I'm going back through what comprised my senior year of high school and first semester of college in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Come along for the ride. New posts every day or so mixed in with other things.
October 22, 1985. Heart comes to play Municipal with Autograph opening. Talk about the difference a few years makes for both acts. Heart did play Municipal on their last tour, but they were definitely a band on a downward spiral. Autograph had opened for Van Halen in February 1984, but didn't stay on stage long that night in Municipal Auditorium as they were chased off by the crowd's boos and projectiles of all kinds. I still owe their drummer an apology for chucking an empty liquor bottle at him. Both bands were now riding high on the charts. I didn't go to the concert, but I'm sure my homeboy Tim X made the scene.
November is here already. I don't know about you, but this crazy year has somehow managed to fly right by while feeling like it's lasted a million years. Let's forget about 2020 for a few minutes and look through the November 6, 1983 Sunday Showcase.
Ballet Nacional Español was coming to the Tennessee Performing Arts Center on November 20.
Sesame Street Live opens on November 9, 1983 and it will be in town through Sunday. I never really had the desire to see these sorts of shows, even when I was a small child, as full sized costumed Ernie & Bert characters creeped me out. I'm sure lots of youngsters enjoyed these events and I assume once the pandemic ends these sorts of shows still go on.
Sesame Street Live video from later in December 1983
They knock 2 years off Prince's age in this article for some reason (he was 25), but it's still amazing to me at how incredible a musical and soon to be movie star the man was at such a young age.
There's a nice big ad for the return of Sean Connery as James Bond in Never Say Never Again. It was announced that Sean Connery passed away just as I was finishing this blog post so I'll add a few quick thoughts on this great actor. He was James Bond to me as he was to everyone. Roger Moore did a fine job in the role and I've heard nice things about Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig (yes, I've not seen any Bond films since Roger Moore was Bond), but Connery was the original and best. I have fond memories of my dear departed mother letting me stay up late on Sunday nights to watch James Bond movies when they aired and my favorite was Goldfinger. Outland wasn't a huge hit, but I was really into science fiction when I was young so I really enjoyed him in that one. Years later I would finally see Zardoz which is mesmerizingly weird with Connery at his best. Darby O'Gill and the Little People was a fun Connery movie. I saw The Untouchables multiple times primarily because of Sean Connery. I could go on and on listing his films, but IMDB has all of that information. Treat yourself to one of his films today or soon and celebrate his life.
"Let's Go Crazy" from the 1983 benefit mentioned in the article above
Never Say Never Again
Goldfinger
The Untouchables
Outland
Sean Connery singing in Darby O'Gill
Zardoz
Music store ads are one of my favorite things to look at. The Rivergate Mall Camelot Music is the only record store that ever carded me after the PMRC music labelling thing started in the mid-80's. They asked for my ID when I purchase Anthrax's Among The Living and Schoolly D's Saturday Night! - The Album.
Camelot Music was selling video games and so was Kmart. The bottom had dropped out of the home video game industry and game prices were plummeting.
Joan Jett was one of many rock stars photos I would tape to the walls of the trailer we were living in at the time. She was appearing at Cat's to help plug her latest record titled Album (which I had on tape) before taking the stage later in the evening opening for Loverboy. I bet she blew them off the stage.
"Fake Friends"
What happens when a couple of arena bands have lost some of their popularity? Sales on your records are declining and the hits aren't as big as before. You join forces on a co-headlining tour and keep playing the arenas. This doesn't mean either band isn't putting out good material, it's just the nature of business. You go up and you go down. I liked both Kansas and Heart and I bet this was a good pairing to see.
Kansas - "Hold On" from the Nashville show 1983
Heart live on ABC In Concert 1983
Cajun's Wharf was featuring more than jumbo gulf shrimp and tasty barbecue beef ribs. They were serving up some excellent rockabilly with Billy Lee Riley and Ronnie "The Hawk" Hawkins all week.
Billy Lee Riley - "Flying Saucers Rock & Roll"
Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks with Levon Helm
Rick Springfield was coming to play Municipal Auditorium on December 8, 1983 on his Living In Oz tour. I was always a big fan of Rick and still am. He picked great material to cover and wrote some classic rock songs of his own. It was good to see him get his props in the Sound City documentary.
Rick Springfield live in 1982
Local bands were going strong along with touring artists at Cantrell's. I'm guessing Dark Star was a jam band that perhaps played Grateful Dead tunes. I doubt it was the British metal band. One of my favorite Nashville bands, Shadow 15, was playing on Wednesday. Blues guitar slinger Gatemouth Brown was playing on Friday. I wonder if Roy Clark came out and played with him? The New Wave fusion jazz of The Nerve would be featured on Saturday night.
Shadow 15 - The Last Forever
I had some friends (Bruno and Chris) that got to see the B-52's at Memorial Gym on November 12, 1983. They came to school in their B-52's concert tees on the next Monday. They loved the show and had good things to say about Translator too. If you were around back then I hope you got to see the concert.
Translator "Unalone" live in Rhode Island November 3, 1983
B-52's "Dance This Mess Around" live May 1983
B-52's "Song For A Future Generation" live 1983
Once upon a time KX104 was a fun Top Forty radio station. I hope the winners below got lots of use of their prizes.
It's common knowledge that cinema peaked with Kenny Rogers starring in Six Pack. Cinemax was having a Kenny Rogers weekend so Six Pack was definitely included. I love this movie and I'm always happy to post the trailer from it.
go Brewster Baker!
