Hullabaloo, Shindig, Upbeat & more...what were your fave Rock TV shows?

Thanks to the VHS, and then DVD revolutions along with some generous banks of collectors, we now have many hours of performances saved over the last 60 plus years. What were some of your preferred TV showcases for the singers & bands you bought back in the day?

 

I'm sorry I was too young for the shows from the 60's but in the 70's it was Don Kirshner's Rock Concert and TV shows that had rock acts: Saturday Night Live, American Bandstand, and a few miscellaneous talk shows.

 

i used to dig 'em all!

 

Shindig and Hullabaloo were both great, and a decade later, The Midnight Special and Don Kirshner's Rock Concert!

 

Shindig, Hullabaloo, Clay Cole, Upbeat, Lloyd Thaxton, Where The Action Is (Paul Revere and the Raiders every day!). Sure I'm forgetting something.

 

Midnight Special and Rock Concert. I loved American Bandstand, too...though it does really fit.

 

For pure adventurousness, variety and total respect for the music, I'd have to go with the brilliant though short-lived Night Music hosted by David Sanborn and Jools Holland (though Holland didn't stay for the full two seasons - it got better after he left). Airing between 1988 and 1990, it featured a fantastically eclectic selection of artists from all genres of music (I think my fav was the episode featuring Pere Ubu, Debbie Harry, Loudon Wainwright III and Philip Glass - to give you an example). Too bad a show like this is almost inconceivable today.

 

Mid-60s, mid-teens.

My parents (wisely) restricted TV time. I was given a choice between Shindig and Hullabaloo.

I didn't blink. Went for Shindig. "Hipper" acts. There was always a faint scent of Hollywood Cheese with Hullabaloo.

Not to mention a much higher likelihood of live, not lip-sync, on Shindig.

Dick Clark stuff never appealed to me. Too much dancing and/or cheese.

I think the surviving videos speak for themselves.

 

I didn't get to see any of the classic ones really except sometimes American Bandstand on Saturdays. I also caught Soul Train once in a while. By the time I was in my teens though MTV was widespread and from there on out it was my go-to channel for concerts. Live Aid, Farm Aid, Band Aid, etc. I also recall a Boston-area station that showed two-hour concerts on rare occasions, my parents lets me stay up to watch King Crimson once and also a Foghat concert. Maybe they were Don Kirschner's concerts?

 

I think Shindig is probably the best. I mean they had The Beatles live on it. That alone puts them on top

 

In Australia it was countdown, sounds, rock arena and beatbox

 

I enjoyed most of the Rock shows back then. One not mentioned yet is Malibu U
hosted by Rick Nelson one summer on ABC.

 

Alice Cooper on ABC's "In Concert" - I was ten years old watching on a small black and white TV in my parent's bedroom, completely riveted. I've never forgotten that.

 

Back in the day... as a teen, I had no personal TV in my room, nor did my most of my friends. I had one friend that a tiny B&W TV in his room. So I basically watched whatever my parents were watching on the TV in the den, which was B&W until we got a 19" color TV. I don't remember then watching The Smother's Brothers.

For Rock, there was several great shows on ABC's In Concert.

My favorite band as a teen was Led Zeppelin, and they weren't doing any live performances for me to see on TV in the 70's.

There was the live broadcast of the California Jam. I didn't have a TV, but watched that on a community room TV at the college dorm.

 

There's so much more to "Shindig" than just the appearances of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones! Believe me, everybody who loves Golden Age Rock 'n' Roll needs to see this show. Some episodes are available on DVD, but the whole series needs digital restoration and proper marketing.

Where else can you see such a boss backing band (which was never called the Shin-diggers, despite claims to the contrary), great background singers like Darlene Love + The Blossoms, and excellent go-go dancers (the main ones were Carol Shelyne with her cute horn-rimmed glasses, Diane Stuart, Anita Mann, Pam Freeman, Lorene Yarnell [later of the dance team Shields and Yarnell], Gina Trikinis, Rini Jarman, Virginia Justus, Maria Gavha, Mariana Pecora and Teri Robinson)? Kudos to Andre Tayir, the main choreographer, often overlooked because of David Winters' involvement in the early episodes.

