Springsteen & Scrambled Eggs (December 31, 1978)

You know, I liked writing about that 1992 Bruce Springsteen ticket stub on Halloween so much, I’ve decided I’m going to go to the Bossman well once again for this final update of 2023. ‘Course, in this case, things are even better, cause the memorabilia is local (to me, that is), the tour it pertains to is legendary, and what’s more, today is the 45th (!!!) anniversary of the event. It was even on a Sunday too, no less!

Now listen: I loves me some artifacts pertaining to the long-gone Richfield Coliseum. From concerts to the Cavaliers, the Coliseum hosted who-knows-how-many events for Northeast Ohioans over the years. As such, I’ve got a special fondness for the place. Funny thing is, I don’t even recall going there back in the day. I mean, maybe my parents took me to see the circus or something there, but it’s not like the venue was an aspect I would have taken note of at that young age. And by the time I was old enough to become a concert/sporting event goer, the Coliseum was but a memory. (It’s just a big ol’ meadow now.)

Nevertheless, because it was a local institution (for just under 20 years), I’m a sucker for things with that old Richfield Coliseum logo emblazoned on ’em. Especially when it comes to concerts.

Which brings us to Bruce. Springsteen performed 14 concerts there over the years, spanning from the “lawsuit tour” (that is, 1977 – post-Born to Run, pre-Darkness on the Edge of Town) to, well, the tour we talked about in that Halloween update. Readers who lean more towards the casual side of fandom will probably be mostly interested in the pair of shows he did at the Coliseum in support of global mega-smash Born in the U.S.A., but as far as I’m concerned, the real gold lies in 1978-1981 (what I consider Springsteen’s zenith, something I also briefly touched on in that Halloween post). Across that span, the Coliseum saw seven of those shows.

No joshin’, when I think about what Bruce tour I’d attend if I had the option of going back in time (either via time machine or at least quantum leapin’), I constantly ping pong between the 1978-1979 Darkness on the Edge of Town tour or the 1980-1981 tour in support of The River. (This presupposes I can only attend one, for some reason.) I can never come to a definitive conclusion though; my choice is always decided by which album/tour I’m currently feeling. The good news is there’s really no wrong option.

Still, in the realm of Springsteen mega-fandom, no other tour generally receives the level of acclaim that the Darkness tour does. And as it turned out, the Richfield Coliseum was the venue for the final two shows of it!

December 31, 1978 and January 1, 1979 were those two dates, and while 1/1/79 was a tremendous grand finale, 12/31/78 will be our main focus for this post, since, you know, today is New Year’s Eve and all. Plus, it’s not like that penultimate show was exactly a slouch – one look at the setlist in that link will aptly demonstrate that.

This wasn’t the first or last time Bruce performed a New Year’s Eve concert; Philly got one in 1975, and perhaps most memorably, Uniondale, NY’s 1980 send-off was nothing less than monumental. (Both of those concerts have been officially released via Springsteen’s Live Archive Series, and while I’d absolutely flip if 12/31/78 and/or 1/1/79 showed up there someday, considering the series tends to focus on shows recorded in multitrack, and since there seems to be doubt that either Richfield outing exists that way, well, I’m not holding out hope for them. Of course, I’d love to be proven wrong!) But whereas 12/31/80 was famous for how sheerly gargantuan it was/is, 12/31/78 actually has a sense of infamy hanging over it.

You see, this concert has become known as “the firecracker show.” As the new year was being rung in, one concertgoer in a particularly, erm, festive spirit decided it was a good idea to throw a lit firecracker on stage. Unfortunately, it exploded uncomfortably close to Bruce’s eye, which caused him to briefly voice his displeasure, and then a little later more elaborately speak about it. (It wouldn’t be the last time Bruce would show his displeasure for firecrackers at his shows either; for example, at one point in 1981, after someone set one off in the crowd, he declared the offending party “no friend of mine” – along with some other, uh, colorful, but entirely understandable, words).

Personally I would have been pretty shaken up myself (who wouldn’t be?), and who knows how I would have responded had it been me in that situation, but it’s to Bruce’s credit that he finished the show – and without any adverse effect on the performance, to boot!

SO ANYWAY, the picture you’re looking at above? Why, that’s a flyer for the big after party at The Coliseum Club that immediately followed this concert! Despite what’s printed on it, since the show went well past midnight, it was January 1st by the time it finally happened. I wonder if any of the band attended? (I doubt they were charged the $7.50, if so.) Can you imagine a better way to ring in the new year? People already exhausted from a fantastic Springsteen concert, partying some more! And disco? Hey, it was 1978, or well 1979, after all!

