Friday, November 17, 1978 was one of the most anticipated days of my nine-year-old life. Why? Because The Star Wars Holiday Special was on TV that night, that's why!

Although Star Wars had premiered 18 months before (back in May of 1977), it hadn't gone away; no siree Bob, not by a long shot. If anything, Star Wars-mania was at a higher pitch in 1978 than it was in 1977, as an endless parade of Kenner toys, Marvel comic books, etc., etc. kept me entertained all through the magnificent year of 1978.

But this was something huge. Back in the days before home video had penetrated into mainstream America, there was only one way to see a movie: In the theaters. Oh, sure, you could catch a movie on TV, but they were frequently sliced and diced (ABC did some horrendous things to the James Bond movies), or split into two parts (which happened more often than you would think). And there was no way in hell that a movie as big as Star Wars was going to be on TV anytime soon.

And that's why The Star Wars Holiday Special was such a huge, huge deal: we were actually going to be able to see our favorite characters in our own living rooms! How awesome is THAT?

I had no idea that I was about to see what is arguably the worst thing ever shown on American television.

The show opens up quite promisingly: Harrison Ford and Peter Mayhew reprise their roles as Han Solo and Chewbacca, and they're in a lot of trouble; thanks to the magic of stock footage from the actual movie (which looks HORRIBLE; you'd think that with the blessings of George Lucas behind this project, they could get spaceship footage that didn't look like a fifth-generation bootleg), they're being chased by Imperial ships, but Han promises Chewie that he needn't worry; he'll get him home in time for Life Day, don't you worry, pal. Of course, I wondered at the time: "What is Life Day?" Apparently it's a non-denominational, non-offensive holiday that Wookies celebrate that won't offend anyone in America. Or something.

Since we're off to Kashyyyk for Life Day (okay, we didn't know the name of the planet then, but we know it now!), of course we have to meet Chewie's family, and we do: wife Malla, son Lumpy and father Itchy. Awesome, right? After all, Chewie was the coolest character in the movie, and now we get to see more Wookiees! Actually, what we get to see is three people wearing shag carpeting, puttering around a tree house and honking, screaming and whining. For ten minutes. I kid you not: A full ten minutes of a nationally-broadcast television special was conducted entirely in Wookiee. Even as an eight-year-old, I knew that was not good.

Lumpy turns to his oh-so-high-tech-for-1978 Commodore 64 and conjours up an entertainment program, and this is where the wheels well and truly fall off. What Lumpy watches is a 3-D prototype of Cirque de Soleil, run by an absolutely fabulous bearded dancer in green leotards. How campy and gay is this sequence? Let's just say that if Rip Taylor and Elton John threw a lavish Pride Party on Fire Island, Lumpy's dancers wouldn't be invited because they were too over-the-top. Now that's gay.

Speaking of Rip Taylor, Malla is getting worried about Chewie, so she contacts one of his friends who might be able to shed some light on his situation: Luke Skywalker! With R2-D2! Awesome, right? No, sorry. A particularly color-blind makeup artist apparently loaded a whole bunch of makeup into a T-shirt cannon and fired the whole thing into Mark Hamill's face. He's wearing more makeup than all of the Kardashians combined, and a prettier woman I have yet to see. We're only 15 minutes into this thing, and it's already so bad......

Well, Luke can't help, so Malla wastes another five minutes of our life by calling her best friend Art Carney, who is apparently some sort of merchant somewhere. After painfully putting small children through Art Carney's deadly "funny schtick" (was he ever funny? Certainly not in 1978 he wasn't) and some more poor-quality Star Wars footage of Darth Vader that James Earl Jones overdubbed to make it relevant to this show, we finally hit the first commercial break.

Thankfully, the surviving videotape of this show preserves most (if not all) of the commercials, and they're generally more interesting than the show itself.

Okay folks, we're 20 minutes into this thing.....hang on, and we'll make it through the whole show, but it's going to take several blog entries. There's no way I can take it in all at once. I couldn't even do that in 1978.

Ram On

It must be hell to be Paul McCartney. No, I don't mean the millions of dollars, the unparalleled fame or being a living legend. I mean that it must be hell trying to come up with a setlist for an entertaining concert!

Let's get this part out of the way right now: This is a fantastic show. McCartney's voice is stronger than it's been in years (probably because he's not inhaling the poisonous vapor that emanates from Heather Mills any more), the band is rock-solid and no-one - no-one- on this planet knows how to work a 20,000-seat arena better than Paul McCartney. He obviously loves his job.

But back to the setlist. I'm just guessing here, but I would say that maybe 50 percent of the people at the Pepsi Center last night had probably never seen Paul before. They probably knew most of the Beatles songs, and maybe one or two of his solo hits. And Paul knows that. And that's why he is always going to play "Hey Jude," "Yesterday" and "Let it Be." Can you imagine seeing Paul McCartney and not hearing "Let It Be"? Blasphemy!

I, on the other hand, have seen Paul McCartney five times now. That means that I have seen five performances of "Hey Jude," "Yesterday" and "Let It Be." And that doesn't count the dozens (hundreds?) of other shows that I've heard, but didn't actually attend. Would I be considered a heretic if said that I'm getting a little tired of those songs?

