I guess it was just a little over three years ago when SCTV’s Rick Moranis created the character of Gerry Todd, genial “hepcat” host of the all-night show on Melonville’s video music channel. In typical Second City fashion, the Gerry Todd Show was based on a juxtaposition of hopelessly incongruous elements—a late ’50s easy listening radio show catapulted into the futuristic universe of 175 channels per household cable television. Planted in front of a bevy of video monitors and behind a selfoperated control board, Gerry Todd—he of the slicked-backhair-with-square-horn-rimmedglasses-and-goatee persuasionchecked in with the guys in the circling satellite for fast-breaking weather reports, tried a videophone dialing for dollars, and even opened up the request line (Caller: “Hey, Ger, how about a Mission Impossible?” Todd: “Sure. Any particular episode?”).

In between station ID’s (six disembodied heads smiling at you, singing “GerrrrryyTodddddl”) and plugs for sponsor Crazy Hy (“This week only!” shouted Eugene Levy in full beard and thick Jewish accent from the seat of a fork lift inside a humongous warehouse. “17 inch TV, 17 dollars! 19 inch TV, 19 dollars!”), Todd aired the latest in adult contemporary video fare—namely, selections from lounge crooner Tom Monroe’s ground-breaking album, Tom Monroe On A New Wavelength, which, against the backdrop of a golf course fairway, found the singer “getting down” with such biggies as “Turning Japanese” (sung so as to rhyme with “grease”) and the Police’s “Da Do Do Do.”

Fade to early March 1985. Yours truly is parked in front of the television set taking an initial peek at VH-1, MTV’s “alternative” video music station for the, er, older fan, and in no time, I’m starting to realize that what we have here is a classic example of life actually imitating art. There on the box is the ubiquitous honest-to-goodness MOR legend Roger Whittaker creaking his way through a video called “Take A Little, Give A Little” opposite an actress at least one entire lifetime younger than him. Halfway through the video, whatever semblance of plot that there may have been disappears completely, leaving poor Rog with nothing much else to do but get into that private plane of his and, sure enough, there’s a camera in the cockpit on hand to record man’s first-ever in-flight video lipsynch. This video is followed by a spot for the “exciting” (their words, not mine) “Lush Life Weekend” contest, wherein the grand prize winner gets two days in a New York penthouse, a limo to use for shopping, and dinner with Linda Ronstadt (poodles optional), and then a few choice words from afternoon VJ Frankie Crocker to the effect that “you can lead a horse to water, but a pencil must be lead” (I actually have this on tape, folks).

Whether Video Hits 1 (in “digital dolby stereo,” no less—as if anyone tuning in this channel by choice is the kind to be surrounded by heavy duty audio equipment) can actually find a market is a matter for the geniuses who thought this station up to worry about. My own meager survey reveals that, of the two people I know who actually have turned on VH-1 voluntarily, both did so because they have infants in the household and found the channel a “safer” companion for the toddlers than regular MTV because VH-1 didn’t have as much physical violence on

the screen. (Aural violence like Melissa Manchester and Eric Carmen is not so easily discerned by those not yet going to the bathroom on their own, I guess.) As for me, I found that repeated exposure to videos by the likes of Glen Campbell, Michael McDonald, Diana and Julio, and Anne Murray, when sandwiched between the pablum-like banter of such hired-because-they’re-‘ ‘personalities”-and-then-ordered-toact-as-if-lobotomized Jocks as Don Imus and Scott Shannon (VH-1’s best VJ is easily Sha Na Na’s Jon “Bowser” Bauman, who seems overjoyed to be anywhere now that the Match Game/Hollywood Squares Hour has bitten the dust) left me feeling that, were it not for the Bamboo Steamer and Grapefruit 45 Diet ads, I might have never gotten out of that channel alive.

SNAP SHOTS Love In Vein, Lita Ford, “Out For Blood”— We once wrote that then-Runaway Ms. Ford had a chance to be the rock ’n’ roll version of lisa, She Wolf of the SS and now, finally, that potential has been realized. Not really sure which is niftier—the notion of virgin male adolescent corpuscles fueling the Ford guitar, or whatever there may or may not be to the bottom half of her hell-bent-in-leather bondage outfit. Madonna, go fish...

COME TASTE THE BAND

YES: Yessongs (VidAmerica)

ASIA: Asia In Asia (Vestron)

GENESIS: Three Sides Live (Thorn EMI)

PHIL COLLINS:

Live At Perkins Palace (Thorn EMI/Pioneer LaserDisc)

Dave DiMartino

During one of Yessong’s dismally dulling “psychedelic” scenes, the famous Yesboys are obscured by a dazzling lightshow which actually includes fleeting glimpses of microscopic spermatazoa. Psychedelic? No. Appropriate? You tell me. All I know is, if you want to see a bunch of Prince Valiant lookalikes flittering around onstage while the dopiest-looking one says things like “mountains come out of the sky and they stand there” and “I get up, I get down” and no one throws things at him, it’s your business.