I picked this flyer up online. I was watching an auction for another flyer from that tour, and decided to see if there was anything else in the same wheelhouse that piqued my interest. As it so happened, this one here had been listed shortly before – right place, right time for me! I wound up buying the other flyer, but I like this Richfield specimen a whole lot more. It may lack graphically in comparison, but the local-to-me vibes and historical aspect(s) are enough to put it over the top for yours truly.

(By the way, you may be wondering what that big splotch in the top-right corner of the flyer is. That’s just a sticker from the original seller on the front of the protective sleeve the flyer is in; I never bothered removing it, so I wound up digitally obscuring it after my picture taking session for this post was finished. Just consider it a watermark or something, okay?)

Not enough New Year’s Eve Bruce memorabilia for you? Okay, I’ve got one more…

Yes indeed, that’s a full original ticket from the event! Like the flyer, I bought this online, and to be perfectly frank, it cost me more than some actual (as in, new, upcoming concert) tickets have. Still, the idea of having a full, unripped ticket for the concert was too cool to resist. (Though in the interest of saving money, I initially tried!)

And dig the mention of WMMS. The big Bruce Cleveland Agora radio broadcast from the summer of ’78 (held in celebration of WMMS’ 10th anniversary) will probably always loom larger than any other show Springsteen holds in Northeast Ohio, but if nothing else, this is an additional reminder of just what a FORCE that station was at the time. (That Agora concert did get an official Archive Series release, by the way.)

Hey, since this ticket is complete, maybe that time travel question I posed earlier just became easier…

Aw what the heck; because I’m not gonna do another update for January 1st and it’s germane to the conversation, here’s a little bonus before we close the year out…

Yes sir, that’s a stub from the 1/1/79 big tour finale! Unlike the previous two items, I didn’t buy this one online. Rather, my good friend Craig gave me this (along with a stub from 12/31/78 and stubs from 1980 and 1981 Springsteen shows at the Richfield Coliseum) a few years back. Well actually, it wasn’t a few years back; more like 10 or so now. (Where has the time gone?!) Because of work, I haven’t met up with Craig for a few years, but rest assured, I’d still consider him one of my best friends. Thanks C, thinkin’ of ya!

And with that, 2023 comes to a close on the blog here. I hope you all have a happy and healthy new year. See you in 2024!

Christmas & New Year’s with The Ghoul, Son of Ghoul and Big Chuck & Lil’ John (1998/1999)

There it is. Not the most-heralded of my many late-90’s/early-2000’s tapes, but certainly one of the more-heralded ones. Please ignore my sloppy, 12-year old handwriting (I’ve kinda sorta improved in that area), and while we’re at it, please ignore The Avenger (a 1961 Steve Reeves film) and the vague “TV Land Programs” descriptive line; those recordings are not conducive to our ultimate goal today (indeed, the TV Land stuff was recorded later, in the summer of ’99). Nope, we’re focusing on the ‘big three’ of Northeast Ohio horror hosts today, all on one powerhouse of a tape, all recorded during or around the holiday season of 1998/99, and all part of some serious nostalgia for me.

1997-1999 was probably the time period most responsible for making me, well, me. Not completely, of course; I continued to refine my goofy self (whatever that means) in the years following, but there’s little doubt that some of the things I’m a still a huge, huge fan of first took hold of me in the era this tape hails from. I had discovered Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Son Of Ghoul in ’97, The Ghoul came back to Cleveland TV in ’98, and despite first watching them in ’96, I really started to appreciate Big Chuck & Lil’ John around ’99. Except for the absence of MST3K and the now-head scratching inclusion of The Avenger, the tape seen above is really a pretty great description of your Northeast Ohio Video Hunter’s interests in the late-90’s. Even the old TV Land programming is a sight-for-sore-eyes.

The lead-off recording was The Ghoul’s first Christmas special of his WBNX TV-55 run. It’s also one of the earliest episodes I have from those WBNX years. I recorded the first couple episodes (which I still have), and a few select later ones (which I don’t), but as it stands, this is one of the earliest to survive. In lieu of any other opening credits or theme music, the specialized “Ghoul’s Christmas Special” title makes it clear that this is a ‘big deal’ in the Ghoul Power world. Also a big deal: according to a quick internet calendar search, this aired on Christmas ’98, a Friday, which was obviously December 25th (at the very tail-end of the day, 11:30 PM, but hey, it counts).

