Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.
After hearing this song it’s hard to get it out of your head. I’ve heard of Ian Dury and the Blockheads for years but really didn’t know much about them. I was won over by this song by the melody and the small guitar riff and his overly British delivery. I never understood the term “too British” that was placed on bands like The Kinks, Slade, and others. It cannot get too British for me.
The groove in this song is infectious. It was released in 1977 as a non-album single but didn’t chart in the UK at the time. The song was written by Ian Dury and Chaz Jankel in Dury’s flat in Oval Mansions, London. Dury stole the riff from an Ornette Coleman album. He later met the bass player Charlie Haden who played that riff (on a song called Ramblin) and he said he stole it also from an old Cajun tune.
Some say the song didn’t chart because it was at the peak of Punk music and by the title it looked like a song about excess…something that was taboo in the Punk playbook. They were signed to Stiff Records and the record company organized a tour.
Per Wiki…Stiff Records organized a joint tour for Nick Lowe, Ian Dury, Wreckless Eric, Larry Wallis, and Elvis Costello, five of their biggest acts at the time, with the intention of having the bands alternating as the headlining act. Ian Dury and the newly formed Blockheads soon became the stars of the tour (it was surmised that Elvis Costello would be the main attraction, having had chart success) and the nightly encore became “Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll”.
That tells you how good these guys were live back then.
Ian Dury: Sex And Drugs’ started as a mild admonishment and ended as a lovely anthem. There was a time when I got fed up with it, but it got a new lease of life. When me and Jankel wrote this song we stole the riff from a Charlie Haden bass solo on a 1960 Ornette Coleman album called Change Of The Century. I met Charlie Haden later and he told me that he’d nicked the riff too, from a Cajun folk tune! It was banned by the BBC when we released it as a single but it sold about 18,000 copies. With this song I was trying to suggest there was more to life than either of those three – sex, drugs and rock’n’roll, or pulling a lever all day in a factory.
Of course when I go out and perform the song, everyone sings along, and you can’t stop ’em! People say to me: ‘Now there’s AIDS about, don’t you think that song was awful?’ I explain it was always a question mark about those activities. And I wrote it before all these dreadful sexual diseases like Herpes and AIDS appeared. I was saying, ‘If all you think about is sex and drugs and rock’n’roll, there is something wrong.’ The title was used in headlines all over the world. I wish I’d got a quid every time that title has been used.”
Sex & Drugs & Rock ‘n’ Roll
Sex and drugs and rock and roll
Is all my brain and body need
Sex and drugs and rock and roll
Are very good indeed
Keep your silly ways or throw them out the window
The wisdom of your ways, I’ve been there and I know
Lots of other ways, what a jolly bad show
If all you ever do is business you don’t like
Sex and drugs and rock and roll
Sex and drugs and rock and roll
Sex and drugs and rock and roll
Is very good indeed
Every bit of clothing ought to make you pretty
You can cut the clothing, gray is such a pity
I should wear the clothing of Mr. Walter Mitty
See my tailor, he’s called Simon, I know it’s going to fit
Here’s a little piece of advice
You’re quite welcome it is free
Don’t do nothing that is cut price
You know what that’ll make you be
They will try their tricky device
Trap you with the ordinary
Get your teeth into a small slice
The cake of liberty
Sex and drugs and rock and roll
Sex and drugs and rock and roll
Sex and drugs and rock and roll
Sex and drugs and rock and roll
Sex and drugs and rock and roll
Sex and drugs and rock and roll
Sex and drugs and rock and roll
Sex and drugs and rock and roll
Sex, drugs, rock, roll, sex, drugs, rock, roll
Cool titles will pull me into songs. This is a pure gritty rock song from the early sixties. Pete Townshend said it was a major influence on The Who.
This is one of my favorite pre-Beatles UK songs. Great rocker with a cool guitar riff. Johnny’s name was Frederick Heath and he formed his first skiffle group in 1957 called The Five Nutters (great name). He then joined Alan Caddy (guitar), Tony Docherty (rhythm guitar), and Ken McKay (drums) in early 1958 and formed Johnny Kidd & the Pirates who were signed by EMI Records.
Heath went on playing with the Pirates and the New Pirates until he was killed in a car crash on October 7, 1966. Johnny Kidd wrote this song after seeing a beautiful girl…hmmm never heard that before! “Beautiful girl” has been used as a muse since music began.
Shakin’ All Over peaked at #1 in the UK charts in 1960. The Who would later do a version on their great live album Live At Leads. Another band covered this song and was a big hit in Canada.
Chad Allan and the Expressions recorded the song in 1964. The group’s label Quality Records credited the artist as Guess Who? in an attempt to disguise their origin and hint that the group might be a British Invasion act. The actual name was revealed a few months later, but radio DJs continued to announce the artist as “Guess Who?”. That version peaked at #1 in Canada and #22 on the Billboard 100 in 1965. From that time on they were The Guess Who
The Who started to hit around this time so The Guess Who got constant requests for My Generation. They didn’t like their name but the record company insisted they keep it. Things worked out for both bands. They eventually became friends and hung out with each other when they crossed paths on tour.
The Pirates bass player Brian Gregg:“Wally Ridley’s (the producer)’s assistant, Peter Sullivan said, ‘We’re going to do the old trad tune, “Yes Sir That’s My Baby”, and you can have the B-side.” The day before the session we were in the Freight Train coffee-bar in Berwick Street and we said, ‘Let’s write any old rubbish’. There was Johnny, the guitarist Alan Caddy and myself. We didn’t have any instruments and we sang the parts to ‘Shakin’ All Over’. We got up early in the morning, had a run through in my front room- not plugged in, and we went to the studio and recorded it. We thought it would be a B-side but Jack Good loved it and pushed it on his new programme, Wham!: And it went straight up the charts.”
Shakin’ All Over
When you move in right up close to me
That’s when I get the shakes all over me
Quivers down my back bone
I’ve got the shakes down the kneebone
Yeah, havin’ the tremors in the thighbone
Shakin’ all over
Just the way you say goodnight to me
Brings that feeling on inside of me
Quivers down my back bone
I’ve got the shivers down the thighbone
Yeah, the tremors in my back bone
Shakin’ all over
Quivers down my back bone
Yeah, I have the shakes in the kneebone
I’ve got the tremors in the back bone
Shakin’ all over
Well, you make me shake and I like it, baby
Well, you make me shake and I like it, baby
Well, you make me shake and I like it, baby
I hope you like instrumentals…because this one has three. Let’s start this off with one of the best instrumentals of all time. Booker T. and The MG’s would keep releasing their groove songs through the sixties. An incredible array of talent with Booker T Jones, Lewie Steinberg, Al Jackson Jr., and the great guitarist Steve Cropper. The song was written by Booker T. Jones, Steve Cropper, Lewie Steinberg, and Al Jackson Jr. Lewie Steinberg would be replaced in 1965 by Donald “Duck” Dunn.
Because of the Ken Burns documentary on baseball…every time I hear this song…I can see Sandy Koufax’s left arm making magic in Dodger Stadium with pastel colors in the stands.
Bruce Channel‘s Hey Baby is a great song that was released this year. The harmonica part is catchy and will stick with you. Who was playing that riff on harmonica? No other than Delbert McClinton. He would later give John Lennon some lessons on the instrument in Hamburg. It was written by Margaret Cobb and Bruce Channel. Here is a bit of trivia for ya… This was the first Hot 100 #1 song with an exclamation point in its title.
