1960s – Page 40 – PowerPop… An Eclectic Collection of Pop Culture

Procol Harum – A Whiter Shade of Pale

I don’t remember the sixties, but this song makes me feel like I do. In my humble opinion, it’s one of the best songs of the sixties. It perfectly captured its time. John Lennon was a huge fan of the song and would play it repeatedly in his psychedelic Rolls Royce.

It is one of those songs like Itchycoo Park that automatically transports me to the sixties… I never get tired of listening to this. A Whiter Shade of Pale was released in 1967. It peaked at #1 in Canada, The UK, New Zealand, and #5 in the Billboard 100. It sold over 10 million copies. It was re-released in 1972 and went to #13 in the UK charts.

Gary Brooker and Keith Reid were credited with writing the song but Matthew Fisher the former keyboard player in the band sued for partial writing credit and won on July 24, 2008. Now the song’s writing credit is Reid-Brooker-Fisher. Gary Brooker and Fisher wrote the music and Reid wrote the lyrics. This was the first song Procol Harum recorded. After it became a hit, they fired their original drummer and guitarist, replacing them with Barry Wilson and Robin Trower… more experienced musicians who could handle touring.

The Illinois Crime Commission included the song in a list of ‘drug-oriented records’ along with “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane and The Beatle’s “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.” When any ban would happen, the records would fly off the shelves.

In 2004, the UK performing rights group Phonographic Performance Limited named this the most-played record on British TV and radio of the past 70 years. In 2009 it was announced that this song is still Britain’s most played record.

Gary Brooker: “I’d been listening to a lot of classical music, and jazz. Having played rock and R&B for years, my vistas had opened up. When I met Keith, seeing his words, I thought, ‘I’d like to write something to that.’ They weren’t obvious, but that doesn’t matter. You don’t have to know what he means, as long as you communicate an atmosphere. ‘A Whiter Shade Of Pale’ seemed to be about two people, a relationship even. It’s a memory. There was a leaving, and a sadness about it. To get the soul of those lyrics across vocally, to make people feel that, was quite an accomplishment.

I remember the day it arrived: four very long stanzas, I thought, ‘Here’s something.’ I happened to be at the piano when I read them, already playing a musical idea. It fitted the lyrics within a couple of hours. Things can be gifted. If you trace the chordal element, it does a bar or two of Bach’s ‘Air on a G String’ before it veers off. That spark was all it took. I wasn’t consciously combining rock with classical, it’s just that Bach’s music was in me.”

Keith Reid: “I was trying to conjure a mood as much as tell a straightforward, girl-leaves-boy story. With the ceiling flying away and room humming harder, I wanted to paint an image of a scene. I wasn’t trying to be mysterious with those images, I was trying to be evocative. I suppose it seems like a decadent scene I’m describing. But I was too young to have experienced any decadence, then. I might have been smoking when I conceived it, but not when I wrote. It was influenced by books, not drugs.”

A Whiter Shade of Pale

We skipped the light fandango
Turned cartwheels ‘cross the floor
I was feeling kinda seasick
But the crowd called out for more
The room was humming harder
As the ceiling flew away
When we called out for another drink
And the waiter brought a tray

And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face, at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale

She said, “There is no reason
And the truth is plain to see. “
But I wandered through my playing cards
And they would not let her be
One of sixteen vestal virgins
Who were leaving for the coast
And although my eyes were open wide
They might have just as well been closed

And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face, at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale

She said, “I’m here on a shore leave,”
Though we were miles at sea.
I pointed out this detail
And forced her to agree,
Saying, “You must be the mermaid
Who took King Neptune for a ride. “
And she smiled at me so sweetly
That my anger straightway died.

And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face, at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale

If music be the food of love
Then laughter is it’s queen
And likewise if behind is in front
Then dirt in truth is clean
My mouth by then like cardboard
Seemed to slip straight through my head
So we crash-dived straightway quickly
And attacked the ocean bed

And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face, at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale

Twilight Zone – Queen of the Nile

★★★1/2 March 6, 1964 Season 5 Episode 23

If you want to see where we are…HERE is a list of the episodes.

The show begins with a reporter coming to the home of a pretty film star that looks amazing for her age. At first, the show seems friendly and innocent and then starts getting dark. It’s a good episode but not spectacular and has twists and turns that will keep viewers interested.

Ann Blyth plays ageless film star Pamela Morris, who is adored and envied by her fans, she has a mysterious past that a syndicated journalist Jordan Herrick (played by Lee Philips) hopes to uncover. This episode was very reminiscent of “Long Live Walter Jameson” from season 1 except Miss Morris will go to any length to keep her youth. Charles Beaumont wrote that one… and he was credited with Queen of the Nile but it was ghostwritten by Jerry Sohl. Beaumont’s health was in bad shape at the time.

This one is has a blend of drama, science fiction, and mystery. How does she stay young? How old is she really? The universe has rules and Miss Morris is breaking the biggest one.

From IMDB Trivia: When Jordan is on the phone with his Chicago-based editor Krueger, Krueger states that Constance Taylor had been “reigning beauty in the days of the Florodora Girls.” This is a reference to the chorus girls of the play “Florodora,” a popular musical comedy that opened on Broadway in 1900 and ran for over 550 performances. Much of the show’s success was attributed to the beauty of its sextet of chorines, whom the public dubbed “The Florodora Girls.”

Pamela Morris claimed to have been born in 1925.

This show was written by Charles Beaumont, Rod Serling, and Jerry Sohl (uncredited)

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:

Jordan Herrick, syndicated columnist, whose work appears in more than a hundred newspapers. By nature a cynic, a disbeliever, caught for the moment by a lovely vision. He knows the vision he’s seen is no dream; she is Pamela Morris, renowned movie star, whose name is a household word and whose face is known to millions. What Mr. Herrick does not know is that he has also just looked into the face—of the Twilight Zone.

Summary

A syndicated columnist, Jordan Herrick, gets an interview with the famous and beautiful actress Pamela Morris. She claims to be 38 years old but according to Jordan’s information, that would have made her first film as an adult when she was only 10. He takes her word for it but her elderly mother, Viola Draper, has news for him: she’s not Pamela’s mother, she is her daughter. The more he looks into her background, the more convinced he becomes that Pamela hasn’t aged for decades. Faced with the facts, Pamela shows the lengths she will go to in order to protect her great secret.

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

Everyone knows Pamela Morris, the beautiful and eternally young movie star. Or does she have another name, even more famous, an Egyptian name from centuries past? It’s best not to be too curious, lest you wind up like Jordan Herrick, a pile of dust and old clothing discarded in the endless eternity of the Twilight Zone.

CAST

Rod Serling … Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited)
Ann Blyth…Pamela Morris/Constance Taylor
Lee Philips…Jordan Herrick
Celia Lovsky…Viola Draper
Ruth Phillips…Charlotte
Frank Ferguson…Krueger
James Tyler…Mr. Jackson

Twilight Zone – An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

★★★★★ Feburary 28, 1964 Season 5 Episode 22

If you want to see where we are…HERE is a list of the episodes.

This one is a totally different animal in the Twilight Zone catalog. It was not written or adapted for the show. The producer William Froug had seen An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, a French film that had won first prize for short subjects at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival. Based on the story by Ambrose Bierce, it told the story of a condemned Confederate spy who, during the instant that he’s falling before the rope breaks his neck, imagines an involved and successful escape.

The Twilight Zone was running over budget for the year so they paid 10,000 dollars for a one year viewing and it balanced their budget. The film was shortened by several minutes and an introduction by Serling was added and voilà… it was a Twilight Zone.

