Prime Time

Prime Time

You Can’t Be Too Wrong

Richard C. Walls

Sooner or later, if you’re writing a column about television, you have to watch a little TV.

So. This month’s installment is a clearance house of recent observations, elongated capsule rantings, irresponsible epigrams and vague but heartfelt conclusions.

DARKNESS AT NOON: Is it my imagination or does Richard Dawson always have a dollop of drool sliding around on his lower lip? When this thought first occured to me I felt that perhaps, finally, I was beginning to crack, that perhaps the layers of reality I’d felt peeling off my brain over the years had finally run out and the final sheath of sanity was ready to slip—so quickly obsessed was I with the question of Dawson’s drooling. I had to know. I knew that I thought of him as a craven fool and consequently it was natural that I would picture him in my mind as a congenital idiot, but still.. .On the first weekday noon that arrived after this rude and obsessive thought struck me I made it a point to watch some of his Family Feud show. It was a small comfort to know that I wouldn’t have to put up with the whole moronic capering, just watch a few seconds to see if the dude really slobbered.

And still I’m not sure. ’Cause came the time, my roommate or partner (according to the Census Bureau) Betty was present and, beacon of sanity that she is, she gave me a hard time. Dawson walked to center stage to do the usual abysmal opening joke and I immediately spotted an incriminating speck of spittle. “See that!”, I cried, triumphantly pointing, “Drool!” “I don’t

see anything”, she said. “Look!”, I fairly shrieked. She looked. “Nope. There’s nothing there. ” And so it went, thru the whole dismal half hour.

But I saw it. I did.

HUMILIATING CHICKS: No doubt you’re familiar with Three’s A Crowd, Chuck Barris’ latest experiment in heavy embarrassment. Here in Detroit the show so outraged certain women’s groups (the names escape me—the usual ad hoc media monitors) that the resultant furor, as they say, got the show canned. This wasn’t too surprising since Detroit has always been a bastion of progressive social action. Ha Ha. Personally, I relished the show. If I had to graft a political-socio intent onto it (and I suppose I do, since I’m defending it) I’d point out that the show didn’t insult women per se—it was humiliating an entire class of men and women, specifically the bourgeois small businessman, his complacent wife and insolent secretary. And watching it always brought a pleasant click of affirmation—yes, these people are fools. And now the show is off the air and one’s brooding hatred of society has to be fed by the more oblique confirmations of ignorance and decay evident on such shows as Happy Days and Three’s Company. Fortunately for the gleefully bittertheNew/y wed Game remains, undiscovered by the wary watchdogs of the status quo. Right on, and all that.

COME BACK, HIROSHIMA: Pink Lady & Jeff...

VIDEO KILLED THE MOVIE REVIEW: Up until recently that is... dig: Judith Crist: the dean of American video movie critics. She really isn’t too bad, tho she has the mannerisms of a distraught enema addict. During her years on the Today Show she more or less defined the form and set the style—brevity, a little wit, less insight—as emulated by dozens of local editions and homaged in Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz. Gene Shalit: one of the primal reasons for hating television. Shalit is a huge pristine jerk who never falters when given the opportunity to make a fool of himself. Rex Reed: commands an admirably nasty wit but, like Crist & Shalit, has a hopelessly conservative conception of what a good movie might be.

One doesn’t want to be too rough on these clowns since some of their limitations are imposed on them via time strictures. Anyone who’s ever tried their hand at capsule reviewing is familiar with the almost sensual appeal of the smart crack vs. the humble reward of the true insight (ah, the guilt). Anyway, for the pastfew ■ seasons PBS has given an up and coming comedy duo called Ebert & Siskel a full half hour in which to practice the craft of TV movie reviewing. And they have managed, while avoiding pedantry, polemics, semiotics and any of several other eccentric modes of expression that enlightened film criticism is susceptible to, to make the form palatable, agreeable, even worthwhile. Sitting and watching the two chuckle appreciatively at each other’s jokes, arguing, agreeing, trying to explain earnestly why they were or weren’t moved by a particular film, it occurs to me that this is an especially engaging form of the standard movie review—two people, not terribly brighter than myself, sitting around talking about flicks.

