CREEMEDIA

CREEMEDIA

Name That Tune Goes Disco; End Of World Imminent

by Rick Johnson

Way way back, in the mists of our spermatozahood, Name That Tune was a good old, self-explanatory kind of show. The band played the melody (usually "Three Coins In The Fountain"), the jerk tried to guess and if he got it right, he won his own home bomb shelter, completely stocked with a colorful array of hula hoops. This was back when television was just plain stupid.

Then, in order to make TV the dumb-byt-shiny instrument of nuzzle it is today] they had to go back and mess with a lot of classic formulas: Thus the $100,000Name That Tune, with Tom Kennedy and a flashing, exploding set that makes a Kiss concert look like a blind man's closet. Despite the famous Kennedy teeth—which have to be run through a car wash instead of brushed—and a studio audience that's been used in textbooks as the definition for Blurting Out The Answer, the show was still OK. It beat Joker's Wild, anyway.

But now they've really gone and done it. Tune has just gone disco, complete' with ya-ya dancers, hump-beat performers and contestants so immaculately groomed that one touch and their whole body might fall off. It's a long way back to winners like Ned The Fireman, who said the secret of his victories was his eye-popping— "they sound like guns goin' off."

The game's still pretty much the same, at least at first. The band, uh, par-done, Dan Sawyer And The Sound System, plays the tune and the dummies hit the button if they know. Only trouble is, nobody can ever figure out what these popular-songs-forcedinto-disco-arrangements are, because they all sound like K.C. and the Sunshine Band outtakes. Let me tell you, you haven't lived until you've heard a disco version of "Buckle Down Winsoki."

If the test animals survive the first half, they go to the Golden Melody Round, that "I can name that tune in three notes" game that's since become such a popular barroom pastime, only we call it Name That Riff. Anyway, Tom gives them a hint like "this was a near local hit for the Ultimate Spinach back in '67." Blank looks all around. BZZZZZZT! "Sorry! That was 'Plastic Raincoats/Plastic Minds'!" How could they miss that one?

This goes On until one of the players (usually named Dahlia) gets one correct—"I know I know I know, that was 'Temporary Like Achilles' by Bob Dylan"—and the crowd screams, Tom throws money at her and cops a quick feel. Then it's back to the dancers, A who've elevated the Sou( Grimace to a true art form, and everybody empties out their sneaks and goes home. Oh yeah, happy.

You Owe It To Yourselves, you who go around so glibly calling yourselves "devo," to watch this show and if " possible, participate! Address for future suckers is P. O. Box 1280, Radio City, NYC. All you need is a haircut that looks like a part off a jet fighter, an ability to stammer, and a perfect knowledge of every song ever written. Hey listen, it beats selling drugs, although it's a lot the same.

Boogie On, Channel Master

TV GUIDE: THEFIRST 25 YEARS

[Compiled by Jay (5. Harris]

(Simon and Schuster)

What's the greatest mag in existence (this zine excepted)—Assassin

Violent World . . . Battling Midget Confidential? Here's a hint: it's a mere 35¢ and contains more info per week than a month of Jeopardy s. Why, it's TV Guide, with a circulation of over 20 million 5 putting it ahead even of Paul Harvey Digest in total readership.

Although most folks take TV Guide for granted, pitching it out with the soup cans at the end of the week, this, disposable (yet essential) magazine wasn't always around. Prior to 1953, a metropolitan area would print its own little television magazine, primarily schedule listings. To nationalize this trend, Triangle Publications purchased Philadelphia's TV Digest, New York's TV Guide, and Chicago's TV Forecast, and on April 3,1953 (almotet twelve years after the beginning of commercial telecasting: July 1,1941), a new TV magazine was sold across the U.S. for only 15¢.

TV Guide: The First 25 Years is a commemorative history of this han^y bible. Jay Harris has selected articles and photographs that illustrate mainly the surface of TV Guide's past coverage (Johnny Carson, Gunsmoke, Dragnet, All In The Family, Farrah, etc.); esoterica has been omitted entirely. (Cleveland Amory's review of Run, Buddy , Run is regrettably missing.) TV Guide has always pushed itself as the respectable overseer of video impact, investigating constantly television's role in this society , so included in this volume are too many essays of a topical nature (i.e., "What The Negro Wants From TV?"). Because Harris chose to avoid rank nostalgia in his compilation, most of the selections are just too dull to read ("The Bumbling Barnum Of Sunday Night—Ed Sullivan," "He's Merv Griffin—Period").

Yet there are a couple of bonuses that make the $15 price tag for the book (approx, a year's sub to TV Guide) almost worthwhile. In the middle,1 there's a color section of 400 TV Guide covers. For collectors, it's a swell way to check out those missing issues; for fans, it's a terrific thrill to see Joe E. Ross and Fred Gwynne or Dwayne Hickman and Bob Denver on past covers. In the back, there's a section that shows the nightly fall program schedules for each season from '53 to '77, evidence or bizarre programming from the Ancient Age (1964—ABC: Combat!followed by McHale's Navy). With these schedule charts, used in conjunction 'with Vincent Terrace's The Complete Encyclopedia of Television Programs 1947-1976 (Barnes), one should never have to rely upon inaccurate memory again.

Nevertheless, although The First 25 Years is hardly a slapdash assemblage of trivia, it still does not convey the very magic of TV Guide itself—that tingling kick of expectation that occurs every Monday , when one buys a copy at the same drugstore and then, quivering with excitement, flips through the issue to see what's on TV one week in advance, pausing in ecstatic anticipation to read "Leave It To Beavhr—Comedy. Little Benjie is convinced that Beaver has turned into a rock."

Robot A. Hull

Walk A Mile In My Shoes

SNEAKERS

by Samuel Americus Walker (Workman)___

1868 was a big year for inventions. Edisoft's phonobulb, McCormick's wheat-detector * the neutron Mountie and of course, ojral sex all made their first appearance in that year. But in a smelly loft.in New York Gity, a

clown-shoe repairman, named Wait Webster stuck the first rubber sole on an old shoe and a sneaker was born.

Since then, this oft-maligned shoe has been blamed for everything from kindergarten feet to the Death Of Croquet. Yet sneaks still rule, and Sam Walker's Sneakers attempts to separate the hooey from thefolderol. For example, do you still believe that sneaks cause blindness? Suffocate your feet? Make you cross-toed? Pigeon-toed? Pigeon-headed? Myths all! The only thing that sneaks make you is cool.

Walker covers all the vital areas like The Sock Controversy, The Odor Problem, The Insole Issue and how to keep your shoes from devolving into bagged-out little dumptrucks. He also giv>es timely tips for tread-setters, the most important being not to wear basketball shoes for tennis or your feet will look, feel and smell like dead, puppies.

You'll also find plenty of Fun Information (i.e. Phyllis George would repeat it) about sneaker jewelry, cars and cakes; gay sneaks (trademark is Peter Allen's bare footprint), how to say "suck my deodorant sock" in Pakistani, and Sneakers Of The Stars The

Ramones and Graham Parker I can see, but I bet Mick Jagger's sneaks smell sweeter than a fawn twat in rutting season.

Plus a visit to an Ohio sneaker factory where tiny, corporately-retarded workers scrawl ARE WE NOT SHOES? on the soles, and Ked-king Dr. Irwin Corey's summation of what sneakers truly represent: "That which can be cleared up with ease rather than talent."

Or maybe he was reviewing this book.

Rick Johnson