The first time I watched this, I didn’t like it as much because I wasn’t expecting it. Now when watching it I realize what a brilliant short film it is. It was almost entirely silent…there were maybe a half-dozen lines in film. It fits the Twilight Zone on one hand…but on another it works independently of it because it was made that way.

A good watch and I reccomend it. It has a little different look and feel but it fits.

I found a discrepancy on who saw the film at a film festival. Rod Serling or the producer William Froug. I’ve read conflicting info at different places. I stated above William Froug because of Marc Scott Zicree’s book on the Twilight Zone. Below this you will see IMDB Trivia saying Mr. Serling…Until confirmed otherwise I will stick to the book. Who knows? Maybe they went together.

IMDB Trivia: Rod Serling was getting ready to take his end-of-season break, with all but one of the shows for the fifth season already filmed or in production, when he decided to leave early and go to a French film festival. There he saw Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (1961) and immediately hunted down the producers with an offer to buy it for a one-time showing for American TV. Serling reportedly picked it up for $10,000 and flew straight back to Los Angeles, filming a new intro the moment he got to the studio and plugging the show into that same week’s time slot. Not only did Serling get what was considered a classic, he also saved nearly $100,000 in production costs and brought the season’s worth of shows in on budget. This prompted ABC-TV to offer to pick up The Twilight Zone (1959) for another season. Serling said no to the deal when his discussions over the content of the new season made it appear he would be “going to the graveyard” for each show, doing Gothic horror shows. (ABC did want that, and eventually would pick up Dark Shadows: The Vampire Curse (1966), which fit the bill, in daytime.) ironically, Serling would return to television in 1970 for three seasons of Night Gallery (1970) on NBC, consisting of the exact format that ABC had asked for.

The 1962 French version of Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (1961) won the Academy Award for Best Short Subject.

The French title of this film -“La riviere du hibou” – translates into English as “The River of the Owl.”

This show was written by Ambrose Bierce and Robert Enrico

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:

Tonight a presentation so special and unique that, for the first time in the five years we’ve been presenting The Twilight Zone, we’re offering a film shot in France by others. Winner of the Cannes Film Festival of 1962, as well as other international awards, here is a haunting study of the incredible, from the past master of the incredible, Ambrose Bierce. Here is the French production of ‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.

Summary

A Southern planter is about to be hanged for sabotage during the Civil War; when he is dropped off the bridge the rope breaks and he flees for his safety amid bullets and shots from a cannon. In this wonderful adaptation of Ambrose Bierce’s short story, the depths of a condemned man’s mind are probed. What does go through one’s mind moments before death?

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

An occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge – in two forms, as it was dreamed, and as it was lived and died. This is the stuff of fantasy, the thread of imagination… the ingredients of the Twilight Zone.

CAST

Rod Serling … Narrator (voice) (uncredited)
Roger Jacquet … Peyton Farquhar
Anne Cornaly … Mrs. Farquhar
Anker Larsen … Union Officer
Stéphane Fey … Union Officer
Jean-François Zeller … Union Sergeant
Pierre Danny … Union Soldier
Louis Adelin … Union Soldier

Twilight Zone – Spur of the Moment

★★★★ Feburary 21, 1964 Season 5 Episode 21

If you want to see where we are…HERE is a list of the episodes.

An eerie opening makes this one very promising. There are things you dream about happening and there is reality that actually happens. Diana Hyland plays Anne Henderson who gets a frightening visitor while riding a horse …or is it a warning? This episode makes you think about the choices you make and how those choices make you who you are…good or bad. Sometimes we all have red flags…not necessarily someone screaming on a horse but things that we know we shouldn’t ignore.

Richard Mathesons final four Twilight Zone scripts run the gamut from mildly disturbing to outright horrific. In Spur of the Moment, the romantic situation is a familiar one…Annes family wants her to marry the proper-but-dull stockbroker, but she is in love with the romantic, headstrong young fellow of whom they disapprove. We just know what she picks. The characters show Serling’s usual level of humanism but with a disturbing realistic edge.

This episode takes place on June 13, 1939, and in 1964.

This show was written by Rod Serling and Richard Matheson

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:

This is the face of terror. Anne Marie Henderson, 18 years of age, her young existence suddenly marred by a savage and wholly unanticipated pursuit by a strange, nightmarish figure of a woman in black, who has appeared as if from nowhere and now, at driving gallop, chases the terrified girl across the countryside, as if she means to ride her down and kill her, and then suddenly and inexplicably stops to watch in malignant silence as her prey takes flight. Miss Henderson has no idea whatever as to the motive for this pursuit. Worse, not the vaguest notion regarding the identity of her pursuer. Soon enough, she will be given the solution to this twofold mystery, but in a manner far beyond her present capacity to understand, a manner enigmatically bizarre in terms of time and space – which is to say, an answer from… the Twilight Zone.

Summary

While out horseback riding on June 13, 1939, 18 year-old Anne Henderson comes across another rider, a middle-aged woman dressed in black, who chases after her. She’s terrified and races home. It’s the day of her engagement party. She’s supposed to marry Robert Blake but childhood friend David Mitchell wants her to break it off and marry him instead. As for the woman in black, she is someone who knows Anne quite well.

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

This is the face of terror. Anne Marie Mitchell, 43 years of age, her desolate existence once more afflicted by the hope of altering her past mistake – a hope which is unfortunately doomed to disappointment. For warnings from the future to the past must be taken in the past. Today may change tomorrow but once today is gone, tomorrow can only look back in sorrow that the warning was ignored. Said warning as of now stamped ‘Not Accepted’- and stored away in the dead file, in the recording office… of the Twilight Zone.

CAST

Rod Serling … Narrator (voice) (uncredited)
Diana Hyland … Anne Henderson
Robert J. Hogan … Robert Blake
Philip Ober … Mr. Henderson
Marsha Hunt … Mrs. Henderson
Roger Davis … David Mitchell
Jack Raine … Reynolds

Cream – Badge

During my senior year in high school in 1985, I had their greatest hits. I wore it out and became a huge Cream fan. I went to an old music store a couple of years ago and they had an original 60s Leslie Cabinet. Why am I bringing that up? That is what Clapton is playing through on this song. A Leslie Cabinet (I have video at the bottom of the post) contains a rotating horn and was designed for organs, but many tried it with guitars. It gives an organ guitar a swirling sound. The Beatles used it a lot.

One of my favorite Cream songs. Badge was written by Eric Clapton and George Harrison. In George’s handwritten lyrics he wrote the word “Bridge” as in bridge of a song and Clapton thought it read “Badge” so they named the song that. In 1969 Badge peaked at #60 on the Billboard 100 Charts, #18 on the UK Charts, and #49 in Canada.

It appeared on Cream’s final album Goodbye. This song is one of only 3 studio tracks on Goodbye…the rest are live cuts. Badge would be the only Cream song to include 5 people…in addition to Clapton, Bruce, Baker and Harrison, Felix Pappalardi played the piano and Mellotron. Pappalardi produced Disreali Gears, Wheels Of Fire, and Goodbye. Robert Stigwood produced their debut album Fresh Cream.

Cream were broke up when this album was released. Clapton was already working with Blind Faith. The did reunite for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 1993 and played 3 songs. In 2005 the band reunited at the Royal Albert Hall…the location of their last concert in 1969 and later in the year at Madison Square Gardens.

I will say…it’s hard for me to listen to the 2005 reunion. Clapton chose to play his Fender guitar and it just didn’t have the bite his Gibson SG had in the Cream days. I didn’t expect the long jams but I do wish he would have been a bit dirtier in his sound. The musicianship though was great.

Don’t study the lyrics too much. They don’t make much sense. Supposedly many of them came from drunk conversations with George and Ringo.