And so, there's the other dynamic Paul has to work with: the hardcore fans who are sick of "Get Back," and are longing for something more eclectic. And that's where I think Paul succeeded rather brilliantly. Last night, I heard "Ram On," "Venus and Mars" and "Mrs. Vanderbilt." Quick! How many of you out there know those songs? Exactly. Would I be considered a heretic if I said that I enjoyed "Ram On" way more than I enjoyed "Hey Jude"?

As we were entering the Pepsi Center, I was, as I always do, grumbling about McCartney. He's a diva (whose late arrival kept us waiting outside in the hot sun for an hour), he's a lazy performer, he's always playing "good ol' Paulie" when in fact he's a calculating schemer, etc., etc., etc. Two minutes into the first song, however, I had a grin stretched from ear to ear, and all was forgiven. And at the end of "Here Today," his mind-blowing tribute to John Lennon, I was weeping like a ten-year-old at a Justin Bieber concert.

So, yeah. Like Laura said, much of the show felt......familiar, and not in a good way. From a purely musical perspective, I'll take a "without a net" free-for-all by the Grateful Dead guys any time, any place. It's more interesting.

But for just pure, unadulterated emotional kapow!......there is no-one better than Paul McCartney. For better or for worse, he truly is the very best there is.


Special thanks to the Denver Post for their amazing photograph from last night's show, which I borrowed quite freely. Please do not sue me! I'm not trying to steal your stuff; I just wanted a nice illustration from last night's show, and your photographers got some great ones.

Get Thai'd!!

So, it was the summer of 1985, a moment in time that, with rose-colored glasses, was absolutely glorious. I was 16, had a car and the world truly was my oyster.

Earlier that year, a very unusual song had peaked at #3 on the Billboard music charts: Murray Head's "One Night In Bangkok." I liked it from the moment I heard it (it was way different than the Bruce Springsteen/Prince/Michael Jackson stuff we were getting day in and day out), but I didn't think too much about it. That is, until..........

One day on the radio, after the song had finished, a disc jockey came on and said: "Who the hell knows what that song is about?" Well, anyone who knows me knows that that's like waving a red flag in front of a bull, and from that moment on I was determined to find out what "One Night In Bangkok" was all about. I listened very carefully to the lyrics, but finally had to resort to a trip to the music store to find the sheet music. And I discovered a whole bunch of weird things.........

First of all, it's from a musical called Chess. I thought that was sort of interesting enough, but guess who wrote the musical? That's right! Benny and Bjorn, the two "BB"s in ABBA! Are you kidding me? Although I totally get ABBA now, I think this information might have soured me on the song back in 1985!

A closer listen to the song reveals some incredibly clever lyrics. It turns out that the narrator (Murray Head) is on his way to Bangkok for a world-class chess tournament, but the background singers want him to indulge in the....um, pleasures that are to be found in Bangkok. But he'll have none of it ("The queens we use would not excite you").

But it's much more than just the world's only song about sex and chess; it's full of incredible puns as well. My favorite line? "Tea, girls, warm and sweet. Some are set up in the Somerset Maugham suite." Incredible! A pun on how both the tea and the girls are warm and sweet, and then a very nice pun on "Somerset" and "some are set." And that's not just some random crap; it turns out that the very famous Oriental Hotel in Bangkok really does have a "Somerset Maugham Suite"! Check it out:

http://www.famoushotels.org/article/698

Of course, with such playful lyrics, it's not hard to imagine that some people could get them wrong; I'll never forget my friend Derek van Westrum laughing at the line "I hit my kids above the waistline, sunshine!" I didn't have the heart to tell him that it's actually "I get my kicks above the waistline, sunshine." Oops.

One other unanswered question about this record: Murray Head? Who?

Well, the esteemed Mr. Head has been on the fringes of music and acting for decades and, before "Bangkok" was best known for performing "Superstar" from Jesus Christ Superstar. But there's an even more interesting "Scott Raile" connection: it turns out that Murray Head's film debut was in an interesting little British film from 1966 called The Family Way, which featured a score by none other than Paul McCartney. As my poor wife will tell you, The Family Way is one of my favorite pieces of McCartney music, and gets played often.

And, as if it couldn't get any weirder, it turns out that Murray Head is actually on the cover of the album Stop Me by the Smiths, which is actually a still from The Family Way! Circles within circles within circles.......

So there it is: More than you ever wanted to know about an obscure minor hit from 1985 that you've forgotten all about. Go check it out again, though! Here's YouTube video that spells out the lyrics:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmaJ4G6qhM8

And here's the original Murray Head video, with the orchestral intro that was trimmed off of the single:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9mwELXPGbA&feature=related

Welcome to Ape City!

About four years ago I tried this blogging thing, and it lasted exactly one post before I gave up. Well, try, try again as they say, so here we go! I've titled this thing "Ape City" because I want to use it as a forum to chat (mostly) about things that were super-cool when I was, oh, eight years old or so. As I enter my 40s, I find myself spending a lot of time looking back to the 1970s and all of the things that I was interested in at the time....well, this is the place where I get to really let loose and expound on those things, without running the risk of putting someone to sleep at a cocktail party.

None of this, however, is interesting in a vacuum, so please, please PLEASE post comments! Even if you don't know a darned thing about, say, the 1976 remake of King Kong, I still love to read people's reactions. Don't be shy!

Much, much, MUCH more to come........