucy on the air somewhere in the world. fresh because the TV episodes remain You don’t have to speak the language wildly popular. to understand what is going on “Mothers and grandmothers are in the show. People just endear getting their girls involved because themselves to the characters. they want them to know of I Love Lucy,” They are everyday people. They Bronn says. “They can put the kids are down to earth. They are always down in front of the TV and not worry trying to make their marriage work, about what is going to be said. And the 22F their family work. People relate to products have to reflect the quality of that show and to this day it’s still the show.” relevant. Everything that people are With that in mind, it’s not like anything is fair game trying to do is what is going on in that show. People when it comes to Lucy’s name. have just endeared themselves to Lucy because they “We have never done life-sized standups of Lucy and relate to all the different circumstances and comedic Desi,” Bronn says. “The reason we’ve never done that is nonsense that makes them laugh.” because [Lucie and Desi, Jr.] didn’t want to see their Now you can introduce your kids to 14 of the funniest and most memorable “I Love Lucy” episodes… just like your parents did for you.
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January 2012 | The Modern
reconnecting: kevin sorbo
Kevin Sorbo’s
True Strength While starring as Hercules, devastating medical setbacks reduced the beloved star to mere mortal status. B
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“At the time, I was not in good shape,” Kevin Sorbo tells me. He’s referring to September 1997, when he played the title character in the planet’s most popular TV series, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. To watch him, then as well as now, you would not think this man could suffer from as much as a cold. At that time, he was 38-years old and already a TV veteran; he was engaged to the woman of his dreams (the actress Sam Jenkins), known by his millions of fans for his TV and modeling work, and also for his intense workouts. This one morning, however, he felt a searing pain in his left arm while doing bicep curls. He left the gym, and instead of going to the hospital, he went to his chiropractor, who cracked his neck. Shortly after, Sorbo’s brain, as he describes it, “went haywire.” In the next few hours, he suffered from slurred speech, dizziness and vision loss. The fingers of his left hand tingled and then turned blue. His fiancé rushed him to the hospital, where he was diagnosed The Modern | January 2012
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with an aneurysm. Bad enough, but wait, there’s more: that same day, he had suffered three strokes. While all this drama was happening in real life, his TV drama awaited his return. So were millions of Hercules fans around the world. What to do? “In a few seconds, I went from a man who was in the shape of a guy in his twenties to a guy who was 90-years old,” he says. “It was a tough battle to get back. Universal [the studio that produced Hercules] kept things quiet. They obviously wanted Hercules to keep going. We were the most watched TV show in the world at the time, and I still had two more years on my contract.” While on the set, Sorbo tried his best to keep it business as usual. What was once a grueling eighteen-hour shoot day became, at best, maybe one or two hours. Scenes were written around him. Body doubles and stunt doubles were used. And to add to his woes, he became severely depressed. “I was busy fighting my way back,” he says. “It took me three www.themodern.us
full years to feel normal again. I feel repercussions of it to this day, but at least I’m able to work. The aneurism got out [to the news media and the public], but the strokes were kept a secret.” Until now. In his tough-minded memoir, True Strength: My Journey From Hercules to Mere Mortal – and How Nearly Dying Saved My Life [Da Capo Press], Sorbo goes public about his private nightmare and his determination to battle back. “Sam, my wife, wanted me to write it years ago,” he says. “I just kept putting it off. I took notes, especially during the first two years because I wanted to chart my own progress. Writing the book did become very therapeutic. I then went into the studio for three straight days to record the audio book. Reading it from beginning to end, there were a couple places where I just broke down. I wasn’t prepared for that.” Yet through his personal strength and his buck-up Midwestern values (he was born and raised in Minnesota), Sorbo bounced instead of dragged. “I had my fiancé at the time, now my wife,” he says. “She got the ‘worse’ part before we even said ‘for better or for worse.’ It was tough. I went through depression, anger, typical human nature things. Things happen, and they happen for a reason. It’s the old adage: no pain, no gain. I just knew that certain things would just wipe me out in rehab, but I just said I’m going to push it, and do it. I was wiped out, but each time I kept pushing it and pushing it. I knew it would be beneficial to me. It would make me stronger. If I was told to walk a block, I would walk two blocks. I would push myself. I knew I would pay for it later. I would lay down on the couch and watch TV. I watched a lot of sitcoms. I wouldn’t watch anything depressing. I wanted to watch whatever would take www.themodern.us
my brain off of what I was going through. I wanted to laugh. Laughter is the best medicine.” The cast and crew of Hercules were equally supportive of his fight back. Despite his trauma, the series also helped him to recover and thrive. He says, “Hercules was the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me. It’s still playing in 100 countries. It was frustrating for me during the last two years on that series, but we still had laughs on the set because I wanted to laugh. It was a different set than it was during the first five years, but we had so much fun every single day. I had a great crew. They were as inexperienced as I was when we first started. We all knew our craft, but we were all green. We all grew. I grew as an actor. That crew went on to work on Lord of the Rings and half of them won Academy Awards. And [production locale] New Zealand was amazing. It’s like my second home. My wife and I talk about retiring there. It was a godsend to me. And it certainly did nothing but help my acting career.” Today, he continues to act, as well as produce and direct. He is also beloved for starring in another legendary series, Gene Rodenberry’s Andromeda. He says, “Since the strokes, I’ve done 200 hours of television and movies. Not many actors get even 20 hours, so I’m very fortunate. I still have a loss of vision in both eyes that is going to be with me forever. My brain has adapted to that. Other than that, I’m doing well. It only affects me now when I get real, real tired. There are days when I push myself too much, on the set or when
I’m working out. Over all, I haven’t missed any work because of it. I’ve passed every physical exam they’ve given me since then. Once again, knock on wood, I’m still here.” These days, he lives in the Los Angeles area with Sam and their three young children. He also leads a mentoring program called A World Fit for Kids, which trains inner-city teens to become positive role models for younger children. In 2008, the program was awarded the Govenor’s Gold Star for the most successful after-school program in the state of California. “We have a program that obviously works,” says Sorbo, whose father was a public school teacher in Minnesota for 35 years. As well, Sorbo’s mom influenced his destiny and determination. “My mom unknowingly had a lot to do with me wanting to become an actor,” he says. “She would watch a lot of the old Hollywood [movie] reruns. Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne. I was just a little kid, 6, 7, 8 years old. I would sit there and watch with her. I was mesmerized by it all. I said, ‘This is what I want to do.’ And every kid can say that, but if you want it, you got to live the dream. You’ve got to push for it. Don’t let other people set your limitations. You can fight. That’s another reason for my book True Strength. I want everyone to find their own true strength within themselves. Fear is the biggest factor that holds us all back in our lives. Don’t be afraid. Go after whatever your dream is.” To find out more about Kevin Sorbo, go to kevinsorbo.net. January 2012 | The Modern
read this retro book
The Great A&P The Walmart of its day advanced the concept of the modern supermarket – and became a victim of its own success. By Ronald Sklar In economist Marc Levenson’s book, The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America [Hill & Wang], we visit the world’s first superstore and de-romanticize the notion of the mom-and-pop business. During the early part of the 20th century, A&P attracted millions of shoppers but also scared Congress into limiting its growth and success. The comparisons to today’s Walmart are uncanny, and the squelching of its progress in the name of momand-pop may ring some all-too-familiar contemporary bells. The A&P was the subject of much criticism, especially at the height of its success. There was a strong anti-chain movement. A&P was the main target. So just as Walmart faced a lot of criticism for driving local businesses out of business and not paying workers enough and destroying small towns, A&P faced very much the same kind of criticism in the Twenties and Thirties. What established The A&P as a landmark business model? It was by far the largest retailer in the world. It was ferocious about cutting costs and cutting prices at a time when most sales were at list price. This made a lot of people very unhappy, but it had much the same attitude that WalMart had, which is that you are better off lowering the price and making it up on volume. The Modern | January 2012
Was this a revolutionary concept at the time? This was very much a revolutionary concept. The traditional notion in retailing, especially in food retailing, was that profit was looked at as a percentage of sales. So what you wanted to do was buy something wholesale for a dollar, sell it at retail for $1.20, and you are getting a 20% markup. If your markup was wide compared to the price you paid, you were thought to be doing well. People tended to apply that markup to each individual item in the store. The A&P idea was, you are better off with a smaller markup. You won’t make as much profit per item, but you will sell a whole lot of items and you will get a bigger return on investment. Return on investment is much more modern thinking. What was the grocery industry like before A&P came along? A&P was there since the Civil War, starting as a tea company. It started selling groceries in the 1890s. It really wasn’t practical to do much of a grocery business before that because you didn’t have packaged goods. It took the invention of cheap boxes and cheap cans, which came in the 1890s, before you could have a lot of merchandise that you can sell in a store. The big break came in 1912, when the brothers who controlled the company, John and George L. Hartford, opened one store that had lower costs and lower prices. They had a bare-boned store. No fancy interior, very limited inventory. Only the items they thought would sell. No telephone. A single employee. The manager would lock the door when he went to lunch. They took the store and they lowered the prices way below their traditional stores. And what they discovered is without any advertising, people came pouring in the door. So they started opening more and more stores. By 1912, A&P had about 400 stores. By 1920, A&P had 4500 stores and had become the biggest retailer in the world. What was the original shopping experience like? The store had a clerk. There was no self-service. The shopper would ask the clerk, ‘I would like a can of this’ or ‘I would like some soap powder.’ The clerk would then retrieve the merchandise and tell the shopper what the cost of the merchandise was. Another thing A&P did was put the prices on things. www.themodern.us
What else did mom-and-pop stores have to fear from this business giant? A&P continued to grow throughout the 1920s. It integrated vertically. It built its own factories, so it made its own bread; it canned its own salmon. It put its own condensed milk in cans. It did its own wholesaling. So it was really a highly integrated company. And the small merchants said that this is unfair: A&P is able to make and buy its products cheaper than we can. And this is price discrimination against us. So there were a whole series of efforts, starting around 1925, to limit what the stores could do. What were these limits? First, there were efforts to tax chain stores. Most of the states in the country had taxes against chains. They were quite high. Typically there would be a tax of $1 for the first store in the state, and $10 for the fifth. And maybe $100 for the tenth and a $1,000 for the fiftieth. In some states, companies like A&P had to pay half their profits in taxes just to keep the stores open. Then you started having what were called Fair Trade laws. State legislatures started passing laws that said each individual store has to be marked up at least 10%. Well, some stores have lower operating costs than others. They need a lower mark up. They couldn’t do that under those laws. You couldn’t have something like a two-for-one sale. You couldn’t have a grand opening sale. Every item in the store had to be marked up by a certain amount. That was to protect the less efficient smaller merchants. All of these things were done to keep the big chain retailers at a disadvantage. Eventually, in the 1940s, the US government filed an anti-trust suit against A&P and its managers. A typical anti-trust suit charges a monopoly with trying to drive up prices. This anti-trust suit charged A&P with trying to drive down prices. It was selling groceries too cheaply. And the government won. The court found that A&P had traded unfairly and sold groceries too cheaply. And that judgment was upheld by the US Circuit Court of Appeals. When was the apex of popularity for A&P? The late 1920s was the height. In 1929, it was the first store in the world ever to sell a billion dollars worth of merchandise. That year, it had almost 16,000 stores. There were A&P stores in 3800 different communities in the United States. They were pretty much omnipresent. What caused the decline of A&P? A&P was controlled by the Hartford brothers. They controlled all the shares through a family trust, www.themodern.us
so they ran the company absolutely as they wanted. John Hartford was a brilliant merchant. He was the idea man who kept A&P fresh. In the 1950s, both of the brothers died. They had spent their entire careers at A&P and nothing else and they ran it very well. When they died, the company started to fall on hard times. It was lead by a man who had worked there for a long time. They didn’t want to change things. They were not aware of important social trends in the Fifties and Sixties. For example, a lot of people were moving to the suburbs, but A&P was an urban company. Most of its stores were in cities. A&P was very reluctant to build these same stores in the suburbs. Starting in the Fifties, you had a lot of population growth in the West, especially in California. A&P didn’t have very many stores out there. Its executives were from New York. They didn’t feel too comfortable. So they missed what was the fastest growing market in the country. The company just went downhill. It lost its pizazz. The stores were dingy and dirty and not well kept. It wasn’t able to keep its stores modern. The company was taken public in the late 1950s. In 1979, control was sold to a German retailer, and the Germans proceeded to run it further into the ground. So it went from being a nationwide retailer to being a small regional retailer in the New York area, as one operation after another was sold or closed down. Today, A&P is operating in bankruptcy. It’s basically a regional grocery in and around New York. What can we learn from the rise and fall of A&P? Economic lessons. One is that [the notion of mom-and-pop stores] are really romantic. In general, mom-and-pop aren’t very good for the consumer. Back when mom-and-pop ruled the roost, the average urban household spent about 30% of its income on food. Today, the average household spends about 7% of its income on food. It took chain stores, and A&P in particular, to make this food distribution system more efficient and less costly. So big stores are a good thing in that they are actually reducing costs and benefitting consumers. The other thing we learned is that companies need to keep reinventing themselves. While the Hartfords were alive, they reinvented A&P again and again. It went from having these little economy stores to having bigger combination stores. It went from having no supermarkets in 1936 to being the biggest supermarket in the country in 1939. A&P was more than half of all the supermarkets in the United States. They made their company keep changing. Companies that don’t do that end up dead. January 2012 | The Modern
I want my MTV
I Want My
e birth h t s e c istory tra h l a r o nged ing new t a a h n c i t c a s A fa nnel th a h c a n life of e v e n u and ure. the cult
The Modern | January 2012
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Legend tells us that MTV blasted off on August 1, 1981 with the Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star.” It was a song that became the channel’s own personal mission statement. However, while that was true, that is only part of the story. It turns out that there was a certain amount of agita within the channel about playing a song that was already two-years old and hadn’t been much of a hit when it was first released. Part of the choice for that song was symbolic, but part of it was through necessity. At the time, the 24-hour channel had a little over 150 videos – and about 30 of those were by Rod Stewart. Therefore, that day the channel broadcast such unlikely MTV artists as obscure British rockers Ph.D and jazz guitarist Lee Ritenour. This is just the kind of juicy little tidbit you can pick up in I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution (Dutton), an oral history on the formative years (1981-1992) of the legendary cable channel. Rock journalists Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum spoke with over 400 execs, VJs, music stars and video directors to form an unparalleled view of the rocking days and wild nights of the cultural phenomenon. We recently sat down with co-writer Craig Marks to get the skinny on the skinny-tie brigade who made us demand, “I want my MTV” for more than a decade.
