Yes, by the third album the band was on the ropes. Kermit in rehab, Miss Piggy doing time in the Pork Bend Correctional Facility ... the years on the road had taken their toll. "It wasn't even us on the third album," Kermit rues today. "It was a contractual obligation thing, put together without our knowledge. I didn't get a cent from it. None of us did."
Eventually, the band got their act together. Made movies, more TV shows. Garnered an entire new audience as well as welcoming back what was left of their old one. "We're older but wiser," Kermit laughs from his Winnebago on the set of Muppet Yo' Mama. "Sure, we each have our own management, entourage, fitness trainers, wellness mentors, and once the cameras stop rolling we head for our homes and families. But occasionally I spin that first album, and yeah, I miss those days. We were punk before punk was a thing! I'm proud of that."
My thanks to Kermit The Frog for making time for me!
Today's deliverable is the iconic first album, the "difficult" second album, and the controversial third album. All you have to do is tell us about your favoritest TV show as a kid!
ReplyDeleteThe Muppets were great fun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uItJuJeuDg
ReplyDeleteMy favourite tv show as a kid.., lemme think, Thunderbirds!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hahdKYRdY5k
Thunderbirds still holds up. Supemarionation!!
DeleteGerry Anderson created so much of the tv of my youth, really liked Joe 90, but UFO was the one I really loved, and I thought that was how the real future would look.
DeleteI could never take UFO seriously because of that bald bloke. I knew that in the future, baldness would be a thing of the past.
DeleteI don't think there was a bald bloke in UFO, if you're refering to Straker, he had short blond hair. And he had a car with doors that opened upwards - hinged from the roof, a future yet to be realised.
DeleteI read bald bloke as blind blake.
DeleteI was thinking of Space: 1999, the follow-up show, with slaphead Barry Morse.
DeleteMa and Pa Kettle and Gilligans Island
ReplyDeleteDoctor Who and The Avengers. For a period they were on TV in our country, and they scared the hell out of me and my older brother. We also tried to watch Koot & Bie which was the best ever.
ReplyDeleteAs a ten years old I did not understand much of K&B but I grew up with them, and have loved them more and more, and their views on a lot of subjects are still (after 30 40 years) on topic.
https://falsememoryfoam.blogspot.com/2020/05/play-whos-in-my-box-with-tvs-emma-peel.html
Deletehttps://falsememoryfoam.blogspot.com/2020/08/play-whos-in-my-box-with-tvs-emmal-peel.html
Johnny Quest. That opening theme song still gets me.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIhEpjnaNlo
DeleteThere's a guy on various social media accounts who goes by the name of Race Bannon, and adopts the persona of a butch/gay Race. Its hilarious.
DeleteHmmm....I have some memory of Shorty Rogers doing a cover of that Jonny Quest, and he also worked with the Monkees. It's like...it's all intertwined, man.....connections....
DeleteI used to have a Shelly Mann lp on which his band incorporated that theme into another song. Age and decaying brain cells have prevented me from finding it again.
DeleteTHIS is how you do opening titles:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2n0widQ4nA
Muppets? Personally I prefer Muffin the Mule.
ReplyDeleteYou got four years at Wormwood Scrubs for that.
DeleteHowdy Doody
ReplyDelete... and howdy doody to yoody toody!
DeleteCaptain Kangaroo!
ReplyDeleteThe Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle. One of my regrets in life was spotting a "Bullwinkel Ford" license plate frame in the Reed & Sons wrecking yard out in Tracy, CA ("Watch for rattlesnakes") and NOT taking the time to remove it an argue out a price at the counter. I was already loaded with with a Studebaker truck tailgate and hood ornament.
ReplyDeleteThe whole of Jay Ward's animated universe were my favorites. R&B&Friends, but also Fractured Fairy Tales. Later there were George of the Jungle and Super Chicken!
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Ward
D in California
I have taught my 4 year-old grandson the George in the Jungle theme song and he has spread it to his room at school..."watch out for that...."
DeleteTookie tookie bird............