George Harrison: I helped Eric write “Badge” you know. Each of them had to come up with a song for that Goodbye Cream album and Eric didn’t have his written. We were working across from each other and I was writing the lyrics down and we came to the middle part, so I wrote ‘Bridge.’ Eric read it upside down and cracked up laughing – ‘What’s BADGE?’ he said. After that, Ringo walked in drunk and gave us that line about the swans living in the park

Hope I didn’t bore you all with the Leslie Cabinet information, but I really like them. In this video you will see how it works and why an organ gets that swirling sound. A sixties model costs around $3000 and up.

Back to our song of the day!

Badge

Thinkin’ ’bout the times you drove in my car.
Thinkin’ that I might have drove you too far.
And I’m thinkin’ ’bout the love that you laid on my table.

I told you not to wander ’round in the dark.
I told you ’bout the swans, that they live in the park.
Then I told you ’bout our kid: now he’s married to Mabel.

Yes, I told you that the light goes up and down.
Don’t you notice how the wheel goes ’round?
And you better pick yourself up from the ground
Before they bring the curtain down.
Yes, before they bring the curtain down.

Ah Ah Ah, yeh yeh yeh
Ah Ah Ah, yeh yeh yeh

Talkin’ ’bout a girl that looks quite like you.
She didn’t have the time to wait in the queue.
She cried away her life since she fell off the cradle.

Twilight Zone – From Agnes – With Love

★★★ Feburary 14, 1964 Season 5 Episode 20

If you want to see where we are…HERE is a list of the episodes.

This episode is a light Twilight Zone and it was appropriately released on Valentine’s Day. Wally Cox plays James Elwood a computer programmer in the early 60s. Wally Cox’s voice is distinctive. If you are a cartoon fan, he was the voice of Underdog. He was also Marlon Brando’s best friend throughout their lives. The computer he is programming is acting strange…that is because “Agnes” the computer is in love with James.

The problem with From Agnes With Love lies with the main character. James Elwood is enormously brilliant in his position but positively inept and naive in life. Sue Randall appears in this episode and she is probably best known as Miss Landers in Leave It To Beaver. All in all, it’s a fun episode but not as memorable as some of the other lighter episodes. As I’ve said before, the 5th season is not as consistent as the first 3. You do have some great episodes mixed in with good and a couple that are below the Twilight Zone’s high standards.

From IMDB Trivia: When Agnes opens the doors to communicate, there are a few phrases that apparently make no sense. AUT AMAT AUT ODIT FEMINA is Latin for “a woman either loves or hates”. Also T’MA ZHILI BYLI and V TUMANE are stories by Russian author Leonid Andreyev. They translate to “Once There Lived”, and “In the Fog”, both controversial stories about women’s sexuality.

While they are in Walter’s apartment he mentions he wanted to drive a “Mustang 500” sports car. This episode was broadcast on February 14, 1964. The 1964-1/2 Ford Mustang was first introduced to the public on April 17, 1964 at the New York World’s Fair, although there had been Mustang concept cars in 1962 and 1963. The Shelby GT500 Mustang was first produced for the 1967 model year.

The music heard early in the episode and in different variations throughout the episodes, is titled “The Cuckoo Song”. Also known as “Dance Of The Cuckoos”, it is perhaps best known as the theme music from the Laurel and Hardy comedy films of the early to mid 1900s.

This show was written by Rod Serling and Bernard C. Schoenfeld

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:

James Elwood: master programmer. In charge of Mark 502-741, commonly known as Agnes, the world’s most advanced electronic computer. Machines are made by men for man’s benefit and progress, but when man ceases to control the products of his ingenuity and imagination he not only risks losing the benefit, but he takes a long and unpredictable step into… the Twilight Zone.

Summary

When their computer, known as Agnes, breaks down the company supervisor calls in a master programmer James Elwood to see if he can figure out what has gone wrong. He solves the problem quickly and soon finds himself in charge of the machine. Agnes and Elwood quickly develop a rapport and the machine takes to giving him advice about Millie, Jim’s co-worker who has finally agreed to go out on a date with. The date doesn’t go well and Agnes has more and more advice for him. It turns out that Agnes has her own agenda.

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

Advice to all future male scientists: be sure you understand the opposite sex, especially if you intend being a computer expert. Otherwise, you may find yourself like poor Elwood, defeated by a jealous machine, a most dangerous sort of female, whose victims are forever banished… to the Twilight Zone.

CAST

Rod Serling … Narrator (voice) (uncredited)
Wally Cox … James Elwood
Sue Randall … Millie
Raymond Bailey … Supervisor
Ralph Taeger … Walter Holmes
Don Keefer … Fred Danziger
Byron Kane … Assistant
Nan Peterson … Secretary

Dave having A Sound Day

Thanks to Max, aka “Badfinger” for giving me the chance to write something for his site today! He’s likewise written something cool about the band from which he took his screen-name, for my site, A Sound Day, (http://soundday.wordpress.com today) One of the best things about writing a blog, for about four years now, has been getting to know other bloggers with similar interests and read their posts. Of those, Badfinger has been a favorite of mine almost since I came to WordPress. I’m amazed that he and I are similar in age and have very similar tastes in music, and in baseball as well. So, needless to say he’s a pretty cool guy!

What I do at A Sound Day is post daily articles generally involving things which have happened on that calendar day in the world of music – album releases, records hitting #1, musicians having birthdays, that sort of thing. A simple enough idea, and one which I must admit wasn’t entirely original. A decade or so back, ex-Sex Pistol John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) ran a short syndicated radio bit called “A Rotten Day” which did the same basically, but in headline form delivered in his characteristically snarky persona. So, it’s not a unique idea, but I try to go beyond the headlines and tell a story. Make it interesting. For example, we pretty much all know the song “Midnight Train to Georgia”, but how many knew it was indirectly inspired by a Mississippi songwriter talking to Farrah Fawcett? Lots of us like London Calling, but do we know that the big hit single on it, “Train in Vain” wasn’t included on the track listing printed on the record because it wasn’t supposed to be on the album? How about an avant garde new wave rocker who has a successful second career writing books about archaeology? It’s the details that make the stories interesting and I try to find them… and remind people of some great music that they might have forgotten. Or introduce them to music I love that they might not have even heard. Grudgingly, I sometimes even cover music that, well, didn’t really get my motor running but was important in its own way, and try to listen to it with a fresh ear. If it was rock, or pop, or maybe even occasionally country, and it was from the ’60s to the end of the century, I’ve probably given it a look. That’s kind of an overview of what I do there, but let me tell you a bit about why.

Music has always been important to me. A big part of my memories… so much so that it can be an almost Rainman-like, frustrating ability. I can barely remember the names of my teachers or classmates from 1974, for example, but I can probably name two-thirds of the #1 songs of that year without ever looking to Google or Wiki. I couldn’t tell you the name of a girl I might have danced with at a junior high dance, but I can still recall the song was “Car Wash” by Rose Royce.

Mind you, there weren’t a lot of dances for young me. I was rather ill a lot of the time, and had by 1970s standards, a very over-protective mother…although by today’s standards, she was pretty lax. At least I walked or cycled to school myself instead of being driven to the door. But if it was raining, or cold, I probably wouldn’t be going out with friends to hang out on the weekend – “you’d get sick.” So I was home (with chain-smoking adults) and prone to lots of asthma attacks and bouts of pneumonia. Things like reading, looking outside at the birds coming to the feeder and music took on an import to me that many wouldn’t be able to relate to. Music especially.

Both my parents liked music, and every vague memory I have of being very young seems to have included music somewhere in the background. One of my first memories was listening to Sgt.Pepper and marveling in the weird but delightful sounds coming from the big wooden-cabinet stereo in the living room, while being dazzled by the funny-looking cover of the record. I can’t say whether it was my Mom or my brother who had the album… my Mom loved the Beatles and my older brother was a rocker as long as I can remember. One time just after he was old enough to drive, my Dad let him drive the car home most of the way from a family Florida vacation. He played Wish You Were Here on 8-track for almost the entire ride. It took some years for me to be able to listen to that with happy ears, I can tell you! Pop, Beatles, Glen Campbell, some old-school country now and again… there always seemed to be music on in the house when I was little.