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It was amazing reading about some of the business practices at MTV at the time – the massive amounts of drugs and sex and the crazy hours. In a modern world where HR is up your ass if you brush up against someone or steal a stapler, do you think that could ever happen again? Probably, although I don’t think in the music business. They’re just not making enough money to behave so badly [laughs]. The only reason that you can get away with that kind of stuff is if you are making so much money, and it’s got enough forward momentum that bad behavior can be tolerated. www.themodern.us
usually, in the form of tequila shots or late nights. That was part of their gig. That’s what made them really good at their job. They would party until 3:00 in the morning and they would be in the office at 9:00. For such a young medium, music videos quickly devised a whole set of visual clichés: the falling wine glasses, the singer’s face projected
J a c o b s Also, it was a drug-fueled era. Cocaine was the drug of choice. That prompts a certain kind of behavior – a kind of reckless behavior, I guess. It was [MTV’s] relationships with artists and the record company executives that enabled them to convince artists to do things that now would be unheard of. Mick Jagger and David Bowie filmed commercials for free for the network [the “I Want My MTV!” campaign]. One of the main reasons was the people at MTV were buddies with those artists. So a certain level of schmoozing of the artists was endemic to the job. That requires some social lubrication
on walls, dripping water, dwarves. Name some of your favorite music video clichés. The falling wine glasses – that was [video director] Russell Mulcahy’s specialty. He invented that. There was a Motels video, and then the Duran Duran video. The overturned table was a really good stock image. That one I like. Also, I lost count of the number of videos that featured stacks January 2012 | The Modern
I want my MTV and stacks of televisions. That was really popular – kind of a postmodern comment on the visual world, or something. That was a really big one that I remember. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel to come up with bad music videos from the early days of MTV, but name some that have actually stood up pretty well artistically. I think there are a lot. From the very early days, the English New
Wave bands of late ’81/’82: Duran Duran, Culture Club, Human League, ABC. I think the ABC videos are really great. Julien Temple did a couple of those. The Duran Duran videos, the exotic trilogy of “Save a Prayer,” “Rio” and “Hungry Like the Wolf,” those are still spectacular. I think Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me?” is a really fantastic video. That was Steve Barron, who had been watching a lot of Truffaut. Usually that kind of pretention didn’t pay off, but in that case it really did. Those groups were more creative visually than a lot of the hair metal bands that followed them. Those videos adhered to a pretty strict template – they were performance videos. Even though it became clichéd so quickly, MÖtley Crüe’s “Home The Modern | January 2012
Sweet Home,” which was stock full of slow-motion shots of forlorn bands being on the road. That then became Bon Jovi’s “Wanted: Dead or Alive” and so many other videos where it was like, boo-hoo, the life of the road is so exhausting and yet fun with slow-motion shots. Those are still pretty fun to watch. That said, what were some of the videos that now just look awful and completely dated?
There are so many. I think the band that had the hardest time making the transition were the American rock groups of the Seventies. Famously, Journey’s “Separate Ways” is preposterous – an awful video. Also Journey’s “Faithfully” video, which isn’t quite as bad. It’s got lots of slowmotion shots of them on the road and has one really fantastically awful shot of Steve Perry shaving his mustache. You can’t imagine why it’s in a music video. Those Hall and Oates videos are terrible, really. And they are the first to admit that these videos are just wretched. You can really see that the groups that didn’t like making videos – that felt it was beneath them – those were the videos that failed the most.
I remember a lot of the pre-MTV videos – like for example “Crackerbox Palace” or “Solsbury Hill.” They are hard to watch. There are technical things. Until CGI came to the fore, attempts to make those types of special effects videos were pretty ham-fisted. I’ll tell you someone who made terrible videos was Prince. Prince’s videos are shockingly bad, because he was such a megalomaniac that he wouldn’t let anybody else direct them. There are stories in the book where he would hire directors, because someone felt that they had to, and Prince’s manager would say, “Okay, why don’t you wait out here and read a magazine while we make the video?” Luckily he’s just such an absorbing live performer that the videos seemed kind of exciting. But given his stature as an artist, if you compare them to the Michael Jackson videos or the Madonna videos, they were really cruddy. There was the famous question that was discussed in pretty great detail in the book – pre-Michael Jackson, was MTV racist? Most of the employees strongly denied it, saying that it was just their format, but just as many artists felt it was legit. Having spoken to so many people on the subject, do you think the charge had any validity? I don’t think they were personally racist at all. I think they came from an institution – commercial radio – where the prevailing wisdom was built on narrowcasting. You would play a certain narrow band of music to appeal to a certain demographic that you wanted to attract. They did not think that their audience, which they thought was going to be essentially a suburban male audience, was going to respond well to urban music videos. It’s questionable whether this is what their research said or this www.themodern.us
is how they read their research, but this is what they believed. They had years and years in AOR radio to back that philosophy up. It took them until Michael Jackson to realize that this is TV, not radio. Visuals mean more. The package is more than just the sound of the record – or even the skin color of the artist. “Billie Jean” was a great video. It was so much better than everything else that preceded it. Then “Thriller” was so much better than everything that preceded that. It was TV, so it had a larger available audience. And Michael Jackson: lucky for MTV that he was such a charismatic, dynamic, people-pleasing star that his videos transcended all the preconceptions that MTV had about audience and music and race. I do think that MTV was reluctant to play “Billie Jean.” On the other hand, I know that they were – and this is sort of racial, if not racist – they were looking for a black artist to play, because the pressure was on. Luckily Michael Jackson came along. These videos looked great and he was also an already established superstar. He was a star with The Jackson Five. He’d already put out Off the Wall. He sold five million records. This wasn’t like an unknown dude that they had to roll the dice on. So it was perfect timing. One thing I found kind of fascinating was the quote from Joe Jackson, who at the time famously came out against music videos, that his stance pretty much cost him his career. Steve Lukather of Toto also was quite vocal about how much he hated having to spend his own money to make videos he knew MTV would never play. Was it really possible in the Eighties for an artist to make it without playing MTV’s game? Pretty much no. But, I think it’s for different reasons too. You take someone like Joe Jackson – that’s www.themodern.us
an interesting case study – Elvis Costello and Joe Jackson, both of them. Costello never made any good videos really, outside of the very first wave, almost before MTV started. He just wasn’t comfortable making them. He didn’t seem to like making them. Joe Jackson essentially refused to make them at a certain point. What that did more than anything – besides shutting off one mechanism for getting people your music – was that it told record companies that maybe this artist doesn’t really want to be famous. So, maybe we won’t spend as much money on this artist. If they don’t want to take advantage of MTV, that says something about this artist, so we’re not going to spend the money hiring an independent promoter to work the record to radio. So it had a kind of effect where the machinery behind the artist started to slow down if the artist either didn’t want to or couldn’t translate into MTV. Just avoiding MTV in and of itself, you could still conceivably have a totally fine career. I’m sure lots of artists did. But most times if you either declined to play the game or couldn’t figure out how to do it right, it definitely impacted your sales. It made you seem like you weren’t of the time. A lot of groups – if you take, like, Genesis: they are a really smart example of a band that made videos work for them, even though they were completely non-videogenic. So there were ways to work around it, if you could figure it out. Find the right producer and director and come up with the right concept. You could have really great visuals – or really popular visuals – without feeling like you had to dance and sing like Madonna. One funny thing in the book was the fact that the execs of MTV seemed to be the wild-living rock
stars, more than the VJs – although it sounds like JJ Jackson and Martha Quinn had some crazy times. Were you surprised to find the other VJs were actually kind of mild as compared to say [MTV executives] Bob Pittman or Les Garland?
It’s sad in many ways that JJ is not with us anymore. He would have probably told some great stories. Yeah, I guess so. I guess I was a little surprised. [Mark] Goodman was married to Carol Miller during most of his tenure at MTV. [Alan] Hunter wasn’t really that much of a party animal. And Nina [Blackwood] was really quiet, too, at least from what everybody says. Particularly Les Garland exceeded their social animal magnetism by far. He was by far the biggest rock star of the bunch. But I think the fact that JJ wasn’t here to share his modelizing stories tilted the box score a little bit. Back in the Nineties I knew a girl who worked for MTV – she wasn’t high up or anything. But she was about 28 at the time and I remember that she once told me that working for MTV was sort of like being in Menudo. Unlike most companies, the longer you had been at MTV and the more experience you built up, the less power you had. And by the time you hit 30 you were just January 2012 | The Modern
I want my MTV about out of there. Do you think that MTV’s fascination with the youth culture and styles eventually took the channel from music videos to where it is now – The Real World, 16 & Pregnant and Jersey Shore? Sure. MTV’s demographic never changes. Even though everyone at MTV ages, the network does not. The network is perpetually fifteen. It perpetually has to tap into whatever is unique about this generation’s youth culture, compared to the previous generation’s youth culture. You need a mix. You need grown-ups running the ship, but you need essentially kids who know this next generation of young people and what they are interested in – and how to market to them. That’s always been the case with MTV and I’m sure it always will be. Also, I don’t know if it’s true anymore, but back in the day, MTV paid their staff terribly, outside the top executives. The directors and producers got nothing. They had a hard time holding onto their talent, both the Jon Stewarts of the world – who started on MTV and left pretty quickly – and directors and producers. They cut their teeth on MTV. They were able to get incredible experience at a very young age. They were thrown into jobs that were way over their pay grade, essentially. They got to direct Unplugged episodes before they really even had their SAG cards or whatever. They were working horrendous hours for very little money. The experience was invaluable, but there is only so long that you can work that kind of schedule for that kind of money. I know this was after the scope of your book, but I always felt like the death knell for music video on MTV was Total Request Live – when MTV decided that the fast cuts of music video weren’t stimulating enough and they had to add The Modern | January 2012
lots of bells and whistles to keep the audience’s attention. When do you feel that the music left Music Television? Even in 1986, people were saying the novelty of the music video had worn off. This was 1986, no less 2001. That’s one thing. In 1986, there were very few other cable networks. The internet didn’t exist. All the things that young people
Even though everyone at MTV ages, the network does not. The network is perpetually fifteen. graft to that are time-sucks and whose pace is very fast. Back in 1985, MTV wasn’t in competition with any of those things. The music video was a new, exciting, vibrant, active medium. Come 2001, the music video seems a little bit tired. It seems old and stodgy in some ways compared to the other leisure time activities that kids have access to. Also, MTV realized essentially as far back as ’87 and really in ’92 [when they launched The Real World] that narrative television rated better for them and therefore enabled them to sell more ads at a higher price. That’s what it’s all about in TV. You’ve got to sell your ads. Any TV executive has to do whatever they can to make sure that people won’t turn the channel. That’s what it’s all about. You’ve got to get them to watch and you’ve got to make sure they don’t turn the channel. Their idea was that if you played music videos too long, kids are going to get bored and turn the
channel. I’m sure they’re probably right. They don’t do those things on a whim. They do it because they research it and they think it’s true. Early on in the book, the MTV pioneers were being told that a 24hour music channel would never work on television. Despite the decade-long glory of the channel, didn’t MTV eventually prove that point? After all, when was the last time they actually played music videos? Yeah, one of the things I found interesting was when I talked to Bob Pittman, who was as smart of a person as I’ve ever interviewed in my life. I don’t know if this is like founder’s hubris or if he has something, but he still insists that if he had still been there, they would have never gone into longform programming. They would have kept at it with music videos. They would have figured out ways to make the music videos work. Even as the audience evolved, he thought, we don’t have to change for advertisers and completely scrap our founding principals. We can adjust it. We know the audience loves this medium. But, like I said, once they realized that other things worked better – narrative television worked better – the first thing MTV did was countdown shows. The Dial Ten or whatever it was called. Then genre things – Yo! MTV Raps or Headbanger’s Ball. They realized pretty quickly that just playing random videos sequenced one after the other was too much like a big, free-formed radio station. It was too easy for people to turn the channel if they didn’t like the next song. That was just an unrealistic approach. To purchase this book, click here www.amazon.com/Want-MyMTV-Uncensored-Revolution/ dp/0525952306/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UT F8&qid=1323634743&sr=8-1 www.themodern.us
on broadway
“Follies,” Here And Now Sondheim’s musical enigma finally gets the production it deserves By Tim Kraft Whenever a major production of Follies is staged anywhere in the world, musical theater lovers will make the pilgrimage with a single burning question to be answered: has someone finally been able to make this show work? For the uninitiated, Follies originally opened on Broadway in 1971 with great anticipation. Despite a legendary score by Stephen Sondheim, choreography by Michael Bennett and direction by Harold Prince, the show opened to mixed reviews, ran just over a year and closed losing every penny of its then unheard of investment of $700,000. When the current revival announced its move to Broadway after a successful run at Kennedy Center, word on the street was that this production is something special. And sure enough, as the house lights dim and the roll of the timpani leads the 28-piece orchestra into the overture, you realize that your visit to the Marquis Theater will indeed be exceptional. The story takes place at the 30th reunion of the fictional Weismann (think Ziegfeld) Follies, just before the theater in which they performed will be demolished. Among the Weismann Girls in attendance are the obsessive Sally Durant Plummer and the disillusioned Phyllis Rogers Stone, former roommates who met their respective husbands Buddy and Ben while performing in the 1941 Follies. Both marriages are headed full-speed toward disaster, and the events of the evening will bring them to the brink of ruin. You’d be forgiven if you thought you already saw this story on a recent Lifetime movie. Without question, James Goldman’s original book is the weak link that has kept Follies forever labeled a musical enigma. But with assistance from Mr. Sondheim, director Eric Schaeffer has jettisoned the script down to bare bones and instead propels the show with a spectacular cast, that magical score and enough high-kicking razzmatazz to fill every theater on 45th Street. True to the follies form, the show is now more a series of musical vignettes (or should I say showstoppers) as the partygoers celebrate the glamour of their youth, literally dancing with the younger ghosts of themselves. But ghosts turn to demons as the Plummers and Durants reveal the exasperation, despair The Modern | January 2012
and downright loathing of each other and what they have become. As Phyllis and Ben, the sophisticated Jan Maxwell and Ron Raines are flawless as the couple that appears to have everything despite the fact they can’t bear to look at each other without a sneer or speak to each other except in anger. But it’s Sally and Buddy who now provide the emotional soul of the show. Danny Burstein brings a new dimension to Buddy Plummer. His character, previously played mostly for laughs, is still a comical traveling salesman but he’s had enough of covering for his wife’s irrational behavior. Bernadette Peters plays Sally as just-this-side of insane rather than merely neurotic, and it works for a woman who for 30 years has created grandiose delusions of a life with the man she truly loves - a man right there at the party, a man who will never love her back. As Miss Peters takes center stage for Sally’s signature number, “Los ing My Mind,” we see her as the devastated and hopeless woman she’s become as her fantasy world crumbles around her. It’s a truly legendary moment of theater, and it will break your heart. In the end, this Follies is a theatrical rarity that beautifully delivers much more than the sum of its parts. Go for the music. Go for the spectacle. Or go to witness the sheer brilliance of the entire cast. Unlike the faded beauties on stage, you won’t regret a moment of it. Tim Kraft is a corporate creative director full time, a freelance writer part time and an avid theatergoer all the time.
