Sunday Showcase April 15, 1979

Happy Easter 2020 or as happy as you can make it during this pandemic. I'm going back to one of my favorite Sunday Showcase years again. This week's issue is from the April 15, 1979 Sunday Tennessean. Kevin Dobson is in between Kojak and Knots Landing (he joined that show's cast in 1982) so he's making television movies.  ABC News is doing a story about men in siege due to liberated women. It's all so Seventies out there!

Tom Jones would be coming to the Municipal Auditorium in the next month. Tickets seem expensive to me, but I don't think I was in the right demographic for Mr. Jones. I am very confused as to why WSM was promoting the show. Sure, Tom had cut "Green, Green Grass of Home" way back in 1967, but he wouldn't put out an actual country record until 1982. During this period Tom was cutting disco numbers like everybody else in the music industry. He was one of my father's favorite singers. Opener Freddie Roman was a stand up comedian. It was standard practice for pop singers to have comedians open for them. 

Tom Jones "Shadow Dancing" his way into our hearts

Coming much sooner to Municipal was The Black Expo Concert on April 20. Sound Seventy and WVOL are presenting this big concert. Trivia time: WVOL 1470 AM The Mighty 147 was the first media company to hire Oprah Winfrey as a broadcaster when she was still in high school. Since it is 1979 most of these artists were also trying their luck with disco which was fine with me. Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers were the lone exception with their band leader and guitarist Chuck Brown credited with inventing "Go-Go" music. I would have enjoyed this concert.

Howard Kenney save some for the children 1978

Tyrone Davis tells us you know what to do in 1979

Betty Wright circa 1979

Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers were bustin' loose!!!

The night before the 20th you could check out Cheap Trick with their opening act TKO at War Memorial Auditorium. My friend the Xman got to see this concert. He said that TKO was brilliant and it's a shame they never made it big, but Cheap Trick was next level and awe inspiring as the Heaven Tonight/Budokan era Cheap Trick was untouchable. I bet they were. One of the first records I ever bought that wasn't birthday or Christmas money related was Live At Budokan. I still remember walking up to Jackson Heights Plaza to the Sound Shop and grabbing it off the rack. I consider "Surrender" to be the greatest rock song ever composed.

Rock N'Roll Again

got my Kiss record out

Cheap Trick Rockpalast 1979

If you watched the Rockpalast concert all the way through you actually saw the Kiss record that the parents got out, but we're on to the Top 10 Records of Nashville for the week preceding April 2, 1979. There's some major disco hits on this chart with the Bee Gees, Gloria Gaynor, and Amii Stewart with some dance floor fillers. Frank Mills hits with "Music Box Dancer" and local Nashville TV station WNGE 2 started playing it before it became a hit. It's very interesting that he says melody hasn't been very popular lately due to disco. Blondie's discofied "Heart of Glass" is on the Nashville chart for its second week. I went crazy for Blondie after seeing them perform on the Mike Douglas Show and "Heart Of Glass" was a huge favorite of mine. I would get the album Parallel Lines for my birthday later that year. The Doobie Brothers hit massively with "What A Fool Believes" which is the gold plated standard for Yacht Rock. I'm going to include a funny NSFW video of how that song came about too. I recommend the whole Yacht Rock series if you want a good laugh. I watch every 6 months or so. Let's throw in Kenny Loggins's version of the tune also. 

Frank Mills on WNGE News 2 program 1979

once had love and it was a gas

muster a smile for his nostalgic tale

Yacht Rock episode 1

Kenny's version was release first!

Old soul stars, Tom Jones, Blondie, plus The Rolling Stones and Rod Stewart were all going disco so The Beach Boys joined in with an almost 11 minute disco version of "Here Comes The Night" on their L.A. (Light Album) release in 1979. They would be coming to play M.T.S.U's Murphy Center on April 24th. 

Here Comes The Night disco short version

The concert got major coverage in the May 3, 1979 Murfreesboro Press so since I love The Beach Boys (except for their foray into disco which was mildly interesting at best) I am including this as a bonus. All of those photos are by Mike West.

Back to our regularly scheduled Sunday Showcase clippings. If you couldn't be at The Beach Boys concert on April 24th you could dress up like the early 1960's and attend filming of concert scenes in Coal Miner's Daughter at Municipal Auditorium on April 24 and 25th.

Look quick and see some of the shots inside Municipal and other Nashville spots

The Great Escape had its grand opening sale going on at 1925 Broadway. My 6th grade peers that were lucky enough to visit the store that spring would come back to Murfreesboro and regale me with stories of all of the comic books for sale. I wouldn't get to visit there until 1985, but made up for lost time afterwards. I was there shopping on the last day that location was open. Of course, once the pandemic quarantine is over you should be able to visit their Charlotte Pike location, Murfreesboro, and Bowling Green, Kentucky stores again.