Around when I was five, I was given a little transistor radio. Might have been for my birthday, might have been for Christmas. I can’t remember. What I do remember is that little black plastic, mono radio with its’ rotating dial and tiny earbud let me listen to my own music…and life was never the same. And here, I feel very lucky because I grew up near Toronto, Canada… so I got to mature listening to two of the coolest radio stations on the continent…CHUM when I was a kid, and CFNY as I grew towards adulthood.

The first station I seemed to find on that little transistor was 1050 CHUM. A Toronto “hits” station that was by far the most-listened to station in the entire country at the time. It had been around since, well about since Noah went looking for two giraffes and two hornets ( did you really have to take them…but I digress!) but one which had switched to rock and pop before the curve, in 1957. “All Shook Up” was the first song they played apparently, and their first #1 song. Madonna’s “Live to Tell” was its final one, 29 years later before it changed formats (the station still exists but is now talk sports apparently) so it covered my early school and junior high years. My tuner rarely swayed back then, even though my radios got better and better through the ’70s, to a big transistor with a big built-in speaker to one of those only-in-the-70s white, plastic stereos with rounded corners and a turntable on top. And I put that to use; while other kids were spending their allowances on chocolate bars or comic books, I was saving my coins til we went to the mall and I could buy “Chevy Van” or “Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You” as singles. I still remember the first LP I bought – Elton John’s Greatest Hits. Nearly 50 years later, that still seems like a pretty decent place to start.

CHUM was a pretty conventional “top 40” station, even though it actually had a “top 30”. And a cool thing about that was they actually published it weekly… I’d stop by the basement of Eatons and go to the records and pick up a little folder with the top 30 songs listed inside, as the picture shows. And take a look at that, a fairly typical example of one. Rock – how ’bout BTO or Rick Derringer? Country, dare you say? Umm, Tom T. Hall, John Denver. Cool pop? Elton John, Wings. Disco? It’s there. In fact, CHUM let us hear pretty much everything that was hot in the decade from Motown to Meco to McCartney. It was one of the great things about the decade, its music (which Max nicely reminded us last week with his 70s AM Radio series) and radio before it became too formulated and narrow in playlists. Plus, it mixed in a fair bit of Canadian content. That helped the homegrown artists and let us hear even more of a range of music. The world knew Anne Murray and BTO but we knew Wednesday (from my hometown, their biggest hit being a cover of “Last Kiss”) and Edward Bear too. Years before he was writing “Black Velvet” for his girlfriend Alannah Myles, we knew Christopher Ward as a decent singer of soft-rock ballads (www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E1VgsoS6i4 ) thanks to CHUM.

One thing Toronto was great for – many say best in North America – was being open to new sounds and “obscure” British music. By 1980, CHUM’s list of #1 songs included some classic rock mega-names – Led Zeppelin, John Lennon, Pink Floyd – but also things like “Turning Japanese” by the Vapors and “Making Plans for Nigel” by XTC. That might have been inspired a bit by the second great station that I lived with – CFNY.

CFNY-FM was a station started in the late-’70s in “the little yellow farmhouse” in the outer suburbs. It’s reach was only a few miles at first; it’s nickname “the Spirit of Radio”… yes the one and the same name Rush wrote a song about. It concentrated on finding and playing great music other stations ignored. If you were going to hear the Damned, solo Peter Gabriel or Depeche Mode years before other people would in Canada, it was going to be on CFNY. As time went by though the station relocated, bought more powerful transmistors and was broadcasting to half a million regular listeners from the CN Tower. And making bands like the Psychedelic Furs and The Smths huge, arena-selling artists in Toronto. Such was their sway in the area that soon other stations began copying them to some degree. Not many hard rock stations were playing A Flock of Seagulls or “music at work” stations The Stranglers, but in Toronto they were. They had to to compete. Now, don’t get me wrong. I actually liked Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, even Madonna and I did hear them, once in awhile turning over to a hit station, or watching Much Music (our version of MTV) but by listening to so much CFNY I found incredible music by artists most elsewhere in North America never heard of – It’s Immaterial, Black (Liverpool singer Colin Vearncombe), (www.youtube.com/watch?v=koRT3HEmre4 )

Sinead O’Connor long before she flipped her wig and became a Saturday Night Live punchline. And as with CHUM, CFNY highlighted a lot of great Canadian acts. A couple of them went on to become national heroes with a lengthy string of platinum records at home… while remaining anonymous outside the Great White North. Blue Rodeo and Tragically Hip. The latter had very Canadian-oriented lyrics that made them so endeared the Prime Minister attended their final concert… which was televised nationwide on the national network! The former mixed country and rock seamlessly to create a great music that at the time defied labels – alt country? Country rock? Later it would probably be described as one of the early examples of “Americana” music (www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mqa4YzKPrFw ), following the traditions of The Band before them. Something we took to by the millions up there… but wouldn’t likely have ever heard were it not for that one station championing them in the early days. See an example of one of their year-end charts below.

When I was six or seven, and coughing and my parents were fighting, I could be in my room listening to Jim Gold or the Doobie Brothers on that transistor radio…and feel kind of happy. A decade or so later, I didn’t fit in that well in many places but when I went to the indie record store and picked up the latest import 12” Depeche Mode single, I was everyone else’s equal… the equivalent of a Sheldon in Stuart’s comic book shop on Big Bang Theory. Music was my friend.

It still is, and I feel priviledged to be able to help you discover some of it, and make some human friends all the while doing so. Thanks again Max, for giving me this space today.

…

Twilight Zone – Night Call

★★★★1/2 February 7, 1964 Season 5 Episode 19

If you want to see where we are…HERE is a list of the episodes.

I really like this one a lot. It has a feel of a horror movie because it is somewhat of a ghost story. It’s about an older lady who starts getting calls in the middle of the night. Gladys Cooper is brilliant as Elva Keene in this episode. Elva is confused and frightened by persistent phone calls from an eerie sounding caller.

Gladys also appeared in Nothing in the Dark opposite Robert Redford in the 3rd season. Who else but Rod Serling could take something as simple as an inanimate object, a telephone, and turn it into an element of fear and dread?Highly suspenseful episode with an ironical ending. So who is the caller interrupting elderly Elva’s rest? One typical Twilight Zone trait is here…loneliness. This one will make you hesitant to answer the phone at night.

From IMDB Trivia: The title of Richard Matheson’s original short story is “Long Distance Call”. However, as there was already an episode of The Twilight Zone (1959) with this title, The Twilight Zone: Long Distance Call (1961), the title of this episode had to be changed.

Originally scheduled to air on November 22, 1963, it was preempted by John F. Kennedy’s assassination. In the alternate timeline featured in The Twilight Zone: Profile in Silver/Button, Button (1986) in which JFK’s assassination was prevented, a CBS television announcement is heard: “We will now return to our regular programming” and the theme of The Twilight Zone (1959) is played, a reference to the intended broadcast date of this episode.

Elva’s phone number is KL-5-2368. The K and the L are both the number 5 on the phone dial. “555” is an exchange number commonly thought to be reserved by the phone companies for use by TV and movies in order to prevent prank phone calls to real people. In fact, only 555-0100 through 555-0199 are now specifically reserved for fictional use, and the other numbers have been released for actual assignment.

On the day that this episode was first aired (February 7, 1964), The Beatles arrived in the United States in preparation for their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show (1948): The Ed Sullivan Show: Meet The Beatles (1964).