Dick Dale…what a guitarist he was. This song is up there with my favorites. Miserlou was released in 62 and still sounds great today. Pulp Fiction helped to make it popular in the 1990s with a new generation.
Otis Redding had a voice that was like no other. Sam Cooke had a smooth-as-silk voice but Otis could give you both. He could sing a ballad and then turn around and growl a song.
The legendary Joe Meek wrote and produced this song. This was an adventurous instrumental record for the time and ahead of its time. The song blasted off for the Tornados. An instrumental with space sound effects, this was inspired by the Telstar communications satellite, which was launched shortly before this song was written. Telstar no longer functions but still orbits the Earth.
An overdubbed Clavioline keyboard provoked spooked space effects, while a backward tape of a flushing toilet evoked all the majesty of a space-bound rocket.
If you want to see where we are…and you missed a few…HERE is a list of the episodes in my index located at the top of my blog.
This show was written by Gene Roddenberry, Lee Erwin, and Jerry Sohl
As Kirk and Spock are about to embark on an away visit to a prison planet to deliver medical supplies, they suspect something isn’t quite right. The medical supply is medicine to help the criminally insane. Kirk arranges a code signal with Scotty before he beams him and Leonard Nimoy back on board.
That proved to be a wise precaution because when the two beam down the prison and it’s a prison for the criminally insane. The warden/governor of the planet Keye Luke has been overthrown and Steve Ihnat has taken over. This former starship commander is mad and also has developed shape-shifting abilities. The inmates have taken over.
I’ve read where some think Steve Ihnat went overboard playing the mad criminal Garth…well yea he did but that is what the role called for. He has ambitions just as mad people do, to take over the immediate universe with the Enterprise at his disposal and his ability now to become Captain Kirk. But there’s that signal code that Kirk arranged with Scotty. Can’t do much until he’s on the Enterprise.
Yvonne Craig plays Marta an Orion Slave Girl and is great in the part. The ending gets eventful. Garth turns into a clone of Captain Kirk and he fights the real Captain Kirk. Spock comes in and doesn’t know which one to stun. He uses his logic and listens…does he stun the wrong one?
If Yvonne Craig seems familiar…she played Batgirl on the Batman TV show.
From IMDB:
The plot of inmates taking over the asylum and impersonating the warden closely resembles Dagger of the Mind (1966), right down to the “agony chair” prop which is reused from that episode. In his memoir ‘I Am Not Spock’, Leonard Nimoy shares a memo that he wrote to the producers to complain about the similarities.
Garth’s costume is that of Galactic High Commissioner Ferris from The Galileo Seven (1967).
The episode’s title is often misattributed to the Greek playwright Euripides. However, the phrase “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad” is spoken by Prometheus in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “The Masque of Pandora” (1875). Another version (“Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad”) is quoted as a “heathen proverb” in ‘Daniel, a Model for Young Men’ (1854) by William Anderson Scott (1813-1885). Yet another variation on the phrase was given by historian Charles A. Beard, who, when asked to write a short volume summarizing the lessons of history, said that he could do it in four sentences. One of them was, “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power.”
The asylum planet’s name is based upon an historical place. Elba II is named after the Mediterranean island off of the coast of Italy where the French Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte was briefly exiled to in 1814. Napoleon succeeded in escaping from there in 1815 and was restored to power in France, but was later defeated at Waterloo. He then spent the remaining six years of his life on the remote South Atlantic island of Saint Helena. “Captain Garth” in this story was characterized as another Napoleon.
The remote control for the facility’s force fields is a repainted and redecorated phaser prop.
Garth’s torture chair is a reuse of the chair in the neural neutralizer room from Dagger of the Mind (1966), with the addition of earpieces mounted on either side.
Although Garth is a former Starfleet captain whose exploits were studied by Kirk at Starfleet Acadamy (and thus is at least a decade older than Kirk), the actor who played Garth – Steve Ihnat – is 3 years younger than William Shatner (Kirk).
Kirk refers to Spock as his “brother” and Spock agrees with this figurative interpretation of their relationship. Kirk would refer to Spock as his “brother” again in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989).
In the United Kingdom, the BBC skipped this episode in all runs of the series through to the early 1990s, due to its content.
Steve Ihnat worked with Gene Roddenberry and DeForest Kelley in his failed pilot Police Story (1967), which led to his casting as Garth.
While the Andorian inmate is wearing an almost boa-like red costume, one of the Human inmates is wearing the traditional Andorian costume seen in the second season (and which can be seen again on an Andorian corpse in The Lights of Zetar (1969)).
Garth mentions several figures from Earth’s history who failed in their attempts to conquer the planet, among them Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler, and the fictional name of Lee Kuan. This marks the second time the fictional name of Lee Kuan was mentioned in the original series, as Spock cited his name among Ramses II, Gaio Giulio Cesare, Alexander the Great, Napoléon Bonaparte, and Adolf Hitler in Patterns of Force (1968), where Spock stated that Earth’s history is “full of men seeking absolute power.”
Contrary to popular belief, the Tellarites in TOS always had three fingers, even in this episode. The fingers are sleeker in appearance than they were in Season Two. The Lights of Zetar (1969) would be the only time we see a Tellarite with five fingers in TOS.
The character of Garth led to an historic legal battle between CBS/Paramount and the fan filmmaking community: a battle about pitting digital rights and its owners, and the community which has fostered their growth in the first place. The Star Trek fan filmmaking community has always been very strong and vibrant one, even prior to the Internet. However, it’s been through such sites as YouTube, that the fan-made films have found a much wider audience. After receiving over $1million in Kickstarter funds, the makers of a proposed fan-made film based upon Garth’s battle at Axanar, were told by CBS/Paramount in no uncertain terms that doing so would be in violation of copyrighted material. This incident – and the uproar since – has roiled the community.
The suits worn by Garth’s men on the planet surface are the same environmental suits as worn by the Enterprise crew in The Tholian Web (1968).
Garth mentions Krotus in the list of leaders who preceded him but failed. Although never shown in any Star Trek (as of 2020), Krotus was an Andorian historical figure, a noted despot who harbored goals of great conquest, but ultimately failed. History would remember him as the Ka’Thelan Conqueror of Andoria, who swept across the planet, forcing the Andorians into a new cultural and technological era. His entire world bowed to him, but his empire ultimately crumbled and he was murdered by his own daughter.
This episode mentions a Starfleet battle strategy called “The Cochran Deceleration.” Although it was never seen used in the series, apparently it is so well known and used by all starship captains that it’s considered a classic battle maneuver.
This was the last live action appearance of the Orions in the “Star Trek” franchise until Borderland (2004) 35 years later.
This is the second consecutive episode to guest star an actor from the Batman (1966) TV series, namely, Yvonne Craig, and the third in a row to feature an actor connected to Batman, as Lee Meriwether (Losira in That Which Survives (1969)) played the Catwoman in the Batman: The Movie (1966) feature film. Previously, Frank Gorshin who played the Riddler played Commissioner Bele in Let That Be Your Last Battlefield (1969).
