Sunday Showcase August 30, 1981

Yes, I'm bringing back for a limited time my reviews of The Tennessean Sunday Showcase and we begin our journey with August 30, 1981. I was 14 years old and had probably gone to the first week or so of high school by this date. It was a miserable time to be alive for me in many ways, but as always I found solace in pop culture. There will be a few of the things I loved from this era in this Sunday Showcase and lots of other things I've found interesting so many years later. Hope you get your full entertainment value from this latest installment. Don't bother calling any of the phone numbers listed in the ads though as most are probably no longer valid. 

Foreigner was touring after the release of 4 and would be playing Municipal Auditorium on September 20. Billy Squier opened this tour, but the ad spells his name wrong. Don't Say No had been out since April along with the single "The Stroke", but the song was only hitting the Top Ten locally this week. And it hit with a bullet too at number 3. Maybe that's why his name was spelled correctly on it.

       

Foreigner - Urgent

Billy Squier - The Stroke

"The Stroke" was something to hear coming out of car stereos. It just exploded through the air. I bought the album Don't Say No and it's been a favorite ever since. I listened to it on a very cheap record player that I got when I was very young. It couldn't get super loud, but as the words in "I Need You" go, "when I feel low...my amps they blow." 

The Jacksons would play Municipal Auditorium on August 31. They were touring behind the album Triumph which was their first album since 1971's Maybe Tomorrow to go number 1 on the R&B charts. It hadn't hurt that Michael's Off the Wall had been a massive success upon its release in 1979.

The Jacksons - Can You Feel It

The Jacksons concert was the night after the mighty Van Halen as they are would play this very night of August 30, 1981 on their Fair Warning Tour. You would expect an ad in Showcase for this concert, but there's an interesting reason why there was no ad, nor was there any in previous papers for this show. It's a fascinating glimpse into how much money was used to market a concert in 1981. 

Van Halen - Hear About It Later

Johnny Paycheck would play 2 nights at a club called Country Showcase in September. A Google Map search showed that this place is long gone, just like Johnny. 

Spanky's is another club that's no longer around, but it would have been cool to Doc and Merle Watson one night and then the Wrong Band the next. Cantrell's building is still standing, but that whole side of Broadway is now a nightmare scape to us Generation X survivors. Find me a time machine so I can go back and see R.E.M. play with Jason and the Nashville Scorchers opening. 

The biggest entertainment ad in the Showcase is for a club called Blazing Saddles out on Nolensville Road. I love that it says there would be guest appearances by country music stars and musicians. It's another in a long list of places bulldozed over. 

If hedonistic rock and roll and cheating country songs wasn't your bag you had the upcoming Day of Joy to be held at Hermitage Landing on September 5th. It's billed as a day of stirring Christian song, but it looks to me to be a Benson Records promotion. I really dig that Hermitage Landing logo. 

Let's take a break for a word from our sponsors: Audio Systems and Mr. Gatti's Pizza. 

TV capsule summaries crack me up. The Bad News Bears is one of my favorite movies of all time so I have to snicker at this one. I wouldn't say that Amanda Whurlizer is mean and tough.  

The Bad News Bears trailer

Sherlock Holmes is coming to WPLN. It was a very long running radio show which ran from 1939 to 1950 with Basil Rathbone as the titular detective. 

Time for the TV Starscreen Puzzle by Al Kilgore. This was a weekly feature. Good luck.

A couple of movie ads for films I haven't seen. I need to get on that. Hell Night looks like fun and I thought I was a big fan of Linda Blair. How could have I missed this one.

Hell Night trailer 

Film number 2 is one I honestly don't believe I have ever heard of (and I thought I was a big fan of Walter Matthau too) called First Monday in October. It's a fictional film about the first female Supreme Court justice named Ruth Loomis played by Jill Clayburgh, but was filmed before Sandra Day O'Connor actually became the first. So after her nomination the movie was rushed to the market. Fact trumped fiction which probably hurt the movie at the box office. I couldn't find a trailer, but here's a clip.

First Monday in October clip

Now for the interesting (at least to me), weird, and scandalous. 

A Jheri Kurl hairdo sure cost some money. Which led me to muse about Jheri curls. Michael Jackson had one among other celebrities. A guy I went to high school with had one and he used to catch hell about living stains on the wall if he leaned on it. This led me down a rabbit hole to discover a dude named Jheri Redding (famous for Redding haircare of course) invented it. It was a way to get "wash and wear" looking  curls that was easier to use than the standard relaxer method. It still involved a lot of work. 

I love the Muppets. I never cared much for Miss Piggy though. Maybe I would have liked Mrs. Piggy.

Hypnotism is weird to me. I like the idea of it, but I'm such a recalcitrant rebel I don't believe I could ever be hypnotized. Hypnosis Center ads were often in the Sunday Showcase.  I found after a cursory Google search that M. C. Radford lived until 2024. His obituary took no note of his hypnosis work, but only noted he was a salesman. He was an interesting guy. 

We end on the scandalous. Nashville has long been regarded as the being the buckle of the Bible Belt. It is renowned for its many churches and being a hub of Christian publishing and music. That buckle was a little tarnished though. Take the belt off and find out some folks probably don't have on underwear. Maybe you could have met some of those folk if you had been wild enough to call the number in this ad in 1981. 

Once the Opry moved and the major department stores and move chains left for the suburbs, downtown Nashville was a bit tawdry. I remember even as late as the early 90's when there lots of adult movie places around. Not because I went to them, but because downtown Nashville was so deserted after dark it was a perfect place to ride a skateboard. Now you can't go 2 feet without hitting a drunk bachelorette party. I suppose it's still a bit tawdry and, let's be honest, much more stupid. 

This wraps up this review of the August 30, 1981 Tennessean Sunday Showcase. I'll do my best to have another one up next week.