This show was written by Rod Serling and Richard Matheson

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:

Miss Elva Keene lives alone on the outskirts of London Flats, a tiny rural community in Maine. Up until now, the pattern of Miss Keene’s existence has been that of lying in her bed or sitting in her wheelchair, reading books, listening to a radio, eating, napping, taking medication—and waiting for something different to happen. Miss Keene doesn’t know it yet, but her period of waiting has just ended, for something different is about to happen to her, has in fact already begun to happen, via two most unaccountable telephone calls in the middle of a stormy night, telephone calls routed directly through—the Twilight Zone.

Summary

The elderly Elva Keene is not too happy when she begins receiving phone calls in the middle of the night. At first the calls are little more than static and her complaints to the local telephone operator, Miss Finch, seem to go unheeded. Over time however, she begins to hear a man’s voice but out of fear, tells whoever it is to go away. When Miss Finch reports they’ve found the problem, Elva visits the site only to realize the identity of the caller, and that regardless of anything she’s said, desperately wants the calls to continue.

VIDEO SPOILERS

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

According to the Bible, God created the Heavens and the Earth. It is man’s prerogative—and woman’s—to create their own particular and private Hell. Case in point, Miss Elva Keene, who in every sense has made her own bed and now must lie in it, sadder, but wiser, by dint of a rather painful lesson in responsibility, transmitted from the Twilight Zone.

CAST

Rod Serling … Narrator (voice) (uncredited)
Gladys Cooper…Elva Keene
Nora Marlowe…Margaret Phillips
Martine Bartlett…Miss Finch

Flying Burrito Brothers – Hot Burrito #1

This song is my favorite of the Flying Burrito Brothers. It came off their great country album The Gilded Palace of Sin. It didn’t chart at the time. It probably would have helped if they would have given it a proper name but regardless… it’s a great song.

Parsons wrote this song with Burrito bass player Chris Ethridge while the band was living in their San Fernando Valley house that was dubbed “Burrito Manor.”

This song, like the album The Gilded Palace of Sin, barely made a dent on the music world of 1969. They did develop a cult following after this albums release that included Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones. The band was more popular with other musicians than the public.

Gram joined the Flying Burrito Brothers after leaving the Byrds in 1968.

The Gilded Palace of Sin. One thing you notice are the “Nudie” suites on the front cover. Nudie Cohn was an American tailor who designed decorative rhinestone-covered suits. Parsons’ suit was hand-stitched by Manuel Cuevas, Nudie Cohen’s protégé, who has called the suit “a map for him to follow to his death.”

The green leaves featured in the design on the front of the jacket are a marijuana plant, and the red-petaled flowers above them are poppies, the natural source of morphine, opium, and heroin. Gram Parsons would die in 1973 and the cause of death was an overdose of morphine and alcohol

This album was a major influence on the Eagles, Travis Tritt, Vince Gill, Alan Jackson, Clint Black, and Randy Travis.

Hot Burrito #1

You may be sweet and nice
But that won’t keep you warm at night
‘Cause I’m the one who showed you how
To do the things you’re doing now
He may feel all your charms
He might hold you in his arms
But I’m the one who let you in
I was right beside you in the end
Once upon a time
You let me feel you deep inside
But nobody knew, nobody saw
Do you remember the way we cried?
I’m your toy
I’m your old boy
But I don’t want no one
But you to love me
No, I wouldn’t lie
You know I’m not that kind of guy
Once upon a time
You let me feel you deep inside
But nobody knew, nobody saw
Do you remember the way we cried?
I’m your toy
I’m your old boy
But I don’t want no one
But you to love me
No, I wouldn’t lie
You know I’m not that kind of guy

Twilight Zone – Black Leather Jackets

★★1/2 January 31, 1964 Season 5 Episode 18

If you want to see where we are…HERE is a list of the episodes.

This episode is a weak one but it does contain some science fiction for sci-fi fans. It is not the worse episode of the series but certainly not the best. Most of the time I do not question TZ logic but on this occasion, I had to. Aliens are on the planet and are trying to blend in with the rest of society. Do you think it’s wise to be three leather jacket motorcycle-riding beatniks moving in a residential neighborhood in the early 60s? Would the term “sore thumb” be used in this case?

I knew the leading lady looked familiar. It was Shelley Fabares who played Ellen Tillman who would 3 decades later star in the TV series Coach. She and Lee Kinsolving who plays Scott bumped this up from a 2. Denver Pyle is also in this episode but really doesn’t have much to do. Earl Hamner Jr admitted in an interview later that this episode was bad. He was not as proud of it as most of the other episodes of The Twilight Zone that he wrote.

From IMDB trivia:

In “The Twilight Zone Companion” (1983), Marc Scott Zicree described this episode as “It Came from Outer Space (1953) meets The Wild One (1953).”

When the real estate agent’s sign is shown in close-up, its phone number is “485-412,” not the standard 7 digit number it should have been. This was presumably done to avoid accidentally using a real number without resorting to the usual 555 prefix.

The close-up of the Invasion Commander’s eye resembles the logo of CBS which produced this show. It is the “All-Seeing Eye” of the Illuminati, also known as the “Eye of Providence” of the Free Masons. It is unclear if CBS is an adept of either practice.

The street is the same as the one in the season one episode “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street”.

All exteriors were shot in Universal’s back lot. As the bikers enter town at the beginning of the episode, they drive right past the town square made famous in Back to the Future (1985).

This show was written by Rod Serling and Earl Hamner Jr.

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:

Three strangers arrive in a small town; three men in black leather jackets in an empty, rented house. We’ll call them Steve, and Scott, and Fred, but their names are not important; their mission is, as three men on motorcycles lead us into the Twilight Zone.

Summary

Three leather-clad motorcycle-riding young men arrive in a small town where they rent a house on a quiet residential street. The neighbors aren’t too sure about them but they are certainly exotic, certainly in the eyes of young Ellen Tillman. The three men leave the house unfurnished and move in with several large crates. As Ellen and her father interact it becomes clear they are something very special indeed. Ellen and Scott begin spending time together while the two others continue with their plans.

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

Portrait of an American family on the eve of invasion from outer space. Of course, we know it’s merely fiction—and yet, think twice when you drink your next glass of water. Find out if it’s from your local reservoir, or possibly it came direct to you….from the Twilight Zone.

CAST

Rod Serling … Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited)
Lee Kinsolving … Scott
Michael Forest … Steve
Tom Gilleran … Fred
Michael Conrad … Police Officer/Alien
Shelley Fabares … Ellen Tillman
Denver Pyle … Stuart Tillman
Irene Hervey … Martha Tillman

Twilight Zone – Number Twelve Looks Just Like You

★★★★★ January 24, 1964 Season 5 Episode 17

If you want to see where we are…HERE is a list of the episodes.

“Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist.”― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Personally, I think this is one of the most important Twilight Zone episodes ever made. It could have been made now.

This one is deeply disturbing and not in a monster or twist sense…it tackles an issue that still is going strong. Did Rod Serling have a crystal ball or did he see where everything was going? This episode takes place in the 21st century and yes, it is very relatable now. In a time now where our cars, houses, and clothes look the same you could see this coming and with plastic sugery it is essentially here. On our phones, computers, tv’s, and magazines we are hit with a barrage of advertising aimed at beautifying ourselves. We are obssessed with celebrities looking perfect and mimicking them. We can lose our identity if we are not careful as a whole.

There is a line in the episode where the lead character says “Is that good being like everybody? Isn’t that the same as being nobody?” and that line speaks volumes. The episode is about when a person turns 19, he or she must choose which body and face they want to go through life with. All the choices are basically models and they are forced to go through with this operation. However, it’s not only the body and face that is changed, it’s their outlook and personality. They are always shallow and happy because no deep thoughts are allowed. The lead character Marilyn Cuberle is billiantly played by Collin Wilcox and you feel like she is alone in the world.