This was released in Jan. 1969 and Garth twice says, “Marta, my dear” in an apparent nod to The Beatles’ “White Album,” which was released Nov. 1968, and included the song “Martha, My Dear”, which was written by Paul McCartney as an ode to his Old English sheepdog Martha. In fact, this is merely a coincidence as the episode was filmed in October 1968, prior to the release of the “White Album”.
Spock’s sentence “Captain Kirk, I presume?” is an allusion to the famous but apocryphal question asked by explorer Henry Morton Stanley to David Livingstone on the shores of Lake Tanganyika on November 10, 1871: “Doctor Livingstone, I presume?” The question was later used as the basis for the title of Doctor Bashir, I Presume (1997).
Summary
The Enterprise travels to the planet Elba II, home of the last asylum for the criminally insane, to deliver a serum that should cure all of its remaining inmates. Kirk and Spock beam down to the planet’s surface where all seems in order, but they soon find the inmates now run the asylum, led by Garth (at one time a starship Captain, whose exploits were required reading at the Academy). Garth, who’s learned how to shape-shift, can take on the appearance of anyone, including Kirk or Spock. In the process of learning this ability, he lost his sanity. Garth plans to pose as the Captain, beam up to the Enterprise and take over the ship, but Kirk has a roadblock set up to overcome.
CAST
William Shatner … Captain James Tiberius ‘Jim’ Kirk Leonard Nimoy … Mister Spock DeForest Kelley … Dr. McCoy Steve Ihnat … Garth Yvonne Craig … Marta James Doohan … Scott George Takei … Sulu Nichelle Nichols … Uhura Dick Geary … Andorian (as Richard Geary) Gary Downey … Tellarite Keye Luke … Cory Bill Blackburn … Lieutenant Hadley (uncredited) Frank da Vinci … Lt. Brent (uncredited) Lars Hensen … Elba II Inmate (uncredited) Roger Holloway … Lt. Lemli (uncredited) Jeannie Malone … Yeoman (uncredited)
It’s hard to be unhappy when you hear this song. McCartney said the song was influenced by The Lovin’s Spoonful’s song Daydream. I can hear that but I can’t help but think the song was also influenced a little by The Kinks. I could hear Ray Davies singing this song.
Original handwritten lyrics to Good Day Sunshine
McCartney did admit to hearing not only Lovin Spoonful but the Kink’s Sunny Afternoon. Most of these British bands would play off each other and the fans were the benefactors to this. John Sebastian would not know about this until 1984 (quote down below) Paul mentioned it in an interview.
Ray Davies did in fact rave about this song in Disc and Music Echo magazine…a very popular British popular music magazine in the 60s and early 70s. The song has a bounce to it and also an older sound…even in 1966 when it was released.
The song was on the album Revolver. That album I think personally is their artistic best…not my number 1 favorite but one of the greatest albums ever made. When they hit America in 1964 all of their albums progressed ahead and weren’t the same. They never remade an album…they were always looking to improve and change. You could see the progression of this from Help! to Rubber Soul to Revolver. After Revolver came their most famous album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. With Revolver, listeners heard more sophisticated sounds and techniques adopted by the Beatles. This song was not released as a single…but it could have been.
The album peaked at #1 on the Billboard 100, Canada, The UK, and probably Mars as well.
An interesting piece of info on this song. Now all of you non-musicians may not care about this part but George Harrison played bass on this song…so please indulge me. George was right-handed so he could not play Paul’s left-handed basses. He ended up renting one out to play at the session.
I thought I knew most of the instruments they played but this I didn’t know. He played a 1965 Burns Nu-Sonic bass guitar. There is a reason I never heard of this bass guitar. The Nu-Sonics were one of the first instruments discontinued by Baldwin after they bought the Burns company in September 1965. They disappeared from the catalog by the fall of ’66 so the total production run for all versions was only about two years.
Here is a picture of George playing the Nu-Sonic Bass Guitar.
Paul McCartney:“Once again, I was out at John’s house in Weybridge. I’d driven myself there from my home in London in my beautiful sierra-blue Aston Martin, ejector seat and all. I love to drive, and an hour’s drive is a good time to think of things; if you’ve got half an idea, you can flesh it out on the way. I would often arrive at John’s place with a fully formed idea. Sometimes I would have to wait, if John was late getting up; he was a lazy bastard, whereas I was a very enthusiastic young man. Mind you, if I did have to wait there was a little swimming pool I could sit beside.”
“Around that time there was quite a spate of summer songs. ‘Daydream’ and ‘Summer In The City’ by The Lovin’ Spoonful, The Kinks’ ‘Sunny Afternoon’…We wanted to write something sunny. Both John and I had grown up while the music hall tradition was still very vibrant, so it was always in the back of our minds. There are lots of songs about the sun, and they make you happy: ‘The Sun Has Got His Hat On’ or ‘On The Sunny Side Of The Street.’ It was now time for us to do ours. So we’ve got love and sun, what more do we want?”
Paul McCartney:“Wrote that out at John’s one day…the sun was shining, influenced by The Lovin’ Spoonful. It was really very much a nod to The Lovin’ Spoonful’s ‘Daydream,’ the same traditional, almost trad-jazz feel. That was our favorite record of theirs. ‘Good Day Sunshine’ was me trying to write something similar to ‘Daydream.’ John and I wrote it together at Kenwood, but it was basically mine, and he helped me with it.”
John Sebastian:“One of the wonderful things The Beatles had going for them is that they were so original that when they did cop an idea from somebody else it never occurred to you, I thought there were one or two of their songs which were Spoonfuloid but it wasn’t until Paul mentioned it in a Playboy interview (in 1984) that I specifically realized we’d inspired ‘Good Day Sunshine.’”
Good Day Sunshine
Good day sunshine
Good day sunshine
Good day sunshine
I need to laugh, and when the sun is out
I’ve got something I can laugh about
I feel good, in a special way
I’m in love and it’s a sunny day
Good day sunshine
Good day sunshine
Good day sunshine
We take a walk, the sun is shining down
Burns my feet as they touch the ground
Good day sunshine
Good day sunshine
Good day sunshine
And then we lie, beneath a shady tree
I love her and she’s loving me
She feels good, she knows she’s looking fine
I’m so proud to know that she is mine
Good day sunshine
Good day sunshine
Good day sunshine
Good day sunshine
Good day sunshine
Good day sunshine
Good day sunshine
I posted a Graham Parker album (Howlin’ Wind) a while back and it was the first time I’d heard it. This song…as soon as I heard it I remembered it. I remember MTV and Fridays playing this video in the 1980s.
This was on the album Squeezing Out Sparks released in 1979. The album peaked at #18 in the UK, #79 in Canada, and #40 on the Billboard 100. Parker had just left Mercury Records and this was his debut on Arista Records.
I’ve listened to Squeezing Out Sparks and there is not a weak song on the album. Parker had felt like Rumour had overplayed on his albums to this point. He told them they need to play like they were in a studio and not live. After that… once they were clicking, it only took 11 days to complete the album.
This album didn’t include horns that were on his albums up to this point. It was a no-frills approach that made it arguably his finest album. This song has everything you want. Smart writing, catchy hook, and Parker’s voice is on point.
