Day: September 2, 2016

We didn’t travel much when I was a kid. Summer vacations for me were just trips to my grandparents’ homes in central Kansas for anywhere from two to six weeks. So I was pretty much always home Labor Day weekend, with three days to kill before school started on the day after the holiday. Since my mom was generally working two jobs, she’d go in both on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend and on Labor Day itself. So I was stuck at home, with four channels of TV to entertain myself.

But actually three channels, since Labor Day weekend meant the Jerry Lewis telethon knocked out one station for most of the weekend. Sadly, that station was the one our TV, which was in our basement, picked up best. Despite my general lack of interest in any of the entertainers Jerry paraded out, I often found myself watching anyway. And, man, did I hate it. A bunch of has-beens and never-weres rolling out to banter with a cheesy comedian. Even if I recognized the good cause behind the whole thing, whatever entertainment value the show offered was lost on me.

I think my experience mirrors most of my generation’s. Even if you traveled on Labor Day weekend, or had cable years before I did, you still ran across the telethon at some point, and likely hated it as much as me. Maybe you went to see your grandparents and they loved Jerry, or hoped that Frank or Johnny or some other old favorite would pop in, and thus kept their TV tuned to the telethon for your entire visit.[1]

Like most old, kitschy things, though, today I can watch clips of the old telethons and at least chuckle. They hold no nostalgic value for me, but they do recall a time not terribly long ago when our popular culture was dramatically different than it is today.

So this AV Club collection of notable telethon clips was a good way to spend my morning.

The utter insanity that was The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

The last weekend of the summer of 2016. Not all of these songs fit that theme, but most do.

“Not Gonna Kill You” – Angel Olsen. Olsen’s MY WOMAN just hit this morning. I’m not all the way through it yet, but based on what I’ve already heard, and the reviews, it’s a strong contender for album of the year.

“Pony Show” – Heidi Gluck. Gluck used to perform with Indianapolis’ Margot & The Nuclear So and So’s. Now she’s based in Kansas City. For those facts, alone, she makes the list. She also has a nice, early solo-career Jenny Lewis sound to her.

“This House Is Not For Sale” – Ryan Adams.

“When The Summer Ends” – Ryan Adams. Amazingly it’s been over two years since Adams released a full length album of all original material. When he dropped his Taylor Swift 1989 cover last fall, he teased that a new album based on what he was going through during his divorce was on the way. This week we finally got a release date for that album: November 4. Apparently he’s still paring down the 80 or so songs he recorded into a single disk. In the interim, one of his all-time classics, and a song about summer coming to a close.

“Cleopatra” – The Lumineers. I’m not a huge fan of The Lumineers, but I do enjoy this song. Most summers, there are a handful of songs we hear over-and-over on WTTS, the Bloomington station that is the soundtrack to our lake weekends. This summer, though, aside from Adele, there didn’t seem to be as many WTTS songs of summer. This one might be the closest one.