The Day the Music Changed
It’s funny how memories work sometimes, especially as time goes buy.
My wife and I purchased the 3rd season of The Muppet Show this week because we’re both ridiculously huge Muppet fans. She, as usual, had the need to watch every single episode, special feature, commentary, etc the second we brought the discs home. I, on the other hand, am perfectly content to watch it in bits and pieces of the next few months as I await the next season release (which incidentally will contain the “Star Wars” episode).
I had no problem with her watching the entire season in one sitting. I just quietly went about my business of the evening, putzing around on the computer, trying to get some writing in, snacking, checking in on the DVDs, handing out to catch a couple of minutes and so on.
At one point, during the “putzing” my ears focused in on the TV in the living room. I heard the normal intro to the episode by Kermit the Frog, “It’s the Muppet Show…” but one small portion of the intro brought back a flood of memories, “… with our very special guest star, Alice Cooper, yyyaaaaaaaaeeee!”
I instantly recalled sitting in front of the television in 1978 watching this episode for the first time. And by the time it was over, my taste in music had changed forever. I learned that guitars were electric, drums were used for more than marching bands, and there was this other guitar called a “bass” that made our crappy paper cone speaker in the TV rattle and vibrate uncontrollably. I also learned that country singers like Kenny Rogers were the only musicians singing about bad days. Heck, Alice Cooper had them all beat with his living nightmare:
For better of for worse, my record collection changed from Kenny Roger’s “The Gambler” and Star Wars read-alongs to Alice Cooper, Black Sabbath, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, The Ramones, and on and on and on.
So for 30 years, I’ve never given thought to when this change occurred. Now that time has passed and this bit of my history came up unexpectedly in the form of the new Muppets DVD, it all becomes clear.
July 4, 2008 at 8:12 pm
Believe it or not even though i was only 3 i also have vague memories of that episode of the Muppets. Perhaps I saw it in syndication a couple years later, but I its one of the few that made an impression cuz he was so cool looking with his long hair and black eye makeup. Did he happen to wear a leather jacket with a cut up jean jacket on that show or something of that nature?