Color Pictures of NYC From The 1940s

A friend of mine sent a link to a website called Retronaut which recently posted some rare color photos of New York City from way back in the day....1942 to be exact.  This one is of Canal Street on the west side.  And the one below is familiar to denizens of the East Village.  It's McSorley's Tavern on 7th Street which has not changed at all since 1942, except for that fact that women are now allowed.

We're so used to seeing ol' New York in film noir black and white that it's always a shock to see that, yes, the world was colorful back then too.  What's notable to me is how quaint the city looks with it's low curbs and cobblestone streets.  There are some really beautiful pictures on the main site, worth checking out....

I Love LOVE AMERICAN STYLE

In a discussion about 70's TV recently, this show came up and, since then, it's crazily-catchy theme song has been stuck in my head.  I remember watching this show in re-runs as a kid and I think my favorite part was the opening credits with all those fireworks and the soooo 70's song.

The real show was an anthology series in which three love stories, all unrelated, were told with "silent movie" breaks between each one.  LAS is famous for being a place where TV pilot scripts went to die.  However, in one very famous case, there was an episode that Garry Marshall wrote and directed called "Love In The Happy Days" about a model 1950s family and their lovestruck son, Ron Howard as Richie Cunningham.  That episode, which aired in the winter of 1972, had the good fortune to come out just before  "American Graffitti" (also starring Howard) became a big hit, kicking off a wave of 50's nostalgia.

Here's a clip of the opening of the "Happy Days" pilot that aired on "Love American Style".  It's interesting to note that Richie's mysterious older brother is a character in this show and his father is not Tom Bosley and his sister is much younger and not named Joanie.  The show's most popular character, "The Fonz" is only a gleam in Marshall's creative eye.

Some Random Late 80's Nostalgia Courtesy Of Lita Ford

A friend from Brooklyn emailed me today with a line explaining his Saturday night; "I went to a bar and got in a fight, I didn't get laid, uh-huh, it ain't no big thing."  The song he is paraphrasing is Lita Ford's kickass late 80's rocker, "Kiss Me Deadly".  Suddenly the song was in my head on a loop so I had to look up the YouTube video.  OMG--I had forgotten what a crazy ass video this was!  Lita, who got her start shredding for The Runaways, basically makes love to her electric guitar on the floor of an industrial factory wearing some skintight spandex and hair that is blown out so much it looks like a tribal headdress.  Here's the clip below if you want to relieve your days of big hair and 80's dancing.

A Video Trip Back to NYC In The 1980s

Nelson Sullivan was a videographer who immersed himself in the New York's downtown demimonde in the 1980s.  He filmed people like artist Haring, rocker Dean Johnson, VOICE gossip Michael Musto and a very young Ru Paul, just off the bus from Atlanta.

My friend Andrew recently showed me some of Nelson's videos which are now up on YouTube.  They provide a fascinating look at NYC in the 80s, not just for who is on camera but for what is in the background too.  A trip to Times Square with some drag queens (including Ru) is most interesting for how relatively empty the sidewalks are during a weekday.  And then, if you look closely, you can see vanished gems like the old Howard Johnson's on Broadway, which frequented back in the day for its Whiskey Sours and French Dips and rude waitresses.

Below is one of Nelson's video compilations but there are many more up on YouTube if you search his name.  He shot more than 1,900 hours of footage using one of the early 8mm video cameras before dying suddenly in 1989 of a heart attack at age 41.  There is also some more information about Nelson and his archive on his website as well.   His work is a great nostalgia trip to the rougher, crazier and dirtier city of the recent past....one that I sometimes miss like an old friend.

All Fall Down-A Blast From the 80's Past

I finally got my YouTube account back after much confusion over at Google when they merged gmail accounts with video accounts.  Oy.  Anyway, after a few months blackout, I am celebrating my return to YouTube with this lost gem of the 80's that was suggested to me...."All Fall Down" by Five Star.  Google may not know how to merge my accounts but they do know my musical taste!

So...Five Star was a funky British girl group, all of them related, with a lead singer who had braces.  Their big hit sounds suspiciously like a slower jam of the Jets "I've Got A Crush On You" but, then again, there was a sweet sameness to this brand of '80's funky pop.  Also, I remember loving this video because of its more handmade rotoscoping which was in contrast to that other super-slick animated video taking 1985 by storm.  Enjoy!

A Real Live Way Back Machine

If you want to have hours and hours of Internet fun, just check out this site....it's a virtual way-back machine on which you can travel a time line through the past of YouTube clips.  It's random, it's fun and it will have you procrastinating whatever you have to do.

The Way-Back Machine: Super Train

President Obama's High-Speed Rail Initiative has been in the news lately as it tries to do two things at once: create jobs and build a world-class train system in the US.  Construction has started on the first major project, a 200 MPH train from Tampa to Orlando.  However, that's nothing compared to the nuclear powered Supertrain which used to speed across the country from NY to LA in less than 36 hours.  What? You say you don't remember the Supertrain? It only ran for a brief period of two months starting in Feburary of 1979.  And the train was also fictional.  


"Supertrain" was a short-lived TV show that aired a mere 9 episodes in the winter of '79.  It was supposed to be the "Love Boat" on speedy silver wheels. Unfortunately, despite a million dollar budget and the imprimatur of ABC programming genius Fred Silverman, the show turned out to be one of the biggest flops in television history.  One hint about how terrible the show comes from the fact that you won't recognize on single name in the opening credits below.  No star was gonna touch this one...


Despite its lameness, I still remember this show fondly, or more so the anticipation I had about seeing it before it aired.  (The promos were everywhere on 3rd place NBC.)  The only thing that kept me watching were the shots of that nifty model train.  Yeah, I know--geek alert!  Well, back in 1979, I didn't have much of a social life....this and "Battlestar Galactica" kept me occupied. :)

The Way-Back Machine: Stryper

This is a new feature on Hi-Fi Bri where I take a look at something weird and wonderful from the late 20th Century.  Today, I'm remembering Stryper, the Christian rock band with the big ass hair that took MTV by fire and brimstone in the mid-80's.  


I always figured that MTV put Stryper's quasi-religious videos on as some sorta counter-PR to the popular argument that the network was turning Gen-X brains into oatmeal.  But watching their video for "Calling On You" (which I saw a hundred times back in the day) these guys really could rawwwkkk!  The song is a catchy confection of glam/metal pop, kinda like Poison without the naughtiness.  The guys were actually a bit hotter than Poison, I have to admit.  Lead singer Michael Sweet was quite cute in a skinny John Travolta sorta way.  And his brother Robert Sweet the drummer was seriously hot.  Check out those guns!  


These days, Stryper (whose name is a reference to the lashes on Christ's back) is still alive and kicking at their official website.  After a short lived breakup and lapse of faith in the 90's, the band started making music and touring again in the Aughts.  To date, they have sold more than 10 million records in total and it's estimated that 2/3'rds of those sales were to non-Christians.