Now for the oddity that was NBC's version of the After School Special with Reading, Writing, and Reefer. I think ABC's fictionalized ones were better. Strangely enough you can see all of this special on YouTube. So check out Brian getting high. Note: I clipped this this before I found the clip. 

Are you high right now? Yeah, a little.

Finally we bring this Sunday Showcase review to a close with this contest ad where you could win a 2 bedroom luxury apartment at Nashboro Village courtesy of KDF. When I would go up to Nashville via Murfreesboro Road as a kid and young adult I would always remember seeing the Nashboro Village sign (I really liked the letter font used) and wonder what it was like over there. I finally went to an apartment there once in the 90's and it was very nice then. I wonder if it still is. I hope the person who won the contest enjoyed their time there. Perhaps they are still there.

Bonus Cheap Trick material: the Xman just sent me additional info from that night back in 1979.

I don’t think I’ll ever forget Cheap Trick playing “Heaven Tonight “live. It was mesmerizing.

BTW- we arrived at War Memorial about 4 in the afternoon and just walked in. When we came into the hall, Cheap Trick was doing sound check, which we sat in the back and watched. Robin waved at us at one point. Then, Rick jumps off the stage and starts walking towards us. I remember it was really weird because he had a huge piece of red licorice that he was eating. He approached us with his hands out like he was about to choke us, then walked down and introduced himself and we shook hands. Then George Harrell, who was with us, asked him if he had a guitar pick. He put one in his mouth and spit it right to him!

They finally asked us to leave, and we came back that night. Had great seats as I recall. Something like second or third row.

Film Flashback April 3, 1980

It was a Thursday night in Murfreesboro, Tennessee on April 3, 1980. New movies usually started on Friday so it would be your last chance to see Scavenger Hunt or the offerings at the Marbro Drive In. We'll begin at Cinema One this week. Scavenger Hunt is mildly amusing with Richard Benjamin, Ruth Gordon, and Scatman Crothers featured among many stars of the time. It's in the spirit of It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World. It's directed by Michael Schulz who also directed one of my favorite comedies of the Seventies Car Wash. 

The Marbro Drive In has what is billed as 3 BIG HITS, but I think that's just advertising hyperbole in this case. Toga Party was originally titled Pelvis when it was first released in 1977, but it was rebadged in an attempt to ride in the coattails of National Lampoon's Animal House's success. It's about a guy moving to New York to make it in the music business. I haven't seen it, but the few reviews I've found say it is terrible and the scenes I saw in the Schlockmeisters review on YouTube seem to go out of their way to be offensive. Watch at your own risk as it definitely NSFW, but, really, it's perfect drive in fodder. Note: there is no actual toga party in the film according to Schlockmeisters.

The Young Graduates released in 1971 looks like it could be fun to see. It's one of many late 60's and early 70's movies about the youth culture of the time. A young girl has a fling with a married teacher, get's pregnant, and then goes on a road trip to Big Sur. It was billed with the tagline "A Report Card On The Love Generation." 

Kidnapped Coed was originally titled Date With A Kidnapper. The Coed in the title ends up helping her kidnapper in a fairly standard film trope, but Leslie Rivers and Jack Canon play their roles very well in this B movie thriller. It's worth a watch sometime.

What's left to see in Murfreesboro on this night in the past? The Martin Twin offers up a country music success story and a summer camp comedy which turned out to be much deeper than to be expected. 

Sissy Spacek won a Best Actress Academy Award for her portrayal of Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner's Daughter. Spacek does her own singing in the film. It's a straight biographical film which shows Loretta's life from her humble beginnings in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky to her rise to become a country music superstar. The movie is good and I did see it in the theater, but I'm a much bigger fan of Tammy Wynette and Tanya Tucker. There is a concert scene in the movie shot at Municipal Auditorium which I will cover in a Sunday Showcase review in a couple of weeks.

Little Darlings is the other movie on offer at the Martin on this evening. I doubt this movie could be made today as the main plot is two fifteen year girls betting who would lose their virginity first while at summer camp. Tatum O'Neal plays the rich girl Ferris while Kristy McNichol plays Angel who just  happens to be a poor girl from the other side of the tracks. Hey a stuck up rich girl and a lower class tomboy....that sounds like Blair and Jo from The Facts Of Life. 

What was marketed with an emphasis on sex and comedy the film is actually not exploitative. There is nuance in the story with quite a bit of drama. The character Ferris lies about a counselor and almost ruins his career, while Angel pairs off with Randy, played by Matt Dillon, and this experience leaves her in an emotionally uneasy state. Kristy McNichol is incredible as Angel. This is a film I wanted to see at the theater, but it was R rated so I had to wait until it came on cable. Even then I had to watch it on my black and white TV in my room with the sound down low. The movie is not available in the US on DVD or Blu-ray probably due to music licensing issues. You can stream it on Amazon for a couple of bucks at this time. I should watch it again. I couldn't find a trailer, but here's Siskel and Ebert's review of it....they both say no to it and I've added a nice Held Over ad from the next week.