Delete"I Spy". Yeah, I know...the Cos...but then, no one knew..I was 13. But it mostly holds up! GREAT theme / score, (Earl Hagen), fab locations, chemistry between Kelly and Scotty...
ReplyDeleteBrilliant show.
DeleteVery.
Delete"I Spy"
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBUwqYgruQg
Jackanory. And Noggin the Nog (see Muffin the Mule).
ReplyDeleteI'm so old I remember when there were only two TV channels in Boston-- but we were close enough to New Hampshire that we could also receive a station from up there, and they had a local guy who did a daytime kids' show that featured Popeye cartoons, which was my favorite show at the time (late 1950s).
ReplyDeleteBy the time I was old enough to go to school they'd added two more channels, including one public broadcasting outlet-- which in those days ran French lessons during school hours, so the teacher could roll in a TV, turn it on, adjust the antenna for best picture, and go take a cigarette break while we had verbs conjugated at us. By then I'd gotten into Rocky and Bullwinkle. And I'd started buying records too, the first one being Leslie Gore's "It's My Party." (Took me 60 years to figure out what about it appealed to me: the second chord in the verse, after the opening G major, is a B flat, and that's the only place it appears; the rest is pretty standard doo-wop harmonies.)
The Beatles were still a year in the future. That was when the world really changed.
TWO channels?! Luxury, mate! Our first TV had only one, and a screen the size of a plate, and almost as round. It was in an upright wooden cabinet, a beautiful piece of furniture with doors. Watched the Children's Hour, and The Lone Ranger on Saturday afternoon, sitting cross-legged in front of it. It was called the Goggle Box for a reason, and parents nationwide fretted over the flickering cathode ray tube's hypnotic hold on their kids.
DeleteRocky and Bullwinkle, Tom and Jerry, and to the utter dismay of my poor mother--an refugee from Nazi Germany--Hogan's Hero's. Tangentially related, since some nutcase thought, hey, I know, let's take this brillig, dark WWII POW camp movie and make it into a 20 minute sitcom, at the end of Stalag 17, when Holden says: , "If I ever run into any of you bums on a street corner, just let's pretend we've never met before"...there needs to be a chef's kiss emoji, no?
ReplyDeletesonny fox wonderama
ReplyDeletewoody
Very, very young - Bill & Ben The Flowerpot Men - later on Stingray, The Man from Uncle, Johnny Quest, The Avengers (Emma Peel ..Ooh!!), The Prisoner and Batman (Adam West)
ReplyDeleteEnough!!!
The Impossibles. Thanks for this cool subject. - useo8
ReplyDeleteI guess Fonda, had, at times, a cartoonish persona so I'll drop this here. Farq - know anything about this?
ReplyDeleteWriter Tam Johnston has the story:
In the hazy, high-stakes aftermath of Easy Rider, a musical lightning strike nearly occurred that would have reshaped the landscape of California rock. Peter Fonda, flush with the success of the film and operating his own label, Chisa Records, found himself at the center of a ghost project: a 16-track collaboration between Roger McGuinn and David Crosby. At a time when Crosby was ascending with CSN and McGuinn was steering a new iteration of The Byrds, this session promised a reunion of the band's most potent creative engines. Yet, instead of a chart-topping release, the tapes were unceremoniously buried by Fonda himself, serving as a stark reminder that in the late '60s, the line between creative patron and uncompromising gatekeeper was razor-thin.
That is a fascinating, gritty piece of rock history. Peter Fonda’s "quality control" on that project really speaks to the perfectionism (or perhaps the ego) of that era's creative circles. It’s wild to think that 16 tracks of McGuinn and Crosby—essentially a Byrds reunion at their creative peak—could be shelved and left to gather dust because it didn't meet Fonda's standard.
To help expand this story further, here are some additional facts and context from that specific period that might flesh out the narrative. Chisa Records was a unique hub. While many associate Fonda with the counterculture of Easy Rider, his partnership with trumpeter Hugh Masekela meant the label was a melting pot of jazz, African influences, and California rock. Fonda was often the financier and the gatekeeper, which created a strange power dynamic with established legends like McGuinn and Crosby.