“Follies” is a strictly limited engagement and runs through January 22, 2012 at the Marquis Theater in New York. For show times and tickets go to ticketmaster.com www.themodern.us
retro essay
Satisfaction! Time Is On Their Side: The Rolling Stones celebrate their golden anniversary this year.
On July 12, 1962, The Rolling Stones – then known as The Rollin’ Stones – played their first gig. This was only a few years before the official launching of Swinging London, and The Sixties as we now know it. Unlike The Beatles, The Stones were not
ack J ’ pin ” m u J “ sh Fla
happy just to hold your hand. They were bad boys. And they got what they wanted fast. Decca Records, still licking its wounds over not signing The Beatles, contracted a sweet deal with the Stones in which the group earned three
“Start Me Up”
times the royalty rate for an unknown act, and 100% artistic control of their recordings. Can we get an amen? The rest, as they say, is history.
Models: Charly, Ben and Johnny from Ford New York Also: Jacob, Abby, Spencer, MIke Photographer: Josh Sailor | joshsailor.com
“Wi
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’s A e h “S bow” n Rai
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“Happy
“Let’s Spend The Night Together”
“Hang Fire” “Som Girls e ” “Tu
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the great forgotten
Is your cynicism wrinkling your flannel and prickling your goatee? Is that what’s making you smell like Teen Spirit? Well, buck up, baby. Here are some forgotten Nineties gems that won’t hurl you into a downward spiral of hurt. The Modern | January 2012
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don’t mention that to him; I made that mistake once in a 1994 interview). He’s also the husband of ‘Til Tuesday lead singer Aimee Mann. He is currently a movie soundtrack composer. However, back in the early Nineties, he was a trailblazing singer/songwriter on the fast track for stardom. Penn won the 1990 MTV Video Music Award for Best New Artist on the strength of this fantastically modern folk-pop ditty. Penn was a wonderfully fussy and often non-commercial songwriter, but he also had a savvy pop ear. None of his follow-up singles quite made the splash of “No Myth,” even the drop-dead gorgeous 1992 ballad “Long Way Down (Look What the Cat Drug In)” and 1997’s “Try,” which did become a fairly significant comeback hit – but they should have. www.youtube.com/embed/h1BGebtVHzM
Notice Me – Nikki
Nikki was the epitome of the one-hit wonder. Despite his feminine name, Nikki was a Milli Vanilli-cute, Japanese-born, male American singer who could actually sing. This unrequited love ballad soared on the wings of Nikki’s gorgeous falsetto into the Top 20 in the early Nineties. And then after the final chords of the song faded away, he was never heard from again. However, to add to his flash-in-the-pan coolness, he is married to fellow one-named one-hit-wonder hitmaker Martika of “Toy Soldiers” fame. www.youtube.com/embed/RU6B8vWKrPE The Nineties are best remembered for Doc Martens, flannel, Y2K panic, parachute pants, coffee addiction and the re-emergence of tattoos, but that doesn’t mean that we were always depressed, hopped-up and ugly. It was also a decade with a huge amount of great music. Of course, you still constantly hear all the obvious suspects (Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and The Rembrandts’ “I’ll Be There for You”). And then again, there is also “Ice Ice Baby.” They are terrific tunes (well, except arguably for Vanilla Ice), but what about the songs that never get airplay anymore? That’s why we’re here. So pull out your CD burner and a grande latte and settle in for a musical trip back to Clinton-era prosperity and good vibes.
No Myth – Michael Penn
Michael Penn is Sean Penn’s older brother (but
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Getting Away With It – Electronic
There is no band potentially quite so disappointing as a “super group,” in which members of several different popular bands get together to make music together for a laugh. Electronic was one such super group, featuring royalty from electronic dance music. Their first single was one of the rare occasions that one of these haphazard groupings actually brought out the best in all concerned. Electronic was made up of New Order lead singer Bernard Sumner, The Smiths’ lead guitarist Johnny Marr, The Pet Shop Boys vocalist Neil Tennant and The Art of Noise composer Anne Dudley. The song was made as a one-off parody of Marr’s former partner, Morrissey’s, mope pop. Surprisingly, “Getting Away With It” was as good as pretty much any tune from any of the members’ songbooks and became a minor hit in the US. After the single’s popularity, the January 2012 | The Modern
the great forgotten group got back together to record a couple of albums, but they could never again capture the sheer magic of their near-perfect first single. www.youtube.com/embed/e_5AJWi-Fiw
Do Anything – Natural Selection featuring Niki Harris
Merging distinct and intriguing inspirations like Prince, Cameo, The Deele and hip hop, Natural Selection threw together one of the most catchy and yet oddly original R&B hits of the early Nineties. A musical back-and-forth conversation with dance diva Niki Harris, it showed the guys of Natural Selection trying to worm their way into the heart of a potential lover. The song is funky and frisky and sadly, forgotten. www.youtube.com/embed/U0v_icbtspE
Dyslexic Heart – Paul Westerberg
song that I wrote… that I’d think would be a hit.” The song gets extra mad props for the wonderfully kitschy music video featuring romance icon Fabio as Sobule’s boyfriend. www.youtube.com/embed/8FdwUGwasck
Sick of Myself - Matthew Sweet
Power-pop hero Matthew Sweet not only recorded one of the best albums of the decade (“Girlfriend” in 1992), he also put together one of the perfect alt-rocking identity crises of the era with this song. This self-deprecating 1995 single was the closest he ever had to a hit, topping out at 58 in the Billboard singles chart. However, anyone who has ever dated outside of their weight class will ruefully relate to the refrain, “I’m sick of myself when I look at you, something that is beautiful and true.” www.youtube.com/embed/CRF_qOJfaDs
Everyone remembers that Cameron Crowe’s movie Singles and the accompanying soundtrack was the director’s tribute to the just-about-to-explode grunge scene brewing in Crowe’s hometown of Seattle. The members of a then-relatively unknown Pearl Jam played Matt Dillon’s band Citizen Dick. Other grunge mainstays like Mother Love Bone, Soundgarden, Mudhoney and Screaming Trees were also featured on the soundtrack. Even a couple of older Seattle acts showed up: Jimi Hendrix and Crowe’s wife Nancy Wilson’s group Heart (in the form of their side-project, The Lovemongers). However, what most people forget is that the single from the project actually came straight outta Minneapolis. “Dyslexic Heart” was the first solo single by Westerberg after he broke up his seminal poppunk band The Replacements. The song is a giddily catchy look at the confusion of love. www.youtube.com/embed/JcMIWKu0ZYE
Your Woman – White Town
I Kissed a Girl – Jill Sobule
Crush – Jennifer Paige
When you first heard Katy Perry’s recent hit by the same name and thought, hmm… that line “I kissed a girl and I liked it…” sounds awfully familiar; this 1995 hit song was what you were remembering. Okay, if you get technical, Sobule’s line was “I’m so glad I kissed a girl” but it was the same idea recycled. The story is about a suburban woman who is having drinks with a girlfriend and suddenly they are making out and kinda enjoying it. It helped lead the way for the lesbian chic of the mid-nineties. The sexually ambiguous Sobule fully acknowledges that it was a crazy coincidence that this was her Top of the Pops moment. In an interview I did with her in 2001, she would simply say that she had had relationships with both men and women. “In fact,” she told me at the time, “that would probably be the last The Modern | January 2012
You don’t expect a song by a vocoderized British gent singing about being a woman over a sample by a longforgotten tune by 1920s song-and-dance man Al Bowlly to climb the charts. However, that is exactly what this oddball hit did in 1997. White Town was the one-man band name for a singer named Jyoti Mishra. The lyrics and androgynous vocals were meant to be inscrutable, with Mishra saying on the band’s website that he was trying to write the song from multiple perspectives. Some of these perspectives included that of a straight man in love with a lesbian woman, a gay man in love with a straight man and a straight woman in love with a lying, two-timing Marxist. Mostly, he said, he just wanted to point out the hypocrisy of love and lust as filtered through highbrow ideals. “Yes, I’m a geek,” he confessed, while giving that long-winded explanation. www.youtube.com/embed/cIQWt3oMids Some people take a roundabout route to stardom. Jennifer Paige was an Atlanta-area singer for some cover bands who was signed to a German record label looking for a pop star in Europe. She finally hit it big in her home country when LA radio station KIIS started playing a demo of this song, which had been delivered to them directly by her producer. With a sweet, airy hook and Paige’s wondrous, layered vocals, the song quickly became huge and just as promptly disappeared. Every once in a while “Crush” still pops up in pop culture – Lea Michele sang a snatch of the song in a first-season episode of Glee – but it has never gotten its proper due as pure pop nirvana and one of the great singles of the Nineties. That is, until now. www.youtube.com/embed/EIhSnaqou0I www.themodern.us
Mark Mussari
by design
George Nelson From bubble lamps to ball clocks—Nelson defined modern design By Mark Mussari “Most people are visually illiterate,” George Nelson once observed, “hence the visual squalor of the contemporary environment.” And Nelson would have known. The influential designer and theorist left an indelible mark on modern design. Like Raymond Loewy and Charles and Ray Eames, his name has become synonymous with 20thcentury American design. A number of his designs—or those produced by his studio— have become iconic: the bubble lamp, the platform bench and the ball clock, to name only a few. Nelson originally designed the slatted platform bench— which you often see in museums—to dissuade visitors from sitting too long in his office! Yet, it became a modern classic. And you probably know the bubble lamp without even recognizing its name. Bubble lamps adorn not only many homes but also a number of restaurants. Their soft ambient light, filtering through that strange selfwebbing plastic shell, speaks of the impending space age (the lamps first appeared, unbelievably, in 1947). They have a scientific look—and this is no accident. Trained as an architect at Yale, Nelson felt that designers were like artists and that their goal was “to integrate the outlook of the scientist, the mathematician and everyone else who is acting creatively.” Nelson was also a pragmatist who viewed design mostly in terms of problem solving. He claimed he resisted the “injection of moral or political judgments into situations where they have no application.” Instead, he felt what was “good” was what worked best. Yet he knew—and insisted—that “no design can exist in isolation.” Nelson also contended that designs must exist in relation to “their environment.” Sometimes it takes more than one great mind to www.themodern.us
come up with a winning design. One night in 1947, Nelson was drinking with—of all people—Buckminster Fuller and Isamu Noguchi. The three gifted minds began to challenge each other to create a clock. Each man scribbled a different design. “Each was taking a crack at it,” Nelson once recalled, “pushing each other aside and making scribbles.” The last man awake that night was Noguchi—and when Nelson awoke the next morning he found rolls of drafting paper. One contained the designs for the now-famous ball clock. Lesson? Perhaps geniuses should drink together more often. Today, in what many consider a postmodern (or is it post-postmodern?) world, we enter a restaurant and find Victorian chandeliers, reclaimed plankwood floors, stainless steel bars or flocked fabric on the banquettes. All at once. And no one flinches. The modernist era of a single, overarching design approach seems long gone—although vestiges of mid-century Modernism often appear among the visual hodgepodge of postmodernist design. In Problems of Design (1957), Nelson wrote: “When I say ‘designer’ please understand that I am referring to people like ourselves who have an identifiable trade known as industrial design.” Do we even know or care what “good” design is today? Nelson felt that design was mostly about communication. “It reaches its full potential when it is experienced by a person fully equipped to understand and enjoy what it has to communicate,” he wrote in Good Design: What Is It For? More than half a century later, his designs are still speaking to us. Mark Mussari is a writer and translator who writes frequently about art and design. January 2012 | The Modern
The Top 10 Kick-Ass Instrumental Movie Theme Songs of the Eighties A
s with my article about instrumental TV theme songs in October’s issue, I think it’s best that I explain what my definition of “kick-ass instrumental movie theme song” means. First off, it cannot be a song with lyrics. This eliminates great pieces like Ghostbusters, unfortunately. I wanted to limit the scope because I decided that I would like to work much harder than necessary writing this article. Also, I want to be able to showcase some wonderful instrumental theme songs that wouldn’t have otherwise made the list. Secondly, the music needs to be the main theme for the movie: for example,“The MOVIE NAME HERE Theme,” not the theme of a battle scene one hour into the movie, or “Darth Vader’s Imperial March.” Finally, it needs to be “kick-ass.” Wait, what is my definition of “kick-ass”? Well, how about I narrow the field even more by saying that the themes need to be kick-ass in a bad-ass kinda way? This, again unfortunately, eliminates such masterpieces as the theme from The Untouchables by Ennio Morricone (1987) and the theme from E.T. The ExtraTerrestrial (1982) by John Williams, but it does give the article more focus. Technically “Top Gun Anthem” from Top Gun could have made the cut, but even with its popularity, I was unable to give it my vote for the top 10. Ok, let’s go. Oh wait, let’s not quite yet… in case you’re wondering why the following themes aren’t on my list -- Star Wars, Star Trek and Superman -- all of these were movies in the Eighties, but remember, the themes were introduced in the Seventies. Ok, now we can begin!