The Ghoul loved the Christmas season and would go all out to celebrate it, including the special Christmas-themed border and groups of kids in attendance, as seen above. It’s clear he loved the holiday season, and the next year, he would even have, roughly, a month-long celebration, running the 1935 Scrooge as well as Santa Claus In Mother Goose Land (which was actually The Magic Land Of Mother Goose and was, if I recall correctly, only vaguely Christmassy) in addition to the film that was also shown that first year…

It’s the 1959 Mexican film Santa Claus. A the time, I was only familiar with this movie via what was printed in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 Amazing Colossal Episode Guide, and since it wasn’t listed in Leonard Maltin’s guide nor had I discovered IMDb yet, I had no idea what year it was even released in, which is why, if you scroll back up, you’ll see I have only “Mexican” listed in brackets next to the title on the tape sleeve. I wouldn’t have known even that if the opening credits didn’t mention Mexico.

The Ghoul loved running this movie during Christmastime, and I have four separate Christmas airings of it: this first one from 1998, plus 1999, 2000 and 2001. And for all I know, he ran it again and again during the rest of his WBNX run.

Truth be told though, I’ve never much cared for the movie. If it weren’t for the fact that it was then a (to me) obscure foreign film, and one that had been MST’d at that, I’m not sure it would have survived all these years, let alone the three other airings I have. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I have all of them, the more Ghoul the better, but I’m not as enamored of this flick as others are. In fact, for a movie that’s gained a pretty impressive cult following, I really can’t stand it at all. Oh, I should love it for the incredible weirdness it presents (Santa battling the forces of evil, wind-up mechanical reindeer, Merlin, and a bizarre pair of moving red lips that are the very definition of “terrifying”), but I don’t know, it’s a movie that has always left me cold.

Not so with the second recording on the tape, which would have aired on Saturday, December 26th. It’s Son of Ghoul’s Christmas special! At the time, SOG was on both Friday and Saturdays, 8-10 PM, so an identical episode would have been aired the day before on Christmas Day as well. It’s interesting that both The Ghoul’s and Son of Ghoul’s shows were/are so different, yet they both really went the extra mile for Christmas.

Oooh, I’m diggin’ that swanky green border! Unlike usual episodes, SOG read the mail on the main dungeon set, as seen in that left screencap. On the right, the screencap comes from the very close of the show. As you can see, they even had a guy in a reindeer costume, and fake reindeer poop on the floor to go with him/it! Tis the season?

SOG’s annual Christmas show has become one of my favorite ‘extra’ parts of the season. Nowadays he’s only on Saturdays, and every weekend before Christmas, there’s a yearly show dedicated to the holiday. More than once (twice, to be exact, including this year), stuff I’ve sent in has been presented on the Christmas show, and it’s always a nice addition to my holiday season. I was regularly writing SOG by 1998, but nothing of mine was presented during his ’98 special. Considering I never really had anything particularly interesting and/or important to say back then, that was probably for the best.

It hasn’t been shown for a few years, but Santa Claus Conquers The Martians (see, I told you my UAV tape wasn’t the last you’d see of it this holiday season!) was once a yearly tradition, not unlike SOG’s running of Night Of The Living Dead every Halloween. I like this movie waaaay more than Santa Claus. It’s weird, it’s goofy, it’s idiotic, but all in a good way. Some may argue that the other movie was all of that and more, but the fact remains that Santa Claus Conquers The Martians is my preferred bad movie for the Christmas season. Even the MST3K version was, in my opinion, superior to their take on Santa Claus.

Speaking of the MST3K version, when they riffed the film, their print didn’t include the title card as seen above. Apparently, because of that, many people were unaware that the film circulated/circulates with a title card. which was odd to me, because by the time I saw the MST3K episode, every print of Santa Claus Conquers The Martians I had seen up to that point had a title as you’d expect.

I first saw this movie when SOG ran it during the Christmas season of 1997, and then right after, I got my copy of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 Amazing Colossal Episode Guide for Christmas 1997, and learned they did the film, too. It’s a pretty weird movie, clearly aimed at the lil’ baby childrens, in which martians kidnap Santa in order liven the martian children up. It includes Pia Zadora (who, contrary to my UAV tape’s description, is not especially precocious – yes, I’m still irritated by that line), and a guy that looks a lot like Jamie Farr but isn’t Jamie Farr (much to my chagrin).

That left screencap above is either the embodiment of the Christmas season, or a truly nightmarish visage, I can’t decide. Maybe it’s both.

At one point, SOG superimposed himself into the movie, and tried to light Santa’s pipe. I thought that was pretty funny.

The last (applicable) recording on the tape is the New Years portion referred to in the title. It didn’t air on New Year’s Eve or Day, nearest I can figure is it was broadcast in the first half of January, but nevertheless, this episode of Big Chuck & Lil’ John’s Couch Potato Theater has some pretty strong memories attached to it (not the least of which is the image above, well familiar to me from so many Saturday afternoons).

