Sunday Showcase Review December 10, 1978 along with a bonus June 17, 1979 Sunday Showcase Review

 This week's Sunday Showcase review is the December 10, 1978 edition with the 3rd Annual Circus of the Stars garnering the cover. Tony Lo Bianco had been in The French Connection and The Honeymoon Killers among many other roles, but he'd tame big cats on this special. It's odd to me that the 3rd Annual Circus of the Stars would air on December 10, 1978, but IMDB shows it as airing on June 20, 1979. A quick check of the Nashville television schedule does show it listed on that night. 

Buddy Ebsen disco dancing as Barnaby Jones. I wish I could find just this scene on YouTube, but I probably saw this in real time as my mother never missed an episode. The "Dance With Death" episode, which is currently up in its entirety on YouTube, wouldn't air until January 25, 1979. 

Intro and outro 1973

NBC was doing a special on drug use called Reading, Writing, and Reefer which I've mentioned before on the April 15, 1979 Sunday Showcase review. I just couldn't resist sharing this clipping of newscaster Edwin Newman sitting on 3/4 tons of grass. That's a lot of dope! Just like with the Circus of the Stars airing this episode is listed on a different date than December 10, 1978. It is shown as airing on April 17, 1979. Perhaps December 10, 1978 never really happened. 

The always smooth Johnny Mathis was coming to the Grand Ole Opry House on February 6, 1979.

Too Much Too Little Too Late 1978

Which car would you want to win? I'm sure I would have preferred the Elm Hill mini-car back then, but I'd be happy with a 57 Chevy today. 

George Morgan - Elm Hill Bill

This is what I want for Christmas. All of it. Thanks in advance. 

Once you get me the stereo equipment you can go visit Port O' Call and buy me everything in their mega Christmas ad in this week's Showcase. It's all go good. Their "music turns me on!" dude still creeps me out after all of these years. 

Rhoda  starring the awesome Valerie Harper went from being one of the most watched television series to cancelled in its fifth season as the ratings went into free fall. I didn't get all of the humor as a child, but it was an amusing show and I had a big crush on Julie Kavner who played Rhoda's sister Brenda.

Rhoda intro seasons 4 & 5

I have never set foot in Opry Mills. I know I point that out often. 

The Sunday Showcase had you covered if you wanted to plan out your sports viewing for the week.

December 10, 1978 NFL Today halftime show SPOILER: Atlanta wins 20-17

Sound Seventy had some good concerts coming to town. Ted Nugent would be playing Municipal Auditorium on December 15th with Golden Earring opening. Ted was out on the road promoting his Weekend Warriors album. The Grateful Dead would be playing the very next night. The entire Dead show is available at the moment at the Internet Archive site. The Grateful Dead only played Nashville 3 times. They played Alumni Lawn at Vanderbilt on October 21, 1972, Municipal Auditorium April 22, 1978, and this December 16, 1978 show. The Charlie Daniels Band would be putting on Volunteer Jam V on Saturday January 13, 1979. Tickets were only $6 but I bet they were going fast. 

New Minglewood Blues from the April 22, 1978 Grateful Dead concert

The Top 10 Records of the past week has some disco, some country, and some pop. Chic's "Le Freak" reaches number 1 where it would stay for some time. My music teacher in 6th grade at the time polled here classes over what our favorite artists were and then once a week she would cover the most popular answers. Billy Joel made the list, but I'm pretty sure The Bee Gees were the overall favorites. I still vividly remember her going over their long history which reached all the way back to the late 50's which may well be the thing that ignited my interest in musical history. Thanks Miss Kidd wherever you are! 

it flows through you and it flows through me

everything we are will never die

big fun to be had by everyone

BONUS Sunday Showcase Review June 17, 1979 

Since IMDB kept telling me that television shows which aired on December 10, 1978 actually were shown in 1979 I began to explore so I could confirm this to be true. The Reading, Writing, and Reefer NBC news special had definitely run in April and was noted in my blog post on that time. So, next I wanted to check out the the 3rd Annual Circus of the Stars to see if it was shown on June 20, 1979 per IMDB. As noted in the opening of this post, it was. So what are we doing still hanging around? Well, because there's so much greatness in the June 17, 1979 Sunday Showcase I figured I'd share it with you readers now since I'm hanging up these reviews shortly after the beginning of 2021. I'll still be blogging, but I'm running out of fresh takes on the Showcases. That's all. 

