Inappropriate Conversations

IC-Fest, Day 1

Spotify Day 1 does not include Garth Brooks at all. We know why, but I did mention it during his Different Drummer segment. 

I intend to italicize the one key track, if I can narrow it to one, that truly sets the beat for me on each of these Different Drummers, too.

Garth Brooks

We Shall Be Free (written by Stephanie Davis)
It's Midnight, Cinderella
Two of a Kind, Workin' on a Full House
Unanswered Prayers
How You Ever Gonna Know?
Wolves (written by Stephanie Davis)
The River
Friends in Low Places

Nanci Griffith

You Were on My Mind
Drive-In Movies and Dashboard Lights
The Loving Kind
Time of Inconvenience
It's a Hard Life Wherever You Go
More Than a Whisper

Victoria Williams

What a Wonderful World
Why Look at the Moon
Summer of Drugs
I Can't Cry Hard Enough
Holy Spirit
Crazy Mary

TobyMac

In the Light
Lose My Soul
Gone
Jesus Freak

Sophie B. Hawkins

Strange Thing (Walking in my Blue Jeans)
Don't Don't Tell Me No
Betchya Gotta Cure for Me
Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover
Carry Me
No Connection
As I Lay Me Down
Saviour Child
Lose Your Way
Sweetsexywoman

Dana Gillespie

You Just Gotta Know My Mind
Move Your Body Close to Me
Empty Bed Blues
More Fool Me
Bismillah
Cry To Me

Maria McKee

Effigy of Salt
I've Forgotten What it Was in You (That Put the Need in Me)
A Good Heart
Am I the Only One (Who's Ever Felt This Way)?
I Can't Make It Alone
Let Your Light Shine on Me
Absolutely Barking Stars
Drinkin' in my Sunday Dress
You Gotta Sin to Get Saved
Show Me Heaven

T Bone Burnett

Stunned
Primitives
I Can Explain Everything
Fatally Beautiful
The Long Time Now
Shut It Tight

I also couldn't find "I Can Explain Everything" on Spotify, and that was a key song for the 200th episode of Inappropriate Conversations, The Sound of Dissent.

One other note about song sequences. Perhaps it is noticeable; perhaps not. You can almost take the last song from each artist and presume it's an encore. McKee's set, for example, would end brilliantly with audience call-and-response for "You Gotta Sin to Get Saved" leaving "Show Me Heaven" as a perfect -- albeit vocally challenging -- encore.

IC-Fest Concept

Indulge me, if you will. I had a fun idea a week or so ago, and it has been a welcome distraction. 

I've never been to a music festival -- not Alive on the Contemporary Christian side of the spectrum or anything like Rocklahoma when I lived in Oklahoma. A couple of months ago, though, Nessa P. made me think of this on a short "not-an-episode" of her Hello Nessa! podcast. After I checked out the band Rainbow Kitten Surprise, it occurred to me that I've named at least one festival's worth of musician/songwriters as Different Drummers in the past decade.

Right now, the count would be 65 if I combined the categories for bands, artists, and songwriters as Music, which I have done on the Category tags. Some of these performers and composers are gone or retired. Others wouldn't make sense in the context of an "Inappropriate Conversations" music festival. But I had no problem coming up with 25 artists and groups, along with very little trouble putting them into a sequence.

Again, making lists can be a relaxing indulgence. So, for a few posts in a row, I'll share my thoughts on an #ICfest of sorts, including proposed set lists reflecting the songs I love most. This will include a focus on inspirations behind their Different Drummer segments. My plan is to post the song titles, as if by day, along with a Spotify playlist that puts these songs in sequence (with only a couple of limitations due to Spotify gaps).

Of course, there is a reason I don't do music festivals. Camping is not really my thing, even less for my wife. Weather is an issue, with a bright, sunny day being no help. I once got a sunburn walking across the street in El Paso, Texas. In addition, I'm sure this concept reflects a combination that's too odd for an audience much bigger than 1.

For now, though, the list!

