edwards drive-in

just watched the first disc of the two disc set “the tomorrow show with tom snyder: punk and new wave”

tom snyder on these shows has his seventies big shaggy haircut, a cigarette in his hand most of the time and one of the best laughs ever in television. he also knows nothing about the people or the music that he’s talking about and this makes it better in a way. he puts the word “the” in front of things that seem alien to him the way your father first talked about the vcr or the computer.

this first dvd has four shows and the shows aren’t entirely devoted to punk and new wave, but they have the full shows anyway. this tends to add something as instead of being distracting.

some of the highlights:

an exchange where robert hilburn, l.a. times music critic labels the music as mostly a fringe group trying to get attention.

snyder: “it this a trend or a fad”

hilburn: “it’s a fad”.

while asking this question snyder holds up pictures of people taken at a concert who wouldn’t look terribly out of place today.

in the nothing changes department, these bands couldn’t get on the radio because the radio was too safe.

kim fowley, the original mayor of the sunset strip. one of those people who you don’t know about, but realize you should have when you do. he started the runaways which became known as joan jett and the runaways. he’s dressed up like a bowie hybrid here and refuses to take the discussion too seriously. and yet he’s still smarter about the subject than anyone else on the show that night.

paul weller, 18 years old, smart and pissed off a bit and saying things like “punk rock is a big flashy neon sign, new wave is an attitude”. he’s sitting next to a very young joan jett when he says this.

a guy named donald wildmon on the show featuring elvis costello. he’s another instance of nothing changes. he’s on the show saying that television has gone to hell with too much sex and violence. he’s got a christian southern organization that wants to make it “decent” once again. my favorite line of his, “sex is a beautiful gift given by god to be shared between husband and wife”. a few of the shows his group objected to were amen, blossom, cbs schoolbreak special, cheers, doogie howser, facts of life, full house, growing pains, johnny carson, the love boat, murder she wrote, scooby doo, taxi, the wonder years and who’s the boss. no, I’m not making this up.

frank capra tells the story of congress trying to stop the release of his film “mr. smith goes to washington”. if you haven’t seen this movie it’s about a young guy staging a filibuster on the floor of the senate to save a boy’s club. the senate actually voted to censure this film by a vote of 96-0. further efforts were made to buy the film outright and not release it. the argument against it was that it was a bad idea to criticize the government during wartime. again, nothing changes.

iggy pop sings a couple songs and then has a very good friendly interview with snyder. you can see the snyder likes him, just the way it’s obvious in another show that he likes wendy o. williams of the plasmatics.

snyder: “why are you bleeding”

iggy: “because I’m on your show”

wendy o. williams appears on a show with a televangelist and the contrast is perfect. I looked up her biography to see that she committed suicide in 1998. here you see her chat with snyder then sing “master plan”. during the song you get the feeling that billy idol was a plasmatics fan at some point as you watch her left arm swinging out at her side. during the performance she spray-paints “fuck the status quo” on her car. she then takes a sledge-hammer to it before blowing it up.