The episode is not about beauty. It’s not about if you are beautiful you are automatically shallow. I think people have misread it through the years. It’s about conforming to the social norm. There is the social price that we pay for not conforming, but I would rather pay it with intrest than go along with the crowd. In a world where everything is beautiful, nothing is.

*** I apologize for interupting here but this is a personal reflection on what this episode means to me. The quote at the top “Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist.” by Ralph Waldo Emerson is the most important quote I’ve ever read. I found it in high school and later on I was wrote up at work (I don’t work at that place now) because I had it on my computer desktop. I was not “part of the team” with thoughts like that. ***

IMDB Trivia: All the characters are named after conventionally beautiful film stars of the day: Lana for Lana Turner, Marilyn for Marilyn Monroe, Grace for Grace Kelly, Rex for Rex Harrison, Eva for Eva Marie Saint, Valerie for Valerie Allen.

Three separate characters – Uncle Rick, Dr. Rex, and Dr. Sigmund Friend – were identical in appearance, but were distinctly different as portrayed by Richard Long. Uncle Rick was kindly and down-to-earth; Dr. Rex was eerily good-natured, with some peculiar mannerisms; and “Sigmund Friend” was a Freud-like, ominous and shadowy character with a thick German accent.

This episode is reported to be the inspiration for “Uglies”, a 21st Century series of young adult science fiction novels by Scott Westerfeld.

When Marilyn shows her mother Lana a picture of herself (Lana) before her own “Transformation,” the picture is of Collin Wilcox with a different hairstyle. Wilcox was herself twenty-eight years old when she made this episode (and just two years younger than Suzy Parker), but the premise made it possible for her to be credible as a nineteen-year-old.

This episode is based on Charles Beaumont’s short story, “The Beautiful People”, which first appeared in the September 1952 issue of the science fiction magazine “If”.

This show was written by Charles Beaumont, John Tomerlin, and Rod Serling

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:

Given the chance, what young girl wouldn’t happily exchange a plain face for a lovely one? What girl could refuse the opportunity to be beautiful? For want of a better estimate, let’s call it the year 2000. At any rate, imagine a time in the future where science has developed the means of giving everyone the face and body he dreams of. It may not happen tomorrow, but it happens now, in The Twilight Zone.

Summary

As Marilyn Cuberle approaches her 19th birthday she faces a momentous decision. Like everyone else in this futuristic society, she must choose which look she will adopt in the transformation process. Here, all men and women look like one of a series of approved faces, all are beautiful or handsome. Marilyn doesn’t want to change her appearance and is happy to look different from anyone else. Everyone assures her that she is under no obligation to undergo the transformation – but they go out of their way to make it difficult for her to say no.

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

Portrait of a young lady in love – with herself. Improbable? Perhaps. But in an age of plastic surgery, body building and an infinity of cosmetics, let us hesitate to say impossible. These, and other strange blessings, may be waiting in the future, which, after all, is The Twilight Zone.

CAST

Rod Serling … Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited)
Collin Wilcox…Marilyn Cuberle
Suzy Parker…Lana Cuberle / Eva / Doe / Grace / Jane / Patient / Number 12
Richard Long…Uncle Rick / Dr. Rex / Sigmund Friend / Dr. Tom / Tad / Jack / Attendant
Pam Austin…Valerie / Marilyn (after transformation) / Number…

Jackson 5 – I Want You Back …1970’s AM Radio Gold Week

The Jackson Five had some great pop songs in the seventies. Most of the early songs were full of energy and infectious. They called their music bubblegum soul. This was the first Jackson 5 single released by Motown Records (they released a single on a local label in Gary, Indiana, in 1968). It launched their career and went to #1 in the US, as did the next three releases: “ABC,” “The Love You Save” and “I’ll Be There.”

The song peaked at #1 in the Billboard 100, #2 in Canada, #2 in the UK, and #12 in New Zealand 1969-1970.

Motown had set up offices in Los Angeles, which is where the Jackson 5 relocated and where this song was written and recorded. The top songwriting/production team at Motown, Holland-Dozier-Holland, had left the label to get better terms, so there was a huge void that many Motown writers were trying to fill.

Their first three songs were written and produced by a Motown collective known as “The Corporation”: Freddie Perren, Deke Richards, Fonce Mizell, and Berry Gordy Jr. Gordy was head of the label and assigned them that name, which kept the focus on the team instead of the individuals within it – if one member deigned to leave, he could replace him.

The Jackson 5 found a winning formula early. Michael Jackson sang the lead and his brothers added vocals in the song. It also opened the door for family groups with young lead singers, notably the Osmonds and the DeFranco Family.

It has gained popularity because of being included on the 2014 soundtrack Guardians Of The Galaxy, which was a #1 hit in America for two weeks.

From Songfacts

The Jackson 5 were a family group from Gary, Indiana, that were auditioned to exhaustion by their father, Joe, before signing with Motown Records in 1968. Joe made sure the youngest brother, Michael, was out front – his voice, dance moves and stage presence were the star of the show. When “I Want You Back” was released in October 1969, Michael was just 11 years old, but by that point he had so much training he could handle the promotional appearances and rigorous schedule. The entire group was media trained by Motown, and for a while they were ordered to tell a story about how Diana Ross discovered the group. For the most part, they came off as a regular family, with Michael citing basketball and catching lizards as hobbies. They described their sound as “bubblegum soul,” a term that explains their appeal to both black and white audiences.

This song tells a tried-and-true story about a guy who took his girl for granted and now desperately wants her back now that she’s left him. Making it work from the perspective of an 11-year-old boy took some doing, but the upbeat track takes the weight off, so it sounds more like a schoolyard crush. There are also lots of answer lines in the lyric (“Let you go, baby…”) that give the other members of the group a chance to chime in.

“I Want You Back” started as a song Freddie Perren, Fonce Mizell, and Deke Richards wrote for Gladys Knight & The Pips called “I Want To Be Free.” Perren and Mizell were childhood friends from New Jersey who moved to Los Angeles and teamed up with Deke Richards, a producer at Motown. When Berry Gordy heard the song, he decided it could be a good fit for the Jackson 5 if it got a rewrite. Michael Jackson reminded Gordy of Frankie Lymon, another teenage star, Gordy suggested they write it as if it were for Lymon. They reworked the song, changing the storyline so it’s about a young kid trying to get his girl back, and they fashioned a lively track to underline it.

When the song took off, Perren, Mizell, Richards and Gordy became the songwriting/production team that powered the Jackson 5. Stung by the loss of his marquee team of Holland-Dozier-Holland, Gordy branded this new team “The Corporation,” which is how the songwriting credit was listed. This kept the writers’ names off the record, ensuring they would remain anonymous. They became the first West Coast songwriting team to make a big impact at Motown.

The musicians who played on most of the ’60s Motown hits were members of their Detroit house band, the Funk Brothers. The Jackson 5 recorded in Los Angeles with a new group of session players. On “I Want You Back,” they included Louis Shelton and David Walker on guitars, Wilton Felder on bass, and Gene Pello on drums.

This song opens with an ear-catching piano glissando that was played by two of the song’s writers, Freddie Perren and Fonce Mizell.

Berry Gordy went out of his way to make this a hit, using all his resources at Motown to do so. With the ’60s coming to a close and Motown moving west, Gordy wanted to mint new stars at the label, and he knew he had a winner in the Jackson 5. One of his ploys was to claim the group was discovered by Diana Ross, and have her showcase the group for industry bigwigs. Ross was also in transition, having recently left The Supremes and launched her solo career. This bit about Ross finding the group proved a solid talking point and was propagated for decades. Nobody seemed to care that it was a ruse – there was a lot more to talk about concerning the Jackson 5 and their precocious lead singer.