There's just no comparing "Shindig" to other shows. No other '60s Pop program had superb regulars like The Righteous Brothers, Dick and Dee Dee, Willy Nelson (not the Country singer but a now-forgotten vocalist), Billy Preston, Glen Campbell, the dynamic Donna Loren and The Shindogs! The Shindogs, incidentally, were a featured five-man band on the show; they were like a second house band. Various members of the LA Wrecking Crew have been erroneously named as members, but the lineup was actually Joey Cooper on bass, Delaney Bramlett (later of Delaney + Bonnie) on rhythm guitar, Glen D. Hardin on keyboards, Chuck Blackwell on drums and the great James Burton on lead guitar.

The first episode of "Shindig", which aired in September of '64, is electrifying television; Little Richard is the featured guest star. I was out of breath after watching it, just like the go-go dancers were; words like "fantastic" and "awesome" don't do it justice. In my opinion, the entire "Shindig" cast deserves induction into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame! That includes producer Jack Good, a legend in his own right.

 

Correct - they were called The Shin-dogs and yeah, they were boss!

 

Growing up in the mid to late 70s, seeing any rock act on TV was a big deal.

 

I think the best ones I've seen are the German Beat Club/Beat Beat Beat before there was any miming. Also there was a regional show out of Texas with Clarence 'Gatemouth' Brown as a regular backing musician that had Freddie King on a bunch named The Beat which I really dig seeing.

I wish someone could put together a collection of The Shindogs from the Shindig show, those guys were @#$%^&*! good! Had I been around (or old enough if I was, though i doubt I was) I would probably have liked Where The Action Is too. I've seen Shivaree and other more obscure '60s shows but I've never seen an entire Where The Action Is show! Luckily there is a lot of Paul Revere & The Raiders music that you can order pretty easily unlike the case with The Shindogs.

From the '70s I like Midnight Special and Soul Train, of course!

 

I've heard a lot about Countdown, they really got behind some groups and singers when they needed it. Only seen clips though.

 

It helped a lot of early oz bands get seen... i used to love it.
There's stuff on YouTube

 

Before my time, but give a shout out to Shivaree. OK it was a poor man's Shindig, but it had such obscure groups as Springhill, Louisiana's Uniques (w/Joe Stampley) and the even obscurer Human Beings from Detroit, whose greatest feat was making #19 on a Motown radio station -- somehow this was enough to get them an invite to L.A. Who paid their airfare? (A clip of them doing the great "Because I Love Her" survives but was pulled from YouTube. I am waiting patiently for a re-up...)

And let us not forget Hollywood-a-Go-Go, if only letting a girl group called The Boys (let's not go there) do their one and only single (How did they get booked? Must've had great managers):

 

I liked them all especially Upbeat and Don Kirshners Rock Concert. Watched Upbeat from the beginning because it was from our Cleveland tv station before it was syndicated to the rest of the country. I was also lucky to go to a taping of Don Kirshner's Rock Concert in Long Beach in 1974 while in the Navy.The groups that were taped that day were Average White Band, Ozark Mountain Daredevils, Steppenwolf , and Brian Auger and the Oblivion Express......great time!

 

Did you see the Velvet Underground's appearance?

 

There was a show called Groovy that I liked. This was mid-late 60s L.A.
and Lloyd Thaxton, yes.
Oh, and 9th Street West.

 

I think I've tracked down where the "Shin-Diggers" name comes from. ABC Records released a tie-in various artists LP in 1964 or 1965. There was a band on that album called The Shin-diggers, but they were not the "Shindig" house band. Also, the show's host, Jimmy O'Neill, used to refer to fans as "all you Shin-diggers".