The Drifters

I'm reading "The Drifters" by James Michener. It was first published in 1971, and tells the story of six young people from diverse backgrounds whose paths meet in Europe. They travel together through Spain, Portugal, Mozambique, and Morocco. It's narrated by an older man who has known most of them before they all meet up. They all open up to him and give him insight into what they are thinking as they experience life.
It's not a bad story. "The Sixties" is a pretty big subject, and this book only scratches the surface, but it does give a good overview. Whether it tells the truth about what happened is up to the reader, or someone who was there, to decide. Robin Williams once said, "If can you remember the Sixties, you weren't there."

What I remember most about the Sixties is the music, especially The Beatles. They're my favourite. I think I saw them when they first appeared on Ed Sullivan, but my memory may be faulty. I do remember walking into the living room in my pajamas, having been awoken by the excited screams of my sisters.

One sister is five years older than me, and the other is ten years older. So they were exactly the right age to contract Beatlemania. They passed it along to me without a second thought. They always had to have each new Beatle record, and they always had to play it ten thousand times a day, so the music became a part of my physical being. A lot of my memories are associated with whatever Beatle song was popular at the time.
Later, when I was reading Vincent Bugliosi's "Helter Skelter," about how Charles Manson used "The White Album" to convince his followers to commit mass murder, I had to get the album to listen for myself.
And then when I read Nicholas Schaffner's "The Beatles Forever," I read about how The Beatles changed music as well as influencing other areas of popular culture such as dress, hairstyles, and drug use, to name a few.
Schaffner also talked about Beatles collectibles. For example, there was a German release of "Magical Mystery Tour" that had the only true stereo versions of that collection of songs. He also discussed how the American releases differed from the British releases. The US release of "Revolver" was missing three songs, giving people a distorted version of that magnificent album's set list.
That book inspired the collector in me, and I was off, hunting for this or that record in the bins of record stores all over the city. I remember that time fondly. When music was being released on 33and 1/3 LPs, shopping for music for me was very enjoyable. The cover art was more accessible than nowadays, when an old man like me has to hold up a CD practically in front of his nose to see it properly.
I always turn to The Beatles' music, especially in times of trouble. It soothes me like nothing else. When I was going through the terrible changes wrought by adolescence, The Beatles were always there for me in the way nobody else was. I think the reason I am still alive today is because I had The Beatles.

At one point in "The Drifters," the narrator becomes enchanted by "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," especially the song "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds." When another character maliciously informs him about the way the song's initials spell out LSD, and he reflects how badly one of the girls reacted to the drug, he becomes so upset that he breaks the record over his knee.
John Lennon denied that the song was inspired by the drug. He says that a drawing his son Julian brought home from school gave him the idea. Paul McCartney still repeats the claim today. But there is no doubt that the imagery of the song is meant to evoke for the listener what it must be like to "take a trip."
Paul McCartney, when talking about writing "A Day In The Life," talks about the line "I'd love to turn you on," an obvious reference to drug taking. He looked John in the eyes and knew he was thinking the same thing. "We're really going to do this."
After reading about "Sgt. Pepper," I had to listen to it again, and I got to thinking about "The Beatles Anthology," their autobiography. The book is just quote after quote, with The Beatles describing their history from the time they were born until their breakup in 1970.
The TV series includes filmed interviews with the surviving members, and the difference between Paul's interviews and George's and Ringo's is striking. George and Ringo are filmed sitting down at their various residences, while Paul is filmed piloting a boat, at concert preparations, sitting in front of a campfire, and on and on. He always has to be... "interesting."

I was reading the autobiography of the members of Monty Python's Flying Circus at the same time. Their book is set up to look almost exactly like The Beatles'. It's not a mistake, or an attempted rip off, as the groups were very close.
When George Harrison saw the first episode of Python, he sent the BBC a congratulatory telegram for finally getting TV right. Paul always stopped any recording session when Python was on, and didn't resume making music until it was over.
George was especially close to the Python's, especially Eric Idle. When Python was doing a series of live shows in New York, George dropped by and suited up to sing in the RCMP chorus for "The Lumberjack Song." When Python lost their financing for "Life Of Brian," George stepped into the breach simply because he wanted to see the film.

My sisters are responsible for my interest in The Pythons, as well. My older sister showed me an episode once when I was about ten, and that was it. My tiny little mind was warped forever.
The Drifters, set in The Sixties, is almost like a piece of that time preserved in print. It is an attempt to describe and define those times, even though they weren't over. As I said, it's a pretty good story, and has at least succeeded in bringing many memories.