By Ron Passaro
10. The Predator – Alan Silvestri – 1987 Were you scared when you watched this movie? You can thank Mr. Silvestri for a lot of that. Note the awesome and ominous six-note motif in the theme that says it all. Silvestri is one of those composers that can just transform his writing from movie to movie. Others, like Elfman and Williams for the most part, have a “sound,” but while Silvestri has his styles, did you really think that the guy who scored Predator also scored Forrest Gump, Back to the Future, Maid in Manhattan and Stuart Little? 9. Beverly Hills Cop – Harold Faltermeyer – 1984 This theme (titled “Axel F” for the two people who don’t know) is one of my favorites. It’s Eighties synth all the way (about 4-5 keyboards were used on this joint) and is still topping the charts in one form or another to this day! 8. The Running Man – Harold Faltermeyer – 1987 Well, hello again, Mr. Faltermeyer! “America has lost its way,” says this cynical and foreboding theme. It’s pretty bad-ass and could serve as a workout piece… that is, if you enjoy doing alternating curls in time with the beat while angrily staring down everyone else in the gym. The melody, like pretty much all the others on this list, is highly memorable. That’s always a plus in pretty much everybody’s book, especially mine, the only book that really matters. It’s bound with the skins of 1,000 fallen dragons. 7. Robocop Basil Poledouris - 1987 Robocop’s theme isn’t heard in the film until he hits the streets for his first tour of duty in Old Detroit. While that may not really count as a “theme song,” I’m still adding
it in because this score is just amazing and is one of my favorites of all time. That is all. And yet… yeah, it definitely is at least a theme of the title character and could be a theme song. Other than a few variations throughout the film, you get to hear it again in all its glory immediately as the credits start. You know, right after Robocop shows us that he’s still got his humanity and stuff. You go, “man!”… I mean, “machine!”… I mean, “officer!” 6. Terminator – Brad Fiedel – 1984 The state of the world’s future in The Terminator is less than ideal, to put it nicely. Need an electronic theme that’s cold, desperate and mechanical with only a hint of hope to help set the mood? Voilá. The theme also evolved nicely in Terminator 2 with, among other things, some more driving percussion that establishes the now famous DaDa Da DaDa rhythm from the get-go instead of the less memorable DaDa DaDa DaDa rhythm heard only towards the end of the initial theme. 5. Beetlejuice – Danny Elfman – 1988 Elfman’s quirky side officially meets his dark side in this classic movie. Well, at least a darker side since it’s still way more quirky than anything else. As a nice warmup for the following year’s Batman score (also on this list,) we get to hear Elfman’s now very recognizable usage of string runs, low brass pads, harp and choir in this theme. 4. Chariots of Fire - Vangelis How many lazy sacks have finally found their way off of the couch and into a gym because of this theme? Not enough in America I guess, as the obesity rate is still crazy-high, but still a lot. No theme in history probably says “inspiration” more than this one. Not that I need to justify this entry, but readers too lazy (get it?) to go to Wikipedia will be interested to know that the score won the Academy
Need To
Award for Best Original Music Score and the theme, released as a single in 1982, topped the Billboard chart for a week. AND… the theme was also used by Steve Jobs to introduce the Macintosh computer to the world. Not too bad. 3. Silverado – Bruce Broughton – 1985 The tagline for Silverado is “Get ready for the ride of your life,” and the same can be said of its theme. Imagine Aaron Copland meets John Williams and you get what many consider to be Mr. Broughton’s masterpiece when it comes to themes. (Others include Jag and one of my favorites, Tiny Toon Adventures). While many may not know this Western genre theme, it still remains that it is one of the best of the Eighties, as well as all time, so check it out if you haven’t! Actually, you probably have and didn’t even realize it - it was recently heard in a Windows 7 commercial in which a kid makes a presentation on his computer to convince his parents to get a dog. What a nerd, but at least he chose some kick-ass music. 2. Batman – Danny Elfman – 1989 This could be considered Elfman’s breakout film score in the sense that after this movie came out, he was immediately awarded the title of “Kick-Ass.” This theme and score revolutionized film scoring in a way that few films have done. Anyone and everyone scoring action films ever since has had to study the work of the former lead singer of Oingo Boingo whether they wanted to or not. The industry demanded it. With Steve Bartek as his head orchestrator, Danny Elfman unleashed a trademark sound that has found its way into thousands of projects including, of course, his own future scores such as the theme songs to Tales from the Crypt and The Simpsons, the Men In Black film franchise, the Spiderman film franchise, the Mission: Impossible film franchise and many more. I’m pretty sure that the question, “Could you… could you make it like a little more Elfman-esque here?” has been posed to composers roughly a million times by now, and that’s just in Hollywood alone.
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1. Indiana Jones – John Williams – 1981 Everybody in the entire world can hum this tune on demand because, simply put, it is beyond awesome. The music screams adventure, excitement, romance and intrigue (yes, the slower middle section would be the romance and intrigue). I could go on and on, but seriously, do I need to make more of an argument here?
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picker/grinner/lover/sinner
Reichen is Truckin’ Our favorite Renaissance Man shares his unlikely passion for The Grateful Dead — and gets “miracled.” By Reichen Lehmkuhl Something that most people don’t know about me is that I’m a Deadhead. That is to say that I’m a “dead”icated Grateful Dead fan. It all started on July 2, 1988. I was fourteen-years old and enjoying a summer vacation just after graduating the eighth grade. As usual, I spent that summer in Norway, Maine,
at Lake Pennesseewassee, where my parents owned a modest summer home, or “camp” as we called it. Those days were never more magical for me until, on this particular weekend, I decided to sneak out of the house on a Saturday afternoon and, with a friend, head to Oxford Plains Speedway. It was located in Oxford, Maine, just one town over from Norway. A band we didn’t know much about was slated to perform at the Speedway on Saturday and Sunday, and they were known as The Grateful Dead. I don’t think we would normally have been so mischievous, but our curiosity peaked when, just days before the concerts, our little area became flooded with Grateful Dead fans. This included their VW buses, tie-dye shirts, and pop-up veggie burrito stands all along the The Modern | January 2012
main road leading into Norway. “What is this?” we asked each other over and over, until we had to find out for ourselves. By the name “Grateful Dead,” we figured that we were going to see a dark-sounding, heavy-metal band. This wasn’t really my favorite kind of music but I didn’t care. I had never seen a band head into any town with so many followers. So, no matter what, they must have been worth seeing. That afternoon, my parents had dropped me and my best friend, Billy, off at the marina to get the boat out of a maintenance slip and to hang out on the lake for a while. Instead of going down to the boat, Billy and I went out onto the road and stuck our thumbs up to hitch a ride into Oxford. Within two minutes, a VW camper van stopped to pick us up. Being our first time hitchhiking, this was nothing short of a scary experience for us. To this day, I don’t know why I felt safe in using this method of transportation. Maybe it was the relaxed atmosphere of a summer vacation town, or maybe it was the spirit of the Grateful Dead that kept my guard down from the fear that had always been instilled in me about hitchhiking. The couple that picked us up were Deadheads themselves, and showed some concern for how young we looked before they let us into their van. Billy was sort of quiet but I explained to them that we wanted to go to the Grateful Dead concert. “Oh, you’re going to the show!” was the last thing they said before popping open the back door. We jumped into the van and the inside of it was like nothing I’d ever seen. It was set up like a home with a small kitchen, some beds, and a portable toilet in the corner. It was decorated with lots of beads and colorful stickers and posters. I could make out the words “Grateful Dead” on several of these posters and stickers. It smelled like marijuana. Our driver was a man in his late twenties, with a full face of reddish-brown hair, and his girlfriend or wife in the passenger seat had long bleached-blonde www.themodern.us
hair. They were both dressed in tye-dye t-shirts. He had long cargo shorts on while she had on a long white skirt with blue flowers printed all over it. “Do you boys have tickets to the show?” they asked. We told them we thought we could just buy one at the door. They laughed at us and told us how every show of the summer was sold out completely, but that they would help us get “miracled.” We asked what that meant, and they told us that someone would just have to give us tickets. We assured them that we would pay for a ticket given the chance to see the concert. They corrected us to say that the Grateful Dead put on “shows,” not “concerts,” and also explained that if we held up a sign in the parking lot that said, “I need a miracle,” that chances were that someone would just give us tickets! We pulled into the parking lot and the woman in the front seat moved into the back and found her “Miracle Me” sign. She pulled out a marker and wrote a big “X 2” under the words and said, “Here, walk around holding this up and you might find a miracle.” She smiled at us and opened the door of the now-parked van. We stepped out into a whole new world - the parking lot of a Grateful Dead show. The first thing I noticed was that the drug culture was very relaxed and that pot was no big deal. There were many, many people walking around that smelled like marijuana. I saw long hair, girls spinning in place to nearby music from a radio (that I later learned were called “spinners”) with their dresses flowing outward in an almost perfectly geometrical shape. I saw people selling sandwiches, buying clothes, and trading hand-woven blankets for a bootleg cassette copy of a show’s music set, or a balloon filled with nitrous. Everyone was smiling. Everyone was happy. Kids, adults, old people. I smelled incense everywhere. I held up my sign. I wanted...I needed...a miracle. I wandered around the parking lot where I was able to check out a thousand people who looked, acted, and smiled differently than anyone I’d ever seen before. Someone came up to me and handed me a ticket to the show. “It’s your lucky day,” she said. I asked her if she knew where I could get one more and she said that her girlfriend had one for sale, but that we would have to follow her to their car. We did and bought the second ticket for $25. The girl offered us some of their van’s punch. We didn’t ask what was in it but, by the way she seemed so carefree, we decided to partake. Not having much experience with alcohol to this point, the punch tasted strong, but sweet. We www.themodern.us
had two cups each and, with a buzz, headed to the gates to get into the show. We went in and found a place to stand together in the back of the crowd that had already gathered in front of the stage. We got to know some of the people around us and lost track of time. Before we knew it, the band took the stage. On the opening song, the dancing began. Everyone was dancing. Everyone! I had never seen people dance the way the Deadheads danced. I had never seen so many people smiling and laughing as they danced to a song. I didn’t know the song that everyone else knew, but I knew one thing fore sure - that this scene and feeling I felt around this group of people were contagious. Soon, Billy and I were both smiling at each other and everyone else, and dancing in the freest way we had ever danced in our lives. This was a party like I had never known. Suddenly, I saw a bunch of white things in the air and realized that people were throwing small marshmallows into the air at the same time. It looked like it was snowing. I didn’t know what this was about but I knew it looked cool. Then it hit me - that’s exactly what the marshmallow snow was about - it just looked cool. We danced through two sets of the music and, although its sound was foreign to me, I loved it instantly because of how good of a time I had at the show. I wanted to hear more of it...as much as I could. It wasn’t death metal at all. To the contrary, the music was very folk-like, and its message, along with the people singing and dancing along, was all about finding peace, love, and happiness. Now, I’m 38 years old and, since that summer, I have seen over 70 Grateful Dead shows in my life. January 2012 | The Modern
picker/grinner/lover/sinner Something quite amazing happened to me in 2005, after I had won The Amazing Race’s season 4 on CBS. It was New Year’s eve and my brother had surprised me by telling me to meet him at home. A limo picked us up to take us to a private jet he chartered to Oakland, just for me and him. On the plane, he pulled two Grateful Dead shirts from his backpack. He told me to put one on. When we arrived in the Bay Area, a car took us to Oakland Coliseum, where we were to see the Dead perform. Before we got to the front gate, a large man met us by the back doors of the arena. He told me to follow him ( all of this had been set up by my brother). He led me into
“
You’ll be surprised who the Deadheads in your life actually are. I’m pretty sure that I have the only BMW 7-Series in New York City with a Grateful Dead sticker on
Reichen Lehmkuhl
”
the back window.