Kenny Rogers was not only a movie star, he had the number 1 song in the Nashville Top Ten this week with his duet with Dolly Parton. Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" had been number 1 and was going into its 9th week in the Top Ten. My favorites would have been Prince, The Fixx, and the Police.
Kenny and Dolly rely on each other
turn around bright eyes
you've got a blank face which irritates
stupid look on my face
it's the same old thing as yesterday
Bonus content from the previous week's Sunday Showcase
Oingo Boing plays Exit/In November 2, 1983. That would have been a fun show.
Oingo Boing live at the US Festival 1983
If you couldn't go see Oingo Boingo you could watch the PBS special on The Chemical People.
There was an ad for this upcoming event in the October 30, 1983 Sunday Showcase and it looked like Expo '83 was going to be a huge event. I wondered why I had never heard of it before and why there wasn't an ad in the November 6, 1983 Sunday Showcase. I looked ahead to the next week and the ad was back along with more information. It seems this event was a multi-media event with a mixture of live acts and performers beamed in from elsewhere. So Dean Martin and Jason and the Scorchers didn't share a stage like I had hoped. If you happened to attend this event let me know how it was in the comments. Until next week, I'm done.
September 5th, 1977 was Labor Day and so this September 4, 1977 edition of the Sunday Showcase has a cover devoted to what was once a huge part of my childhood: the annual Jerry Lewis Telethon to raise money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. I would sometimes try to watch as much of it as I could on Sunday night when it would begin, but never made it far past midnight. If someone was going to be on it I liked I would try to make sure I caught them during the course of its 21 and a half hour broadcast. The telethon had hit its peak in 1976 with 213 stations carrying it making it, effectively, America's fourth largest television network. Even if you didn't watch a minute of the telethon there would be local drives to raise money for MDA. The telethon was inescapable yet reassuring showing that people cared for others less fortunate. Stories abound of how horrible Jerry Lewis was, but I think we can all agree that the telethon was a good thing.
Jerry conducts the Count Basie Orchestra
The Exit/In was going strong with an eclectic line-up for the week. Fats Domino rated an ad of his own.
Jimmy Buffett was coming to town soon with Jesse Winchester to play the Grand Ole Opry House.
Al Green was grappling with his decision to become a minister, but was still making secular music with The Belle Album set to come out later in 1977 so I don't know if this concert was going to just be gospel or not. Al Green is an artist that is worth hearing no matter what he's singing about.
Al singing "Belle" in 1978
Heart was going to play the Tennessee State Fair on September 24, 1977. Note that 15WLAC was promoting it. It was around this time when I was in 5th grade that I would listen to 15WLAC on my father's big battery powered AM/FM/shortwave radio under the covers late at night when I was supposed to be asleep.
Barracuda 1977
The circus was coming to town. There was a WNGE family night.
I love old camera ads. I prefer Polaroid, but a Kodak will do in a pinch.
Seventies television had some weird pairings as Darth Vader meets Marty Allen on The Wacko Saturday Morning Preview and Other Good Stuff Special which will air on Channel 5 later that week. That would have been can't miss television for my 10 year old self.
Then there's Muhammad Ali appearing with Annie's Andrea McArdle on the NBC Saturday morning preview show called "C'mon Saturday!" which was going to air on Friday. I'm pretty sure I watched that one too. I loved those preview shows. They were an absolute must watch so you would be ready for the new Saturday morning shows. As far as this one goes, who didn't like Muhammad Ali plus I had crush on Andrea after seeing her sing on the Tony Awards or some other show.
The Paramount is screening the Bruce Lee movie Fury Of The Dragon which was actually just several episodes of The Green Hornet edited together. It's rather shameless.
More like fury of Kato
Audio Systems is selling the amazing black box that "unscratches" records! It appears to be just a noise tampering filter to me. I decided to see if I could find a video on YouTube about it and, sure enough, I did.
Guy starts the test around 5:12 into the video
The Top 10 Records are Elvis heavy with his recent death casting a shadow on the charts with Ronnie McDowell's "The King Is Gone", Leon Everette's "Goodbye To The King of Rock 'n' Roll", along with Elvis's "Way Down" taking up a just under a third of the top 10. My 3 favorites from this chart round out this week's Sunday Showcase review. Next week will feature a State Fair insert so hope to see you then.
Another Sunday is here which means it's time to look through an old Sunday Showcase. We find Kiss on the cover of this one.
They were on the road on their Asylum tour. This was the first tour since Dynasty that stayed inside North America and lasted from November 29, 1985 through April 12, 1986. The November 30th show in Nashville was the second of the tour which had begun in Little Rock the night before. The opening act for this date was Black 'n Blue. Notice the ad features the Lick It Up album cover shot which was incredibly well out of date at this time. It's hair metal era Kiss and while it's not my favorite part of their music catalog it's still pretty fun.
The only other concert of note was an anniversary one of John Kay & Steppenwolf at Jackson Theater. I suppose it was 15 years in the business as the band with John Kay began in 1965 as the Sparrows. They have a very convoluted history. They sounded pretty good at Farm Aid in 1986.
The Top Ten songs in Nashville this week are a pretty weak bunch. The Miami Vice soundtrack was living large. Glenn Frey (note misspelling in list from the paper) beats out Starship in Nashville, but couldn't do it nationally as Starship's "We Built This City" was demolishing eardrums across the country. "Head Over Heels" is a song I do love (the Nigel Dick directed music video rules) and Heart's "Never" was good...just stop yourself and listen. The rest of the top ten don't interest me very much.
That's all for this week. Ain't it funny how time flies. I hope to have more next week.