Every other week they drop the straight reviews and do a theme show, a recent retrospective of the horror film being one of the best. It began jolly enough with the usual nods to Germany, Universal Studios, and the A-Bomb but by the end a mood of depression hung in the air that was so thick that you could hack it to death with a bloodied butcher’s knife. Horror movies, they agreed, had recently begun to pander to a passive'masochism, with evil pervasive and triumphant—as thothe more graphic revelations of evil in 70’s horror films were just too overwhelming to be contained in the traditional mode of good winning over evil. After showing a clip from Alien, Ebert brought out an Alien “doll” and the two critics commented sadly on this crass attempt to corrupt children. “Why not pollute our toys?” asked Siskel, exasperated over the pollution of everything else (our toys?) to which Ebert, ever attuned to the spirit of oneupmanship which keeps these shows rolling, responded, “It’s sickening just to call this a toy.” Of course they were overreacting a bit, caught up in a moralizing mood, but it was decent of them to point out that most exploitation filmakers nowadays seem not only to be after the fast buck, but to have the morals of child pornographers.

It’s an entertaining little show and it’s called Sneak Previews.

CANADIAN HUMOR: Second City TV likes to think that they have a young hip comedy show but the only thing even remotely innovative about this mishmash of old jokes and sophomoric satire is the canned laugh track—while the humor conveys the same old smartasseries, the accompanying laughter is wildly avant-garde. Maybe they’re doing it on purpose. After all, the show is Canadian-produced, and they don’t think like us.

WHO DO YOU KILL DEPT. As if this column weren’t incoherent enough, the last time around (Teenage Waistline, CREEM May ’80) it was graced by a truly mind-bending typographical error—the third and forth lines at the top of pg.

47 should read-“what he’d be like if he was there since, like his name, his personality seemed a private joke. During the Pilbeam Tea his only signs of life were a grin.” We ride at dawn.

No Highway Robbery >

LOST HIGHWAY: Journeys & Arrivals Off American Musicians by Peter Guralnick (David R. Godine)

I’m a rolling stone,

All alone and lost.

Fora life of sin I have paid the cost.

When I pass by,

All the people say,

’Just another guy On the lost highway.

—Hank Williams, the Original Outlaw, in his recording of Leon Payne’s “Lost Highway”

It is difficult to find fault with a book that begins with this humble assertion: “I never wanted to be a critic. ” At a time when there seem to be more critics of popular music than there are substantial artists to write about, Peter Guralnick’s confession comes as quite a shock. But it’s not exactly this spirit—the humility of a man confronting giants—which makes Lost Highway such an awe-inspiring book.

Guralnick is a master of portraiture, an ability he first revealed with Feel Like Going Home, a passionate collection of essays primarily about bluesmen (Johnny Shines, Skip James, Muddy Waters). For Guralnick, the blues are the backbone of American music; they are the stylistic source for every artist whom he cares about. Of course, it’s only fitting that he should be devoted to a musical form rooted in the integrity of modesty.

Lost Highway, too, is a collection of portraits, but with a profound difference from Guralnick’s earlier book. By employing the road as a metaphor, he gives us a sense of passage, an insight into the continuity of American music, how it actually connects more than we may fully realize.

The structure of the book is itself a journey, one which seems to depart and arrive at the same spot. “What I have tried to do in the pages that follow is indicate a kind of loose historical, and stylistic, progression.” Yet it moves in a progressive circle, “from blues influences to the blues itself.’*

The book’s four divisions are the signposts of American music’s history: “Honky Tonk Heroes” (Emest Tubb, Deford Bailey, Bobby Bland—the earlier generation whose music, inhabiting a rural setting and springing directly from a folk tradition, finally went to the city); “Hillbilly Boogie” (Elvis, Charlie Feathers, Charlie Rich, Scotty Moore, Jack Clement—black and whites unite under the shelter of Sun); “Honky Tonk Masquerade” (Waylon Jennings, Hank Williams, Jr., James Talley, Merle Haggard—traditional country music, pursuing the legacy of Tubb and Williams, often branded, ironically, as “outlaw music”); “The Blues Roll On” (Howlin’ Wolf, Big Joe Turner, contemporary Chicago blues—the ubiquitous force which has motivated every artist in this book). Most of the portraits were originally printed in other magazines, but what links them, besides his flair for organization, is Guralnick’s heartfelt passion, a deep faith in the steadfastness of traditionalism.

His faith is born of the enthusiastic conviction that American music is not merely the vinyl product pushed by record companies or the din of false idols, like So many plastic Jesuses, mouthing the latest trend, but instead, that it’s a process, a constant movement between journeys

and arrivals that never rests, incalpable of being buried in a record bin as a commodity. In other words, the music is always out there, in the air, in the soil, in the hopes and fears of people. “This may not seem so startling a discovery,” writes Guralnick, “but in an age when each month seeks a new hero, when everything has to be assigned a convenient washable label, and punk is forgotten as quickly as bossa nova, it’s an important truism to keep in mind.”

What is repeatedly brought home to Guralnick, whether he’s interviewing Rufus Thomas in Memphis or touring with James Talley in Oklahoma, is that for an artist to break through popular music’s current homogenization may be an unfeasible task, but that to enter the process of American music is quite simple—it requires only the commitment of engagement.”

