Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Greeting salitations. Welcome my friends to another edition of The
Power Hour on six ten double the ETV, and I'm
Chuck Douglas. You know who you are, and we take
it from there. We get one hour together, which means
I talk really fast and you what you must listen
even faster my number eight two one nine eight eighty
six eight two one WTV and and I'll be calling
on you. I think here just momentarily to help me
(00:25):
with the programming decision, just so you know, because I'm
I'm unsure and I need I may need some guidance.
So I wanted to tell you, first of all, another
celebrity passing today, and this one by today's standards, I
guess kind of obscure, but from the sixties into early
seventies he was. He was kind of a hit maker.
(00:46):
At eighty two years of age. Lou Christine, the guy
who brought us lightning strikes in nineteen sixty five. Baby,
it's hard to settle time a month for you. Just
stick in the now part. Every boy, once a girl.
(01:10):
He Captruss to the very kind of operatic baby rowdy. Yep,
here we go, imitate Frankie Valley Now Lou Christie passing
(01:34):
at eighty two years of age after what they describe
as a brief illness, performed all the way up until
twenty twenty three, was still doing it and was most
recently doing a podcast, kind of a memorabilia podcast or whatever.
And again, you know, he had he had several hits.
Lightning Strikes was the biggest one in sixty five and
U seventy four. I believe it was for the last hit.
(01:59):
That was the last time he was on the charts,
and that was Oh my gosh, hang on a second.
I had that in front of me a moment ago,
because I don't remember the song myself. Two Faces have
I the Gypsy cried. That was in sixty three Lightning Strikes,
with sixty five Gonna Make You Mine in sixty nine
Beyond the Blue Horizon There We Go, which was in
(02:20):
nineteen seventy four, only made the Hot one hundred chart
at number eighty and then it dropped off, So there
you go. I have said before those falsettos. The Beg's
didn't introduce the falsetto. They were big, you know, the
fifties do op groups and the sixties on into the
(02:41):
sixties I cringe every time I see one of the
legends of that genre of music that constantly post on
Facebook and Instagram of Frankie Valley, because the Four Seasons
are still performing and Frankie is, uh, he's lip syncing everything.
I mean he's he's not actually singing. He stands there
(03:01):
with the microphone, almost zombie like, and it makes me
very sad to see it. And I guess, you know,
lou Christy had that same sound and lightning strikes, and
that made me think of Frankie Valley. And there are
those that can keep on rocking, as we have seen
with you know, all kinds of groups. Right now, we
always talk about Jagger and the Stones and Rod Stewart
(03:23):
who looked great at the AMAS and then canceled every
concert after, which scares me because Rod Stewart is he's
eighty years old. He skipped on the stage, he looked great,
and then he canceled shows that he was supposed to
be get in Las Vegas at the first of the
month due to an illness. I don't know what that
illness is. But we keep we keep losing those people
(03:47):
that got played on the radio for I mean ten
fifteen years after the song came out, you just couldn't
get away from it. And when k Tel Records was
out there doing those compilation records, you remember kateel Zachi.
Oh enough for Katel, I know, I am not they
would have, you know, they'd sell an album and it
would be like the Greatest Hits of nineteen eighty one,
(04:08):
and they'd have all kinds of different artists. Usually it
was a male order thing by Katel, by male order,
back when we still had cod collect on delivery, and uh,
you can get it on album, cassette or eight track tape,
and and uh, the music was just played forever. It
lasted forever. I don't know anybody's going to be playing
anything from Cowboy Carter in five years, but.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
But I know we had That's what I call music
volume one, two, three, four, five, Yeah, a million, you know.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Yeah, because the songs were just so enduring and the
performers were so enduring, in fact, enduring performer. The person
that I have on Facebook that actually uh noted Lou
Christie's passing was Fabian. Are you familiar with Fabian? Probably now?
He was a fifties guy. His big turn Melose term
(05:00):
Alosa say Italian boy from Philadelphia, and so was Lou Christie.
By the way, lou Christie was his performing name. His
name at birth was Luji Alfredo Giovanni Sacco. Yeah, I
don't blame him for going with Lou Christie, but I
just I don't know. Every time we lose another one,
(05:20):
I just I feel a little bigger hole opening up
because the stuff today I just don't see. I don't
see being out there fifteen twenty years from now, still
being played, still being recognized, and as strong as some
of these older acts seen today, and as much as
every time your kid buys a new video game, there's
(05:43):
an ACDC song in there, and Brian Johnson is he's
going well, you know, he's the voice is still there
and you'll want him to last forever, but they're not
going to. And it's just I don't know. It's kind
of sad when you you sit and actually think about
(06:04):
the passage of time. But I'm I'm glad that he
stopped performing and it's going to be remembered as a legend,
as opposed to Frankie Valley, who, just like I said
with Joe Biden, if you love this guy, stop him,
stop him. Just let let him. Let him go down
in history as one of the greats. Don't don't keep
(06:24):
sending him out there for this Dog and Pony Show
where he's more of a comic strip than he is
the performer that that everybody knew and loved, and he was.
He was truly legendary, from the falsetto stuff with the
Four Seasons to things like my eyes adored you or
swearing to God, Frankie Valley was amazing, and it makes
(06:48):
me very sad to see where he is now. The
programming thing is, Zach, I'm gonna ask you to help
me because I can go one of two ways with
our hour today. I can go I can go frivolous
and goofy, or I can go serious and newsy. But
I'm not sure which because I'm I'm I feel so
blasted good today that I could go either way, and
(07:08):
I don't know which way I want to go. So
what do you want to do? You want to go serious,
you want to go fun? Fun? Okay, then we'll go fun.