Normally, Parker named his albums after song titles, although this time he toyed with calling it “The Basingstoke Canal” after a waterway connecting to the Thames River, about 30 miles from where he was born in the London area of Hackney…but he woke up one morning with a song on the album called You Can’t Be Too Strong going through his head with the lyric “I know it gets dark down by Luna Park/But everybody else is squeezing out a spark/That happened in the heat, somewhere in the dark.”
Graham Parker: “‘Local Girls,’ of course, refers to the girls in my/your hometown, not the girls in someone else’s town. … The idea for ‘Local’ is from remembering what it was like to be a boy at home, looking out the window, seeing a rather toothsome piece stroll by, nose in the air perhaps, down the quiet semi-detached suburban street, and knowing that she probably already (at 13/14 years of age) fancies herself as an army wife (I grew up next door to an army camp and the squaddies were always stealing the girlfolk) and is going to look upon your feeble advances with some disdain. It’s a fairly typical the-object-of-ones-desire-is-always-out-of-reach-type song, just about 30 times better and more pregnant with meaning/detail than pretty much anyone else on the planet could even begin to aspire to, is all”
Graham Parker: “It wasn’t until I’d done all my Hippie traveling and being a freak and all that, and got back and lived with my parents and started to absorb all influence of my earlier years. I just pushed myself out in the world, got to London and met the right people, including Dave Robinson, who became my manager. He put the band the Rumour around me. So that was basically the beginnings of my career. I was just basically what I consider to be a successful singer/songwriter/musician by the time I came to write Squeezing Out Sparks. It was very inspired times for me, and that’s what resulted in that album.”
Local Girls
Sit by my window and look outside, wonder why the sun don’t shine on me
What’s wrong with you, you stupid child, don’t you think that I’m the one
You’re waiting to see?
Don’t talk too much ’cause she falls for the suckers, makes her feel
Everything is secure
Don’t ever leave a footprint on the floor
Don’t bother with the local girls, don’t bother with the local girls
They don’t bother me
She’s probably half-wit, she must be straight,
Or bound to have a mother who knows nothing but hate
Don’t want to love her, I’d rather knock her down
Standing at the bus stop where she waits each morning
So isolated that she thinks that the army is the place where a man ought to be
Don’t bother with them, they don’t bother me
Don’t bother with the local girls, don’t bother with the local girls
They don’t bother me
They got the walk, they got the talk, right down without a flaw
At 6:00 I got to stop my dreaming at the counter of the store
Don’t bother with the local girls, don’t bother with the local girls
They don’t bother me
Without a doubt I got to intercept, must be time someone ran and shouted in
Their head
You look all right in the cheap print dress,
But every time you swish it ’round you make me disappear
I’m aware of exactly what I’m doing, making everything a mystery
Don’t bother with it, it don’t bother me
Electric…that is the best way I can describe Jerry Lee Lewis. From those old black and white clips in the fifties, the Killer was doing just that. Using all of his limbs to pulverize the piano. The song peaked at #3 on the Billboard 100, #8 in the UK, and #1 on the Billboard Country Chart in 1957. It is one of the most recognizable songs of the 1950s.
This song was written by Roy Hall (using the pseudonym Sunny David) and Dave “Curly” Williams. Hall was a songwriter/piano player who ran a music venue in Nashville and played in Webb Pierce’s band. Lewis’s version sold over 6 million copies. Roy didn’t get to enjoy the money from the song for too long…he had to sign his royalties away to his ex-wife.
“Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” was Lewis’s second single, following “Crazy Arms,” which had failed to chart. But Lewis, well aware of his own talent, was pushed by producer Sam Phillips’s work in Sun Studio and brought “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” into the recording sessions confident that it could be a hit. Recording sessions took place in February 1957, in Sun Studios.
Lewis claimed to have heard the song from the singer Johnny Littlejohn at the Wagon Wheel nightclub in Natchez, Mississippi. He was a force of nature… he transformed the landscape of any song he moves through, and “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” was no different.
This song was the first of Lewis’ four Top 40 hits, which all occurred in a period of about a year and a half… but he had a huge country career starting in the 60s.
Whole Lot of Shakin’ Goin’ On
Come along my baby, whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on
Yes, I said come along my baby, baby you can’t go wrong
We ain’t fakin’, while lotta shakin’ goin’ on
Well, I said come along my baby, we got chicken in the barn
Woo-huh, come along my baby, really got the bull by the horn
We ain’t fakin’, whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on
Well, I said shake, baby, shake
I said shake, baby, shake
I said shake it, baby, shake it
And then shake, baby, shake
Come on over, whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on
Oh, let’s go!
Alright
Well, I said come along my baby, we got chicken in the barn
Whose barn? What barn? My barn
Come along my baby, really got the bull by the horn
We ain’t fakin’, whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on
Easy now
Shake it
Ah, shake it, baby
Yeah
You can shake it one time for me
Ye-ah-ha-ah, I said come on over, baby
Whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on
Now, let’s get down real low one time now
Shake, baby, shake
All you gotta do, honey, is kinda stand in one spot
Wiggle around just a little bit, that’s when you got it, yeah
Come on baby, whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on
Now let’s go one time
Shake it baby, shake, shake it baby, shake
Woo, shake baby, come on babe, shake it, baby, shake
Come on over, whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on
If you want to see where we are…and you missed a few…HERE is a list of the episodes in my index located at the top of my blog.
This show was written by Gene Roddenberry, John Meredyth Lucas, and Arthur Singer
If you take Veruca Salt, Scarlett O’Hara, and mix her with Bellatrix Lestrange… you might come up with Elaan. She is a flat-out…handful (and I’m being nice)… to deal with as her first teacher and now Kirk can testify to it. But as it goes on…you do start having sympathy for her and understand her a bit more and why she is like she is.
Federation space politics and diplomacy are at the forefront of the plot. The Enterprise is directed to transport a princess (Elaan) from her world to their enemy’s world in an effort to marry her off to the enemy and thus ensure peace.
The problem is that Elaan is barbaric and has no intention of fulfilling her duties. And, once she comes aboard, she is a prima donna who needs civilizing before she’s ready to marry anyone. So, it’s up to Kirk, after she injures the other teacher, to civilize her. There’s a subplot of an assassination attempt through sabotage that’s thrown in for a little bit of tension.
Kirk becomes infected by Elaan’s tears. According to legend, and 23rd-century biochemistry, the tears of such a female enslave all men. This provides another excuse for Kirk to, uh, fraternize with an alien woman (see Wink Of An Eye) who is generally regarded as off-limits.
I started to feel a twinge of pity for her by the conclusion, despite her earlier antics. She seems doomed and forsaken at the end to spend the remainder of her life behaving in a certain fashion, contrary to her nature. France Nuyen does a great job playing Elaan. They cast her perfectly with her exotic looks. Even Kirk is hurt also seeing her go.
There is also a good space battle with a Klingon ship.
From IMDB:
France Nuyen is believed to be the first person of Vietnamese descent to appear on American television.
The story includes elements of both Homer’s “Iliad” (Helen of Troy, represented as Elaan of Troyius) and William Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew” (the battle between the clever rational male and the unreasonable temper-tantrum-throwing female).
Mel Brooks based many of the characteristics of Princess Vespa in his classic Star Wars spoof Spaceballs (1987) on Elaan.