Two popular songs sampled this in 2001: Jay Z used it on “Izzo (H.O.V.A.)” and it was also used on Lil’ Romeo’s “My Baby.” In 1992, it was sampled on the Kris Kross hit “Jump.”

The sci-fi soul singer-songwriter Janelle Monáe covered this as a bonus track on the deluxe edition of her The Electric Lady album. She explained to A.V.Club that she chose this particular tune as it resonated with her. “There are so many amazing Michael Jackson songs from different stages of his career,” she said, “and that happened to be one of my favorite stages. It makes people happy, and I love the tone, and musically, it has a lot of places to go for our orchestra. It has a lot of odd instrumentation.”

“The version I did does not sound like the Jackson 5 original recording,” Monáe continued. “I wanted to interpret it my way and record it differently, while continuing to pay homage to him, but I saw it in a different light. I’m really excited to let you guys hear it because you’ll get a chance to hear that song from my perspective. I had a dream about it and how I wanted it to be recorded.”

This song appears in the films Now and Then (1995), Drumline (2002), Daddy Day Care (2003) and Friends with Benefits (2011).

I Want You Back

When I had you to myself, I didn’t want you around
Those pretty faces always make you stand out in a crowd
But someone picked you from the bunch, one glance is all it took
Now it’s much too late for me to take a second look

Oh baby, give me one more chance
(To show you that I love you)
Won’t you please let me back in your heart
Oh darlin’, I was blind to let you go
(Let you go, baby)
But now since I’ve seen you it is on
(I want you back)
Oh I do now
(I want you back)
Ooh ooh baby
(I want you back)
Yeah yeah yeah yeah
(I want you back)
Na na na na

Trying to live without your love is one long sleepless night
Let me show you, girl, that I know wrong from right
Every street you walk on, I leave tear stains on the ground
Following the girl I didn’t even want around

Let me tell ya now
Oh baby, all I need is one more chance
(To show you that I love you)
Won’t you please let me back in your heart
Oh darlin’, I was blind to let you go
(Let you go, baby)
But now since I’ve seen you it is on

All I want
All I need
All I want!
All I need!

Oh, just one more chance
To show you that I love you
Baby baby baby baby baby baby!
(I want you back)
Forget what happened then
(I want you back)
And let me live again!

Oh baby, I was blind to let you go
But now since I’ve seen you it is on
(I want you back)
Spare me of this cost
(I want you back)
Give me back what I lost!

Oh baby, I need one more chance, hah
I’d show you that I love you
Baby, oh! Baby, oh! Baby, oh!
I want you back!
I want you back!

Twilight Zone – The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross

★★★★ January 17, 1964 Season 5 Episode 16

If you want to see where we are…HERE is a list of the episodes.

Don Gordon who plays Salvadore Ross a troubled young man who has fits of rages. He soon finds out that human characteristics can be bought, sold, and exchanged like stock. There is one thing though…it’s a price steeper than money. Salvadore starts out as another Serling low life. A small-time man looking for shortcuts who only want things without giving back. His newfound power has no explanation, but I didn’t mind.

This is an episode about getting what you want and how essential it is to be true to yourself in attaining it. Sometimes it’s not about having it but how you get it. The acting is top-notch. Don Gordon went on to have 134 acting credits in 6 different decades. He also appeared in the Twilight Zone appearance since The Four of Us Are Dying. The character here is similar…cocky, slightly cruel, and short-tempered.

From IMDB Trivia: Based upon a short story of the same name, written by Henry Slesar and first published in the May 1961 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction by Mercury Press, Inc.

Kathleen O’Malley plays the nurse and J. Pat O’Malley played the older patient in the hospital. They were not related, however, when he began his career, he was known as Pat O’Malley, but when he arrived in Hollywood, he became known professionally as J. Pat O’Malley to avoid confusion with the actor Pat O’Malley who was, in real life, the father of Kathleen O’Malley.

The character of Salvadore Ross is 26, but the actor playing him, Don Gordon, was 38.

The $100,000.00 offer in 1964 would be the equivalent of about $896,000.00 in the year 2022.

This show was written by Jerry McNeely, Henry Slesar, and Rod Serling

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:

Confidential personnel file on Salvadore Ross. Personality: a volatile mixture of fury and frustration. Distinguishing physical characteristic: a badly broken hand, which will require emergency treatment at the nearest hospital. Ambition: shows great determination towards self-improvement. Estimate of potential success: a sure bet for a listing in Who’s Who in the Twilight Zone.

Summary

Salvadore Ross is a volatile mix of violence and frustration. He’s not very bright and hasn’t made much of himself so far. He is very much in love with Leah Maitland though she has told him she doesn’t want to see him anymore. He thinks she won’t see him because her father doesn’t approve and that they both think she can do better. When he realizes he can actually exchange parts of himself, like his age, with others he sets out on a path to make himself more acceptable to both of them.

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

The Salvadore Ross program for self-improvement. The all-in-one, sure-fire success course that lets you lick the bully, learn the language, dance the tango and anything else you want to do. Or think you want to do. Money-back guarantee. Offer limited to…the Twilight Zone.

CAST

Rod Serling … Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited)
Don Gordon…Salvadore Ross
Gail Kobe…Leah Maitland
Vaughn Taylor…Mr. Maitland
J. Pat O’Malley…Old Man
Douglass Dumbrille…Mr. Halpert
Douglas Lambert…Albert Rowe
Seymour Cassel…Jerry (uncredited)
Ted Jacques…Bartender (uncredited)
Kathleen O’Malley…Nurse (uncredited)

Buffalo Springfield – Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing

My friend and I discovered his father’s Buffalo Springfield’s greatest hits album in the early eighties. I grew to be a fan then and there, before I knew about Stills, Young, and the rest. Broken Arrow was my favorite song but Mr. Soul, For What It’s Worth, and this one we could not get enough of.

This song was Buffalo Springfield’s first single and the breakout for both Stephen Stills and Neil Young – although it wasn’t supposed to be. Originally the song Go and Say Goodbye by Stephen Stills on the A-side and Young’s Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing on the B-side, before their producers caved to pressure from distributors and flipped the sides.

Richie Furay sings the lead on this song after hearing Young play it earlier. Furay had songs he wanted to include on the album. His songs got lost in the shuffle with the Stills and Young and the developing rivalry between the two.

It wasn’t a smash by any means, but it charted at #110 in the Billboard 100 and #75 in Canada in 1966… so it got some airplay and was a regional success in California. Their album Buffalo Springfield peaked at #80 in the Billboard Album charts in 1967.

In Los Angeles, California’s WKHJ was the first radio station to play the song. Buffalo Springfield’s management arranged this feat by giving the station advanced tapes of “A Day In The Life” by the Beatles, which gave them the chance to break the song ahead of anyone else.

Neil Young wrote this song, which is partially based on one of his real-life schoolmates. Ross “Clancy” Smith attended Kelvin High School in Winnipeg, Canada, with Young.

Neil Young: “He was a kind of persecuted member of the community. He used to be able to do something, sing or something, and then he wasn’t able to do it anymore. The fact was that all the other problems or things that were seemingly important didn’t mean anything anymore because he couldn’t do what he wanted to do.”

The Carpenters did a version on their album Ticket To Ride in 1969.

From Songfacts

Further stress on the band’s debut was brought about by frustration with their producers. Though the legendary Ahmet Ertegun was their mentor, they’d been hooked up through the management team of Charlie Greene and Brian Stone, who were clearly out of their depth. Greene and Stone named themselves Buffalo Springfield’s producers and had them signed not to Atlantic proper or even their subsidiary Atco, but to their own York/Pala Records label, giving them a bigger slice of the profit pie than they otherwise would have been entitled to. As drummer Bruce Palmer is quoted in Neil Young: Long May You Run: The Illustrated History, “They were the sleaziest, most underhanded, backstabbing motherf–kers in the business! They were the best!”

