Show #166 July 14, 2018

Tonight we've got two "HEYs" for Helen and zero for Bill...


Hey Hey Helen- ABBA ABBA 
Hey Polarity!- Tommy Hoehn Losing You to Sleep 
Hey Julie- Fountains Of Wayne Welcome Interstate Managers 
Hey Diane- Bowling For Soup Drunk Dynasty 
Hey Sue- The Late Show Portable Pop 
Sick of Waiting- Kurt Baker Combo Let's Go Wild! 
Money- Dumptruck Wrecked 
In the End- The Connection Wish You Success 
^Hey!- Gillmor Counting The Days 
Hey- Pixies Doolittle 
Hey- Blue Shoes Someone Like You E.P. 7"
*Hey Hey- The Elms The Big Surprise
*Hey Hey- The Descendents Fat E.P. 7"
*Hey! Hey!- The Shake Ups Ponymania 
Hey Hey Alodia- Segatron Rainbows and Hangovers
Hey, Tristessa- Mockingbirds Mockingbirds 
Hey Rita- The Rubinoos The Basement Tapes Plus 
*Hey!- Hellacopters Hey! 
*Hey- Goo Goo Dolls Hold Me Up 
*Hey- Slaves Hey
The Perfect Place- David Myhr Lucky Day
Sucker- Beechwood Inside the Flesh Hotel 
Chasing A Ghost- The Longshot Love Is for Losers 
*Hey Now- Matt and Kim New Glow 
*Hey Now- The Regrettes Hey Now
*Hey Now- Myracle Brah Myracle Brah 
>Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!- Johnny Otis And Orchestra Let The Sunshine In My Life 
Hey Hey Hey- Room Eleven Hey Hey Hey 
Hey Hey- The Wellingtons Hey Hey The Wellingtons 
Hey!- Stephen Lawrenson Somehwere Else
Hey Paula- Jr. Gone Wild Less Art, More Pop 
Hey Jane- Pink Spiders Teenage Graffitti 

^Power Pop Peak:  #70 6/20/09 (Mitchel Musso version)

*SacroSet[s]:  "Hey" Songs

>Power Pop Prototype:  1956




I started tonight's show with this "HEY HEY!" from Krusty The Clown because my favorite  "HEY," the one I grew up with and looked forward to on Saturday mornings has been forever tainted.  As I've mentioned in this space before, along with Mum's Elvis albums, Dad's comedy albums had a huge impact on me growing up and none more than Bill Cosby's Revenge.  I was a very shy kid yet after memorizing stories from the record I found I could perform them in front of people and, even more important, get laughs just like Bill.  I would perform for my relatives whenever asked, admittedly also when not asked, such was the power of this album over my young imagination.  (It makes me smile now, thinking about a 7 year old white kid from suburban Brockton, Massachusetts telling stories about black kids from urban Philadelphia to his elderly white Canadian relatives.)

Released in 1967, Revenge was a juggernaut, topping the Billboard R and B Album chart, hitting #2 on the Pop Album Chart and winning the 1968 Grammy for Best Comedy Album.  I didn't know any of that until I googled it just now- what I knew back then was that it was the funniest thing I had ever heard.  I especially loved "Buck Buck" a story about Cosby's childhood on streets of Philadelphia and my favorite person it it was Fat Albert, whose "Hey Hey HEY!" is permanently lodged in my psyche.  Turns out Fat Albert was first introduced on Revenge.

I remember being excited when my mom told me Cosby had a show called I Spy (by this time in weekend reruns after its initial 1965-1968 run) but his character on that show was so dry and so unfunny I didn't make it through the whole episode.

 
Having played "Buck Buck" from Revenge for a few friends in my neighborhood, it was hugely gratifying when Fat Albert and The Cosby Kids joined the CBS Saturday morning lineup in 1972.  At the age of seven I felt like a trailblazer!  My "Hey Hey HEY!" was a big thing in the neighborhood that fall and I milked it for all it was worth.