When the camera slowly tilts up Elaan’s skimpily clad body (bikini bottom and top) in the transporter, her belly button is covered as per the 1951 Code of Practices for Television Broadcasters, which prohibited female navel exposure. However, by the fall of 1966, this guideline was no longer being enforced. While it’s true costumes on Star Trek often obscured women’s navels, the network did not require it, contrary to a popular myth. In Mirror, Mirror (1967), both Nyota Uhura’s and Marlena Moureau’s navels were often seen, and the first time this happened was in Shore Leave (1966).
Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated during the filming of this episode. France Nuyen, a big supporter of Kennedy, had been deeply shocked by the news while shooting her parts as Elaan.
The red “armor” of the Elasian guards’ costumes was constructed from a popular 1960s table place-mat, made of tiny plastic discs embedded in a plastic sheet. This is the same as the red stand-up collar worn by Galt in The Gamesters of Triskelion (1968).
When Mr. Spock scans the Dohlman’s necklace, the sound the necklace makes is the same as the sound made by the Martian tripods in The War of the Worlds (1953).
This episode features the first appearance of the classic D7 Class Klingon battle cruiser, designed and built by Star Trek art director Walter M. Jefferies. (Klingon ships previously had been represented by blobs of light or blips on a computer screen). Day of the Dove (1968), which was filmed later, but aired earlier, reused shots of the Klingon battle cruiser from this episode.
This is the only “TOS” episode that was written and directed by the same individual, in this case John Meredyth Lucas.
France Nuyen, who plays Elaan, starred opposite William Shatner on Broadway in “The World of Suzie Wong” from 1958 until 1960, and they would reunite again in A Small Beheading (1974).
A scene with Spock playing his Vulcan harp in the recreation room set was filmed but then edited out.
The Saurian brandy container makes an appearance in this episode. The bottle is actually a George Dickel commemorative edition “powder horn” whiskey bottle.
In Relics (1992), this was one of many adventures which the revived Scotty reminisced about.
The Klingon Captain says “No terms. Surrender must be unconditional and immediate,” paraphrasing the famous policy of US Civil War General Ulysses S. Grant.
Marked the only time in the series that McCoy actually spoke the line “You’re out of your Vulcan mind”. Because the line was frequently quoted and parodied throughout pop culture, it was only assumed to have been spoken multiple times over the course of the series.
The Perfect Mate (1992) is essentially a retelling of this story.
This and Errand of Mercy (1967) show a Klingon flip-top communicator similar to the ones used by Starfleet. This communicator was originally seen as an Eminiar VII communicator in A Taste of Armageddon (1967).
This episode takes place in 2268.
In A Small Beheading (1974) where William Shatner and France Nuyen are reunited, he plays a ship’s captain and she plays his wife, who is also a member of the Chinese royal family.
William Shatner and France Nuyen had previously starred together in the original Broadway cast of “The World of Suzie Wong.”
The sound effect heard as Kryton sabotages the dilithium crystal assembly is the same one heard in the episode “Arena” when the Metron speaks.
One of the only TOS episodes to have its score composed specifically for it (by Fred Steiner). Many of its cues were used in other third season episodes.
The episode title was inspired by the legend of ‘Helen of Troy ‘.
Summary
Kirk and the Enterprise crew are on a diplomatic mission to transport Elaan, a princess of her people, to Troyius where she is to marry the ruler in the hopes establishing peace between their two worlds. She’s rather a handful for Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise – imperious, demanding and completely lacking in anything remotely akin to manners. She even stabs the Troyian ambassador when he enters her quarters uninvited. It’s left to Captain Kirk to try and get her under control, but she does have the power to entice men, and soon Kirk is passionate for her. All the while, the Enterprise is being followed by a Klingon warship that is bent on destroying them. It is also apparent that the Enterprise has a saboteur on board.
CAST
William Shatner … Captain James Tiberius ‘Jim’ Kirk Leonard Nimoy … Mister Spock DeForest Kelley … Dr. McCoy France Nuyen … Elaan Jay Robinson … Petri Tony Young … Kryton James Doohan … Scott Nichelle Nichols … Uhura George Takei … Sulu Walter Koenig … Chekov Majel Barrett … Nurse Chapel Lee Duncan … Evans Victor Brandt … Watson Dick Durock … Guard #1 Charles Beck … Guard #2 K.L. Smith … Klingon Hal Baylor … Guard (uncredited) Bill Blackburn … Lieutenant Hadley (uncredited) Frank da Vinci … Transporter Operator (uncredited) Roger Holloway … Lt. Lemli (uncredited) Jeannie Malone … Bridge Yeoman (uncredited) Eddie Paskey … Lieutenant Leslie (uncredited)
I’ve always liked Jimi’s mellow songs. The song moves so well because of his guitar playing and the futility of life lyrics. The song originally appeared on the Axis: Bold as Love album released in December of 1967.
Jimi Hendrix and his mother Lucille Hendrix
He never liked talking much about his past, but he reveals some in this song. Sarita Cannon has written a book that explores Hendrix’s identity as a Black Cherokee. Hendrix’s Indigenous ancestry has never been documented by blood. His grandmother, a vaudeville performer from Vancouver, British Columbia, passed along Cherokee traditions to him. incorporated Indigenous themes in his music, including this song, the instrumental “Cherokee Mist” and the 1967 anthem “I Don’t Live Today.” His mother had stated that she was part Cherokee.
Many believed that this song is an instance of Hendrix reflecting on painful memories from his childhood, including his parents’ tumultuous separation and his mother’s illness, Hendrix himself never confirmed the inspiration behind the song. Leon Hendrix, Jimi’s brother, has said the lyrics were about their father’s alcoholism and their family. He said the soldier in the song is Leon himself. At one time Leon was taken away by Child Protective Services.
Castles Made Of Sand was not released as a single and did not chart although the album peaked at #3 on the Billboard 200 Album Charts in 1968.
This album was his second studio album to be released. His third and last album Electric Ladyland was released in October of 1968. Since Hendrix died in 1970…a glut of albums have been released. The man must have recorded in his sleep.
Castles Made Of Sand
Down the street you can hear her scream you’re a disgrace
As she slams the door in his drunken face
And now he stands outside
And all the neighbours start to gossip and drool
He cries oh, girl you must be mad,
What happened to the sweet love you and me had?
Against the door he leans and starts a scene,
And his tears fall and burn the garden green
And so castles made of sand fall in the sea, eventually
A little Indian brave who before he was ten,
Played war games in the woods with his Indian friends
And he built up a dream that when he grew up
He would be a fearless warrior Indian chief
Many moons passed and more the dream grew strong until
Tomorrow he would sing his first war song and fight his first battle
But something went wrong, surprise attack killed him in his sleep that night
And so castles made of sand melts into the sea, eventually
There was a young girl, whose heart was a frown
‘Cause she was crippled for life,
And she couldn’t speak a sound
And she wished and prayed she could stop living,
So she decided to die
She drew her wheelchair to the edge of the shore
And to her legs she smiled you won’t hurt me no more
But then a sight she’d never seen made her jump and say
Look a golden winged ship is passing my way
And it really didn’t have to stop, it just kept on going…
And so castles made of sand slips into the sea, eventually
If you want to see where we are…and you missed a few…HERE is a list of the episodes in my index located at the top of my blog.