a green room where all the members of the Dead were hanging out and they all said, “Happy Birthday, Reichen.” They put a pass around my neck that said, “Family” on it. I met every member of the band, except for Jerry, of course, and then they let me sit on the stage to watch the show! I got to watch the band and the music play to the crowd, in waves across the dancing people. This was my birthday present set up by my very loving brother that year. As we left the show that night, a girl ran up to me and said, “Are you Reichen from The Amazing Race?” I told her that I was he, and we got to talking about the Dead and how surprised she was to see me at a Dead show as she would never pin me as a Deadhead. I told her about my first show in 1988 and we ended up exchanging numbers and addresses. She was that cool. About two weeks later, I got a package in the mail at my house in L.A., and it was from her. She had located the bootleg recorded copy of the show from July 2, 1988, my very first show. This was the best The Modern | January 2012
gift ever. I now had the entire concert on CD. That night, I made no plans, put the discs into my player, and laid on my living room rug, just listening to the whole show. I was in heaven. I was back at Oxford Plains Speedway again. Even when I was a cadet at the U.S. Air Force Academy, I would make my best efforts to “sneak” away, to see a show whenever I could. When Jerry Garcia died in August of 1995, I held a memorial service for him in one of the military assembly rooms at the Air Force Academy. After he died, The Grateful Dead became, for a time, just The Dead and continued to tour. Different members of the band branched off to form their own bands and I’ve continued to follow all of them as well. There isn’t a Grateful Dead song I don’t know, and there isn’t a well-knownto-dead-heads Grateful Dead lyric I couldn’t identify. I’ve quoted their music more than any fortune or saying out there, and much of what their songs taught me have given me words and ideas to live and love by. My favorite song is “Ripple,” which talks about being a leader or a follower and what happens to people who only do one or the other. I’ve named two of my boats after this song. I’ve heard more than twenty bands cover and remake the amazing music and songs of the Grateful Dead, such as The Indigo Girls’ interpretation of “Uncle John’s Band,” or Jane’s Addiction version of “Ripple.” Amazing. My love for the Grateful Dead runs deep. Not only did they and their followers show me a whole new world when I was so young and impressionable, but showed me how to look for and accept whole new worlds for the rest of my life. I credit this band and their music for helping to shape me into a person with a wide-open mind, a love for many different types of music, and a NEVER-ENDING hope and vision that peace and love can create real bliss and happiness in small groups of people and in the world as a whole. When you “hear” the Dead, you’ll inevitably find and get along with others who have heard them too. You’ll be surprised who the Deadheads in your life actually are. I’m pretty sure that I have the only BMW 7-Series in New York City with a Grateful Dead sticker on the back window. If you haven’t ever listened to the Dead, may I suggest picking up the album, American Beauty and falling asleep to its tunes? You won’t be disappointed and, eventually, you’ll realize that when you become a Deadhead, you’ll have nothing left to do but, “Smile, Smile, Smile.” Reichen Lehmkuhl is an actor, entrepreneur, political activist, writer and TV reality show star. www.themodern.us
I get around
Hey, Good Humor Man! Our vintage-vehicle maven shows off his cream of the crop. By Ronald Sklar This month, Lenny Shiller, owner of a garage full of vintage vehicles in Brooklyn, USA, shows us his gleaming white diamond: The Good Humor truck. • This 1965 Ford 100 made the rounds all over Brooklyn (there were Chevy Good Humor trucks too). • The theory of Pavlov’s dog was never better executed: the ringing of the Good Humor bell made millions of kids salivate and run. • Most people still remember the names of their Good Humor Man. Mine was Steve. Lenny’s was Frank. Lenny says the oddest name he ever heard was Bingo.
• The truck box is porcelain, not plastic. The trucks were not painted. The outside of the truck was illuminated by twelve-volt florescent bulbs. • Also available: Good Humor scooters and push carts. • The demise of the Good Humor truck: the little door made reaching difficult. The round truck (Mr. Softee, for example) made the ice cream business smoother and more efficient (yet how do we discontinue the blaring loudspeaker songs?). • Good Humor’s parent company, Unilever, sold the fleet in 1978. The products continue to be sold in retail outlets. • With the proper consumer licensing, “you can still make a dollar from a truck like this,” Lenny says.
For more info on Lenny’s fabulous collection, click on http://clubs.hemmings.com/clubsites/brooklyncarclub/index.html
www.themodern.us
January 2012 | The Modern
lionel
When Kids Were Kids and
Toys Were Dangerous B y
Our favorite social commentator sheds light on the dark side of play time. The Modern | January 2012
L i o n e l
It’s become an all too familiar trope. Nostalgia, the lens that romanticizes everything, more often than not is a distortion. Recently I was speaking with an old friend about our high school days and before we knew it, we were lapsing into the usual saccharine recollections of the glory days of that halcyon time, the salad days of... and then I said STOP! What the hell were we talking about? High school wasn’t that fun or exciting. Our forced nostalgia created the illusion of longing for a time that never occurred. The exercise of recollection and the theme of nostalgia artificially
create this warm and tingly reference point that more often than not misses the mark. Memories light the corners of my mind. So with that in mind, while I wax nostalgic herein as to a bygone time when being a kid was deliciously dangerous, I’ve given it great thought and reflection and I can accurately state that I’m not creating the illusion of a time that never was. It really existed and I’m not lapsing into a nostalgia reflex. What does not destroy me maims me. No, sir. Those were better days and I’ll tell you why. Whether by design or an inadvertent glitch in humankind’s www.themodern.us
development, we weren’t hypersensitive to the notion of death and blinding mishaps. That, and of course the fact that consumer product testing labs were unknown, we weren’t all that litigious and there was this understanding of understanding. We understood that you understood that you were risking life and limb in your adventure(s). In fact, the horrors that were present were so blatantly obvious you couldn’t miss them. Nothing was recessed or hidden in those days. It was because of the obvious nature of its risk that made the behavior all the more inviting. www.themodern.us
Let us prey. Toys were dangerous. Very dangerous. I laugh today when I see some pale-complected scaredy-cat consumer product safety whatever go on and on about a child being able to swallow a loose piece from a toy. I harken back to the immortal Mick Dundee who, upon encountering a street hood brandishing a switchblade and demanding money, said, “That’s not a noyf. This is a noyf.” As you’ve gathered, “noyf” is my attempt at articulating Strine. Mr. Watson, I need you. I grew up in Flawda (that’s Florida for most people.) Flawda is three miles in from the beach. The innards of
the state. The interstices. Rednecks, pick ’em up trucks, homozygous consanguineous inbreeding and a family tree that looks like a Brussels sprout. Flawda was the nation’s scrotum, the dangling peninsula. And when anyone of us in the ’hood ventured through the Carolinas for a summer vacation we were sworn to bring back fireworks. Not firecrackers, but fireworks. As in the works. It was never enough to merely light a firework or cracker or M-80 or Roman candle or bottle rocket or cherry bomb and run away. Run away?! That was for sissies. You always reconfigured, retooled, January 2012 | The Modern
lionel doubled-up and reengineered the explosive for a bigger bang. You taped them together, slit them open and recombined the blasting powder. You never ever lit or detonated anything as-is. (Or would that be “as-was?”) And I shan’t ever forget chasing after a poor kid in the neighborhood with two Roman candles in my hands trying my best to hit him square in the back with white hot phosphorous that rivaled military grade thermate for steel-cutting in controlled demolitions. Had I hit that young man he’d be the subject of a telethon to this day. Rome wasn’t built in a day. So why was that better than today? Because we didn’t care about failure, especially if failing meant certain death. We knew somehow that severe injuries were a possibility, that third degree burns and skin grafts and painful debriding were a real risk. But the fact that we didn’t care – not that we didn’t know, but the fact that we didn’t care – carried over into other areas of lives that inspired courage, excitement, risk and, er, painful disfigurement and death. A man’s got to know his limitations. When you see a kid loaded up with padding, bicycle helmets, knee pads, cervical collars, Kevlar, flak jackets – all to ride a bike – it’s a statement of who we are – and what we’ve lost. How can that kid possibly have fun with the risk of paralysis virtually removed altogether? And it wasn’t that our parents didn’t care when they blindly acceded to our engaging in these behaviors. It was a different, tougher time. And there was this thing called adventure. They just tossed out an admonition. Take it easy. The refrain “be careful” was said almost in passing. It was the “have a nice day” of our time. It was a throwaway. A nicety, conversational hamburger helper. It wasn’t meant to invoke and convey panic The Modern | January 2012
and dread and terror – as in BE CAREFUL! Pyrography, anyone? One Christmas I received a wood burning set. IT WAS A SOLDERING IRON! For kids...and what was wood burning anyway? Why would you want to artistically burn wood? To this day I have no idea. It was more like branding – burning and singeing balsa with a 900-degree wand. Or to be fancy-schmancy: pyrography. Try finding one of these today – in the toy section, no less. Go ahead, make my day. I had a pellet gun. A Crossman. Not a BB gun. A pellet gun. Think of a .22 caliber Happy Meal. It was pump action and shot lead pellets. They came in a little milk carton container. That was also the beauty of those days – camouflaging danger through the familiar. When I showed her my weapon of choice, my mother warned me about the classic duality of danger: breaking your neck and putting your eye out. Folks, when it came to this baby, putting your eye out was the least of your worries. Putting you out was more like it. Oh, and it looked exactly like a gun. It wasn’t painted orange or – Gawd forbid – pink. My Crossman looked exactly like a real gun. That was the point. And do you know why cops never mistook it for a real gun? Huh? Because we never pointed a fake gun at a real cop during a real crime. Our insanity had boundaries. They’re creepy and they’re kooky. I had one extremely dangerous toy. I know, you mean dangerous unlike the others I’ve mentioned? Good point, but this was just gratuitously dangerous. I mean even among the series of dangers that I voluntarily and gleefully faced, this was right up there. It went by either “Thingmaker” or “Creepy Crawlers.” It amounted to a super-duper
hot plate that liquefies Chernobylgrade toxic chemical goop that you’d squirt into bug molds. This solid piece of metal would hit temperatures that could smelt pig iron. Think of a Bessemer furnace that plugged into the wall. Nobody got hurt. No lawsuits. A few melted fingers. But, hey! Those are the breaks. Death from above. But the gold standard of toy danger was the the toy that possessed more potential, raw, killing-and-maiming power; the toy that was sure to inspire catastrophic brain injury, paralysis and certain death; the impaling reighof-terror – behold the lawn dart or “Jart.” For you who never had the chance to look death in the eye as a child, the lawn dart was a big heavy plastic winged dart with a deadly killer metal- pointed tip that you’d throw up in the air. Think horseshoes meets the grim reaper. The kinetic death force of this impaling “toy” will never be seen again. My cousin Chucky was introduced to the working end of one of these killing machines when he was a kid. Oh, he’s fine now. But ever since that day he walks around yelling “Who ordered the veal cutlet!” I’m sorry. Maybe the toys were dangerous. Maybe they posed an incomprehensible risk of serious harm. And, OK, fine. Maybe some of us were hurt, blinded and disfigured. Permanently scarred. OK, so what’s your point? Lionel is a talk radio panjandrum, an ex-prosecutor and commentator on New York’s heritage PIX 11 News (wpix.com/lionel) – seven nights a week and weekdays and a Monday morning thrown in for good measure. That’s 13 times a week for those keeping score at home. He’s also a podcast titan on Lionelmedia.com. He may be tracked, stalked and hunted on Twitter@LionelMedia and Lionel’s Fan Page on Facebook. He’s also available via email at lionel@lionelmedia.com. This article contains gluten. www.themodern.us
retro sports
Way to Go, Mike Fratello! This esteemed NBA coach helped lead our Greg V. to a Teacher of the Year award. By Gregory Vrecenak Growing up, most boys aspire to join the ranks of professional athletes. Little leagues for all sports across the country inspire innumerable dreams of playing in the MLB, NFL, or NBA. The allure seems quite reasonable. Spend hours playing your game of choice. Perfect your game. Get rich and famous. I, however, grew up a little different than most. I didn’t wish to attain fame and fortune as a professional athlete. In fact, my body style (best described as a six-foot-fourinche ironing board) prohibited my inclusion in any and all professional athletics. Rather, growing up, I wanted to be the coach of the team. My father’s good friend, Mike Fratello, coached in the NBA during my childhood. He coached the Atlanta Hawks, the Cleveland Cavaliers, and the Memphis Grizzlies. I often reflect fondly on days when Mike’s teams came to town and I got to go to Madison Square Garden to see Mike. I would watch the game, but not the players. I’d admire as Mike barked out orders and plays from the sidelines, wishing that I could do the same. As soon as the fourth quarter ended, I’d get excited because I knew that Mike would address his team and then come and hang in the stands with my father and me. As old fraternity brothers, they would catch up, talk about the months in between their last meeting, and take subtle digs at one another. I’d ask Coach about certain plays he ran and about coaching the best athletes in the world. A visit with Mike never disappointed. (As a side note: I wish he would have gotten the Knicks head coaching job in 2003. They would have been a lot better off.) I never became a professional head coach. I coached little league baseball and basketball, and emulated Mike as I gave sage athletic advice to 15-year-olds, but I never made it to the big show. In fact, my coaching career peaked at a high school junior varsity baseball position. Instead of becoming a coach, I became a teacher, and I haven’t looked back since. And, reflecting on my current life path, I couldn’t be happier. I have the privilege of doing exactly what I want to do on a daily basis. Sure, I’m not in the public spotlight and I don’t have a lucrative contract. I do, however, have the opportunity to give needed feedback to students on a daily basis. In a lot of regards, I am a coach. I encourwww.themodern.us January 2012 | The Modern
age. I educate. I discipline as necessary. I’ve always prided myself on living life slightly different than the masses. This philosophy has made all the difference in my life. Growing up, I admired a family friend who had the good fortune to coach in the NBA. That admiration, that love of education, has sculpted me into the “coach” I am today. In 2010 I graciously received the Teacher of the Year Award. For that, I can say, “Thank you, Coach Fratello, the 1985-1986 NBA Coach of the Year.” In addition to teaching, Greg, along with his brother, Jeff, runs the Baseball Santa Claus (BSC) organization. BSC gives away free tickets to sporting events to those who could not otherwise afford to attend. it also teaches the value of literacy, creative writing and paying it forward. For more information, go to baseballsantaclaus.com
retro quiz
We’ve Got a Basketball Jones for this slam-dunk basketball trivia quiz. By William Shultz 1. Who scored 100 points in an NBA game, what year did it happen, who did he play for and against what team? 2. What was unusual about the venue? 3. What team owns the most World Championships in the NBA? 4. Who has the record for most points scored in a career in the NBA? 5. What year did the NBA start and what cities were represented?
