The Cars

In other "looking backward, not forward" news, I stumbled across this concert video of "The Cars" circa 1979 last evening. 

The Boston-based Cars were, I suppose, my gateway drug into what became known as New Wave - national bands like Blondie, Talking Heads, Pretenders, Cheap Trick, The Police, Elvis Costello, B-52s, and yes, The Knack - bleeding over into punk, to brit-rock, to ska. I blame Jim Reedy who was (and still is, no doubt) far more musically progressive than myself. I'm not sure if we ever saw them live in small clubs in Boston (it's possible that we did, Jim was adventurous and a positive influence that way) - I know I saw them in '79 at the Yale Bowl* for SunFest79 (Beach Boys, Eddie Money, Flo & Eddie, Henry Paul Band, The Cars) and again during college (Boston Garden, it's possible the Clash or one of their off-shoots opened, the internets are not cooperating this morning in terms of documenting the show)

I'm struck by how "small club rock & roll" they seem here, rough around the edges and unpolished compared to modern standards. Remembering the individual members (one of the few groups I came to learn all the band-member's names), remember playing "Good Times Roll" in Jim's basement. Did not realize bassist Ben Orr passed away so long ago (2000) and so young (53, pancreatic cancer) - he kind of has a bit of a "Sting" vibe here.

Nice to take a look back. The Cars made the jump to MTV, but broke up in 1988. I picked up a Best of Anthology on CD along the way but I never replaced my vinyl copies of The Cars or Candy-O. I remained a big enough fan to pick up Panorama, Shake It Up, and Heartbeat City on vinyl back in the day (all long gone), but I dropped out by the time they released "Door to Door" which I do not remember at all.

* I also went to the 1980 edition - The Eagles, Heart, and Little River Band - and I wore an Eagles baseball concert shirt often enough for my artistic college roomie to make it my signature garb when caricaturing me. This second concert is a blur - I had worked the overnight shift at McD's. And somebody (Robin V?) had pot which I rarely smoked but did that day, all I remember is being about as far back as possible in the Yale Bowl and my fatigued, sun-baked, and stoned brain thought I was watching the concert on TV.

Monty Python's Flying Circus on Netflix

Netflix has dumped a ton of Monty Python related material recently - best of shows, clip reels, live performances, remembrances, biographies.

I've decided to go back to the source material: 4 series, 45 episodes, aired in Britain from 1969-1974. Python has been kind of ubiquitous in my life (although the Marx Brothers were much earlier and more formative), but I'm not sure I've ever done a canonical viewing of the show. The ensemble became known for stand-alone sketch / bit comedy that fans have come to know by heart, but many of the belly laughs of viewing the original shows come from the way sketches bleed over into each other, or show up again later in the show.

My most recent watch (Series 2, Episode 1) features the "New Cooker" sketch, and the long line of service techs patiently waiting to enter the sketch pop up several times later in the show; the classic "Ministry of Silly Walks" (Cleese silly walks through the following sketch at least once), and "Ethel the Frog / Piranha Brothers" which I remembered mostly from a record album compilation, so there is a soundless bit in the middle I did not recall, as well as an addendum tacked on for the recording "...sorry squire, I've scratched the record....sorry squire, I've scratched the record....sorry squire, I've scratched the record....". And Spiny Norman's animated appearance during the credits is sort of the icing on the cake. "Dinsdale...."

My earliest Python memories were of my dad watching and laughing in our family room in PA, over the air via the local public station, quite possibly in black & white. I think we were both a little embarrassed about the occasional nudity (most often in Terry Gilliam's animated pastiches). I was a little too young for it to be appropriate (but was curious) and he seemed a little embarrassed for enjoying it as much as he did. I think he was looking for someone to share it with and I was not quite there yet.

Later on in high school, where the sketches bounced around pretty wildly in lunchroom banter and classroom cut-ups. I probably picked up a lot of it second hand, or through records - in those pre-internet, pre-DVD, pre-VCR, even pre-cable days (we were late acquirers) it was catch as catch can in terms of actually seeing the shows. And when I was able to watch a show, it was difficult to put some of the humor in context the way a serial viewing of the series provides, both in terms of repetitive themes as well as the evolution of the humor and the acting / comedy skills.

Holy Grail (1975) and Life of Brian (1979) neatly bookended my high school career - I'm sure I saw both in the theaters. But again, a different experience when one needs to pay and screen multiple times, rather than watching the film over and over the way a VCR, DVD or stream permits.

So...a nice little break from reality that I am savoring (rather than binge watching) and a chance to revisit a more innocent era, personally and culturally.

Atari: Game Over

I spent the morning unexpectedly entralled by Atari: Game Over (2014), streaming now on Netflix, and also available in pieces on Youtube. 

The Atari 2600 gaming console game out in 1977; I was 16 years old. I spent many hours in the local arcade (Framingham's Fun and Games, first opened in '74, and still around in an evolved form). And though my gaming days were relatively short-lived (the last game console I've owned was a Colecovision; I never really stayed involved as the industry morphed through PC, Nintendo, Sega, Sony, Xbox, etc.), as a young soon-to-be engineer who spent some time in college and in the workplace hard-coding micro-processors, Atari video games were still my first taste of geekery. My family owned a 2600; my younger brother Kevin (now a programmer / database geek himself) had an Atari 400 computer (with that membrane keyboard).

The documentary is kind of remarkable. It orbits two stories: an individual obsessed with the urban legend that millions of Atari game cartridges of ET: The Extraterristrial were buried in an Alamagordo, NM landfill. And the programmer, Howard Scott Warshaw, who created the ET videogame in five weeks at the behest of Atari management, trying to leverage a $22M investment in the game rights before the Xmas season.  When ET tanked (it was reportedly too difficult to play), Howard's career, and the first videogame bubble led by Atari, burst.

The film is technically excellent - interweaving these two stories, abetted by interviews with many of the key players - Warner Brothers executives, Nolan Bushnell of Atari, Atari programmers, and other public figures who have been touched by the games. There's a little bit of playfulness around "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (the movie, and also a successful 2600 game also designed by Warshaw) - comparing the search for the buried games to the search for the lost ark, and a very familiar closing shot....

When the urban archeologists finally get close to finding video game evidence, the dig has become a happening, with video game fans, Warshaw, and others flocking to the desert landfill site. And watching Warshaw (now a psychotherapist) get choked up, first as he visits the site of the Atari headquarters for the first time in 30 years, and then at the landfill, was quite moving.