I like fun funds good. We talked about toilet paper
with Mark. It's important and he asked me. He Mark,
by the way, if you weren't listening to to the
Blazer Show this afternoon. We were talking about toilet paper,
whether it should go over or under, and I stand
(07:30):
by my choice. Toilet paper goes over, and if you disagree,
you're wrong. I pick So So what is it? How
do you pick neither?
Speaker 2 (07:37):
The beday?
Speaker 1 (07:39):
See, that's for fringe people and weird people. No, I
don't want if I don't have to go, I don't
want anything squirting me in that. No, No, I'm sorry, No,
I just know. No. You don't have one of those,
do you? Oh?
Speaker 2 (07:55):
No, I don't have one.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Okay, multiple ones? Oh my gosh, that's just so weird.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Yeah, when you get used to it.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
No, do you actually? No?
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Multiple be days. I'm kind of a connoisseur. I won't
stay in a hotel day.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
That's just freaky. I'm sorry, man, that is freaky stuff.
Toilet paper goes over? Be days or for weirdos. I
stand by my thoughts on that. Mark asked me though,
while we were talking about He asked me if if
I remembered SERTs. I think SERTs are still around, aren't they.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
I don't know. I used to eat SERTs all the
time when I was a kid. We used to stop
at a convenience store and get them before we went
to church, and I would always get like the orange kine.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Because SERTs were two to two mints in one. That
was their their slogan for a long time. But it
got me to think it and I asked him, do
you remember Vela mints? Because the eighties we had all
kinds of weird stuff that everybody was flocking to the
store to buy. That is no longer there. Even the seventies,
there were some products out there, but mints, Susie Chaffee
(09:02):
or Susie chapstick. I think didn't she do commercials for elements?
If I'm not mistaken, But that new Velaments took the
sugar out. You can really taste the mint. They were
sugar free mints, that's all they were.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
SERTs are no longer available since twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Really, yeah, they stopped. So that's why all these people
have stinky breath now. It's because there's no SERTs out there.
But life Savers are still around. Live Savers a part
of Livy. But Velaments I had all kinds of elements.
Do you remember Chelsea a soda pop called Chelsea. No,
(09:38):
don't just pour a soft drink peel a Chelsea. It
was in a green bottle with I believe it was
silver foil on top. It was made to look like
the michelob beer bottle of the ades.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
I'm looking at the cans look like beer can.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
It was made by ennheuser Busch and it was supposed
to be soda pop and I used to drink them
on my paper route and they found that it actually
had like one point five percent alcohol or something, so
annheuser Busch was forced to take it off the market.
They started calling it baby beer and and and it
went away quickly. But they don't just pull them as
(10:16):
drink peel uh Chelsea. And it wasn't that good. I
don't know why I drank it, except the advertising was powerful, right.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Did that? I mean you couldn't get drunk off, that,
could you.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
I don't know. I was like thirteen years old and
I drank several of them and my papers got delivered
really fast. So well, I'm not sure micro shakes something
else from the eighties. Do you remember micro shakes? No,
they were here's what they.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Born in eighty one. I don't remember all.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
The Okay, so that's my gosh, eighty one of your child.
I was already a decrepit old guy in eighty one.
The micro shakes were ice. They were they were milkshakes
that you put in the Microway, okay, this was so stupid,
but we went we went out and bottom they were
just really hard frozen. Okay, so when you put them
(11:10):
in the microwave, all it did was unfreezing enough to
where you could stir them up, and they were actually
milk shaky as opposed to brick hard. That's what micro
shakes were, and we flocked to buy micro shakes. There
was a soft drink called Help Help Help, the Real
(11:32):
Fruit drink, red and purple and orange and pink. It
was like a Fago type soft drink and it only
lasted I think probably a year, maybe a year and
a half on the market. It went away.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
I don't know how Fago lasts.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
I think it's like occasionally I like it occasionally.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Macro real quick to The micro shakes were the good.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
No, not really, they were. They they were kind of
like they were kind of like Frosty's, but not as uh,
not as flavorful as a frosty, but the cup was
about the same size as a regular size frosty, and
once you put them in the microwave for sixty seconds,
you could stir them up because they were now no
longer you know, brick hard, and stir them up to
(12:14):
kind of a frosty consistency. But there was nothing scientific
about them at all, but we flocked to buy microshakes.
Max Headroom on television. Have you ever heard of Max
Headroom y?
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Yes, that was the guy who they interfered in the
signal in Chicago or whatever.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Yes, and they said that he was entirely computer generated.
He wasn't. It was an actor and all they were
doing was digitizing this recorded actor. And you've seen him.
He's on Star Trek the Next Generation. He was. He
did several TV shows as he was an actor. But
they had America believing Max Headroom was computer generated to
(12:58):
the point where not only was he a spokesperson for
PEPSI No, it was coke. I think I think he
was spokes Maybe it was diet coke, but anyway, he
was doing commercials for a soda pop and ABC Network
gave him his own television show. Max's Headroom had a
television show, The fictional character that wasn't really fictional.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
What what was it about?
Speaker 1 (13:24):
I forget it was the eighties. I don't remember much
about details. I just remember I had a good time.
But then again, we talked earlier about you resembling the
Gico Caveman. Do you remember the Gico Caveman got their
own TV show on ABC? I did did not last
that long, not what seven episodes or something like that.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Commercials were funny, but they tried to stretch that into
a half hour.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Didn't work anyway. So if is that told me I'm
going to be fun and frivolous today, what else, Especially
if it's from the seventies and eighties, a period where
I grew up. The stuff you flocked to the store,
You thought, Oh, this is the greatst invention ever, It's
the greatest food product ever. It's the greatest mood rings.
Just so much stuff we fell, the crap that we
(14:08):
fell for that is still a fond memory. I just
I don't know, I just feel like talking about that