Masters of UHF

Before cable television there was UHF.

Usually accessed on portable televisions with a secondary UHF channel dial and rabbit ears – which seemed to make UHF viewing synonymous with childhood bedrooms and cramped first apartments – requiring one to navigate, Admiral Peary-like, through staticky snow while adjusting the antenna just so.

UHF was the bargain basement of television and an often-interesting alternative to what the networks had to offer. There were some UHF shows available to viewers in New Jersey that were not just fun to watch but offered a strong homemade vibe that made them feel like labors of love, an enthusiasm transcending their inexpensive sets, wobbly camera work and visible boom mics.

When the UHF Hall of Fame gets launched, The Uncle Floyd Show will be among the first class of inductees. Billed as a kid’s show (if “kid” means over the age of 15), it was a daily half-hour of puppets, sketches, corny jokes, double entendres, insider humor and Floyd’s barrelhouse piano playing. Floyd’s cast of regulars lit a fuse of anarchy that threatened every show with collapse before its thirty minutes was up.

In 1982, Zacherle, another king of the UHF dial, appeared on The Uncle Floyd Show:

After his host gig on Chiller Theatre on New York’s WPIX ended, the Cool Ghoul returned to the airwaves (albeit UHF) from 1965 to 1967 with Disc-O-Teen which answered the question, “What if American Bandstand had no budget and was hosted by a crypt-keeping undertaker instead of the clean-cut Dick Clark?”

Disc-O-Teen ran on weekday afternoons, broadcasting from a theatre in Newark. Kids danced to the latest records and hung homemade bedsheet banners around the studio while Zach introduced lip-synching bands like the Box Tops and Every Mother’s Son, asking them non-sequitur questions, addressing the girls as “my dear” and the boys as “old boy.”

The kids looked like the those you'd see in high school hallways between classes, not the Stepford-teens with clothing allowances of American Bandstand or the professional dancers found on Soul Train.

UHF was also the home of Rockers 80, as Jamaican deejay/veejay Earl “Rootsman” Chin showed reggae music videos and scored several impressive interviewing coups, including Bob Marley, and Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

Parts of Chin’s interview with Marley can be found online, although it can be difficult to understand without closed captioning, given Chin and Marley's heavy Jamaican patois and it’s seriously laidback (aka sluggish) vibe, no doubt courtesy of ganja smoked before filming. The video clips omit the end of the interview as I remember it, with Chin telling Marley that he’s “the greatest,” to which Marley replies, “No, Jah is the greatest.”

The Jagger-Richards interview, circa 1978, is remarkable in that both seem to be enjoying themselves, possibly thanks to the Heinekens they’re knocking back throughout. It also marks one of those rare occasions when Jagger’s been filmed with a beard (which is pretty impressive):

Rockers 80 was sponsored by the Kew Motor Inn, which still exists in Kew Gardens, Queens. Nice to know that its "theme rooms', including the Safari Room, Chin would list in the ad copy are still available at, according to the hotel's website, “very reasonable short-stay rates” – a wink/wink, nod/nod phrase that could explain the allure of UHF TV: the potential for inexpensive fun.

Gimme shelter

Fifty years tonight I saw the Rolling Stones, and in a roundabout way began making my way into the rest of my life.

The Stones announced their 1975 summer tour by playing Brown Sugar on a flatbed truck rolling down Fifth Avenue in New York City, shows that included six nights at Madison Square Garden. For me, discovering pot and holding my youthful belief that rock music was a signpost on the road to illumination, seeing the Stones live was a necessity.

With 120,000 tickets available over six evenings, I drove into a deserted Manhattan around dinnertime, parked a block away from the Garden and bought seats for the June 24 show.

I chose June 24 purposely. What better way to celebrate the third anniversary of the first date with my then-girlfriend? Uh no. She seemed less than thrilled about the prospects of spending this special evening listening to songs about the Boston Strangler (Midnight Rambler), inter-racial sex (Brown Sugar) and groupie sex (Star Star).

1975 Rolling Stones live

If she’d managed any enthusiasm at all for the show, it likely began to slip away as we navigated through the scary flood of humanity that washed up on the sidewalks around the Garden on a concert night: kids out of their gourds stoned and/or drunk, guys selling drugs and bootleg t-shirts, ticket scalpers, wild-eyed city people, vendors selling their diarrhea-inducing gyros.

After fifty years, I’ve forgotten a lot about the show – how could I’ve not remembered that Billy Preston was part of the band for the tour? What I remember best was the spectacle. The giant lotus flower that opened to reveal the stage. The stupid inflatable phallus that rose up from the stage (her enthusiasm now vanished). Jagger swinging on a rope over the stage. Steel drummers accompanying the band on Sympathy for the Devil – they played Sympathy for the Devil! And for some reason, the haze of cigarette smoke around Keith Richards and Ron Wood.

The Stones, man!

(An audience tape of the concert can be found on YouTube. The band sounded a little chaotic, but it was the Stones).

While I’m fuzzy about the show’s details, what occurred afterwards remains clear. Back at her house The Tonight Show was on; Kenny Rankin was singing. Rankin was a popular singer/songwriter with a jazz influence, laid-back music perfect for Sunday brunch programming on an FM rock station. As we watched, she told me how stupid the concert had been and that she’d rather go see Kenny Rankin.

She may as well as admitted to being a Republican.

We had friends who got married out of high school and converted to Christianity. How much of an influence were they? Was I ready to take eternal vows or submit to some mysterious conversion? Or give in to a lifetime of nodding out to James Taylor? Four months later, we agreed to move on. 

In 1975, life seemed full of endless possibilities; I just needed to make the right choices and be true to myself. No crystal ball could have predicted it any better.