The reason that Lost High way is one of the few intelligent books ever written about American music is that Guralnick is himself engaged, even married, to his subject. In the chapter “Faded Love,” he relates a dream he’s had about Elvis calling him up in the middle of the night—to compliment him on a well-written article. Guralnick write about his personal vision without any self-consciousness whatsoever, for it’s the innocent confession of a genuine fan, not a, literary game of some rock journalist concerned only with manipulating his reader.

Because he cares so intensely, Guralnick’s sentences seem to flow, as if written of their own accord. When there’s an intimate exchange between him and his subject, as in the case of Charlie Rich, his style become relaxed and expansive. But when there’s a distance involved, Guralnick chooses his words very carefully,, as if he were creating miniature portraits under a microscope. Consider this remarkable tribute to a most remarkable performer, Howlin’ Wolf. “I saw Wolf get really angry onlyvonce, when a young white girl danced around him, touching Wolfs face teasingly with her hand. Wolf s expression grew blacker and blacker, until at last he brushed he away with one huge paw, like a god swatting a fly.”

The final chapter of the books, “Sam Phillips Talking,” is the equivalents the Revelation of John. Sam Phillips speaks to Guralnick with the urgency of someone who know the gospel truth; Guralnick even views him as “an Old Testament prophet in tennis shoes,” speaking in the cadences of a southern preacher. What Phillips reveals should be left as a surprise; suffice it to say that after reading his words, the history of American music seems to fall into place, while his

warnings force one seriously to dread the future.

“... but in a way I began to identify with my subjects, began to see myself like them stranded out on the highway, for brief moments anyway taking up the strangely disembodied life of the road. ” Lost Highway is Peter Guralnick’s act of witnessing; it is also a testament of various musicians’ endurances on the road to salvation. Reading it is a rewarding odyssey unto itself; writing it was assuredly an act of faith. Without a doubt, it is the most humanistic work ever written about American popular music.

Robot A. Hull

Bang A Gong

THE GONG SHOW MOVIE

Directed by Robert Downey and Chuck Barris

(Universal)

The first depressing thing you notice about this Banquet-class"turkey pot pie is that Chuck Barris plays himsdf. You’d figure that a guy with Chuck’s dough and connections would get some hotshot lookalike stuntman type—say Larry Breeding or Anson Williams—to walk that walk for him, but no, it’s the as-seen-on-TV Barris all over again. Remember all those electric Gong Show moments when Mr. Bopper Barris just couldn’t resist playing his gee-tar along with everybody’s favorite f leabitten country/soul act?

I dunno—maybe Chuck’s feeling unrequited guilt over inflicting the Newlywed and Dating Games on ds Middle Americans for so many years, but this movie is the biggest suppository of schmaltz OP Chuckie Baby has slipped up our spincters since his “heartwarming” 1974 “novel,” You And Me, Babe.

The semi-fraudulent premise of The Gong Show Movie is that you’re going to get to see all those G. S. acts that were top vulgar or too obscene to show on familyhour TV (run that by me one more time?), but I seem to recall seeing most of these geriatric transvestites, endomorphic Negroes, second-string blimps & grinders, and misshapen face-farters on my pristine Cincinnati screen, way back when. Oh, yeah, Jaye P. Morgan gets so aroused during one furious gonging session that she bares her tits for the whole Western World (this is where the “R” rating comes in), but I already suspected her of having such knockers when she was still trying to pass for Jane Fonda on talk shows. Now, if Rex Reed took it all off...

But legitimate Gong Show footage is as scarce as deserving 30-point acts in this damaged-merchandise-sellout—far too many minutes are devoted to certain cloying fictions re Chuck Barris’s precious, ever-so-humble angst that he can’t go anywhere without total strangers auditioning potential Gong Show wowsers right in front of him. As ol’ Upchuck’s leggy-shikse (fake) live-in girlfriend, “Redhead” (Robin Altman) comforts him, when some smartasses pick on him in a parking garage: “It comes with the territory, Chuck.”

Right on! Chuck Barris is a star, and if stardom is taking its toll on his little tenderfoot of a heart, it’s time we all gotthe message. Remember Jim Nabors? A magnificently talented, sensitive, opera singer, for chrissake, trapped in that grotesque “Gomer Pyle” clown persona, Jim’s true depths never revealed to his adoring public! Would you want that to happen to...

“I really don’t know,” (claws violently at terminal dandruff) “/ liked it,” (pulls 10-gallon hat lower, to cover Head & Shoulders debris) “Why did you gong this movie, Rich?”

Richard Riegel