Along with Fat Albert, Revenge had also introduced me to Weird Harold on the track "9th Street Bridge," so when the show came on I knew the characters well enough to feel like a Cosby kid myself.  Starting in prime time on NBC in 1969 as Hey Hey Hey It's Fat Albert, the network balked at moving the show to Saturday mornings because they didn't like the educational component.  Cosby insisted every episode have a lesson about lying, bullying, cheating, pretending to be someone you're not, etc.  Some of my friends didn't care for that aspect of the show but I took those lessons as scripture.  It never seemed weird to me that they spent so much time in a junkyard.  I'd heard my Dad make jokes about the awfulness of Philadelphia so I just assumed the city was one giant junkyard but no one on the show seemed to mind so I didn't either.  After each lesson the Junkyard Band would play a song, in the junkyard on junk instruments of course:

The song I remember most was "Everybody Plays The Fool" which I was shocked to hear on the radio one day and even more shocked when the DJ said it was by The Main Ingredient.  "No it's not- it's by The Junkyard Band!" I tried to tell everyone to no avail.  Interesting side note, The Main Ingredient included Cuba Gooding, Sr. father (no duh) of Cuba Gooding, Jr.  One other note about the group- I'm now back on The Junkyard Band- is that they all played instruments made of junk except when they would cut away to Rudy who would be playing this slick guitar with an "R" on it.

My questions have never been answered:

• Why is Rudy the only one with a real instrument?
• Why in the group scenes is he playing a junky banjo-looking thing but not in the cutaways?

Now I would like to add:

• Is it a 5 string bass or a 5 string guitar?
• How is the bass connected to the amp- there doesn't seem to be a chord? 
• And where in the junkyard is he plugging in his amp?

In any case, it was easy to hear the pop R and B songs on the show were not being played on the junk instruments and Fat Albert's voice was different on every one- giving me my first taste of lip-syncing.  Even so, I was curious to know how those junk instruments would really sound.  To this day whenever I hear cacophonous experimental rock, like Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica, I think "this is what The Junkyard Band would have sounded like."  Who knows, creating an unholy din with instruments made in a junkyard in the early 70's- the Junkyard Band probably would have been huge in Germany.

 
But I digress...  Looking back, I see now that Bill Cosby also had a big impact on my perception of race.  Growing up we didn't have any black people in my neighborhood or my school, Kennedy Elementary.  I'm sure I had seen black people in Brockton but I don't know that I had ever talked to any.  I also don't remember seeing many black people on TV- my favorite shows at the time being The Brady Bunch,

Ultraman

F-Troop and Ultraman (this last show had a 100% Japanese cast which didn't seem that exotic compared to the giant monsters destroying Tokyo each week.)  I had heard my father playing Revenge on our stereo before I saw the cover- and it never occurred to me that the man talking, or Fat Albert or Weird Harold did not look like me.  My father never mentioned it either- so when I did see Cosby on the cover, his blackness was simply a fact and nothing more.  Same with Fat Albert and The Cosby Kids, it didn't really occur to me that after years of watching shows with all-white casts I was now watching a show that was 100% black.    

Like a lot of people, I found it hard to believe those early reports about Bill Cosby drugging and raping women.  This man had taught me valuable life lessons as a child and gone on to be Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable- how could the same person do such horrible things to women?  I wasn't sure how to take his criticism of young black men's speech, work ethic, low slung pants, etc. but I listened because it was Bill Cosby.  In

the 2002 Jerry Seinfield documentary Comedian, Chris Rock talks about going to see Cosby do a two hour show in a huge theater and you can hear the awe in Rock's his voice.  Cosby is a giant of comedy- how could this same guy be a monster?  Yet, there's no denying the truth:  the man has been abusing women his entire career, the first allegations dating back to 1965, two years before Revenge came out.  And the gall he had to tell other people how to live their lives- especially the hectoring "advice" he gave young black men all while doing appalling things to young black women.  

Hannibal Buress

The insane thing is Cosby seemed to be getting away with it until comedian Hannibal Buress called him out during a 2014 show in, appropriately, Philadelphia.  Someone illegally recorded the bit and uploaded it to youtube.  Think about that for a moment- it wasn't the numerous reports in the news media of women telling their personal Cosby horror stories that turned the tide...IT WAS A COMEDY BIT!!  How many more women would have been abused if that person didn't upload their poor quality recording of Buress' rant.  It truly boggles the mind. As for Cosby himself, he clearly doesn't get it- judging from this "performance" coming out of court last year:



Seriously- F**k You Bill Cosby.

So, what do I do with this information?  I loved Louis CK, but cutting him out of my life was relatively easy.  I don't even have any desire to finish Horace and Pete and I was really enjoying that show.  Cosby though, those roots run much deeper and it makes me sad that this guy who had such a positive impression on me has destroyed so many lives.  No more "Hey Hey HEY!" for me.

I guess all there is to do is to try to hold on to the good things he did for me, chuck the rest and move on- yet I'll say it again:  F**k You Bill Cosby.

As a palate cleanser, I'll let Krusty take us out...



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ALL KINDSA GIRLS #166