We cover a few, not many, and often a bunch of salient points are missed that would have been a lot more relevant to discuss at the time their last #1 came up.
The debate has raged since that episode was new: here, Krusty can read, where he's otherwise always been portrayed as illiterate. Was it a continuity error, or the producers deliberately giving fans something to argue about?
To bring this tangent back to music, I seem to recall that the president of NBC was looking to put a show on the air that could be described Using the following 2 phrases: MTV Cops. The result of course was Miami Vice.
well the diffrence between this era and his dip in the 70s is that fans and critics were both in agreement that Tonight and the followup were simply not good albums. Bowie himself called them the two worst albums of his career. In the 70s however, an album like Low sunk the momentum Young Americans and Station To Station had built for him in the states, but it was also an album with a side of instrumental ambient songs, and the side with "songs" were relatively uncommercial compared to songs like Fame and Golden Years. Low is an album that sold poorly upon release but over the years became reappraised as one of his most daring and uncompromising works that wasn't meant to sell millions of copies. On the other hand with Tonight, Bowie admittedly half-hearted (over half the songs were covers, though some being songs he had written with Iggy in the 70s) an album because EMI expected more hits after Let's Dance, which "Blue Jean" became one, but the album in general is one of his most cringeworthy, he goes full on lounge lizard on a few tracks here (Tumble And Twirl, his horrendous cover of God Only Knows, etc...), it's usually regarded as one of his bottom 3-5 albums, and the album that followed would be even worse because he actually put effort into it, but the songs weren't there and it was mired with the worst of 80s production (even though posthumously his estate would try to amend that by having Bowie band members re-record those tracks while retaining Bowie's vocals to something less glossy). Bowie spent years trying to atone for Tonight and Never Let Me Down because both albums hurt his credibility and are stains on a generally solid discography.
I was a huge fan of Miami Vice. It was a revolutionary show in terms of production, and the first few seasons were quite good. But, a lot of the creative talent left for other shows (Crime Story & Wiseguy) and the show jumped the shark with the Sonny has amnesia story line. I was also pissed when they killed off Zito. I loved Zito & Switek.
I loved The Cosby Show as a child, but it was one of those shows, much like Diff'rent Strokes or Gimme A Break, that rewatching them as an adult would be painful at times (I'm talking before the scandal). Lisa Bonet/Denise was always my favorite part of the show and of course Bill always was at odds with her because she was ore of a freespirit compared to the "omg I love Bill" co-stars. The best seasons and episodes were the ones when she was a major part. When she departed for the second and final time, the show was dead to me. I think it's funny that he had such a problem with her doing a movie with Mickey Rourke and Robert DeNiro, when both actors were in their heyday... given the same year Bill himself was in freaking Leonard Pt. 6, Bonet made the better call IMO. Of course now she's married to Jason Momoa and has a daughter who has a strong career going, while Bill is in prison, so Team Lisa. For 80s NBC fare, I think the dialogue and storylines on Family Ties and Golden Girls hold up much better to my 40 year old eyes, and The Facts Of Life is much more fun if I want to go back and revisit something I loved when I was little
I don't think it was Nile, because Let's Dance is generally regarded as far superior to the two that followed it. Let's Dance sounds amazingly fresh compared to Never Let Me Down, which is overrun with every bad 80s production stereotype imaginable. Plus (I know this is jumping far ahead), when Bowie was looking to jump start his career and start trying to regain credibility as a solo artist after spending a few years doing the Tin Machine thing (which also was him trying to repair his image), Nile was the person he turned to, and the subsequent album (Black Tie White Noise) is generally seen as the start of his artistic comeback that carried until his death.
I think Let's Dance (the album) is just dreadful (I can't deal with this production style at all, it ruined a Thompson Twins album also), don't know if I've even heard anything from Bowie after that, I just prefer his pre-Let's Dance stuff, but I'm not really a huge fan so I'm not the expert in any case.
I believe 'Zeroes' from NLMD was recut first and Bowie gave the thumbs up to redo the whole LP before he passed. I think the results are tremendous. My first show on WPDH fm was literally the night I graduated high school and the first song I played was ;Day In, Day Out'. So despite that LP's obvious flaws, it's always held a special place for me.
Television was so much simpler back then.Me and the wife(RIP) were big tv watchers back then.I would buy TV guide every week throughout the 80s.Then cable started creeping in which was good but became a monstrosity of 300+ channels of mostly crap tv.
I forgot that a pre-Law And Order Dick Wolf was brought in to run the 4th season of Vice. Yeah, when Michael Mann left to do other shows Vice suffered, although the fourth season featured a memorable guest run from Sheena Easton that - shockingly I thought - briefly restored the program to its former glories. The impact Vice had on the sound of the pop charts in the latter half of the decade was massive. Much of the country didn't have cable or MTV, but everybody got NBC. Vice exposed a certain style of music to a vast television audience. It was like a series of commercials every week for certain artists, many of them pretty obscure to American audiences, others rising big hits at the time Vice first aired. You can see a listing of songs by-episode here. I still remember how Peter Gabriel's work was utilized in one of the last episodes of the 1st season, "Evan" - I think Vice had more than a little to do with his big subsequent commercial breakthru in the US.