1. Wilt Chamberlain, 1962, Philadelphia Warriors, New York Knicks. 2. The game was played in Hershey, Pa. 3. Boston Celtics with 17. 4. Kareem-Abdul Jabbar, 38,387 points. 5. 1947 New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis, Washington.
lucky strike lanes NYC’s Lucky Strike Lanes
Scores a Perfect 300 A few friends called me up the other night and wanted to paint the town red. I didn’t feel like bar-hopping again, especially on a wintry New York City evening. I suggested a bowling adventure which was received by skepti-
cism. The group’s attitude immediately changed upon learning of Lucky Strike Bowling Lanes’ full bar. Lucky Strike is located on West 42nd Street and 12th Avenue, which is a hike from the ‘A’
train stop. When we arrived, my friends were a little weathered by the frigid winds blowing in from the Hudson. We hurried inside and de-thawed while checking in. The tall hostess sporting a Lucky Strike “t” informed us of the hour
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long wait. I grimaced by the news and slowly turned to face my group. As expected, they began to scowl. Strike two. “You can grab a drink in the lounge while you wait,” she said. The group’s frowns turned upside down. As I led the way to the lounge, I began to take in the atmosphere. Huge silk and velvet orbs emanating dim red lights hung above, walls adorned with retro relics like Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe, all to be topped off by shag carpet floors. We plopped down and began to cozy-up on an oversized velour couch; we felt very groovy. I picked up the cocktail list, which offered drinks such as The Coco Chanel, The Betty, and Strawberry Fields. I was definitely getting an old-school vibe from the place, so we ordered their happy hour special, Sangria. The drinks came out in huge glasses and for only $8 we knew we were in for a great night. My friends and I made a toast, chugged back a good portion of our drinks, and began to relax on the big comfy couch. I started to notice the music and looked around to check out the bowling lanes. A live DJ was in the center of the room and music videos played on big screens hanging on each wall. The DJ was spinning a mash-up of old and new jams; the best I had seen in a long time. It was finally time to bowl. We finished the rest of our drinks and bellied up to the shoe rental counter. To my surprise, all of the bowling shoes were fancy retro Puma kicks, which just added to my predictions of experiencing the best night ever! We walked to our lane following to the pumping tune of Janet Jackson’s “What Have You Done for Me Lately.” We were welcomed to our lane by the tantric moves of Janet Jackson on a jumbo screen at the end of the lane. This wasn’t bowling, this was www.themodern.us
a party! The screen above us was pre-programed with our names and I was alleviated to see Hayley was first up... gutter! Although the group was laughing at her misfortune, we offered condolences and support by indicating all tal-
ent required was a brief warm up. To our surprise, the screen above played an animated video of a ball not coming close to a pin then big booming letters, G-U-T-T-E-R BA-L-L! Ha! What a way to rub it in, Lucky Strike. Hayley had her revenge as no one in the group had bowled since middle school, which was reflected in our scores. However, we all concluded the true reason was the distracting lights and Janet Jackson videos reflecting off the lane. I still managed to beat everyone with a score of 120. Not bad, eh? In our last frame I realized that it felt really good to make fun of friends for being awful bowlers. Exhausted, sore, and tipsy, we managed to return our cool Pumas to the checkout counter. The girl behind the desk smiled and giggled, she could tell we were
all a bit beaten. On our way out I wished we had played another round; I really didn’t want to leave. What a blast Lucky Strike Lanes was, such a great atmosphere with great vibes. I turned around and saw a big sign adver-
tising game night with 25-cent - wings and I thought, “I’ll definitely be coming back for that.” Excited by the prospect, I turned back to the group and suggested, “Next week anyone?” We then opened the front door and reluctantly stepped back out into the freezing winds of NYC. Jacob Schirmer is originally from Kansas and is currently living life to the tenth power in New York City. For more information on Lucky Strike Lanes, click on http://www.bowlluckystrike.com January 2012 | The Modern
instead, try this
Forget Freakin’ Citizen Kane The Lady from Shanghai will shatter your perceptions of “great cinema.” By Barrie Creedon Eons ago, I was at a writers’ group event, attended by the local paper’s movie critic. This was one of those groups peopled with ten or so semi-amateurs - myself included - eagerly trying to develop our writing and, more importantly, eagerly trying to convince ourselves that we were actual writers, honest and for-true. After the program, I drifted over to Mr. Critic and asked him what his favorite movie was. Citizen Kane. “Uh, huh. And your second favorite?” Casablanca. At that point I was sorely tempted to ask if I could see the model number on the back of his neck. This wasn’t an actual human being. This was one of the GateKeepers. The Gate-Keepers, for those of you who aren’t in the know, are those critics who all agree on What Is Good. Some issue proclamations only on film, others only on literature. Some make their name as arbiters of Good Music, or Good Art. A precious few are multi-taskers who pontificate on a combination, of say film and literature - or art and live drama. What the Gate-Keepers say, goes. It’s not up to you, Mr. or Ms. Non-Gate-Keeper, to question their judgment. If you don’t like what the Gate-Keepers say you should like, then they consider you shallow, immature, or just plain dumb. Citizen Kane does have a fairly daring - for its time, at least - point of view, some whizbang camera The Modern | January 2012
work, and some fine acting. The Gate-Keepers, however, long ago decided that no film in film history is better. No film will ever be better. So it has been written, so it will (not) be done. To which I say: baloney. I’ve already seen it three times, and still don’t get how it could be called the greatest film ever. I could easily name ten films that I think are better, one of which is The Lady from Shanghai. First things first. For the contemporary audience, the main distinguishing characteristic of The Lady from Shanghai is this: it’s a Coen Brothers movie - and not just a Coen Brothers movie, but the BEST Coen Brothers Movie ever - made several years before the Coen Brothers were even born. That’s the famed Welle– sian genius for you. It’s got everything you love in Coen Brothers films. It’s a quirky take on an established genre, in this case film noir. Instead of dark alleys, the film offers over-lit daytime exteriors, which manage to be every bit as creepy. It’s got plenty of oddball characters, and no matter how short their screen time, they manage to register. It’s got a super-quotable screenplay and mind-bogglingy awesome cinematography. In fact, this is one film where the cinematographer deserved to have his name above the title. Lastly, it stands up to repeated viewings, in part because the plot is so confusing. The film opens at night, with Irish merchant seaman Michael O’Hara (Welles) stopping a purse snatching in Central Park. The beautiful snatchee, Elsa Bannister, is www.themodern.us
played by Welles’ estranged wife, Rita Hayworth, sporting a short blond ‘do instead of her signature long red mane. Aflush with his amazing luck, O’Hara grabs the reins of a horse-drawn carriage, and takes Elsa for a ride. Big mistake. Soon she’ll be taking him for a ride. Like all good film noir female leads, Elsa is well aware of her charms and the many uses thereof. And even though he gets a good look at how manipulative she can be within the first ten minutes, Michael is the classic film noir male lead: he is under the impression he can play with fire and not get burnt. Just before taking his leave of her for the evening, Elsa informs Michael that she and her husband previously unmentioned - will soon be leaving New York via their luxury yacht, and that they’re short one staff member. While O’Hara is spending the next day hanging around the Seaman’s Hiring Hall, he is surprised by the entrance of a handicapped man asking to see him. This turns out to be Arthur Bannister, (played by the ever-brilliant Everett Sloane), “world’s greatest criminal lawyer,” on a mission to get Michael to work for him on the yacht. Although Michael has no intention of accepting Bannister’s offer - earlier in a voice-over he mentions, “I don’t like a girlfriend to have a husband. If she’ll fool him, she’ll fool me.” - his resolve is sabotaged by his scruples. While at the hall, Bannister drinks himself stupid, and so O’Hara and a buddy, Goldie (Gus Schilling) drag him back to the ship. While Goldie and another shipmate pack Bannister off below deck, Elsa, wearing what looks like a like a captain’s jacket, and not much else, sidles over to O’Hara. “I wasn’t sure you’d come,” she purrs. “I’m not stayin’” is the cold reply. “You’ve got to stay,” Elsa whispers, tears in her eyes. If that won’t persuade him, Bannister’s pet investigator (a sleazier-than-usual Ted de Corsia) and maid (Evelyn Ellis) go to work on him. The maid’s “She need you bad. You stay,” clinches the deal. What follows is another staple of film noir cinema: a look at the wealthy and venal. While on a deckboard party, Michael idly mentions his disdain for money. Immediately, Bannister barks cynically about how and why he ruined another lawyer. “He died broke, and here I am... money’s something all of us have in common.” Just before this scene, Bannister’s law partner, George Grisby, makes his first significant appearance. Played by the seldom-seen Glenn Anders, everything that comes out of George’s mouth sounds slightly unhinged. The law firm of Bannister and Grigsby would have been betwww.themodern.us
ter named “Bitter and Bonkers.” Throughout the voyage, Elsa keeps Michael on a string, while seemingly unrelated plots are percolating in the background. Blindly in love he may be, but Michael has everybody’s number, as shown in this scene, which takes place at the end of a picnic held in a stifling Mexican village: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKk3k1MgDhs From here, the plots and schemes kick into high gear, with Elsa laying her traps. The result is a few dead bodies, and O’Hara a hair’s breadth from the gas chamber. Finally, the film ends with what may be the most famous scene in film history: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G05H0QacqQM Although that’s the scene that’s best remembered from this film, it’s only one of a number of jaw-droppers. Speaking of drop: when the yacht stops in Mexico, O’Hara and Grisby go wandering around a craggy tourist landscape, with Grisby going on about “those bombs.” (The film was shot only a year after Hiroshima.) The conversation at its logical end, George trills, “So long, fella,” and drops out of the frame. The way this is shot, you automatically assume he jumped off a cliff. It’s quite a surprise when he reappears just a few edits later. Another eye-opener is the scene in a darkened public aquarium. As grossly magnified sea creatures swim oh-so-slowly in the background, Elsa feigns concern over the bizarre deal O’Hara made with Grisby while alternately pitching woo. Then there’s the scene in the Chinese theatre where a performance is going on, and...well, I won’t ruin any more of it for you. Barrie Creedon lives and writes in Philadelphia, PA.