The Legend of the 16 Tracks: For years, Byrds archivists have treated these sessions as a "Holy Grail." Because they were recorded under the Chisa banner and not a major like Columbia, the rights and physical tapes were caught in a legal and personal limbo for decades. Critics and biographers have often wondered if Fonda’s assessment of the quality was accurate or if the "shelfing" was more about the volatile interpersonal relationships between the three men at the time.
This was happening right as the Byrds were transitioning through the Ballad of Easy Rider era. Crosby was already deep into CSN, so a side project with McGuinn at that moment would have been a massive industry pivot if it had actually seen the light of day.
McGuinn has always been a "gearhead" and a perfectionist in the studio. In later interviews, he noted that during the Easy Rider era, the lines between professional recording and "tripping in the studio" were often blurred. If Fonda felt it "wasn't there," McGuinn—who was often the most sober professional in the room—likely didn't put up a fight because he was already moving toward the more disciplined sound of the 1970 Byrds' Untitled album.
Crosby later reflected that his only job in any Byrds-related project was to be "Roger’s wingman." His ego was notoriously massive during the CSN era, but he admitted that his blend with McGuinn was "the best sound we ever had." To have an actor (Fonda) tell the "best harmony singer in the world" that his 16 tracks weren't good enough was a slight Crosby likely carried silently, contributing to the "rift" that David would later lament in his 2019 documentary, Remember My Name.
Fonda’s memoir, Don't Tell Dad, remains the most candid account, “That was my right,” said Fonda in his 1999 memoir. “It simply wasn’t there.”
To this day the tracks remain unreleased.
This is all new to me, Mr. Mac. It seems fantastic to me that Fonda had the power to shelve the album - he barely had the credentials to shelve a can of peas. And I'm always suspicious of anyone who claims it was their right to do, or not do, something. Having said that, I'm not grinding my teeth to bitter paste in my mouth over never getting to hear the tapes.
DeleteAlmost makes you wonder if the tapes were destroyed. Hard to believe that never would have been slipped out into the stratosphere.
DeleteI'm grateful. It means I don't have to try to like them.
DeleteI was born the same year as TV, 1948, but it entered in our home only in 1960. Warner Brothers cartoons were more fun than Disney's.
ReplyDeleteHas Disney ever been fun? Serious question.
DeleteYou want this stuff or not? What am I, a mind reader?
ReplyDeleteRocky and Bullwinkle and Friends, for sure. Even now, I'd watch. But, at least in the US, never discount local programming for kids, some of which was insane. I grew up in Chicago where we Svegooli and his Screaming Yellow Theater, Kiddie-au-Go-Go, and the all-time fave Garfield Goose, a show whose premise was that said goose Garfield was under the delusion that he was king of the United States and all the characters around him just fed into the delusion rather than upset him. They would surround the goings on with cartoons and serials. My go-to kids' show. --Muzak McMusics
ReplyDelete"Garfield was under the delusion that he was king of the United States and all the characters around him just fed into the delusion rather than upset him" - remind you of anyone?
DeleteFarq is the promised 3 by Yes?
ReplyDeleteHow many fingers am I holding up? STAY WITH ME! Look at me - how many fing- BREATHE *thumpthumpthump*
DeleteThe Bugs Bunny/ Road Runner Hour! Basically repackaged Looney Tunes!
ReplyDeleteYes, please: we.would.like.the.deliverable. Speaking for myself and the grandkids
ReplyDeletehttps://workupload.com/file/xUkz7cAdcdX
DeleteI've included the outtakes/demos disc from the Japanese deluxe edition of the first album. Miss Piggy's countrified version of Wayne County's "Fuck Me Or Fuck Off" has to be heard to be believed, and Adrian Sherwood's dub version of "Good Ship Lollipop" is incredible, but I could do without Animal's version of "Toad."
what more could a fella ask for...I hope the Kermie & Kurt tapes come out someday... the version of "About a Girl" is supposed to be killer stuff.
DeleteDe.Liv.Er.
ReplyDeleteYou have no manners, Snorky. This is what held you back in life.
Delete