Headliners:
Neil Young
Garth Brooks
Elvis Costello
The Roots
Tom Waits

Featuring:
Indigo Girls
Violent Femmes
Maria McKee
Todd Snider
Sophie B. Hawkins

Along With:
Reba McEntire
T Bone Burnett
Dana Gillespie
Holly Cole
Chris Rice

Special Appearances By:
Dolly Parton
TobyMac
Nanci Griffith
Brian Eno
Phil Manzanera

And:
Laurie Anderson
Michael Franks
Imani Coppola
Victoria Williams
Larry Kirwan (Black 47)

A Cold Night's Death

I believe my all-time favorite in the ABC Movie Of The Week series is A Cold Night’s Death from 1973. I don’t pretend that it deserves a place in history with Duel or Brian’s Song. It’s just my favorite.

The plot brings together elements of science fiction, horror, adventure, and mystery. At the same time, it is a character study that makes full use of props and location. If this short plot summary sounds familiar, you may have seen the film re-aired as “Chill Factor.”

Robert Culp and Eli Wallach star as virtually the only actors in the 74-minute film. They are research scientists sent to a remote mountaintop laboratory to study the impact of high altitude on primates, in support of space exploration. Leaders of the program have lost contact with the scientist on site, and part of the mystery is resolving what happened to him.

The plot kept me guessing and on the edge of my seat at age 8. That is less true now, and not because I remembered the story. It is an excellent example of the journey being more important than the destination.

Culp was the star on the TV series “I Spy” and would later appear regularly on “The Greatest American Hero.” He’s never been better than this 1973 movie of the week, though. It’s harder to make the same claim for Wallach, who will always be remembered for roles in films like 12 Angry Men, The Magnificent Seven, and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

A small cast helped control costs on a tiny TV budget. This is not a Hollywood film, in the purest sense, and it is even lower in budget than most independent films today. Still, A Cold Night’s Death was shot on 35mm film rather than videotape and several scenes are on location in the White Mountains of California.

More than anything else, this 47-year-old movie shows what can be done with limited resources when characters and actors are given room to drive a story. On re-watching, some moments reminded me of The Shining (1980) and The Thing (1982) and the earlier film pales in comparison to those classic thrillers. It is noteworthy that A Cold Night’s Death came earlier.

I believe there are several films in the ABC Movie Of The Week series that are worth a second look today. It aggravates me to think of how few are available either in re-run, videotape or DVD.

For all the better-known examples in the series, though, A Cold Night’s Death is my favorite. Yes, over Steven Spielberg’s Duel or pilots for future TV shows like “The Night Stalker” and “Starsky And Hutch.”

 

Made For TV Program Direction is a Facebook group focusing on recollections of old TV movies and shows like this one.

Made for TV Program Direction - an index

Growing up, I became aware of what television could be in the 1970s. It's not that I don't have memories from the decade before. At the dawn of what we call syndication today, though, it is not easy to remember if I initially saw shows like Star Trek and Jonny Quest on first run or only as reruns. It's safe to say that every made-for-TV movie I recall, whether on ABC's Movie Of The Week or elsewhere, was from seeing the original broadcast.

While I appreciate modern streaming services like Netflix and Disney Plus, something is missing. It's possible that I'm unique in my nostalgia for pilots that never took off, single-season TV shows that didn't generate enough content for syndication, and small budget and hastily filmed TV movies. (What we praise Roger Corman for achieving in theatrical releases remains under-appreciated for television films.) I'm unapologetic. 

Perhaps the dream of laying on my couch re-watching some of these memories will never happen. I still have an evolving program schedule in my subconscious.

 

I have shared some of this before on past Inappropriate Conversations podcasts. 
The Morning After for Classic Made-For-TV Movies was released in January 2011.
Somewhat more recently, I covered some of the same ground with a look at a particular year in
Television Debut (1972-73) in August 2016.

I'm also aware of kindred spirits from other podcasts like Made For TV Mayhem and Forgotten TV.

Beginning this Christmas week, I am starting a public Facebook group called
Made for TV Program Direction
with a modest goal of simply establishing an index. 