The first season of Cosby is absolutely hilarious and some of the sharpest family comedy anybody had written, before or since. It rapidly degraded after that though into a fairly repetitive shadow of its earlier self, and catching it in reruns about 15 years ago I was shocked the program remained as popular as it was as long as it did. Bonet was easily the breakout star of the show, and I'm not at all surprised the old man had real problems with a woman who wouldn't take his crap. Team Lisa all the way. The Golden Girls will go down as the great NBC comedy of the '80s, along with Cheers.
Yeah, Let's Dance is practically Ziggy Stardust in comparison to that migraine-inducing mess. Black Tie is kind of a mess, unfortunately. It's not stupid, but most of it just doesn't work. That having been said, "Jump, They Say" was the best thing he'd done in about a decade.
Never watched The Cosby Show but that had more to do with me working from age 13 than anything else. I memorized every line from his Wonderfulness and Revenge LPs and even played 'Buck, Buck' with the neighborhood kids in the late 70's. I was devastated to find out what Cos really up to. He was a big influence on me
Oh it got way worse after Let's Dance, some of it is Bowie's fault but it might even moreso be EMI, because after LD, they had a "pop star" on their hands and expected Bowie to deliver more hits. Let's Dance was a deliberate pop crossover album and Bowie brought the songs and sounded like he was having a good time. The follow up albums he sounded bored and both albums were mired by awful production and mediocre material. He wanted Let's Dance to be a one off pop crossover but his label expected him to duplicate it. He even referred to this era as his "Phil Collins years"
Well, a tepid follow up would be an example of a downward trend. Doesn't mean that the trend never reverses. I think the reason it's especially noteworthy at this point in his career is that Bowie was explicitly trying to be a top selling artist. In the past, he might dip in popularity, but that didn't necessarily correlate with the quality of his efforts. But when your focus is making hits, and the hits dry up, that's noteworthy. Blue Jean was a decent sized hit, though not perhaps at the level he might have hoped for with the first single of his new album. I will say I haven't heard it on the radio in thirty years. Unlike Let's Dance, it seems to have evaporated from the public consciousness.
Yes. From 1970 to 1980, Bowie operated at a relative consistency, just certain albums clicked more with the masses than others, in the 80s he was wandering aimlessly competing with younger artists he'd influenced who were making better music than him in 1984
Even at the time I felt like the show got increasingly preachy and annoying as time went on. It was Father Knows Best, but with a straight face. Cliff and especially Claire could get so damn smug. As much as I liked those Thursday shows in the 80s, I find I have never had a desire to rewatch them. Family Ties is pretty dire a lot of the time, too, for the same reason; I found it unwatchable when I tried to watch it at the gym in the late 90s. Part of what I liked about Cheers was the overarching narrative, so it's not as fun now that I know how Sam and Diane turned out (but it has definitely aged better than Ties and Cosby). Meanwhile, I never liked Miami Vice; I mean, they gave a career boost to Phil Collins AND former Eagles.
Bonet always seemed like such a space cadet that she took me out of the show every time she appeared on screen. For some reason I liked her more on A Different World, but she was only there for one season!
I recall that there was a "movie" called BILL COSBY: HIMSELF that played endlessly on HBO and other movie services on cable. Cosby had been a sort-of forgotten comic of the 60s, trying to re-invent himself, and this movie was essentially a series of his current comedy routines, filmed and edited into a 90-or-so minute film. Personally, I had been in a bit of a funk in 1984 having lost my Dad, and one Sunday, we stumbled onto this Bill Cosby movie, and it had me roaring. It was one of the funniest things I'd ever experienced, and at work, it was even water-cooler material as it seemed that everyone had seen it - or was recommended to see it. That provided a groundswell of interest in the upcoming COSBY SHOW on NBC, and it took off right out of the gate.
The first three seasons of Family Ties hold up, definitely a product of the Reagan years but it was very well written and acted. The problem with that show to me coincided with it being a blockbuster. Back To The Future happened and they realized that Michael J Fox was now a superstar so they essentially retooled the show to his vehicle and sometimes Michael Gross and Meredith Baxter were relegated to one or two scenes. Its very much the Fonzie effect as I think the early Happy Days episodes were infinitely better than when it became The Fonz Show
That's what made her a great contrast to her parents, though... Bingo. It was great its first few seasons, when it was an ensemble. I drifted away after it became the Alex P. Keaton show.
I was a fan of both Cosby and Family Ties - at least the first few years. I was a far bigger fan of Cheers. My favorite character on Cosby was Theo. I thought the “discussions” between him and Cliff Huxtable were hilarious: -“That’s the dumbest thing that I have ever heard.” -“I brought you into this world and I can take you out.”
For me, the only two interesting characters were Alex P. Keaton and Mallory (I liked Mallory's dullard boyfriend Nick, too). We would always joke about what a waste of space Tina Yothers was; I can't even remember her character's name. Jennifer? The parents were totally overshadowed by Michael J. Fox, especially Meredith Baxter-Birney, who was so lowkey she disappeared into the wallpaper. But Fox and Bateman really were fun to watch, and for a while that was enough reason to tune in. I suppose they did make it the Alex P. Keaton show after a while, but in this case it seemed like the best path they could take. He effortlessly stole every scene he was in.
