Annie Lennox, Freaky Styley, and Spielberg's Pubes: Another Rolling Stone Nostalgia Trip
Take our ink-stained hands and join us at the OldStand, where Jon McMillan goes to remind everyone what an honest-to-goodness music magazine is supposed to look like.
We got such a positive response to our post about a recently-excavated back issue of Rolling Stone, that we thought we'd dig a little deeper in the nostalgia pile, all the way down to October 24th, 1985.
RS No. 459 features Billy Crystal, an environmental disaster, a long interview with cover-mogul Steven Spielberg, and a glowing writeup of a RHCP album (debut full-length Freaky Styley), making this strictly a déjà vu affair. There's also a snarky takedown/recap of the second annual MTV Video Awards, which reads suspiciously like a blog ("Someone performed fellatio on someone else in the hall, but nobody cared -- they weren't famous"). Ouch.
After the jump: portable turntables are all the rage, E.T. blanches Spielberg's netherparts, and Ray Charles ends a sentence with a preposition. Unknown vandals swiped the Table of Contents and the charts (along with pictures of the Eurythmics), so you'll have to settle for a context-free graphic that details a big-money showdown between The Boss, Luther Vandross, Wham!, and anyone lucky enough to be on tour with the Scorpions. May the best band win!
What, no stars? How are we supposed to tell what's good?
From a hilarious-in-retrospect special feature about audio/video. When Ray Charles is the only one who can see what's good about laserdiscs, you know your business is in trouble.
No recollections of this. Any guesses as to the plot of this show?
Yes, Brooke: George Michael is the perfect specimen of manhood. Almost too perfect...
Posted at 1:43 PM in OldStand
Tags: George Michael | Ray Charles | Red Hot Chili Peppers | Steven Spielberg
George Michael is a "perfect specimen of manhood"?
yeesh.
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"The Insiders", I'm gonna guess, are living "on the edge" of the tough urban world of the 80s as a pair of undercover cops, taking down drug dealers through complicated plots that involve breakdancing competitions, Pac-Man tournaments, and sometimes, just sometimes, they have to go "way over" the edge and almost blow their cover! So they shoot people.
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...but according to IMDB, the theme song was Genesis' "Just a Job I Do", complete with Phil Collins' vocals, which was apparently the highlight of the show.
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Freaky Styley was not the RHCP's first album.
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At first glance, I thought that was Andy Gibb on the cover.
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wow... concert tickets that avg'd $14-$19... i'd pay way more than that to see Wham! now!
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I think ABC was trying to capitolize on the success of NBC's Miami Vice, gerri-curl included, but wanted to be different so they decided to give it a more "urban/inner-city/ghetto" twist. Must See TV for 1985, right?
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I think it's pretty clear from the ad that The Insiders was about a pair of undercover cops who infiltrate the inner circle of Prince and the Revolution.
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The white Insider is on a show now called Divinci's Inquest that's on real late on Sunday nights, I'm pretty sure its filmed in Canada.
And isn't the black Insider Stoney Jackson?
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I still have one of those record playing boom-boxes! My brother found it in an alley maybe ten years ago. The pick-it-up-and-take-it-anywhere-with-you qualities allowed me to bring it to college.
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In 2005 I saw the Panasonic Triple Take in a restaurant somewhwre in Hungary.
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thanks spielberg. i like knowing all those little details...
i want one of those record playing boomboxes so bad. amazing.
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