|
Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: ontario, canada
Posts: 5,265
|
Music Hop's Rythym Rockers - Shea, Stockfish
anyone remember the show?
__________________________________________________ ___
Music Hop
Thu 5:30-6:00 p.m., 3 Oct 1963-25 Jun 1964
Mon-Fri 5:30-6:00 p.m., 28 Sep 1964-25 Jun 1965
Mon-Fri 5:30-6:00 p.m., 27 Sep 1965-2 Jul 1966
Mon-Thu 5:30-6:00 p.m., 3 Oct 1966-28 Jun 1967
In the era of Top Forty radio, and on the eve of the British invasion, CBC Toronto introduced Music Hop, an after-school program of rock 'n' roll and pop music for teenagers. Like Dick Clark's American Bandstand, and most television adaptations of rock 'n' roll, Music Hop was a dry cleaned version of what was going on. Staff announcer Alex Trebek, who also worked as the quizmaster on Reach For The Top, was like the young, more-hip-than-the-rest-of-them high school teacher, and presided over the show. The house band was Norm Amadio and the Rhythm Rockers, who were composed of Amadio on piano, John Stockfish on bass, Red Shea on guitar, Don Thompson on tenor saxophone, and Alex Lazaroff on drums. Shea and Thompson occupied one section of the bandstand, and acted as the band's clowns. Thompson, who wore horn-rimmed spectacles, had a wasted look that made him appear a leftover from the beat era (and, in fact, his musical allegiances lay more in jazz than in the rock or rhythm 'n' blues parts he played for the show. Thompson was known in Toronto music circles as "D.T." to distinguish him from the other Don Thompson, who plays bass and keyboards.) Shea, with a pompadour and duck's-ass haircut had a James Dean/Juvenile Delinquent look, and also looked the youngest of the troupe. (Not long after their Music Hop gig, Shea and Stockfish took up jobs as Gordon Lightfoot's regular backup musicians.) Music Hop originated in the period of the girl group, and featured its own vocal trio, the Girlfriends, who were Diane Miller, Rhonda Silver, and Stephanie Taylor. Each week, Trebek introduced guest musicians and numbers from the regular performers as the teens in the audience danced. Stan Jacobson produced the first season in Toronto.
The next year, Music Hop underwent some major changes. In Toronto, Trebek was replaced by Dave Mickie, one of the "motormouth" disk jockeys who thrived on AM radio in the mid-l960s. Mickie seemed to descend out of nowhere, and attracted a considerable audience to his CKEY radio show with his mile-a-minute patter and his voice, which had an epiglottal push that could not be matched. The sight of him on television more than met listeners expectations. He had a headful of hair, piled high and combed back, so he looked like Bobby Rydell in a distorting mirror. In contrast to the Ward Cleaver cardigans of science teacher-like Trebek, he wore loud sport jackets and looked like he would take your little brother as a down payment on a used car. As far as the teenage audience of Toronto was concerned, of course, he was a true star.
In addition, the show expanded, and the Music Hop title embraced shows from across Canada. They included, on Mondays, Let's Go, from Vancouver, produced by Ain Soodor; Tuesdays, Jeunesse Oblige, from Montreal, produced by Pierre Desjardins; Wednesdays, Hootenanny, from Winnipeg, produced by Ray McConnell; and Fridays, Frank's Bandstand, produced by Manny Pitson in Halifax. The original Music Hop, from Toronto, and now produced by Allan Angus, held down the Thursday time slot. By 1966, the CBC estimated that one million people watched the show at least once a week. Most were under twenty years old, but the network also guessed that nearly a third of the viewers were adults.
In the second half of the 1960s, the "good, clean fun" of Beatlemania had begun to transform itself into psychedelia and expressions of social unrest. The music itself seemed to expand past the boundaries that half- hour, network television shows such as Music Hop could contain. (In the U.S.A., prime time shows such as Shindig and Hullabaloo both lasted only until 1966. American Bandstand, of course, continued and continues in its Saturday afternoon time slot.) Presumably, too, the high school audience that Music Hop first attracted had grown by a few years, and television was a lower priority among after-school activities. The CBC axed Music Hop at the end of the 1967 season, just before the "summer of love."
Postscript: Dave Mickie vanished from the Toronto television scene with the demise of Music Hop, and also disappeared from the radio airwaves. Some conjectured that he had left a trail of bad cheques and heavy debts in his wake; others speculated that the inevitable had happened, that his high velocity simply caused him to burn out. Several years later, a new voice turned up on the Toronto radio scene, which by than had been transformed by the evolution of freer programming policies on FM stations. The leader in the Toronto market was CHUM-FM, and the new late-night announcer was. . . a. . . ahh. . .typically. . . slowwww. . . talking. . . guy. . . named. . . David. . . Marsden. Rumours circulated that, whether his drawling and hesitant delivery was just an affectation or whether it was the result of brain damage, this was Dave Mickie. It turned out the rumors were right. At the time of writing, David Marsden is program director of CFNY-FM, the freest form station in the Toronto area.
|