John Wayne had passed away on June 11, 1979 so gets a tribute in this Sunday Showcase. I enjoyed seeing True Grit when I was a youngster and The Searchers is one of the greatest movies ever made. 

This additional Sunday Showcase review is brought to you in part by Castner Knott Co.'s Hairstyling Salon which seems to be living in the past and future. The neon font style is exciting Eighties while the guy's perm is straight up 1972 era Brady Bunch. 

The late great Eddie Rabbit is rocking some smooth late Seventies yacht rock style. The ad is promoting his latest album Loveline and the ad is a direct homage/ripoff of the profiles included in rock magazine Creem. I think it's pretty cool. 

Suspicions is an awesome tune!

Time to pause for a couple of ads. Cheap Records sounds like my kind of record store. I still love digging through bargain bins for records. Europa Mini Park has lots of entertainment for you if you can go back to 1979 somehow. Perhaps a go cart time machine will get you there.

John and Yoko let us know that their "silence is a silence of love and not of indifference." 

Here's the Top 10 Records 6 months after the one from 1978 above. Disco is still going strong in June 1979 with 5 disco tracks making the charts: "Ring My Bell", "Hot Stuff", "We Are Family", "Makin' It", and Blondie's "Heart of Glass." One could make an argument that "Rock 'N' Roll Fantasy" was disco too. 

I was a huge Blondie fan and I also really dug Rickie Lee Jones. Randy Vanwarmer is at number 1.

Rickie Lee Jones

Blondie

Randy Vanwarmer

It seems appropriate that Tennessee Williams's Cat On A Hot Tin Roof is playing the Tennessee Theatre. If you didn't want to see the play that taught me what mendacity meant, you can check out the Exit/In which has a great lineup this week in 1979. 

Soul Man 

This last portion of today's post is brought to us by Disco Concepts who can teach you all the latest disco dances. You take the first step...we'll show you the rest. 

Planetarium....hmmm we need something that rhymes with that for our laser show. I've got it! Laserium!

I may have been one of the few goofy 12 year olds in America that liked to keep up with the Nielsen ratings, but I was always happy to see the Showcase listing the Top 10 shows. Sometime they would also show the bottom 0, but this week they were listing the Top 20. ABC and CBS were annihilating NBC which only has 1 show in the Top 20. The regular TV season would have ended and we were in rerun land by now. I was a massive fan of ABC so I was happy to see them on top. The most intriguing show in the Top 10 for me was Stockard Channing in Just Friends which was a show I watched since I had a crush on Stockard. I think the show had already been cancelled, but here it sits in the Top 10.

Stockard Channing in Just Friends

The Skyway Drive In has 4 big shows for you if you feel like heading out Dickerson Road. 

The Sunday Showcase sometimes featured ads for out of town shows like this one for James Taylor promoted by Mid-South Concerts. I like their logo and lament that I never went to see a show at the Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis. 

Bad Company were coming to Nashville on July 12, 1979 to play Municipal Auditorium. 15WLAC was still playing music and ROCK 106 was still the premier hard rock FM station. 1979 was cool.

Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy

Sound Seventy has a full slate of concerts coming to various venues. George Benson along with a 23 piece string section would be bringing his pop jazz guitar to the Grand Ole Opry House the very night of June 17, 1979. June 25th would see Molly Hatchet opening for Atlanta Rhythm Section at Municipal. Kansas with Leroux would be coming to Murfreesboro to play Murphy Center on 7-6-79. A guy that worked with my mother at Greer-Nut in Smyrna bought me a t-shirt from the Molly Hatchet show. 

Molly Hatchet live 1979 

Those concerts weren't all that Sound Seventy had for music fans. There was 2 more great ones coming July 8th and 9th to Municipal in 1979. Natalie Cole was one of the top soul/pop singers of the day and The Cars were a New Wave hit machine. I think the debut album by The Cars is one of the best records ever made so I would have loved to have been at that concert, but I was too young. That's all for this week.

Natalie Cole and her opening act Peabo Bryson = awesome

Bye Bye Love - Benjamin Orr = rock star

The Cars Musikladen full show

Extra bonus content: A Creem Profile on The Cars (not in Showcase)

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.