This show was written by Gene Roddenberry, Joyce Muskat, and Arthur H. Singer
the Enterprise comes upon a superior alien race that selects the landing party of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and a pair of unnamed crewmen as guinea pigs in a psychological experiment. The aliens look like second cousins to the Talosians and we know what intellects they had. You also know what happens to unnamed crewmen in any Star Trek episode.
This crowd is almost as good or bad depending on your point of view. The three regulars are put into a room together with a deaf-mute named Gem played by Kathryn Hays. She cannot speak, but her facial expressions tell much because Hays is a total empath with healing powers.
As all the series regulars are tortured, Gem heals them. But like that other healer from the big screen, John Coffey in The Green Mile it takes a lot out of Gem every time she heals. It’s soon clear she’s the object of the alien experiment.
This is an interesting and emotional episode dealing with the idea of self-sacrifice. Having Gem mute makes her more mysterious as she can’t tell people about herself… the members of the Enterprise must determine for themselves what she is and decide whether she is a fellow prisoner or working with those holding them captive. Kathryn Hays does a great job in the role… expressing Gem’s emotions entirely through facial expressions.
From IMDB:
This was DeForest Kelley’s favourite episode.
In the sequence of Gem absorbing the boils, Kathryn Hays was strapped to a board and kept absolutely still while make-up was applied. Stop-motion photography filmed the progression. The few moments of the scene took eight hours to film.
This episode contains another one of McCoy’s famous, “I’m a doctor, not a…” quotes. In this episode, it is “coal miner”.
The Empath was written by Joyce Muskat, one of only four fans who were able to sell scripts to the original series, the others being David Gerrold, Judy Burns, and Jean Lisette Aroeste.
After McCoy is tortured, his tattered uniform shirt is an older velour shirt, rather than the new polyester double knits that were used in the 3rd season.
The helical staircase in the station was also used in For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky (1968).
The orange-red flickers that accompany the Vian transporter effect are frames of the same effect created to represent the Medusan ambassador Kollos.
Though identified as Thann and Lal in the closing credits, the two Vians are never called by their proper names on-screen.
The third season of Star Trek was famously only greenlighted after viewer pressure made the NBC network change their mind after they originally planned to cancel the series after the second season. One of the conditions that NBC insisted on when they finally commissioned a third season was for the production company to implement cuts to the production budget by 25%, and this resulted in production design shortcuts (such as reusing footage, props and sets from previous episodes) as well as a purported drop in the quality of some of the scripts. The budget cuts are particularly noticeable in this episode, one of the last of the third season. With the production budget for the entire series already thinly stretched and close to running out as the production schedule for season three drew to a close, the producers were forced to creatively save money by implementing minimal set design in the laboratory scenes where much of this story takes place (hence why these scenes were filmed against a black backdrop) and re-use the slightly redressed alien desert planet surface set previously seen in The City on the Edge of Forever (1967) among others.
In Turnabout Intruder (1969), Kirk (in Janice Lester’s body) mentions the events of The Empath to try to convince Spock of the mind switch.
The research station shown at the beginning is the same set used in The Naked Time (1966). While it’s not unusual to re-use sets, this also confirms that Starfleet used the same design of research station on various planets.
In the United Kingdom, the BBC skipped this episode in all runs of the series through to the early 1990s. Three other episodes were also skipped, Whom Gods Destroy (1969), Plato’s Stepchildren (1968), and Miri (1966). The reason given was because they dealt with the unpleasant subjects of madness, torture, sadism and disease.
In the final scene, Scotty refers to the story of ‘the pearl of great price’. This refers to a parable told by Jesus in Matthew 13:45-46.
This is the only episode whose first-act credits open on a completely black background.
This was one of the few episodes to quote the Bible.
The Empath bears many striking similarities to Nightmare (1963), where Earth men are subjected to various tortures and torments by bizarre aliens on a mostly barren set with just a few props and backdrops. Both “The Empath” and “Nightmare” were directed by John Erman.
The footage of the Minaran sun is re-used from Operation — Annihilate! (1967).
The preview of the episode shows Gem’s healing of wounds done by jump-cuts, rather than as fades.
Sound effects of the Vians’ laboratory were previously used in Norman’s lab in I, Mudd (1967).
The tripodal device in the center of the Vian laboratory appeared first in Spock’s Brain (1968) as the framework connected to the black box (by “light rays”) that housed Spock’s brain. It is inverted here from its earlier position.
Uhura and Chekov do not appear in this episode.
The couch seen in the underground lab is a gigantic version of the agonizers seen in Mirror, Mirror (1967) and Day of the Dove (1968). It was first seen as the Eymorg’s table in Spock’s Brain (1968).
This takes place in 2268.
Leonard Nimoy and Kathryn Hays were also cast together in Night Gallery’s “She’ll Be Coming For You” (S3:E10, 1972).
Summary
Kirk, Spock, and McCoy suddenly find themselves in an underground laboratory where they meet an attractive young woman who is not only mute but also an empath who can absorb someone else’s pain. When their captors make themselves known, they refuse to explain why the three men have been taken prisoner or why they and the young woman, whom McCoy has named Gem, are there. Inexplicably, they set about torturing them for no apparent reason. Fortunately, Gem’s empathic powers allow her to take away their pain, but only at great sacrifice to herself. When their captors tell Kirk that he must choose which of his men to die, their selflessness comes to the fore, leaving Dr. McCoy to volunteer himself. They all soon learn that the object of the experiment is Gem herself.
CAST
William Shatner … Captain James Tiberius ‘Jim’ Kirk Leonard Nimoy … Mister Spock DeForest Kelley … Dr. McCoy Kathryn Hays … Gem Alan Bergmann … Lal James Doohan … Scott George Takei … Sulu Davis Roberts … Dr. Ozaba Jason Wingreen … Dr. Linke Willard Sage … Thann Bill Blackburn … Lieutenant Hadley (uncredited) Dick Geary … Security Guard (uncredited) Roger Holloway … Lt. Lemli (uncredited)
I was trying to think of the name of this song and described what I could…and my friend Dave gave me the answer from my few clues. In 1998 I heard this song constantly and always liked it.
The lyric that made me like the song was They hung out with folks like Dennis Hopper and Bob Seger and Sonny and Cher. I’m a sucker for pop culture references… like that should surprise anyone. Shawn Mullins wrote the song after a woman in Los Angeles talked to him about her childhood and teenage years. Mullins said “There were certain details, like Sonny & Cher and Bob Seger, things in it that were real. But there’s also certain things about her character in the song that aren’t really like her. The person in the song took a sadder turn. The actual girl really had her act together and she was very smiley. Her smile was incredible.”
Shawn was based in Atlanta and pressed copies of the single that was released independently. Good fortune hit when an Atlanta radio station slipped the song into the rotation. Lullaby gained traction and Columbia won a bidding war and he signed with them. He started to open up for big names but never hit the Hot 100 again. Mullins’ first album, he said he wanted to do something different and it flopped… as well as his second album. He now records independently.
He has probably made a decent living off of this song because it’s been used in movies and TV shows…I remember hearing it on The Office. The song peaked at #7 on the Billboard 100, #2 in Canada, and #9 in the UK in 1998-99.
Shawn Mullins: “The whole album was written from journal entries that I would do on the road, so, after that night the lyric was pretty much done. I never edited back then at all.”
