Welcome back to Misc., the local pop-culture column that tried to follow its bliss, until its bliss filed a restraining order against it.
WHERE THEY ARE NOW: Ross Shafer was poised to make it big in 1988 when he quit as the original host of KING’s Almost Live to star in the final post-Joan Rivers version of the Fox Late Show. His career since then has been one pathetic comeback try after another. Now he’s shamelessly ripping off the “Guy” comedy of Tim Allen, Jeff Foxworthy, and Red Green. He’s showing up on celebrity talk shows in overalls and no shirt to promote a “humor” book, Cook Like a Stud. You can imagine the routine, wreaking creaky gags out of the use of shot glasses as measuring spoons, claw hammers as meat tenderizers, and hubcaps as baking sheets.
WHERE THEY WERE THEN: Some of you may recall Marni Nixon as the singing hostess of KOMO’s late-’70s puppet showBoomerang. A few of you might also know the Seattle-native Nixon had a studio-singing career in the ’50s and ’60s before she returned home. She was perhaps the most famous “unknown” in Hollywood, the real soundtrack singer in such musical hits as Gigi, West Side Story, The Sound of Music, and My Fair Lady. But few know her connection to that more-popular-now-than-ever master of space age pop, Juan Garcia Esquivel. In the liner notes to the recent CD compilation Music From a Sparkling Planet, vocal director Randy Van Horne credits Nixon as a session singer on Esquivel’s first U.S.-made LP, Other Worlds, Other Sounds (1958). Somehow, the vision of the perky, homey Nixon of Boomerang shrieking “Pow!” and “Zu-Zu-Zu!” seems oddly satisfying.
ANOTHER KIND OF PAY TV: The Seattle area’s getting an all-new TV station for the first time in 12 years, but don’t look for it to have any shows between its commercials. A Minneapolis company called ValueVision, partly owned by Montgomery Ward, is planning to launch an all-new UHF TV station in Tacoma (tentative call letters: KBGE). Actually, the broadcast transmitter’s just a loss-leader (at a reported cost of $4.6 million); they’re going on the air in order to force their home-shopping informercials onto local cable systems, thanks to an FCC rule requiring cable systems to carry all local over-the-air channels.
WHAT’S IN STORE: Vintage clothing was considered the latest “hot” thing in some circles, even before KING-TV heard of Cocktail Nation. And where there’s hype, money invariably follows. So it should come as no surprise that corporate-backed vintage chain stores are moving in big on what had been the territory of indie merchants and (usually) nonprofit thrift stores. You already know the Bufallo Exchange circuit; similar outfits rumored to be Seattle-bound include Crossroads (no relation to the Bellevue mall) and Wasteland. The Urban Outfitters chain has recently offered shelves of reconditioned garments alongside its new inventory. One indie vintage operator, the New Store, has started trying to defend its market share with flyers touting itself as the local, homespun alternative to “big corporate resale chains.”
GOOD NEWS: Centralized globalist culture may have peaked! An NY Times story, “Local Programming Cuts Into MTV,” notes with thinly-disguised alarm how broadcast and cable producers in assorted European and Asian countries are capturing viewers by offering local videos, in local languages–something MTV’s continent-wide satellite feeds just can’t offer. Seems audiences in assorted countries have increasingly had it with passive-aggressive acceptance of prepackaged superstar acts.
Since some global MTV acts in recent years have emanated from Seattle, some of you might see this as another sign of the long-hoped-for end of Seattle’s musical influence. I don’t. Most of our best bands and promoters weren’t trying to become global superstars; they were trying to smash the concept of global superstars. They were trying to promote a different attitude toward making and listening to “pop” music, as a creative force speaking directly to audiences rather than a brand-name entity to be manufactured and marketed. The more people there are around the world who make their own sounds, the more the Seattle scene’s real message to the world will have taken hold.
