What Are They Dancing To?

Here’s a Scopitone of Brook Benton lip-syncing Mother Nature, Father Time while bikini girls apparently dance to something else.

If you’re unfamiliar with Scopitones, they were music video jukeboxes typically placed in lounges and similar adult-oriented locations.  It seems that most Scopitones, like the later music-video format, were more about the girls than the songs. (I remember child-oriented ones, but their format and machines had a different name).  The videos often had the hubba-hubba vibe of 50’s-60’s softcore men’s magazines (like here and here).  Although Procol Harum did one, most rock acts snubbed Scopitones. I imagine they’d started looking dated, like something their dads watched for cheap thrills, down there with carnival peep-shows.  One novelty was a live Billy Lee Riley one, unusual in that it’s not lip-synced.

For you film nerds: I can’t verify this, but I know I read somewhere that French (who invented them) Scopitones used Pathecolor, a very early film tinting process that used stenciling.  Wikipedia claims that the last use of Pathecolor was the 1954 Mexican surrealist classic, Robinson Crusoe, but it’s often stated that it was used in that august cinematic masterpiece, Dr. Goldfoot & The Bikini Machine.

Shit

My parents wouldn’t let me stay up to watch Starsky & Hutch, but I still get a thrill when I see an old Gran Torino.

Seeds Documentary!

Not sure how a doc about some of my favorite proto-punks got past me.  This goes straight to the top of my list if it’s available anywhere.

Experimental Matrimony

Ah, the emptiness of modern comforts…

Can a song be both great and ridiculous?  Fifty years on, I’m still wondering.  But I still love this and almost everything from Roxy’s first five albums.

Andy Kaufman’s Helpful Hints

Renfield and I caught the new Kaufman documentary at the Indie Memphis Film Festival yesterday, which of course sent me down the YouTube rabbit hole later. These clips are not in the movie, but a good sampling of some of the things he did to enrage the locals during his Memphis wrasslin heel stint in 1982. Hilarious.

The guy they keep cutting back to is Dave Brown, weatherman and co-host (along with Lance Russell) of the local wrestling program on our NBC affiliate.

Zombie Season

A lot going on here that I missed when I first listened.
My compliments to everyone involved.