My Childhood. Welcome To It.

Holy crap! Look at what I just found.

Green Tambourine by the Lemon Pipers on Upbeat. Circa 1968.




This was produced for the syndicated music show Upbeat produced by WEWS-TV in Cleveland. The band recorded this at WCPO-TV in Cincinnati (both stations being owned by Scrips Howard.) Although on the web it looks like film, it's not. There's breakup about halfway through the recording. The segment had to have been shot with WCPO studio gear recorded on 2-inch Quad videotape. The tape would've been driven up Route 3 (no I-71 yet) to Cleveland where WEWS edited it into the master recording. It was the dawning of the age of electronic editing with SEMPTE time code, so they didn't have to actually splice/cement the tape into the master. The fact that this recording is "wild" tells me it's the orginal tape.

While it was easy to make multiple prints of film in the '60's, the common practice among a group of stations was to ship the one-and-only 2-inch master tape to the various stations airing the show. No satellite distribution, folks.

It's obviously lip synced to a 45 on the production room turntable.

Can anybody tell who the host is? I recognize the voice.

But here's the really groovy thing about this clip. The props used in the video are from WCPO's Uncle Al Show. The tin man, the elephant, and the carousel were regular features on the daily children's show. The fact that they are active in the video tells me the technical crew for Uncle Al was working this production. I'm guessing a few hours after this was shot, the studio had been rebuilt for a newscast and was on the air. Set crews worked every day at TV stations back then.

I was 5 years old, and a regular viewer of Uncle Al when this was made, so you can imagine the far out trip this took me back on when I found it. I had never seen it before now. I'm not sure Upbeat aired in Cincinnati.

One of these guys in the band is Bob Naive, who in later years became a jazz DJ on WVXU in Cincinnati, and got a "real" job as a - gasp - investment banker. No kidding. He handled my savings account. Money feeds his music machine.

This just might explain a lot about our current financial situation.

Just kidding, Bob. Please, don't sue.