Saturday Night Live's Seventh Season

I just finished watching Saturday Night Live's seventh season, which I downloaded from Demonoid. The video quality isn't that great. It was recorded on a VCR, and then made into a torrent, so the picture has downgraded a bit. There're even parts where the tracking isn't done properly.
But overall it's watchable, and the seventh season is probably my favourite. This was the season where the show came back from the dead. Some may argue whether that's a good thing, but that's not what I want to talk about.
The sixth season of SNL had been very bad. There was a new cast, new writers, and a new producer that managed to run the show into the ground in only eleven episodes. Dick Ebersol was brought in to produce one final show and then shut it down until the next season.
The only survivors from that series were Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo. Ebersol wanted to hire John Candy and Catherine O'Hara away from SCTV, but Candy turned him down and O'Hara backed out after meeting Michael O'Donoghue.
O'Donoghue, a writer from the first five seasons, basically returned to kill the show. He wanted to give it a Viking funeral, and tried to instil "danger" back into the writing process. His volatile personality guaranteed that his tenure would be short-lived.
The fourth show was the nadir. Donald Pleasence was the host, and he featured in a sketch that highlights an amputation and gallons of spurting blood.

The musical guest was a punk rock band called "Fear." Their performance reminded me of the episode of SCTV's "Mel's Rockpile," where he had a punk band perform. Mel, the lamest host ever, announced that there would be a "slam dance." All the dancers slammed into each other with great ferocity, and Joe Flaherty screamed, "Have you no consideration for the women!"
That was funny, but "Fear's" performance was not. They were booked on the show at the insistence of John Belushi, who also made a surprise cameo that night. It would be his last appearance on the show before his death the following spring.

There were, however, a lot of great musical performances that season from The Kinks, Rick James, The Go-Go's, Meatloaf, the Allman Brothers, Lindsey Buckingham, and John Mellencamp. Elton John sang his John Lennon tribute, "Empty Garden," and the Charlie Daniels Band did "The Devil Went Down To Georgia." Johnny Cash did a selection of his greatest hits.
On the Christmas show, Bill Murray hosted, and made a midshow announcement about the Polish government's crackdown on "Solidarity." An interesting bit of social commentary thrown into a comedy show. But then, SNL always prided itself on its satire of America's fools and their foibles.
There was a lot of fun made of Ronald Reagan, depicted as the clueless idiot he was in real life. His administration was shown to be the "Bizarro World" from Superman comics. This was the beginning of the end of the cold war, but the times were still pretty tense. They even did a Dr. Strangelove sketch.
The comedy could be very sharp at times, sometimes too sharp for comfort. Towards the end of the season, they conducted a phone-in poll to decide the fate of a lobster dubbed "Larry." Callers voted whether to spare the lobster or boil and eat him. At first, it looked like he was for the pot, but the final tally spared his life.

Then, on the next week's show, Eddie Murphy read a letter from a woman in Oklahoma who doubted that Larry had survived the show, especially the way Murphy was "waving him around." She also commented, "I thought those people didn't like seafood."

Murphy's response to her racist comment was to reveal Larry's boiled body, announced that his stay of execution had been revoked, and ate him.

The last show of the season was my favourite. Olivia Newton-John was the host, and she sang some hits from her "Physical" album. I was hot for Olivia at the time, I'll tell you.

But the best part was when Graham Chapman interrupted a sketch as the Colonel, telling them it was "too silly," and obviously ripped off from Monty Python.
Chapman was on the show to promote the film "The Secret Policeman's Other Ball." An NBC station had recently refused to air the trailer for the film, saying it was "too objectionable, even for [SNL}."
They then played the trailer, and invited Chapman to comment. Chapman read NBC's objection, which said that the American flag displayed in the ad was "rumpled" and "defaced in one corner." While the flag was a bit wrinkled, it wasn't defaced. There was a birdcage in front of it, and the censors might not have gotten a good enough look to see it.
I think what really cheesed them off was the poking of fun at the Moral Majority and the fact that Chapman was wearing a tutu, nylon stockings, and a garter belt.
Chapman made an eloquent apology, saying he never meant to offend anyone, or do anything to break the strong bonds between Britain and America by defaming the flag.
He then stood up to reveal he was wearing a star-spangled g-string.
It was an hysterical moment, typical of the humour of that season, which marks it in my memory as one of SNL's best.
At the end of the show, when everyone was waving goodbye, Piscopo announced that Eddie was going off to San Francisco that summer to make a film with Nick Nolte. This film was, of course, "48 Hrs," and it made Murphy a big star.
In fact, the shows in this torrent were re-presented on Comedy Central with the subtitle "The Eddie Murphy Experience," and include a few taped reminisces from him about his time on the show.
Well, it wasn't the first time that a cast member grew larger than the show, and it wouldn't be the last. Murphy's success overshadowed that of Piscopo and fellow cast members Tim Kazurinsky, Mary Gross, Christine Ebersole and SCTV alumni Robin Duke and Tony Rosato. It's too bad, as they all helped make the seventh season one to remember.