In my last post I discussed my memories from the strange and distant alternate universe called the 1980’s. This included a few cultural artifacts that are long forgotten. As a service to younger readers (and because it’s important to remember how goddamn weird the world really is) I provide the following “study guide”.
Robert Preston, The Music Man, 1962. This is exactly what it feels like when everyone suddenly picks a single obscure thing and decides it is corrupting society. Robert Preston nailed it!
Time Magazine, June 19, 1972. Frankly I didn’t realize how long the whole Satan thing lasted. I thought it fired up in the early 1980’s. 1972 is a lot earlier than I thought.
Hee Haw (1970’s). As God is my witness, people watched this on TV in the 1970’s and in reruns in the 1980’s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xv13g44ROaw
Benny Hill, 1980. (NSFW?) This was PRIME-TIME in 1980. I’m not saying TV is any less stupid now, I’m just saying adults were watching this on black and white TVs with antennas in the exact same era when they though immoral heavy metal was leading their teenagers into sin and perdition.
Ow My Balls (Any Day Now). The excellent future documentary used “Ow My Balls” as an example of how low society would degrade in an idiotic future. Go ahead and compare this to Hee Haw.
Dio, Last In Line, 1984. I’ll admit it hasn’t aged well but so what? Also, I don’t give a shit how juvenile the lyrics are… the opening section of the song is brilliant. Dio shamelessly and non-ironically heaps up a 45 second pile of lame ass schmaltz. A happy kid on a bicycle; just like the kids on “Stranger Things“. Then, just when you’re going to puke from all that sugar, Dio immolates every molecule of schmaltz with a 5 second scream that’ll straighten your spine! (Which is something of a parallel to the plotline of Stranger Things.) Imagine a kid trying to explain the whole “juxtaposition of good and evil in both tone and instrumentation” to an adult who’s hyperventilating about Satan! Also, it’s wrong and cruel to expect a hearty young man to subsist on a diet of the Bangles on FM.
One last point. There was a time when MTV (Music TV) played music videos on television. It didn’t last long but it was pretty awesome for a while.
AMC Gremlin, (pictured model is from 1978). What. The. Fuck!?!?
One skit from Hee-Haw that I recall is where Junior Samples and another actor are under the lazy tree facing different directions. “Hey Junior…..” “Huh?” “There’s a girl over yonder without a stitch of clothes on.” “I sure do wish I was a looking that direction”.
We had three channels, and two channel changers, myself being one of them and my sister the other. Then we got the motorized antenna rotor and picked up two more stations. We watched a lot of Hee-Haw and Austin City Limits.
Yep! I remember when we got the motor, & didn’t have to go outside to turn the antenna anymore.
Little pieces of masking tape stuck on the motor controller, with the channel written on each one, each placed at the direction of that station’s bearing (SW was Jackson, NNW was Paducah, etc.).
Two things:
1) If you think the Hills Angels sketch was raunchy and NSFW – which in strait laced America it might be – then you DEFINITELY don’t want to search out Kenny Everett and the dance troupe Hot Gossip on his “Kenny Everett Video Show” otherwise it will blow the fluff out of your navel.
Something like Hot Gossip dancing to Animals like THIS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=su5FV1qGD4E
Any sketch with Cleo Rocos in it is worth a look too … Ahem! Just saying, is all …
2) if you keep giving away the secrets of how the politicians manipulate the public with manufactured and faux panics, I can see you having an accident like falling down the stairs and breaking your neck, no matter how many times you need to fall down the stairs to do it and even if you live in a house with no stairs.
The men in dark suits, sunglasses and flat top hair cuts don’t mess around, y’know.
I also have important information about Hillary Cl………
You want “mass hysteria”???
I got some “mass hysteria” for you right here, Binky:
https://tinyurl.com/y7wd5jvx
!!!!!
Miniature horses on airplanes? They take away smokes and free booze and now we’ve got livestock!
Well at least they haven’t yet allowed miniature cows on planes. Horse muffins are a pain to clean up, but cow pies? Yeesh!
Of course, there is no shortage of full-size cows on planes these days, is there?
}:-]
Dio is freaking awesome! He’s still better than 90% of the shit that passes for music now days.
THANKS! I knew I wasn’t alone in that!
MTV. 1982 to 1984. The golden years before they went craptastic and multicultural.
It was still watchable up to ’86 but you could see it declining.
It was cool for a while. Then it was gone!
I honestly believed music videos would become a permanent addition to the art form of music. Much like how every record came with lovely album art on on the LP’s slipcover. (Younger readers may need to consult Wikipedia on the concept of art on a big flat visual surface as part of how you stored your vinyl album.) Now that I think of it, LPs were the peak integration of visual medium into your music. CDs never had as much “punch” and now music is just filenames with thumbnails…bummer. I was a bit embarrassed by Dio’s cover art but you sure as hell knew you were looking at something.
If you’d have told me in 1985 that music videos would fade away it would have been unbelievable. It would have like telling me synthesizers would devolve back into player pianos.
I’m still surprised by the quick rise and ensuing fade of a promising artistic medium. And, of course, MTV has been shit ever since.
The satanic mass hysteria included actual witch hunts, and many people were put in cages for years as a result. Massachusetts indulged in yet another round of witch hunting and Gerald Amirault spent 19 years in a cage because he changed the pants of a 4-year old boy who had wet himself. There were at least a dozen other cases where fantastical tales of satanic ritual abuse were coerced from preschool children and used to try and convict innocent people.
Including here in Florida by dear ol’ Janet Reno!
But at least now she’s where she belongs, in a warmer climate. Spending time with her dear ol’ buddy Teddy “Swim, bitch!” Kennedy.
OK, here’s something more recent – I cut & pasted this from Paul Harrison’s Scientific Pantheist FB page (I don’t have a FB account, but check in on some bookmarked public pages from time to time):
PRICELESS: On April 26th this year the Arkansas congress allowed a monument of the Ten Commandments to be erected in the grounds of the state capitol. The Satanic Temple sued, saying it privileged one religion over others, thus violating the US constitution. Now they have gone one better – they are seeking to erect a magnificent one-ton 8 ft bronze statue of Baphomet, who looks amazingly like Satan, on the grounds. They shipped it from Detroit, and held a gathering to celebrate pluralism, with Christian and secular speakers. This could go to the Supreme Court. The Arkansas Capitol could end up with Wotan, Isis, Zeus, Ganesh, Kwanyin, Mbombo – a theme park for gods. Paul Harrison- Note: Mbombo is a Congolese God who created the Universe by vomiting it up.
I Ecosia’d it and yep Time, Fox, NPR, Christian News Network, etc are all reporting on it.