Lullaby
She grew up with the children of the stars
In the Hollywood hills and the boulevards
Her parents threw big parties
Everyone was there
They hung out with folks like Dennis Hopper and Bob Seger and
Sonny and Cher
She feels safe now in this bar on Fairfax
And from the stage I can tell that she can’t let go and she can’t
Relax
And just before she hangs her head to cry
I sing to her a lullaby
I sing:
Everything’s gonna be all right
Rock-a-bye, rock-a-bye
Everything’s gonna be all right
Rock-a-bye, rock-a-bye, rock-a-bye
She still lives with her mom outside the city
Down that street about a half a mile
And all her friends tell her she’s so pretty
But she’d be a whole lot prettier if she smiled once in a while
‘Cause even her smile looks like a frown
She’s seen her share of devils in this angel town
Everything’s gonna be all right
Rock-a-bye, rock-a-bye
Everything’s gonna be all right
Rock-a-bye, rock-a-bye, rock-a-bye
I told her I ain’t so sure about this place
It’s hard to play a gig in this town and keep a straight face
Seems like everybody’s got a plan
It’s kind of like Nashville with a tan
Everything’s gonna be all right
Rock-a-bye, rock-a-bye
Everything’s gonna be all right
Rock-a-bye, rock-a-bye, rock-a-bye
This is another song I noticed on the BBC Life On Mars TV series in the mid-2000s.
Atomic Rooster… Now that is a name. I’ve been in short-term bands with different names such as… “The Flying Junebugs”, “The Cryin ‘Shame” and “Green Swingset” but Atomic Rooster is unique.
Atomic Rooster was an English rock band, originally composed of former members of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. Throughout their history keyboardist, Vincent Crane was the only constant member and wrote the majority of their material.
The band was founded by the late British blues pianist Vincent Crane, originally with British drummer Carl Palmer, after Crane left The Crazy World of Arthur Brown which he had co-founded in 1966. During 1970 they formed Atomic Rooster as decided in New York, and the band’s first gig was headlining at the Lyceum, London, with Deep Purple as support. The first Atomic Roster single was “Friday the 13th”, and the first album was Atomic Ro-o-oster.
Their history is defined by two periods: the early-mid-1970s and the early 1980s. Their genre in music is difficult to define since they went through radical changes in a very short time during the life of the band. However, their best-known era represented a more hard rock/progressive rock sound, exemplified by their only hit singles… Tomorrow Night peaked at #11 in the UK and The Devil’s Answer peaked at #4… both in 1971.
The Devil’s Answer
People are looking but they don’t know what to do
It’s the time of the season for the people like you
Come back tomorrow, show the scars on your face
It’s a clue to the answer we all chase
Three, five and seven lift the heaviest load
reach the top of the heaven that’s fallen below
Devil may care but you wish for the best can’t you see there’s an answer that lies there
Come all you sinners and keep with the time
can we see all the faces that have fallen behind
Don’t make the reason it’s a secret for you
There’s a clue to the answer we all know
There’s no clue to the answer we all know
People are looking but they don’t know what to do
It’s the time of the season for the people like you
Come back tomorrow, show the scars on your face
It’s a clue to the answer we all chase
It’s a clue to the answer we all chase
Gary US Bonds song Quarter To Three was a huge hit this year. Bonds’ real name is Gary Anderson. His label boss, Frank Guida, changed it to “U.S. Bonds” for his first single, New Orleans, as a play on the posters asking Americans to “buy U.S. savings bonds.” Pretty clever, but too many people, including many DJs, got it wrong and thought it was the name of a group. His next single, “Quarter To Three,” was initially issued as U.S. Bonds but soon changed to Gary U.S. Bonds, along with his subsequent releases.
Now let’s check in with Del Shannon. He released what is now an iconic song named Runaway. This song was written by Del Shannon and Max Crook.
I want to throw some country in this also with a song that has been remembered along with the artist who did the vocals. Patsy Cline sings I Fall To Pieces. The song was written by Hank Cochran and Harlan Howard.
The Big E makes a wonderful appearance in this post. This was a pure rock and roll song and that was a seldom occurence for Elvis Presley at this point.
Now for the Big O to close this year out. Roy Orbison does Running Scared with his operatic voice. Hearing Orbison’s voice still gives me the chills. was recorded in RCA Studio B in Nashville with the session pros known as “The A-team.” This was the last song that he sang live before his death in 1988.
If you want to see where we are…and you missed a few…HERE is a list of the episodes in my index located at the top of my blog.
This show was written by Gene Roddenberry, Arthur Heinemann, and Gene L. Coon
I always liked this episode…maybe more than some other Star Trek fans. The ending bothered me but other than that I loved it. I do have a question or two for you serious Star Trek fans coming up.
The Enterprise receives a distress signal, but when they arrived on the planet, they see it was once inhabited but is now totally depopulated. When they transport back to the ship, something is slipped in Kirk’s coffee by an unseen force. Suddenly, everyone but him appears to be moving slower and slower, though it’s actually Kirk that is accelerating in speed to such a degree that he seems to disappear…moving too fast for the human eye to detect.
Once this occurs, he discovers that there were survivors on the planet and they beamed aboard undetected because they, too, were moving at this hugely accelerated speed. The Scalosians plan on putting the ship’s crew in suspended animation and using the crew as breeding stock to be thawed out as needed, as the same thing that makes these beings accelerate also makes their men sterile.
So they have to mate outside of their race or their race will die.
I just noticed when Deela and Kirk are left alone in a room…it goes to another shot and when it comes back to the pair…Kirk is putting his boots on and Deela is combing her hair. It’s clear in a subtle way they had sex. I’m curious about how the censors allowed this. Nothing stops Kirk…even being held against his will.
SPOILERS
Kirk leaves a message to the others about what is happening. Spock, McCoy, and Nurse Chapel see it and McCoy comes up with an antidote so Spock drinks the Scalosian water and he speeds up to help Kirk. They get together and disable the freezing device that the Scalosians have put in place. Spock does have the antidote with him.
Why didn’t Kirk offer the Scalosians the antidote that he and Spock took? Would it have not worked with their body chemistry?
From IMDB:
The remastered version of this episode premiered in syndication the weekend of 13 January 2007. New shots of Scalos from space, as well as an enhanced matte painting of the surface were inserted into the episode, alongside more realistic phaser effects. This was the first remastered episode from third season to air and thus featured a “new” opening titles sequence.
Walter Koenig did not film any new footage for this. Chekov appears briefly in the opening scenes but it’s stock footage from earlier productions. He takes no part in the plot.
This contains the second time in The Original Series where Kirk is seen in what can be presumed to be a post-coital situation. He is seen zipping up his boots while sitting on the edge of his bed, with Deela standing nearby arranging her hair.
The hyper-accelerated movement plot was also used in The Night of the Burning Diamond (1966), produced by Gene L. Coon/Lee Cronin.
Written by Lee Cronin, the pseudonym of Gene L. Coon. The pseudonym was used because he had left Paramount and was under contract with Universal, so he was not supposed to be working for Paramount as well.
Loosely based on an H.G. Wells short story called “The New Accelerator”. A cartoon episode of The Lone Ranger (1966) also used this plot.
