Music for Mondays: The Knack ‘Good Girls Don’t’

The Knack - 'Good Girls Don't'. Squeaky clean video version, Summer 1979

Happy Monday friends and neighbors! Let’s start the week off with a power pop blast. Kick those feet right up on your desk and slip back in time to August, 1979. We’re going to enjoy The Knack playing “Good Girls Don’t”. “Good Girls Don’t” was the follow-up single to the No. 1 smash “My Sharona” and hit a respectable high of No. 11 on the Billboard charts. The video below features the “Clean” radio edit of the song and leaves out any mention of “in her pants” and “sitting on your face.” Now, we can listen along with Granny and the whole family. Whoo hoo!



The Knack Wiki

Wattstax Trailer (’73)

Wattstax, Summer '72. Power Shakin' and Lockin'

The Wattstax concert was organized by Stax Records and held in the Los Angeles Coliseum on August 20, 1972. The film documenting the event was released in February of 1973. Witness a fantastic trailer below and seek out the entire motion picture if you haven’t seen it. Not only is it an amazing document of the social climate in 1972 but the music is incredible across the board. You need to see this amazing film if for no other reason than to see Rufus Thomas perform “Do The Funky Chicken” while the audience in the Coliseum goes wild.

Wattstax, Summer '72 - The Bar-Kays and one hell of a white afro!

Interesting Factoids: Actor Ted Lange, who went on to play Isaac on TV’s The Love Boat, talks about the black experience in 70s America in the movie (and in the trailer below).



Wattstax Wiki

TV Time: NBC’s Super Season Promo (’75)

Here’s a nifty promo from 1975 for NBC’s upcoming Fall “Super Season.” Turns out Tony Curtis’s McCoy and Glenn Ford and Julie Harris in The Family Holvak weren’t very “Super” in the ratings department. Still, Disney and the Sunday Mystery Movie did OK.

Interesting Factoid: James at 15‘s Lance Kerwin played the son, Ramey, in The Family Holvak.

Investigate: McCoy, The Family Holvak, NBC Sunday Mystery Movie

People Feb 06, 1978: Bee Gees ‘Stayin’ Alive’

Let’s dip back into another time capsule issue of People Magazine. This time we’ll crack open a copy from February 06, 1978 with the Bee Gees featured on the cover. The headline reads: “Saturday Night Fever’s Bee Gees, Stayin’ Alive?, After 22 years, the Brothers Gibb are hotter than ever.”

The cover story focuses on the Saturday Night Fever explosion, mentions the Bee Gees’ upcoming Sgt. Pepper’s film and follows Barry and Maurice to their new homes in Florida. Robin has remained in England. Here are a few choice paragraphs.

Robin and Molly Gibb Feb. 1978

Their Here at Last—Bee Gees Live LP then sold some one and a half million, and when impresario Stigwood asked them to come up with some tunes for a disco movie, they delivered five in a week and a half: one of them, Stayin’ Alive, in two hours. Its title—and exhilarating thrust of rhythm—tells it all about the Gibbs. So do sales: Their first single release off the LP, How Deep Is Your Love, shot to No. 1 the same week Saturday Night Fever hit the moviehouses. Alive, the film’s opening and closing theme and one of the finest creations of the disco era, is well on its way to the top. And Fever’s sound track double LP, moving a staggering 200,000 a week, finally dislodged Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours from No. 1 after so long that everyone had forgotten its predecessor (Hotel California).

Barry and Lynda Feb. 1978

Barry, the eldest, is the chief songwriter, apostle of domesticity and prime mover of the Gibb HQ to Florida (after spotting it on a promo tour last year). Once he’d relocated his wife of seven years, Lynda, a former Miss Scotland, and their two children, he convinced Maurice to follow with Yvonne, his wife of three years, and their son. Along the way came the Bee Gees’ parents—Barbara, an ex-songstress, and Hugh, a ferryboat bandleader back in Britain and their manager pre-Stigwood. They bought a houseboat near the homes Barry and Maurice own along a private cove in Miami Beach. Andy (who has lately been dating actress Susan George, 27, since his marriage got into trouble after 16 months) also lives nearby.

You can read the entire article if your fancy is tickled.

Here’s a nifty bonus ad from the same issue.

The VW Bus Feb. 1978. Man, whatta van.

TV Time: ‘In the News’ Rollerskating and the Olympics (’79)

Rollerskating 'In the News' 1979. The flared trousers made you go faster. Fact!

Here’s an “In the News” segment from CBS Saturday Morning programming in 1979. The clip focuses on rollerskating and the attempt to bring the sport into Olympic competition. I always loved when I caught an “In the News” report and the spacey theme tune and narrator Christopher Glenn’s voice are indelibly etched in my brain. On display below we have an intro by Bugs Bunny and a cool, Western-themed commercial for “New” Hubba Bubble bubble gum included.

Brady Bunch Moments: Porkchops and Applesauce

The Brady Bunch, Oct. 22nd 1971 - The very moment 'porkchops and applesauce' entered your psyche

My favorite TV show of the 1970s, by a wide-margin, is The Brady Bunch. I watched the show when it originally ran from 1969-1974, though I was so young I barely remember those first few years. It was when the show went into syndication soon after, and I watched it five or six times a week, that it really sunk its joyful claws into me and never let go.

To honor this fine obsession show, from time to time, we’ll look at particularly memorable moments. We’ll get things rolling today with Season 3, Episode 055 “The Personality Kid,” which first aired on October 22, 1971. Directed by Oscar Rudolph and written by Ben Starr, the episode features Peter (Chris Knight) attempting to imitate Humphrey Bogart and uttering the immortal phrase “porkchops and applesauce.”

“Peter: (Bogart voice) Hey Mom. Hi Alice. What’s for dinner?

Carol: Porkchops.

Peter: Porkchops, eh? What else?

Alice: Applesauce?

Peter: Porkchops…and applesauce. Ain’t that swell?

Carol: Have you got something stuck in your teeth?”

The Brady Bunch: ‘Pork Chops and Apple Sauce’ Clip, 1971

Brady Bunch Wiki

Return to the Bionic Disco homepage for more mind-expanding 1970s pop culture!