Also from that book: “What hurt the album more than anything, though, was Greene and Stone’s production. Despite the Springfield’s strength as a live act, the managers forced each musician to record separately, piecing the parts together. Worse, after the band participated in the mono mix, Greene and Stone quickly converted the album to stereo, resulting in a tinny mix that outrages the group to this day. Young commented that Greene and Stone made them sound like the All-Insect Orchestra.”

In the same book, classmate Diana Halter says Clancy had multiple sclerosis, and was “so intelligent and so bright that he masked the sweet soul beneath it all.”

All accounts taken together, it’s hard to put an exact picture together of what made Clancy such a standout figure, but all agree he was exactly that.

Though Clancy was an inspiring figure in the song, “Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing” is about Young as much as it about Clancy. He wrote it in 1965 after having a terrible time in Toronto, where his attempts to get things going as a professional musician totally flopped. The rejection he experienced there was so complete (“humbling,” as he called it) that it sent him into a fit of introspective, frustrated songwriting. Out of this pain began to emerge the songwriting style on which Young would build his legend. The pinnacle of those songs, many of which were only recorded on demos or not recorded at all, was “Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing.”

Released on Buffalo Springfield’s eponymous debut album, the song peaked at #110, which wasn’t very good at that time. Unlike the modern era when there are so many bands and expectations are a bit more muted, back then a major-label act, even a new one, was expected to at least break into the top 100 to be considered commercially viable. The song was popular in the Los Angeles area, however, which was the nexus of hippie counterculture.

Young first recorded this song on a January 1966 demo for Elektra Records (Elektra rejected the demos). It can be heard on the 2009 release of The Archives Vol. 1 1963–1972.

There’s a live solo recording of the song on Sugar Mountain – Live at Canterbury House 1968.

The psychedelic band Fever Tree recorded the song in 1968 on their self-titled debut album.

Furay got an early preview of this song from Young himself when the Canadian visited Furay’s New York City apartment. He was auditioning to be house performer at a nightclub called the The Bitter End and played it there. Some of the auditions were recorded but haven’t been released anywhere.

The Clancy Brothers inspired the musical form in this song, with its Irish-styled 2/4 rhythm verses and 3/4 rhythm choruses.

Many journalists and historians have noted this song as Young’s artistic breakthrough, the one that helped him find the niche that would give him the kind of appeal that endured over 50 years later.

Who’s coming home on old 95?

Einarson in Don’t Be Denied posits that this line might refer to a trip that Young took home to Winnipeg in the fall of ’65, suggesting that the train was numbered 95.

Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing

Hey who’s that stomping all over my face?
Where’s that silhouette I’m trying to trace?
Who’s putting sponge in the bells I once rung?
And taking my gypsy before she’s begun?
To singing the meaning of what’s in my mind
Before I can take home what’s rightfully mine
Joinin’ and listenin’ and talkin’ in rhymes
Stoppin’ the feeling to wait for the times
Who’s saying baby that don’t mean a thing
‘Cause nowadays Clancy can’t even sing

And who’s all hung-up on that happiness thing?
Who’s trying to tune all the bells that he rings?
And who’s in the corner and down on the floor?
With pencil and paper just counting the score?
And who’s trying to act like he just in between?
The night isn’t black, it can only be screened
Don’t bother looking you’re too blind to see
Who’s coming on like he wanted to be
Who’s saying baby, that don’t mean a thing
‘Cause nowadays Clancy can’t even sing

And who’s coming home on the old ninety five?
Who’s got the feeling to keep him alive
Though havin’ it, sharin’ it ain’t quite the same
It ain’t no gold nugget you can’t lay a claim
Who’s seeing eyes through the crack in the floor
There it is baby don’t you worry no more
Who should be sleepin’ but is writing this song
Wishin’ and a-hopin’ he weren’t so damned wrong
Who’s saying baby, that don’t mean a thing
‘Cause nowadays Clancy can’t even sing
Who’s saying baby that don’t mean a thing
‘Cause nowadays Clancy can’t even sing

Twilight Zone – The Long Morrow

★★★★ January 10, 1964 Season 5 Episode 15

If you want to see where we are…HERE is a list of the episodes.

The Long Morrow is a simple but complicated love story in the Twilight Zone. Robert Lansing and Mariette Hartley play Commander Douglas Stansfield and Sandra Horn respectively. They make the characers real and inject an emotional depth to their story. The Twilight Zone had some of the best casting of any show on television.

I would say it’s The Twilight Zone’s most romantic episode. This one is unbelievably poignant with the ironic ending. It makes you think about human spirit and the lenghs to which Man (and Woman) will go to realize an ultimate ambition. We are clever when we want to be but sometimes it doesn’t turn out the way we think it will.

To talk anymore about it would give the ending away. This is one you will have to watch.

Robert Lansing: I was a little reluctant to do the semi-nude thing in the ice block, but it was such a good idea, so visual, that I bypassed my own feelings and did it. I was wearing a pair of mini-trunks which today id wear on a beach.

From IMDB Trivia:

Both Robert Lansing (Commander Stansfield) and Mariette Hartley (Sandra Horn) later both guest star on Star Trek (1966), but not together. Robert Lansing played Gary Seven in S2E26 (“Assignment: Earth”), for a spin-off series that was not picked up. Mariette Hartley played Zarabeth in S3E23 (“All Our Yesterdays”) as a love interest for Mr. Spock.

This episode takes place in June 1987, in November 1987, from December 31, 1987 to January 1, 1988, on April 19, 1988, on May 1, 1988 and in 2027.

This show was written by Rod Serling

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:

It may be said with a degree of assurance that not everything that meets the eye is as it appears. Case in point, the scene you’re watching. This is not a hospital, not a morgue, not a mausoleum, not an undertaker’s parlor of the future. What it is is the belly of a spaceship. It is en route to another planetary system, an incredible distance from the Earth. This is the crux of our story – a flight into space. It is also the story of the things that might happen to human beings who take a step beyond, unable to anticipate everything that might await them out there.

The narration continues after Stansfield is informed that his journey into space will take forty years:

Commander Douglas Stansfield, astronaut, a man about to embark on one of history’s longest journeys: forty years out into endless space and hopefully back again. This is the beginning, the first step towards man’s longest leap into the unknown. Science has solved the mechanical details and now it’s up to one human being to breathe life into blueprints and computers, to prove once and for all that man can live half a lifetime in the total void of outer space, forty years alone in the unknown. This is Earth. Ahead lies a planetary system. The vast region in between is the Twilight Zone.

Summary

Commander Douglas Stansfield is selected to be the first astronaut to go on a deep-space mission. He will be away for 40 years but for much of that, he will be in stasis, and on his return he will hardly have aged. Stansfield is a seemingly ideal candidate as he is single and has no close family. Prior to his departure however, he meets the beautiful Sandra Horn and they fall very much in love. Forty years later, Stansfield returns but it seems he and Sandra had their own way of dealing with the 40 years since they last saw each other.

Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:

Commander Douglas Stansfield, one of the forgotten pioneers of the space age. He’s been pushed aside by the flow of progress and the passage of years, and the ferocious travesty of fate. Tonight’s tale of the ionosphere and irony, delivered from the Twilight Zone.

CAST

Rod Serling … Narrator / Self – Host (uncredited)
Robert Lansing…Commander Douglas Stansfield
Mariette Hartley…Sandra Horn
George Macready…Dr. Bixler
Ed Binns…General Walters
William Swan…Technician