But in case you forgot, these things happened back then. Yessongs was originally filmed back when Yes played extremely meaningful progressive rock; with their massive smash Close To The Edge and any remaining sense of melody behind them, the film is a harrowing reminder of the perils of vegetarianism. Indeed, only carnivore Rick Wakeman, clad in a blue-sequinned cloak large enough to bunk two Liberaces, shows any signs of life whatsoever, and this mostly during his frantic attempts to press the proper switches on his many large, bulky and ugly synthesizers. When he reaches them in time, he plays an appropriately regal sounding screech—not unlike those one can now obtain from a $25 Casio Kmart special—and the crowd oohs and ahhs. Most remarkably, no one jumps onstage with scissors and cuts the two feet of hair getting in Wakeman’s way.

Yepper—hate to use slang, but if I said Yes it’d be confusing— progressive rock has aged remarkably well. Particularly if you never hear it again for the rest of your life. Music theorists from here to Boogie, Iowa, have often wondered where it all went wrong; how horrible groups like Emerson, Lake & Palmer evolved from quite respectable, fine little pop bands like the Nice (whose first two albums are by no means jizz showcases); how quite respectable, fine little pop bands like Yes (whose first two albums are also by no means jizz showcases and in truth feature songs by Richie Havens, the Beatles and Buffalo Springfield) turned into blundering behemoths that recorded two-LPs’ worth of one song that you couldn’t hum if you wanted to. After much consideration, many a theorist has been known to say “who gives a fuck,” but this is another story.

To be candid, one need only watch Asia In Asia to want to go out and get a coke or something. Asia, of course, features Yes’s Steve Howe, ELP’s Carl Palmer, King Crimson (& U.K. & Uriah Heep & etc.) bassist John Wetton and the Buggies’ Geoff Downes, a member of Yes right before they started having hits again without him. Did you know that John Wetton—-who wrote and sang all of Asia’s hit—I mean hits—was kicked out of Asia and that this tape does not feature him? Did you know that Greg Lake—who was in King Crimson and then ELP— replaced him? Just for this concert? And that this performance was originally shown on MTV? And that the most charismatic man in show biz—MTV’s Mark Goodman—introduces the band in phonetic Japanese?

You say you did know that, maybe, but you’re not sure? And that even if you did, you’re not sure you want to bother remembering it? Fair enough. What isn’t fair is the fact that / didn’t know, and I watched the tape. As you may suspect, it is utterly pedestrian, astonishingly amateurish, and extraordinarily lifeless. But aside from that, it’s real good.

And of course we’ve yet to discuss Genesis, who are themselves veterans of the progressive rock wars, and surely merit a mention: Genesis.

Is it merely coincidental that Robert Fripp’s King Crimson has played a part central to all these bands? That, in fact, Greg Lake, John Wetton and Yes’s Jon Anderson have recorded with Crimson? That Fripp has recorded with Genesis’s Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins? That, finally, Fripp recorded with Brit cult band Van Der Graaf Generator and its leader Peter Hammill?

Yes. It is merely coincidental.

Anyway, the Genesis video sucks. It would’ve been interesting if it was done when Gabriel were in the band, but of course it isn’t. Actually, it couldn’t have come at a more awkward time in the band’s career: everyone’s gone but drummer Collins and the remaining two Genesoids, Michael Rutherford and Tony Banks. One might uncharitably put forth that the band was coasting on the contributions of others— including the departed Gabriel and former guitarist Steve Hackett—but that would not be entirely true. What would be true, however, would be that at the time this concert and the accompanying interviews were filmed, drummer Collins was just coming off an enormously best-selling solo album. A solo album considerably more successful than any of the recent Genesis albums, or, for that matter, either of the solo albums by compatriots Rutherford and Banks. One might say that from this point in their career onward, Genesis need Collins very much more than Collins needs Genesis. It would be rude to put forth that suggestion to Genesis in a videocassette bearing their name, of course, so there remains an unspoken Hey, Phil, why don’t you dump these guys and their aimless noodling and make millions on your own doing Supremes songs? that makes the sensitive viewer a tad nervous.

However, one can see how the prospect might make Phil a little nervous. Though his Live At Perkins Palace is the most entertaining video of this entire bunch, that isn’t exactly an unqualified rave. Unlike the members of Yes, Phil has never looked like Prince Valiant. Much to his credit, you say? Perhaps. Collins seems an entirely affable, friendly fellow who has become a very major recording star—Number One in the States as I write—on the basis of one thing and one thing only. His records. He is an enormously talented drummer, a very sharp, skillful record maker, and on his way to utter baldheadedness.

If this world were fair, that surely wouldn’t matter. And Mark Goodman would be home listening to Van Der Graaf Generator records, wondering if he should buy a Sadistic Mika Band album because Eno was wearing their Tshirt, but Jesus, Jap imports are expensive.