Hello, and welcome back!
Today is the 40th anniversary of the sign-off of Philadelphia's beloved UHF TV station WKBS Channel 48. One of my most popular articles is a love letter to this station, so I won't repeat myself here. Suffice it to say, it was the TV home of my childhood.
In looking up some footage related to the station today, I came across two musical performances that were recorded at the station during the late '60s to be featured on a local dance show hosted by late radio host Hy Lit. They are nothing I would have expected to see on Channel 48 in general or Lit's show in particular, but here they are in their psychedelic glory.
The first performance is by a band called The Group Image. I hadn't heard of them until today, and considering they only released one album in 1968, it's doubtful many others have heard of them either. But they seem to be having a great time in this fun performance, shown here in raw footage meant to be edited into the final cut of the show at a later time. Here are The Group Image performing their song "Hiya."
Also from 1968 is a particularly interesting performance, as it has to be one of the earliest TV appearances of Alice Cooper. Here they are performing "Reflected," a song off their first album that they would later rework into the song "Elected," which appeared on their legendary album Billion Dollar Babies.
If the song is unable to stream via embedding, you can watch the performance directly on YouTube here.
Have a great Labor Day Weekend! I hope you had a great summer, and here's hoping we all have a fantastic fall ahead!
8 comments:
Looks as if "Hiya" might be from '67...
And the Alice Cooper track tags itself as '69! (as the band would want, after all...)
HY LIT was on the other KBS stations, I think...they were so damned tentative about making a go of being a network...CREATURE DOUBLE FEATURE, I think, was Only on WKBS Philly and WKBG Boston...a bit less half-heartedness would've taken them further. The George Romney interview on the Detroit Kaiser station, WKBD, was historically important, even if it torpedo'd his likelihood of being the 1968 Republican nominee for president (much to our sorrow in several ways): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSdSiBehQpI
They did have the wit to have THE LOU GORDON SHOW on all the KBS stations...
Thanks Todd! Field Communications, which bought these stations from Kaiser, way have been too shortsighted to create a network. It was likely that same shortsightedness that encouraged the Field brothers to make the ridiculous decision to shut down the station rather than sell (there were several potential buyers that were eager to buy, but the asking price was considered unfairly high for a UHF indie).
Nah, Kaiser cat-footed the network tendencies into nothingness before Field was involved...given the notions of tax losses and other creative accounting (see the streamers of late, among too many others) the Field closure was part and parcel of the hell with anything but the easiest remunerative bottom line.
Haven't thought about Lou Gordon in years. Used to be on Sunday nights in Detroit. I remember him getting all upset about seeing a breast. And he had the MC5 on one night..Also remember Hy Lit on Saturday afternoon. Remember seeing Janis Joplin on his show.
Not anonymous. This is Steve Oerkfitz.
I have to wonder in which context Gordon was upset about mammary viewing...
Yeah, with a bit more will (and the continued interest of a Henry J. Kaiser who survived 1968), KBS might've been an interesting contender in the network sweepstakes...certainly had more money behind it from jump, as well as a firmer base, than The United Network (of the Bill Dana-hosted THE LAS VEGAS SHOW, and nothing else, mild fame), from a year or so before the initial launch of KBS.
Steve, for whatever reason, I think Blogspot is choosing to make you Anon on multiple blogs.
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