two things. first, i think i’m no longer afraid to admit that i preferred soul train to bandstand, but i could only watch when no one else was around because no one in the house wanted to watch the sooooooooooooul train!
second, it took me YEARS be fore i realized that there were two lines side by side, which was how they could cut to dancers mid-line and still seem like it was live. i just wasn’t too observant (gotta look at the soul train logo in the background, david, that’s the clue).
and rerun with his slo-mo. how’d he ever end up in a tv show with such an unfunky theme song written by mancini? shouldn’t Q have been in on that? seriously.
That “Soul Train” over “Bandstand” admission really makes me think that I still want to write a piece about how listening “across borders” was such a big deal back then. If you had outside-the-margins (or expectations) tastes you could be marked by it. i remember so clearly buying a copy of “In Through the Out Door” whenever that was it came out, but also buying a couple of other “soul” LPs because, well, that’s what I was *supposed* to be listening to, right? A few years later, when it really didn’t matter anymore, I thought it was pretty funny that that album was packaged — conveniently , for my , situation — in a brown-paper wrapper. I loved “In the Evening” and couldn’t hold back. The first “cross” I remember, was “Young Americans” but they we’re already playing that on KGFJ; Zeppelin was a whole other matter.
I LOVE your comment about Q over Mancini too — yes, that makes total sense — and Q had a lot of juice around then. (and now, I don’t remember, when I figured out there were two lines…but it wasn’t right away, either, I promise)
Watching this video, reading the comments, and looking at these dancers (esp. the one right around 1:55) made me think of riding the #5 to school in the morning and watching the older girls get on the bus with this “world-weary” expression, and the smell of lipgloss and just-snuffed-out cigarettes and then the illicit radio turned on in the back rows….what a stiff hit of the past…
native to the place 
two things. first, i think i’m no longer afraid to admit that i preferred soul train to bandstand, but i could only watch when no one else was around because no one in the house wanted to watch the sooooooooooooul train!
second, it took me YEARS be fore i realized that there were two lines side by side, which was how they could cut to dancers mid-line and still seem like it was live. i just wasn’t too observant (gotta look at the soul train logo in the background, david, that’s the clue).
and rerun with his slo-mo. how’d he ever end up in a tv show with such an unfunky theme song written by mancini? shouldn’t Q have been in on that? seriously.
That “Soul Train” over “Bandstand” admission really makes me think that I still want to write a piece about how listening “across borders” was such a big deal back then. If you had outside-the-margins (or expectations) tastes you could be marked by it. i remember so clearly buying a copy of “In Through the Out Door” whenever that was it came out, but also buying a couple of other “soul” LPs because, well, that’s what I was *supposed* to be listening to, right? A few years later, when it really didn’t matter anymore, I thought it was pretty funny that that album was packaged — conveniently , for my , situation — in a brown-paper wrapper. I loved “In the Evening” and couldn’t hold back. The first “cross” I remember, was “Young Americans” but they we’re already playing that on KGFJ; Zeppelin was a whole other matter.
I LOVE your comment about Q over Mancini too — yes, that makes total sense — and Q had a lot of juice around then. (and now, I don’t remember, when I figured out there were two lines…but it wasn’t right away, either, I promise)
Watching this video, reading the comments, and looking at these dancers (esp. the one right around 1:55) made me think of riding the #5 to school in the morning and watching the older girls get on the bus with this “world-weary” expression, and the smell of lipgloss and just-snuffed-out cigarettes and then the illicit radio turned on in the back rows….what a stiff hit of the past…