Just see it. It’s well worth the 87 minutes you invest.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF87-4teb-c January 2012 | The Modern
girls were girls & men were men
George – the forgotten Kennedy Hollywood’s favorite tough-guy character actor is the real deal. By Jay S. Jacobs Of all the Sixties and Seventies icons with that Kennedy surname, George was the toughest hombre (though Rose gave him a run for his money.) He may not have been part of the Hyannisport clan, but George Kennedy was a huge name during the Nixon era (yet no coincidence that a non-related Kennedy kicked Nixon’s butt in 1960). Kennedy has put together a fearsome body of work – appearing in over 200 movies and TV shows (as recently as the 2006 movie Don’t Come Knocking). However, he wouldn’t be hanging around with those Kennedy commies, those hoity-toity, champagnesippin’ politicians from Massachusetts. He was a man of the people, a tough (but occasionally tender), hard working, All-American Joe. Not only that, he put aside his show biz career for sixteen years in the military, to save your freedom in WWII. Top that, punk. Though, surprisingly, for all his brawn and brashness, Kennedy was the son of an artistic New York family. Dad was the orchestra leader George Harris Kennedy, who died when little George was only four-years old. After his father’s death, he was raised by his mom, ballet dancer Helen A. Kieselbach Kennedy. He made his stage debut when he was only two and became a radio performer while he was young. Kennedy joined the Army to see combat in World War II, where he became very involved in Armed Forces Radio. He also helped create the Army Information Office – a liaison service between the Army and Hollywood. When a back problem forced him out of the active military, he drifted back to his show-biz roots. His first gig upon his return to the biz was as a technical advisor on the classic sitcom Sergeant Bilko, which led to some brief on-camera appearances. He followed up with a small role in the classic gladiator film Spartacus. After that, his path was set. Soon he was popping up with bigger and bigger roles in such hits as Charade and Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte. He won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in Cool Hand Luke. He became Hollywood’s go-to guy for tough and smart. As a boy, I remember reading the then-unfilmed blockbuster novel Jaws, thinking Kennedy would be absolutely perfect for the role of Chief Brody. I was pissed off when they instead hired some unknown guy named Roy Scheider. I have since grudgingly acknowlThe Modern | January 2012
edged that Scheider did a fine job, but I still believe Kennedy is a much better fit for the character as he appeared in the book. He may not have been given that role, but he got a hell of a lot of other good ones – and here are some of the best. Joe Patroni – Airport, Airport ’75, Airport ’77 and Airport ’79: The Concorde The Airport series of films was almost like a disas-
ter-era precursor of The Love Boat – a different hodgepodge of B-celebs and has-been actors in each episode, where the only constant was the mode of transportation. Only one man was in all four Airport films (in fact, I’m pretty sure only one man was in even two), and that man was George Kennedy. Due to a series of shaky sequels, it is easy to forget what a big deal the original Airport was – at the time, it was nominated for ten Oscars. In the Airport movies, Kennedy was Joe Patroni, the Grand Poobah of all airline techs. He knew more about airplanes than Orville and Wilbur and was more than happy to use his awesome knowledge to save the world from evil-like the Bermuda Triangle, stowaways, art thieves, aging comedians, purse dogs and Sonny Bono in a latrine with a briefcase bomb. (Patroni also made sure that his passengers got a free meal, had no carry-on luggage and were able to watch an in-flight movie. Air travel was much nicer in the Patroni era.) In Airport ’75 (which, oddly enough, came out in ’74), Kennedy teamed up for the first time with Moses of the NRA (aka Charlton Heston) to stoically rescue a desperate 747 from death due to a hole in the fuselage where a small plane hit the craft (as well as death due to Helen Reddy’s singing nun). By the time they made it to Airport ’79: The Concorde, Patroni was the pilot of the flight – showing Captain Sully how a real man saves his passengers. Unfortunately, by this point, the series was on www.themodern.us
supersonic fumes and the unintentional comedy (they literally tried to sell the film as a parody after it opened to terrible reviews) finally totally grounded a series that seemed like it may fly forever. www.youtube.com/embed/wupqktw252M Dragline – Cool Hand Luke You have to be a pretty tough hombre to give Paul Newman (in his prime) a big-assed beat down, but George Kennedy was just the person for the job. Kennedy played Dragline, a convict in a southern jail who pretty much ran the place. Newman was Luke Jackson, an unconventional new convict who was sentenced to hard time for cutting the heads off of parking meters. Due to pressure from the guards, Dragline beats Luke to a pulp. Yet he grows to respect how his opponent won’t stay down and refuses to fight any further. They become close friends – Dragline also gave Luke his “Cool Hand” nickname in a jailhouse poker game – and they share an eventually fatal escape attempt. This role earned Kennedy his only Oscar, for Best Supporting Actor. www.youtube.com/embed/veCZvM6-okQ Sgt. Lou Slade – Earthquake Here, Kennedy reunites with his Airport ’75 co-star Charlton Heston to form a lethal two-man disasterbustin’ squad. This is a classic cheeseball melodrama about Los Angeles being flattened by a massive quake. It was filmed in that new modern filmmaking marvel called SENSURROUND! This was essentially a way of making the seats in the theater feel like they were moving under the audience during the earthquake sequences. The technique was revisited in such earthquake-free fare as Midway, Rollercoaster and Battlestar Galactica, before disappearing. Slade is a tough LA cop who was vigilant about preserving the peace, even at the expense of destroying Zsa Zsa Gabor’s hedges. When the city is nearly destroyed by a devastating quake, Slade has to keep the people from panicking, all the while saving dogs, www.themodern.us
Heston’s wife, mistress and motorcycle daredevils. And you crazy types like Marjoe Gortner better keep your filthy mitts off of sweet American meat like a young Victoria Principal or he’ll get Neanderthal on you. What, you got somethin’ against religion? Sadly, a sequel script written with Kennedy’s character as the lead, and with Richard Roundtree and Principal reviving their roles, was never filmed. www.youtube.com/embed/cJb0o52feiA Red Leary – Thunderbolt and Lightfoot If you’re a tough guy in the Seventies, at some point you’re gonna cross paths with Clint Eastwood. George Kennedy went mano-a -mano with the man with no name in one of the roles where he actually had a name: that of Thunderbolt. This film was written and directed by a then-unknown Michael Cimino of The Deer Hunter and the infamous Heaven’s Gate infamy. Kennedy played Red, a crazed thief who felt he was betrayed by Eastwood’s preacher thief. When Thunderbolt hooks up with a young car thief named Lightfoot (one of Jeff Bridges’ first major roles), Red makes damn sure they knew that they were working for him. This leads to a robbery plan and an eventual showdown with the cops and a vicious guard dog. www.youtube.com/embed/UjIDrWn0DQ4 Captain Ed Hocken – The Naked Gun: From The Files of Police Squad!, The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear and The Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult Kennedy was better known as a dramatic man of action than for his comic chops – but here’s your proof that he could play it for laughs, too. The Naked Gun was a reboot of an acclaimed, but very short-lived (six episodes) TV series on ABC. It was created by Jerry and David Zucker, the minds behind the hit film Airplane!, a hugely popular parody of the Airport series. With their Airport knowledge, the Zucker brothers were well aware of Kennedy’s gruff-but-lovable charm. He was cast way against type as the sensitive, slightly cowardly partner of Lt. Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen). Hocken joined Drebin in mistakenly causing much havoc – often seriously injuring OJ Simpson in the process. See? Even in comedies, George Kennedy always gets the bad guy. http://www.youtube.com/embed/73ZsDdK0sTI January 2012 | The Modern
retro tech
Stick It in Your Ear The fuzzy beginnings of electronic sound By Art Wilson My generation and those that follow have almost been constantly bombarded by sound waves forming speech and music generated by speakers and headphones converted from electronic audio signals. As a young child I remember vintage (by that time) console radios – beautiful pieces of furniture. But table radios, playing the AM band, were common in every home. In the morning there would be music or local talk and news, or network variety, with
My older sister started buying the pop records of the day, and the rebellious rhythm ‘n’ blues, and I had a few children’s sets, some of which were colored red or yellow. I would sit and stare at the distinct labels spin around and around while the music was forming memories. TV was coming into its own in a big way, and of course, would have an audio component, and cars had AM radios to entertain and keep us company. Audio was usually coming from one speaker, and that was good enough for us. It was the content that
hosts like Arthur Godfrey. Coming home for lunch from school, I would hear my mother’s soap operas, like The Romance of Helen Trent. In the early evening there was news and later at night, entertainment and comedy by Jack Benny. The real exercise of our imaginations was the adventures – The Lone Ranger, and the suspense – The Shadow. Our house didn’t have a record player at that time, but my grandparents did, and we would listen to the 78 rpm discs that were easily broken if dropped. But when 45 rpm records became popular, we acquired an RCA stackable record changer with a thick spindle and a lid.
mattered. But the technical world was working to make that sound more life-like, and the term “high fidelity” was coined. My cousin was the first audiophile I knew. He read up on the field and acquired a component hi-fi system at his home. The sound was unprecedented. I remember attending an exhibit somewhere, and they were demonstrating binaural sound. You’d place a cup shaped speaker over each ear and the sound was like real life. Of course we have two ears for a reason – to detect directional sound. Stereophonic was the next phase of hi-fi and the
The Modern | January 2012
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The New Oldies audiophiles migrated to doubled gear – stereo amplifiers and record turntable cartridges, and at least two speaker units for their systems. The use of stereo headphones was a logical next step. You could plug in these massive contraptions and place them on your head, and you’d float to another world. FM radio was originally an experimental band. It broadcast a better tone and was perfectly compatible with hi-fi systems. FM’s programming was limited, with low listener ratings, and often simulcast programming with the much more commercially successful AM band. I remember demonstrations by radio stations where they would have you tune one radio to their AM band, and, if you had one, an FM radio to their frequency, and place them left and right for two channels of stereo. Or they did a similar setup with a TV and radio. This, of course, was experimental and
Miss Cassie in the hizzy! DJ (and model) Cassie Stevens has played around the world (she’s currently spinning in India). Here, she reports back retro requests with an international flavor. “Finally Moving by Pretty Lights” | Released on
October 23, 2006, this has become a very sought-after song in LA as well as in India. 2006 may not be very long ago, but this shows that music has to loop around the world a few times before it could become a hit.
“You Make My Dreams by Hall and Oats” | This
1980s hit always gets people to move, anywhere on the planet. My favorite place to drop this song is at Teddy’s in the Roosevelt Hotel in LA.
“Muddy Waters by Manish Boy” | Originally
released way back in 1955, this one will rock on in rock-and-roll bars forever. It’s also one of my personal favorites. It has a sexy rock-and-roll feel to it that makes people bust out with their Dirty Dancing moves.
Black Betty by Ram Jam | Released in 1977, this one surprised everyone in the crowd at the Redbull Thre3style competition in LA last year. This should be played for all the people. It still lives on!
“Big Poppa by The Notorious B.I.G.” | Another one
of my guilty pleasures. Released in 1994, this song hit the Top 10 in 1995 and has kept people dancing ever since. My favorite place to play this tune was in Atlantic City.
cumbersome; eventually, the FM band developed the capability of stereo broadcasting over one receiver. Stereo receivers replaced monaural ones in hi-fi component systems, and stereo table radios and car radios also evolved. The “beautiful music” format began to be independently popular on FM radio, with progressive rock stations soon to come.
DJ Cassie Stevens has deejayed in New York, Paris, Los Angeles, Atlantic City and is now on a three-month contract in India. Her music taste is vast: she loves everything from rock-and-roll and Motown to house and hip hop. She says, “It all depends on the vibe of the place.”
(Don’t touch that dial! Stay tuned for the next installment …) Art Wilson is a Philadelphia-based musician, teacher, software specialist and retired chemist. www.themodern.us
January 2012 | The Modern
picker/grinner/lover/sinner
The Singing Nun and the Tragedy of Jeanine Deckers In 1963, she scored an international hit with “Dominque”. But this rebel spirit also struggled with personal demons. By Desiree Dymond I came of age in Michigan in the Eighties. However, I had a mother who grew up in a convent in a land far, far away. To me, the Philippines was a mystical place filled with happy, care-free nuns teaching girls to sing songs around a campfire in French, English and Tagalog. The girls went about their daily chores of washing clothes in the nearby river and making crafts to sell in the convent’s store. I’d imagine they would have been singing just like the dwarves in Snow White. I fantasized that the convent’s mountaintop home was swirling with mist and fairies, singing the little girls to sleep in their warm beds every night. In the Sixties, there was a Belgian nun named Jeanine Deckers, also known in France as Sœur Sourire (Sister Smile). In the US and Britain, she was known as The Singing Nun. In 1963, she had a major international hit with a single called “Dominique.” My mother and her childhood friends learned this song quickly, being as popular as it was with the nuns. When the song would be broadcast on the one radio owned by the financially challenged convent, the girls would dance with joy at this oncea-week radio privilege. Fast forward to the more recent past: I witnessed my mom and her twin sister singing “Dominique” in a sad hospital room. I became obsessed with how cute and funny the song was, and that it had the ability to pull me out of sadness, even if just for a moment. Some time later, I was searching the Internet for the French lyrics to the song when I came across the tragic story of Jeanine Deckers. The Modern | January 2012
Despite “Dominique” surpassing Elvis and other chart toppers by the Christmas of 1963, Deckers saw no profit from her success. Having taken a vow of poverty in dedication to her order, all of the possible financial gain she could have made was donated to the convent and taken by her management. On some level, Deckers must have found some dissatisfaction with this situation. Shortly after this hit song, she decided to leave the convent to pursue her music career. Unfortunately, this turned out to be a bad decision. She never again experienced the commercial success of that first hit song. This shocks me as I listen to some of my other favorite songs of hers, such as “AmourSoleil,” “Pour Les Chances,” and “Plein Ton Esprit Dans Ma Guitare.” I don’t even speak French, and have only a rough idea what these songs literally mean, but the feeling I get from them is enough to make me fall in love. Maybe it’s naïve of me to think that just because the music is beautiful and moving, that it should fare well commercially. The only reason I see her success being hindered in the cruel world beyond the convent was her decision to leave the order and shed her innocent nun persona. She renounced her Catholic religion by recording a song in support of birth control. It was called “Glory Be to God For The Golden Pill,” and a direct assault against the church’s beliefs. Then there was another song entitled “The Smiling Sister Is Dead,” as well as her naming the album I Am Not a Star in Heaven. This obviously did not fly well with her large base of Catholic fans, especially people similar to my www.themodern.us
mother who were raised in a strict Catholic environment and took offense to Deckers’ new direction. After leaving the convent and experiencing commercial failure with her music, Deckers decided to start teaching. She opened a school for autistic children with her partner. Eventually, the Belgian government came after her for unpaid taxes on the song “Dominique”, which was an astronomical amount of money. Since Deckers couldn’t prove that she had donated all of the money to her convent, the unfortunate burden was placed upon her. No one who financially benefitted from her past talent came to her rescue. This extreme debt and the risk of losing her beloved school was all too much for her; Deckers could no longer endure. In 1985, at age 51, Deckers and her partner were found dead. They had taken a lethal overdose of barbiturates, paired with alcohol. The suicide note left was this:
“We hope God will welcome us. He saw us suffer, so He should show clemency.” My mother’s response to this tragic ending?
“We hope God will welcome us. He saw us suffer, so He should show clemency.”
“She should have never left the convent.” Jeanine Deckers and her partner, Annie Pecher, now reside at Cheremont Cemetary in Wavre, Walloon Brabant, Belgium. One day I hope to pass by and lay a yellow flower on her grave. Desiree Dymond is a model, singer/songwriter, and blogger residing in NYC.