The Scalosian weapon was made from lathe-turned aluminum and was approximately 170 mm (6¾”) long. A sketch of the design appeared in the “Star Trek: The Original Series Sketchbook” (p. 91). The weapon made a sound identical to Klingon disruptors and the Ardana torture device in The Cloud Minders (1969).
The “Star Trek Customizable Card Game” features a wild card called “Boot Scene” (named after the famous suggestive scene with Deela) which can neutralize the opposing player’s Captain Kirk with a beautiful alien.
In the first scene, Scotty is shown on the bridge recording a log while other dialogue is played over this scene. The footage is reused from The Empath (1968). This is evident because Scotty wears a very different hairstyle, and another woman takes the place of Uhura. A piece of Scotty’s dialogue with Kirk on the planet below from “The Empath” can also be heard, very faintly. In fact, what he is saying originally played over Kirk’s communicator in “The Empath”.
This episode was, in essence, a bottle show with the need for only one set, a fountain, which was designed by Walter M. Jefferies.
As part of the condition of commissioning a third series of Star Trek, the network insisted on a cut in the budget of 25%. This meant that some episodes suffered notable cost cutting measures. This particular episode was considered one of the more lavish and expensive ones of series three due to the number of special effects that had to be created for the story.
Rael is also the name taken by Claude Vorilhon, the founder and actual leader of the UFO religion known as Raëlism. It started in 1973.
In a note from Gene Roddenberry to Fred Freiberger dated May 29th, 1968, he calls the water “Scalian water”, which may be a mistake on his part or a indication that the name was changed to “Scalosian” later.
This, along with ‘The Tholian Web’ and ‘The Cloud Minders’, was one of the most expensive stories to make from series 3 due to the number of effects shots needed. As the series budget had already been significantly cut back from the budget NBC had assigned to Seasons 1 & 2, some of the other stories filmed for the rest of Season 3 had to make noticeable cutbacks in their sets and effects to accommodate the high production cost of this episode. However, as other posters have noted, even here the budget was sparingly used with limited film sets.
This takes place in 2268.
Kathie Browne and Jason Evers also appeared together in Deathtown (1968).
In the accelerated world of the Scalosians and then Kirk and later Spock, touching anything (buttons, switches, machines, countertops, doors, etc), at the accelerated speed, would have the same (if not more) energy as a bullet from a gun. So, everything they touched in the unaccelerated world could blow apart as if it had been struck by a bullet. However, bullets are harder than hands/fingers so the latter might not have had an immediate effect. Over time, they might wear out through over-use.
Actress Kathie Browne (Deela), first worked with Gene Roddenberry in 1962 on an episode he wrote for Have Gun – Will Travel (1957), titled Taylor’s Woman (1962).
Captain James T. Kirk takes his coffee without milk.
When Kirk entered the accelerated world of the Scalosians, given everything they did within the ship, compared to the slower Enterprise crew, the crew’s movement could have equated to weeks or even months in the Scalosian world, not merely days. During that time, Kirk and the Scalosians would have needed to eat, sleep, use the bathroom, bath/shower and shave. Any appliances (e.g., shower, faucet or flushing toilet) would have operated far too slowly to be useable by Kirk and the Scalosians.
Summary
The Enterprise responds to a distress call from the planet Scalos, but when Kirk and a landing party beam down to the planet they find no living beings. It turns out that the Scalosians live at a much higher rate of acceleration, rendering them invisible to the human eye. One of the Scalosians, the beautiful and seductive Deela, accelerates Kirk so they can interact, where she tells him he cannot return to his normal life. For the crew, Kirk has virtually disappeared before their eyes. The Scalosians want to turn the Enterprise into a cryogenic storage facility for the crew. Kirk learns that at his current state of acceleration, they are subject to cellular degeneration and rapid aging should they suffer the slightest cut. He leaves a message for the crew but it is left to Mr. Spock to find a way to decipher it.
On this one…at least as far as the City…CGI brings the city to life…it’s one of the very few CGI effects that I liked.
CAST
William Shatner … Captain James Tiberius ‘Jim’ Kirk Leonard Nimoy … Mister Spock DeForest Kelley … Dr. McCoy Kathie Browne … Deela Jason Evers … Rael James Doohan … Scott George Takei … Sulu Nichelle Nichols … Uhura Majel Barrett … Nurse Chapel Erik Holland … Ekor Geoffrey Binney … Compton Bill Blackburn … Lieutenant Hadley (uncredited) Dick Geary … Scalosian / Security Guard #1 (uncredited) Eddie Hice Eddie Hice … Security Guard #2 (uncredited) Roger Holloway … Lt. Lemli (uncredited) Jay D. Jones … Engineer (uncredited) Jeannie Malone … Yeoman (uncredited)
This is one of my favorite songs I like by them. The song peaked at #50 on the Billboard 100 and #41 in Canada in 1970. This was the B side of the song “You Make Me Real.”
John Sebastian from the Lovin’ Spoonful played the harmonica on this recording. He is identified on the album as “G. Puglese” because of Sebastian’s contract with Reprise Records. Lonnie Mack played the bass on this one with is unusual…the Doors usually let the keyboard handle the bass parts.
Morrison was said to write this song about The Topanga Corral, a windowless nightclub in Topanga Canyon. There were also bungalows in the back that Morrison mentions in the song. The club burnt down in the seventies. It is remembered for artists such as Canned Heat, Spanky and Our Gang, Linda Ronstadt, and Little Feat playing there.
Morrison was convicted of indecent exposure and sentenced to six months in jail, but he died while the case was being appealed. In 2010, Florida Governor Charlie Crist granted Morrison a pardon, clearing him of the charges.
It was on the album Morrison Hotel. The album peaked at #4 on the Billboard Album Charts, #3 in Canada, and #12 in the UK in 1970.
Robby Krieger on Morrison Hotel: “Ray (Manzarek, keyboards) had been driving around downtown LA, and he saw this place called Morrison Hotel. So we decided to go down and shoot some photos there, but the guy who owned the hotel wouldn’t let us inside it. I guess they thought we were hippies. There were a lot of drunks and bums hanging around that area. Anyway, we snuck in there real quick when he wasn’t looking and got the shot that became the cover of Morrison Hotel.”
Outtakes from one of Morrison’s recording sessions were used to dub his voice into this version on the 2000 tribute album Stoned Immaculate, where he duets with John Lee Hooker.
Roadhouse Blues
Ah keep your eyes on the road, Your hands upon the wheel. Keep your eyes on the road Your hands upon the wheel. Yeah, we’re going to the roadhouse, Gonna have a real good-time.
Yeah, the back of the roadhouse, They’ve got some bungalows. Yeah, the back of the roadhouse, They’ve got some bungalows.
They dance for the people Who like to go down slow.
Let it roll, baby, roll. Let it roll, baby, roll. Let it roll, baby, roll. Let it roll, all night long.
Do it, Robby, Do it!
You gotta roll, roll, roll, You gotta thrill my soul, alright. Roll, roll, roll, roll-a Thrill my soul.
*improv* Passionate Lady. Passionate Lady. Give up your vows. Give up your vows. Save our city. Save our city. Ah, right now.
Well, I woke up this morning And I got myself a beer. Well, I woke up this morning And I got myself a beer.
The future’s uncertain And the end is always near.
Let it roll, baby, roll. Let it roll, baby, roll. Let it roll, baby, roll. Let it roll, all night long.
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