Ah, Big Chuck & Lil’ John on their old King Kong set. It was the same set as their usual Friday night Big Chuck & Lil’ John Show, except Couch Potato Theater was always broadcast Saturday afternoon and was called, you know, Couch Potato Theater. Couch Potato Theater was a bit of a wild-card: sometimes a full-length movie would be shown, other times old Three Stooges shorts or episodes of The Abbott And Costello Show, even skits-only if time was an issue (similar to what the revived Big Chuck & Lil’ John Show is now). In this case, though, old silent short comedies were the day’s subject.

My recording of this almost didn’t happen. At the time, I was a big, big fan of silent comedy films (still am, actually, though not quite as fervent), and trying to catch and tape some of them when they were run as unscheduled-between-programming-filler on WAOH/WAX was a common thing with me. Somehow, though, I missed the TV Guide listing for this episode of Couch Potato Theater, in which several old silent comedies were run over the course of the afternoon. To make matters worse, we had to leave soon because my brother had a basketball game. So, I grabbed the only available tape, cued it up after The Avenger, and hit record. Better than nothing, right?

I began taping in the middle of some Keystone film, the title of which I no longer remember, but was able to capture the entire last subject of the day: Charlie Chaplin’s The Champion, a 1915 Essanay film, which was from the period when Chaplin’s movies started to get really good. From how I understand it, this particular short has been the subject of much editing and whatnot over the years, but the version Big Chuck & LIl’ John ran was the Blackhawk Films print, apparently one of the better ones. Certainly lengthier, if nothing else.

The Champion, as the name and screenshots kinda sorta show, detail Chaplin’s Little Tramp character becoming a boxer. The subject of boxing is one I’ve always liked (having grown up on the Rocky movies), and the addition of an English Bulldog is always a plus, so yeah, I like this short. I’m sure I have many of them on cheap, public domain DVDs, but I’m not as familiar with Chaplin’s Essanay films as I am with his Mutual work, which I consider my favorite of his.

At the time, I was just then starting to appreciate Big Chuck & Lil’ John, something that would be more fully-realized when I began watching The Abbott And Costello Show on their Saturday afternoon program. Still, I recall having made a habit of at least checking the listing for their Friday night show, so I’m not sure how I missed the listing for these old silents. I can’t remember if I discovered the broadcast while flipping channels or if I came across it that day in TV Guide, but either way, I came in when most of it was over. It was one of those feelings, unfortunately well-familiar to me as a heavy-taper by then, of “Oh man, I’m missing this!” Of course, the follow-up “Well, at least I got some of it” took a bit of the sting away.

(If you go way back to the top and look at the tape’s label, you’ll see that the listing for this is off to the side and not where it should be, right after The Avenger. That’s because, for years, this broadcast was unlisted on the tape. I don’t know if it was due to the haphazard nature of the recording or what, but for whatever reason, I never labeled it properly. Oh sure, I took the time to label “TV Land Programs” later that summer, but Chuck & John got shorted on that front. It wasn’t until 2011 when I was making a concerted effort to label a lot of my tapes that had suffered in obscurity for years that this was duly notarized. It took a bit of searching, I could only remember it was on a tape with a purple Sony tape, but finally I found it, labeled it, and it is now given the proper respect it so deserves.)

There’s just under an hour of Chuck & John action on the tape, but even so, several skits were captured. My favorite of them (tied with “The Lil’ Flash,” at least) was Cuyahoga Jones, their Indiana Jones parody. This was the first time I had ever seen one of these skits, which were part of a continuing storyline in which Cuyahoga tries to steal the “Kapusta Diamond.” Big Chuck played Cuyahoga, and Lil’ John played Shortstuff. In this one, they tried to earn $20 in order to buy supplies to help them carry the safe containing the diamond out of the castle. Pretty funny stuff!

Believe it or not, there’s a lot of memories tied into this tape, more than I could ever hope to accurately describe in print. The video itself, yeah, I fondly recall all of this stuff from that winter season, but it also brings to mind that general period in my life. All of the things/shows/etc. I was and am into, sure, but also other memories, like going to the mall with my Mom for Christmas shopping, come to mind when thinking of the era this tape comes from. As much as I love the actual recordings, I think those memories are even more important to me. Maybe I’m doing a sloppy job of getting across what I’m trying to say, but hopefully you know what I’m getting at. I’m sure you can all relate in one way or another.

And so, with that, this Christmas post nears an end. I sincerely hope all of you have a fantastic Christmas and New Years. Thank you to all that have taken the time to read this blog, and in some cases, even pass the link around. Have a wonderful holiday season and be safe in the new year.

Stay tuned, more goofy stuff to come!