Can't you just tape me and play it backwards?

Ever wonder what Stella and I look like while we're on the radio at KXLU? Wonder no more!

Karlheinz Stockhausen R.I.P.

Now whenever I hear radio static, I'm going to wonder if it isn't Karl composing something new.

The Great Metrano!

Art Metrano: The World's Greatest Magician!

I told you so!

December Edition of Reverend Dan's Videos For Nimrods

CURRENT PROGRAMMING
Learn a New Dance
Fun at Jiffy Lube
The Love Me Nots: Move In Tight
Crusader Rabbit: Episode 5
Fox News Porn
Naomi Wolf on Democracy Now!
Cartoon: Miss Glory
George McKelvey: My Teenage Fallout Queen
Lou Reed: Sweet Jane
Ian Hunter: Once Bitten Twice Shy
Cartoon: Peace On Earth

The Campbell Brothers Will Possess Your Soul

EVERYTHING in this this clip of the Campbell Brothers performing in a House of God Church completely and utterly kicks so ass*: The Preacher testifying at the beginning. The Campbell Brothers themselves wailing on truly rocking bit of Praise Music. The people in the congregation who SERIOUSLY know how to clap, dance and celebrate. The guy yelling "HEY!" This stuff is so good that you can't even believe that stuff this good exists.

I told you so.

* "Kicks So Ass" is a new catch phrase that Don Bolles, Dave Arnson and I are trying to popularize. Spread the word!

The Man With The Golden Bass

Sonic Cool. After a quick clip of teenagers dancing to the Hawaiian War Chant (???), dig Jet Harris (original bass player for The Shadows) playing his version of the theme to "The Man With The Golden Arm".


How could you not want to play bass guitar after seeing this! Thanks to Insect Surfer guitarist Dave Arnson for passing this along.

That Happy Feeling

T'was a time when we only had seven television channels in the Los Angeles area. SEVEN! I also had to walk a mile to school barefoot in the snow during a blizzard and a solar eclipse, but that's a tale for another time. This time, I'm talking about UHF television, and a song that has been burned into my brain. After-School television in the seventies was a pretty healthy scene, even with only seven channels. Starting at 3:00pm every weekday afternoon, channels 5, 9, 11 and 13 would each attempt to woo the young viewer by showing a bounty of cartoons and 60's reruns. And for a while, it was enough. But then dad came home after a trip to Japan, with a portable television with a 7" screen. Unheard of at the time! We could carry it from room to room! And in addition to picking up the seven channels of Very High Frequency, it also picked up something called ULTRA HIGH FREQUENCY! UHF! Back then, there wasn't a whole lot on UHF. There were endless stock market reports on channel 22, and channel 28 was where we could see the PBS programs. After that, you had to dial all the way up to channel 52 to get something else to see. And it was a goldmine.

Channel 52 was KBSC, and they only operated for half the day, starting around 3:00pm in the afternoon. They played all the stuff the other channels had passed on. Three Stooges, The Little Rascals, Felix The Cat, Speed Racer, Kimba The White Lion...stuff like that. So not only did they play all these cool shows, they did it on this weird UHF channel that only a few people knew about. The station went through a ritual every broadcast day. At around 2:00pm the station would put up the station logo which looked sorta like the illustration. Just a big number 52 with with call letters and cities of operation. For an entire hour, the station would show that logo card and play one song over and over and over again. We didn't know the name of the song, we just knew it as the "Waiting for channel 52 to start" music. And often is the time we would sit there and listen to the song over and over, waiting. I mean, who needs to see Magilla Gorilla and Squidly Diddly again when soon there would be Speed Racer with all those wonderful crashes and explosions and gasping! And the song was really kind of...happy. Later on, during one of our teenage "KRUD" radio sessions when we were looking for music for commercials, Dana found an album in his parents collection. The Best Of Bert Kaempfert. Playing it, we recognized a few of the tunes. "Hey, that's the song to the old Match Game!" "Yeah!" Then we listened to a song called "That Happy Feeling" and the world stopped. "CHANNEL 52!!!" we screamed! The mystery had been solved, and we weren't even trying to solve one! The composer and performer of the "Waiting for channel 52 to start" was Bert Kaempfert and the song was really called "That Happy Feeling", and from that day on, I've been a fan. And because of the channel 52 connection, I've found quite a few people who feel the same way. I've also met those who despise the music of Bert Kaempfert, for example Stella's boyfriend, the King of Hair. Instead of associating the music of Bert with an afternoon of great television entertainment, the Buffalo, N.Y. born King of Hair associates his music with getting up for school with an icy wind blowing across a freezing Lake Erie and hearing Bert's beautiful music behind the local weather reports.


Bert Kaempfert and his Orchestra kick out the jams on a live version of "That Happy Feeling".

Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp

Lancelot Link Secret Chimp was an all-Monkey spy spoof that aired the ABC network from 1970 until 1972. I love how the Hollywood Cinerama Dome is used as the headquarters of the A.P.E., the all-monkey spy agency. I was first taken to the Cinerama Dome back in 1965, for a showing of The Hallelujah Trail. It was my first trip ever to Hollywood, and the Dome made one hell of an impression on my five year old noggin. As for this particular episode of Lance, you got monkeys, and you got surfing. How can you lose?

Video: Thee Michelle Gun Elephant Live!

One of the things I really enjoy about becoming geezer is that it's still possible to find out about some great band I had never heard about. For example, I finally got around to listening to Howlin' Wolf at the age of 45, which means all his stuff is NEW TO ME!!! Another cool band I've recently (within the past five years) heard about is Thee Michelle Gun Elephant. Named after a wonderful mispronouncement of The Damned's "Machine Gun Etiquette", I wish I had heard about these guys when I had a chance to see them. I might never had heard about them at all were it not for my friends Shirley and the Late David Arnoff (he ain't dead, he's just late). Here they are in Japan back in 1998 playing "Smokin' Billy".

Four guys making one hell of a racket!