Hopefully it will evolve over time, beginning with a set of topic categories:
General Nostalgia
Movies of the Week
Pilots
Special Presentations
TV Series

As an open public group, my hope is that it will evolve. Maybe I'm not alone.
As often as someone may see something that they remember and would love to revisit, others may share things the rest of us have missed completely.

Television, even in my lifetime, has produced content that was probably expected to simply come and go. The internet and other developments have made it more possible than ever to revisit and remember. Even if this is only a place for my notes, once or twice a week, I'm going to do just that: revisit and remember.

 

The 2019 College Football (should be) Playoffs

Continuing a tradition for many years, here is a 16-team bracket for the college football tournament we should be watching, alongside fewer than 40 bowl games, if America's most popular college sport was conducted even remotely like all the others. 

Yes, improvements have been made from where we have been. With three undefeated and powerhouse teams this year in defending-champion Clemson, recently elevated LSU, and previous #1 Ohio State, how exactly would the former two-team BCS system have established a single championship game? It seems most likely that the defending champion would not be permitted to defend their title despite a winning streak exceeding two dozen consecutive games!

In contrast, the four teams seemed to fall more easily into place this year. It is just a matter of time, though, before a similar problem hits a system where at least five conferences are annually being shoved into four slots, and that presumes there is any validity in concepts like "power 5" and "group of 5" conference designations. More on that in a moment.

First, a couple of notes on this year's bracket. I took the liberty of making some "selection committee" decisions. I moved Oregon up to a 5-seed over Georgia to avoid a potential semi-final rematch of the SEC Championship. I'm not sure LSU-Georgia was great competition the first time, and I'd only want to see a repeat if those were the only teams left standing. I also shifted the 9-10-11 spots where Florida, Penn State, and Utah originally landed. Again, it was all about avoiding early-round rematches. The bracket benefits from those subtle moves.

In recent years, I have reacted to the de facto segregation of FBS, or what we use to call 1A football, into "power" and non-power silos by generating separate brackets. I'm continuing that tradition this year with the NIT v. NCAA distinction, to make an apt comparison to the annual basketball tournaments. What I'm calling NIT is all "group of 5" and it leaves another 8-team bracket for just the "power 5" schools.

For many, this will have the attractive feature of 8-team brackets rather than 16. I've never found 16 to be a problem, but I know that some do. Perhaps it also generates more competitive early-round matches by maintaining the pretense of relative conference power. While the top bracket, which I prefer, includes the winners of all FBS conferences with 6 at large teams, two separate 8-team brackets increases the playoff representation beyond none or just one for "group of 5" schools. This also puts more traditional-conference powers into the bowl games, with only three at-large teams. The best 8 in the "NCAA" version is simply the three strongest teams after all the "power 5" conference champions are given automatic qualification.

I know there are some who, oddly, pine for the "good old days" when all we had was exhibition play in the form of bowl games and a mythical national champion. My answer is unchanged. Following the 1983 college football season, the game I desperately wanted to see was the best offence in the country (Nebraska) against the best defense in the country (Texas), and I still want to see that game despite both teams narrowly losing in bowl games.

Perhaps it was never to be. Maybe Nebraska losing at Miami and Georgia shocking Texas is a sign that neither team could have navigated a tournament like this one to arrive in a final. If so, I'd suggest that the reason would be even better, perhaps something like North Carolina State upsetting Houston in March Madness just a year or so later. 

The fact that we will never know should not stop us from pushing for a better solution, one that wouldn't leave Clemson out of a chance to defend their title, one that wouldn't use conference tie-ins like the Rose Bowl's from preventing the #1 teams in two different polls from settling the unanswered Nebraska-Michigan controversy from 1997. We can do better than we are today, and it is so obvious that you'd swear defenders of current and previous schemes for football must never watch the college basketball tournament each year -- deeming March Madness to be mere nonsense instead.

Different Drummers: artist, athlete, and more

This last group (8 of 8) of the 216 Different Drummers covers a broad range of role/relation. This completes the index, for now.
The reason for 216 references on 218 Inappropriate Conversations podcasts-to-date is the first two in March 2010 being used for introduction: the show itself, and then Different Drummer as a concept. 

Different Drummers: theologian