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dig this dvd
The Ed Sullivan Show
Four Complete Historic Episodes featuring the Beatles (SOFA Entertainment–2003) Screw The Beatles. It’s Soupy Sales who steals this historic show. By Ronald Sklar The seemingly endless commentary from critics on the power of the Beatles’ influence has been branded on our brains so deeply that we now take the Fab Four’s explosive beginnings for granted. In fact, the very clips of their first appearance on American television, in February 1964 on Ed Sullivan’s Sunday night variety show, have been viewed and reviewed, discussed and dissected, interpreted and defined to the point of meaninglessness. Even to watch these classic performances now, after probably a lifetime of exposure to them in some
The Modern | January 2012
form, can leave you lukewarm rather than exhilarated. The very need to use this visual experience to “define a generation” or to illustrate a “turning tide” in our cultural history cheapens the very punch it originally packed. The only way to experience the true blow-out shock of this televised event is to screen it in its purest form: as an entire program, rather than just the highlighted clips. You need to consider the whole to appreciate the sum of its parts. In this important, musthave DVD containing the complete, four-episode Beatles’ appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show (three in February 1964 and one during the next television season, in September 1965), you get to truly witness and decide for yourself what the Beatles have done and how they’ve done it and why they mean what they mean. During the course of these programs, you literally see history being made; the culture actually changes before your eyes. These are the raw, unedited episodes of The Ed Sullivan Show, warts and all, and there are plenty of warts: dishwater-black-and-white broadcasts filled with what the entertainment business was before it surrendered to youth: borscht-belt comedians telling mother-in-law jokes and complaining about “these kids today;” Vegasworthy novelty acts involving acrobatics and unlikely props that each drag on a minute too long; brassy broads in sequins and furs really selling you a song; people-sized puppets (yes, puppets) doing their darnedest to be adorable; magicians glazing you over with card tricks; and impressionists imitating long-forgotten celebrities. Most agonizingly of all, we are pounded over the noggin with long commercials that take their time communicating their tiresome messages (for instance, Lipton Instant Tea is somehow proud that their product “puts you in an eating mood”). These broadcasts were the most watched in television history to that date, and www.themodern.us
the delirious advertisers shelled out big bucks because they knew you weren’t going anywhere, not even to pee. And strangely yet, the first Beatle sponsors – like Aero Shave shaving cream and Griffin Liquid Wax – no longer exist. There is no denying how easily entertained everyone was back then. It really didn’t take much to amuse the masses. The Beatles cut through all of this torture like a buzz saw. THIS is exactly where you appreciate them, and see the difference they have made, and you suddenly realize that the way we are entertained is about to change forever. The other acts on the show – as well as the 100% Caucasian studio audience -- seem to be well aware that they are a part of something novel and kicky and special. However, it’s not evident that they are conscious of the fact that history is actually being made, “right here on our stage,” as Sullivan would say. It’s almost as if the Beatles are a lucky distraction: it’s for the kids, but everybody is curious as to what the fuss is about. The screaming teenagers appear wild to Sullivan and to the befuddled adults in the audience (many with their hands to their ears), but not to us. The teenage boys are not screaming – in fact, they’re sitting like gentlemen in sharp suits and crew cuts, but you can just see that something is getting to them, stirring within them, and they are never going to be quite the same again after the closing credits. The excitement is electric, but to the audience it’s more like electric shock: a quick zap – not long term. It doesn’t seem likely that anybody is noticing that the world had just experienced a jolting shift. Today, programming aimed at youth is created, produced and hosted by youth. Back then, however, it was an adult world, with Sullivan being the stern but perceptive master parent. With the exception of American Bandstand in the afternoon, rock and roll was not a regularly welcomed occurrence on television, and certainly not taken seriously — until this. Rock and television were born together and grew up side by side, but they had an uneasy courtship at first. Kids acting like kids (unruly and ruled by their hormones) were not a pretty sight for a family show. Sullivan alerted the “youngsters” to stay in their seats, and his stone-cold eyes warned them to keep their screamwww.themodern.us
ing and squirming and panty-wetting to a minimum. He was not above requesting that the audience “settle down,” reminding them throughout the show that “you promised…” However, by the Beatles’ fourth appearance, Sullivan himself was taken in by the very Beatlemania he sparked. He encouraged the pandemonium, attempting to lift his stiff arms and ask for more cheering. Sullivan introduces the Beatles very first set (contrary to everyone’s cloudy memory of this, their debut song was not “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.” The portion consisted of “All My Lovin’,” “Til There Was You,” and “She Loves You”); then, he proudly declares that the segment is dedicated to Johnny Carson, Randy Parr and Earl Wilson. This in itself is baffling and beyond strange, but it is proof again that adults ruled (but not for much longer). And it is most likely no coincidence that the set is sponsored by “today’s” Anacin, the headache remedy (for adults whose heads were spinning). Also, it could very well be possible that Paul’s lovely rendition of “’Till There Was You,” from Broadway’s The Music Man, was a reaching-out opportunity to get the adults to dig them too. And dig they must. After that, it was back to the adult table. In the most anticlimactic moment in the history of television, magician Fred Kaps performs the world’s most boring card trick only seconds after the Beatles finish their first set. The cast of Oliver (including young Davy Jones, who would follow the Beatles again as a cast member of The Monkees) do some Broadway beltin’, and the non-funny husband-and-wife comedy team of McCall and Brill do a cutesy boss-and-secretary sketch that won’t register as much as a tee-hee from you. “Brilliant” impressionist Frank Gorshin (soon to be The Riddler on Batman) wonders how it would sound if stars like Broderick Crawford, Dean Martin, Marlon Brando and Burt Lancaster ran the country. You won’t give a rat’s ass, but the audience is beside themselves. As Homer Simpson would later say, “It’s funny because it’s true.” The real second-runner-up in this historic show is another Brit – a bull of an old broad named Tessie O’ Shea, who wows us with her rendition of “I’ve Got Rhythm.” She’s mixing it up, kicking up her heels, tossing off her mink stole and playing the banjo – she ain’t leavin’ till you love her. January 2012 | The Modern
dig this dvd “Keep your eye on the mink,” she tells the audience with a wink, “I got it the hard way.” We don’t exactly know what she means by this, but we’re sure it’s for adults only. The second show (the following week) is broadcast from the old-world glamour of the Deauville Hotel in Miami (or as Sullivan calls it, Miama). In a large auditorium without air conditioning and burdened with archaic, scorching television lighting, the Beatles again do their thing (“She Loves You,” “This Boy” and “All My Lovin”). In an audience of four thousand, 1.5 million of them are vacationing Jews from New York (Paul, in yet another attempt to win the adults’ approval, jokingly says, “this next one was written by one of our favorite American bands: Sophie Tucker!”). However, it’s singer/dancer Mitzi Gaynor (or as Sullivan insists on calling her, “Hollywood’s Mitzi Gaynor”) who makes one of the first attempts to reach out across the generations. Done up in an intense Sixties ’do, and backed by male dancers who may very well be homosexual, she makes a rambling speech about how some music is for you and some music is for me, but some music is for ALL OF US. Then she proceeds to prove how wrong she is about that, with the appropriately inappropriate “It’s Too Darn Hot” and “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Comedian Myron Cohen makes some Krushchev jokes and Sullivan introduces boxing legend Joe Louis, who is seated in the audience with fellow fighter Sonny Liston (who Sullivan calls “a real class guy”). Louis stands up, takes a bow, and wonders what the hell he’s doing in the middle of 1964. However, it’s the comedy team of Allen and Rossi who actually earn the title of comedy team. The wacky, wiry-haired Marty Allen, whose beloved catchphrase is “Hello, dere,” takes the audience by storm by commenting that the kids think that he is “Ringo’s mother.” He then snaps into a wild dance while donning a Beatles wig (as if he needs funnier hair than the hair he already has). In honor of Joe Louis and Sonny Liston, he also poses as a fighter who, when asked by straight-man Rossi, “What do you do after a fight?” Allen answers, “I bleed.” And, “Do you plan to fight Sonny Liston?” Allen answers, “Sure, I got a minute.” Their second appearance is a true howl, when Rossi sings a ring-a-ding-ding rendition of “She Loves You” The Modern | January 2012
while Allen shimmies and frugs into the audience, unsuccessfully attempting to get someone – anyone – to twist with him. Sadly, for the sake of history, there are no takers. Without a doubt, this is one of the truly funniest moments ever on television, and if you watch nothing else on this DVD collection, watch this. Forget the Beatles – you will forever belong to Marty Allen. By the Beatles’ fourth appearance, in September of 1965, the novelty is starting to wear off. Their hair is much longer, the songs are much deeper (“Ticket To Ride,” “Yesterday,” “Help”), and Ringo, whose awkward facial expressions should be cataloged, trademarked and practiced to perfection by ALL OF US, blows his shot at the big time with the unbearable “Act Naturally.” Fellow Brit Cilia Black wows the crowd with a swingin’ rendition of “September In the Rain,” but it’s the English way she says “Septembah” that gets the Liverpool-lovin’ audience grooving. During a commercial break, Pillsbury boasts of its new concept of “refrigerated dough!” However, it’s comedian Soupy Sales (not the Beatles) who wins the day with his novelty record, “The Mouse.” Like a rodent himself, he scurries into the audience and unashamedly does his dance (which involves sticking your teeth out like a mouse, among other mousy gestures) and the crowd cannot get enough. Soupy Sales is completely and totally adored, and that’s putting it mildly. The crowd goes wild for Soupy in a way that would make the Beatles envious. They even know the words to the song, which has since been lost to the ages but should definitely be resurrected. Even though we never get to see other Sullivan shows in their full length (including the one they tease you with, starring “top comedy star” Jack Carter), these four programs will get you feeling fine. They’re worth watching, because you will never see anything like this on television again.
See what all the excitement is about. Here’s a taste of the episode itself (look out for Soupy!):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXu3LS1fmdg www.themodern.us
postcards from the edge
Location Postcards By Jack Rotoli I love old postcards with the textured linen style and the vibrant colors. I don’t specialize in any city, state or holiday. My favorites feature an inviting montage of scenes crammed into the swooshing set of letters of a city’s name. I can experience each town’s enthusiasm as they designed their cards, wanting to show off as much as possible to a growing nation on the road. On the back of Albany’s card, for instance, they list which scene is featured within each letter on the front. That’s easy to do when you have only six letters. I think Jacksonville may have tried this too, but gave up after the “k.” I’m fascinated by how much information is displayed in “Jacksonville Beach.” It consists of a full moon surrounded by clouds, on a clear night at land’s end. The breakers form into crashing waves on the sand, and that’s just in the “I,” a painting a mere quarter-inch wide. Montgomery, Alabama likes our flag. Three of its scenes feature the stars and stripes waving over landmark buildings. Virginia wants to educate me. I get the capital and state flower information on the front; population and square miles are noted on the back. It’s almost obligatory to have “Greetings from” on the front of the card. This must be an unwritten law in the postcard industry. If a postcard just said, “Albany, N.Y.” would it be less appealing, or less inviting? Would the recipient disregard the card if they felt they weren’t greeted first? The backs of the cards are equally enjoyable. The cards from Albany, NY and Montgomery, AL were sent from and to the same individuals. At first, the text indicates that the sender was traveling with a theater group, as she spoke of “the show,” but again, the postmark dates indicate a difference in five years. That would give ‘getting the show on the road’ a whole new meaning. There’s nothing written on the back of my Walterboro, SC postcard. Perhaps nobody wanted to mail this incredibly outdated relic. These postcards are old, from a different time and state of mind. I find the imagery dis-
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turbing, but feel it can’t be ignored. Intrigued by the painting of African-Americans (let’s face it, they look like slaves in the cotton field), I imagine that their history in the slave trade haunts the citizens of Walterboro, as does the witch hysteria in Salem, MA. I visited the official website and find Walterboro to be rich in history and culture. The various postage offers an insight to the rising cost of a penny postcard over the years – or fivepenny postcard… or eight pennies. The cards from Canton, OH and Kansas were mailed for free, as both senders were engaged in serving our country during World War II. The really interesting thing is that both cards are addressed to the same woman, from two different servicemen! If they only knew. You’ll have to trust me on this, but I fuzzed out the names to protect the senders’ and recipient’s privacy; but hey, who could resist a little voyeurism into their lives? I guess “Blue Eyes” never heard Glenn Miller’s “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree.” Upon closer scrutiny, however, the postmarks indicate that the cards were sent two years apart, Canton in ’42 and Kansas in ’44, which then makes one wonder of the servicemen’s fates. We can only guess of the relationships though. Friends? Lovers? Brother and sister… we’ll never know, but the memories and correspondence live on in the postcards from the past. Jack Rotoli is an artist and writer living in Pennsylvania.
January 2012 | The Modern
retro merch
Jay S. Jacobs
Mood rings expressed your feelings… nothing more than feelings By Jay S. Jacobs The 1970s were a complicated era. It was a heady time. It was a conflicted time. It was a sexy time. It was a scary time. Sometimes, we just didn’t know how we felt about things. Into this grand, national state of confusion came a little beacon of clarity: the mood ring. Finally, we would know what our disposition was. It was right there on our finger in bright, shiny colors. It had to be true, right? Jewelry told us it was so.
The mood ring was the brainchild of a pair of New York inventors named Josh Reynolds and Maris Ambats. Essentially, it was a thermochromic liquid crystal thermometer worn as a ring. When your temperature rises – through happiness, excitement, passion, horniness, whatever – the color of the mood ring changes to a bright green, blue or purple. When it is lowered – through fear, anger, remorse – the color goes dark. The ring was accompanied by a color chart, explaining what each shade of the stone meant while www.themodern.us
you were “feeling.” Suddenly bluffing at love or poker was just a little bit harder for an enraptured public. The mood ring was first made available in 1975
through the classy New York department store Bonwit Teller, for the rather pricy (for the Seventies) costs of $45 for a silver band or $250 for gold. Soon, and for a brief, “shining” moment, they became huge. The fad allowed for cheesy manufacturers like the K-Tel Corp. (who made their name selling compilation records of the current top of the pops) to sell on the cheap. The mood ring became a vital part of any mid-Seventies teen’s wardrobe, together with the puka shell necklace and the “Sit on it!” tshirt. The only problem with mood rings was that there was no agreement as to the color chart. Each manufacturer devised its own list, so what one ring manufacturer saw as happy, another one might take to mean gaseous. And suddenly, despite the valiant efforts of these jewelers, the world was a complicated place, yet again. Jay S. Jacobs is the author of the books “Wild Years: The Music and Myth of Tom Waits” and “Pretty Good Years: A Biography of Tori Amos.” He is also senior editor and founder of the pop culture web magazine www.popentertainment.com. January 2012 | The Modern
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sh t
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPLuCpKrDUc This mid-Sixties Midwestern children’s show actually has a mission statement: to move lunchmeats. And check out the proud parents in the peanut gallery: they’re dressed to the nines. Back then, people dolled up real swell for TV tapings, church services and airplane rides. Today’s musical guests: The New Colony Six (not too shabby!). As you can see from the band’s curtain call, they are clearly overjoyed to have been booked on this local kiddie show (Shea Stadium must have already been taken). Nevertheless, these tots could really cut a rug. You could really learn a thing or two from them if you are serious about your Sixties dancing. Pandora, the hostess with the mostess, is stiff and unsettling, in a charming kind of way. And she knows whereof she speaks: the announcer claims that she “makes the scene” every week on Kiddie A Go Go. Then she returns to her box. Ronald Sklar