I've written about roller skating here before and this Top Ten from the September 28, 1980 Tennessean Sunday Showcase takes me back to that time again. So many of the songs in that week were staples at Skatecenter West aka Jack's. It was about a month into 8th grade and my life was devoted to baseball cards, comics, KX104, and roller skating. Queen's "Another One Bites The Dust" is my favorite from this Top Ten. I even bought the 45.
It's with much pleasure and wonderment to see Liam Gallagher make such a complete comeback to rock and roll. The chants of "Liam, Liam, Liam" during the MTV UK Unplugged performance made my son's day. He is named for him after all.
What was playing at the movies in Murfreesboro, Tennessee 44 years ago? The Martin Twin was showing a couple of interesting British movies. One screen featured Tommy directed by Ken Russell while Monty Python and the Holy Grail played in the other theatre. The Towering Inferno was playing at Cinema One. The Marbro Drive-In was featuring the usual Seventies exploitation style b-movies Games Guy Plays and Games Girls Play.
Cinema One was usually where the more cutting edge type films were shown so it's a bit strange to find a weekend where the Martin Twin showcased the edgier fare while an Irwin Allen disaster movie played on the south side of town. The Towering Inferno was a towering hit though. It ranked number 2 on the highest grossing movies released in 1974. It came out in December of 1974 and didn't get to Murfreesboro until September of 1975. This was the second week at Cinema One. I didn't see any of the movies playing this week at the theater, but I did catch some of The Towering Inferno on network television back in 1980 and it just bored me.
The Martin Twin was where it was at for this week. I'm not a huge fan of Tommy even though I enjoy the songs, Ann Margaret is ravishing, and Roger Daltrey is tremendous in it. I guess I would like it to be less opera and more of a musical. Singing all of the time is just strange to me. I recall that it was the Riverdale High School Drama Club that would show Tommy every year to raise money for the Drama Club. I believe they showed it in the auditorium with an actual film projector. It wasn't a crummy VHS tape. I never went though. Lots of students did. It got you out of 2 classes during the school day. I loved The Who, but I guess money was just too tight for me. I needed my extra few dollars to buy a new Creem magazine or old Black Sabbath tapes back in those days. Tommy was a pretty big hit back in 1975 as it was the 9th biggest grossing film of the year.
I never would have thought Monty Python and the Holy Grail would have played during normal hours in Murfreesboro in its first run. I was familiar with Monty Python when I was 9 years old because PBS would show Monty Python and the Flying Circus back then. I didn't understand much of it, but the British accents were funny. Monty Python and the Holy Grail would later become a favorite of mine in my high school days. It would often feature in movie watching parties during the 1984-1987 or so boom of VHS tape renting. You had to be able to quote portions verbatim and with the correct accent if you wanted to keep up with your geeky friends.
The Marbro Drive-In has Games Guys Play which is a re-titling of the movie Goodnight Jackie. It's a sex comedy. Gregory Sierra, Jim Backus, Lana Wood, Christopher Norris, and Barry Williams are the better known actors in it. The IMDB reviews note that it's a rather mild film. Games Girls Play was originally titled Sex Play and also goes by the name The Bunny Caper. The synopsis: "Young daughter of high ranking political figure gets into trouble when she and her friends compete at bedding the foreign diplomats." I have never seen either of these movies, but might have to look up Games Guys Play since there are so many television stars I liked in it.
The Nashville newspaper The Tennessean had a Sunday supplement called Showcase. I guess it still does, but I haven't purchased a newspaper in over a decade. This section of the paper was my second favorite with only the Sunday funny pages beating it out. My family never subscribed to the paper and didn't buy it every Sunday, so it was a big treat when my father would buy it. I'd go straight to the funnies and then hit Showcase next. During the Seventies I would go to the very end of the section just to see what song lyrics had been printed. I was mad about music from a very early age. I was given a little kids record player when I was 4 and would get to buy 45 records every now and then.
Showcase was all about entertainment and since I was into television, movies, and music, after seeing what the song in the back was I would go back to the beginning and read the whole thing. Ads, upcoming club shows, articles on artists I didn't know or care about, every television listing; I would actually read it all. When you're an only child you've generally got lots of free time. It didn't hurt that I loved to read and still do.
When I got to college I goofed my first semester up. I quite going to most of my classes. I got thrown out of English class for talking too much. So I spent several years just working. My mother finally talked me into going back and during my first semester I had no transportation into school. My father would take me. Since I then had lots of free time I ended up looking through old Showcases on microfilm just to see what rock acts had been through Nashville in the past. I wrote a post about this way back in 2005.
Here it is 31 or so years later and I have little free time at all. I commute an hour and a half to work, spend 9-10 hours there, and then an hour and about 40 minutes home. I barely have a moment to relax. When I do though, one of the things I like to do is look at old newspapers. I suppose it's nostalgia as a placebo for the frantic pace. Things seemed slower then. That is probably not true, but faulty old memories are sometimes all one has. Hence, most of what I post is trips to the past. I hope to make this a weekly stop just like Friday's Movie Flashback.
This Old Showcase Review will be on the top songs in Nashville in the Sunday, September 23, 1979 issue. What were we listening to 40 years ago? Here is what was hot.
I liked Dionne Warwick, but I loved "My Sharona" by The Knack. I can still remember riding with my mom and hearing it come over KX104 for the first time. The beat! The rocking guitar and that incredible bridge along with lyrics that seemed to my 7th grade ears to be on the naughty side just couldn't be topped. The inclusion of the song in the film Reality Bites was right on the money. It was, perhaps, the first pop anthem of Generation X.
"Sad Eyes" was a swooning song that made for a good change of pace when skating at the roller rink. CDB's "The Devil Went Down To Georgia" was a favorite that had been on the charts for 3 months! I felt like quite the sinner though, because I always liked the devil's music section better. Local Murfreesboro radio station WGNS 1450 (hard to believe it was once a music station) probably really hated me as the summer of 1979 was when I started incessantly calling them up to request songs. "Lonesome Loser" was one of my many requests. I really liked that tune when I was 12, but nowadays not so much. Sorry Little River Band.
"Don't Bring Me Down" was ELO at their rocking best. I can still remember hearing that tune coming out of car radios that year. I wasn't too keen on Herb Alpert back then, but I have the "Rise" album now. The Commodores and Supertramp could do no wrong. "Sail On" is an especially good song since it flips the breakup song on its head. I don't remember the Bonnie Pointer song at all, but I bet it's good. In case you are wondering the song at the end of the Showcase this week was "Different Worlds" which was the theme song to the television show Angie.
This week's Friday Movie Flashback goes back 41 years to September 20, 1978. The movies playing in Murfreesboro, TN on what was a Wednesday then were a mixture of rock and roll both real and fake, an Italian sex comedy originally titled "La Professoressa Di Scienze Naturali" which in English is just "The Professor of Natural Sciences", an American sex comedy about a bogus sex clinic, and what I consider to be one of Burt Reynolds's best films.
The fake rock and roll was the blockbuster movie of 1978. Grease was the word that summer. The ad in the paper from the Martin Twin located in Jackson Heights Shopping Center touted the movie was in its 5th week. Sure, it was released way back in March, but as my friend Jimmy has pointed out to me, back in the Seventies Murfreesboro did not always get movies during their first released week. It could be several months later before they played which seems to definitely be the case with Grease.
I did go see Grease in the theater that summer before school began so it would have been earlier in the run when I saw it. I went alone, quite possibly walking from the rental house we had moved into earlier in the year on Murfree Avenue as it was a matinee that I attended. I was hooked from the moment the Barry Gibb penned title song performed by Frankie Valli and cartoon credits played. My parents came of age in the Fifties so I had been raised on Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino, and Jerry Lee Lewis. Sha Na Na had a television show and Happy Days was still a top ten show. I enjoyed being awash in Fifties nostalgia and still do. The oddest thing to me was my parents wouldn't let ride a bicycle on the street until I was in 8th grade, but were fine with me walking up to Jackson Heights alone to either hang out or see a movie.
Hooper was the 6th biggest movie at the box office that year and I saw that one at the Martin Four also. Burt Reynolds was my favorite movie star and I knew I didn't want to miss that one. It's a bit strange how one can remember seeing a film in the theatre when one is 11 years old, but I can. Sonny Hooper is one of Burt's best roles as he really turns in a fine performance as the aging stuntman being challenged by Ski played by Jan-Michael Vincent. It's a perfect mixture of comedy, action, and with just enough drama thrown in also. I highly recommend it.
The Mar-Bro Drive-In had a pair of sex comedies that I have never seen. School Days is the Italian entry which was made in 1976. Seniors was released in 1978 with the premise being 4 dorks open a fake sex clinic. It does have Dennis Quaid and Priscilla Barnes in it so I might have to check it out one of these day.
Cinema_One was featuring the real rock and roll with Martin Scorsese's wonderful documentary of The Band's last performance (at the time) called The Last Waltz. I did not see that in the theater. I was familiar with a few of The Band's songs then, but not enough to make me want to beg my mother to take me across town. We generally lived on the Mitchell-Neilson side of Murfreesboro and didn't get over to the Mercury Plaza area as often. I did see many films there, but it was usually much easier to attend ones playing at the Martin. I do love how if one looks back at the history of movies playing Murfreesboro it was generally the Cinema_One and then later Cinema_Two that played the artsier and more out there movies. I saw The Last Waltz probably in 1985 and enjoyed it. I actually own The Last Waltz on DVD and have Grease and Hooper on Blu-ray.
There was once a slide in Old Fort Park that was just a whole bunch of rollers attached in a wavy pattern. The local newspaper dubbed it the "rollercoaster slide" and that sounds about right. I don't remember when it was installed or even when it was removed, but I do remember going down it when I was around 9 or 10 and then later when I was either a sophomore or junior in high school.
My mother would sometimes go to events at the Ag Center and that would be when I went as a young kid. The slide was just pure fun and pure evil too. If you didn't pay attention you could pinch your fingers or even toes in it as you slid on it or tried to walk up it. Good luck with that last bit. I went to Old Fort Park in high school once. My graphic arts class had gone on a field trip up to some printing facility in Dickson, TN and then came back to picnic and kill the afternoon at the park. I thought I had my future well planned. I'd be an A.B. Dick offset press operator, but like most of my youthful plans it didn't turn out that way.
But for the moment I was just a goofy high school student who spent an inordinate amount of time worrying about being perceived as cool. I didn't get too into trends or the typical myriad of ways of trying to be cool. I was, as they say now, very close to being on the spectrum and my social skills were fairly non-existent. Still, I hoped that people thought I was cool and I wondered, for a second after we arrived, if a high school kid that rode a kid's slide would only be considered to be an infantile dork. Not that my worrying was going to shake me too much on this matter. If that slide was still there I was going to go down it. The funny thing was that everybody went down it that afternoon. It was downright glorious.
