Glenn O’Brien’s TV
Party – Premiere Episode
(12/18/78)
Picture: C
Sound: C+ Extras: C Episode: C+
Though it is very awkward and has some dull moments, the
premiere episode of the cable access show TV Party with Glenn O’Brien
reminds us of a time when TV had more possibilities. Shot and presented on fuzzy black and white videotape because
that was all they had, the writer for Andy Warhol’s Interview Magazine
(in a column called Beat) was spotted on another show and given his
own. Blondie co-founder Chris Stein
calls in on the first show and supposedly became a later co-host. Fab Five Freddie shows up before his
“blinking glasses” days and Warhol painting assistant Walter Steding was there
from day one.
The show also featured anyone else who was around, in the
best tradition of Punk and New Wave, including a wacky call in segment. Funny moments surface all over the place,
including a supposed plot about then President Jimmy Carter trying to kill New
Wave music! The show runs about an hour
and has no commercial breaks, but considering this is DVD, they could have had
two more shows here. Nevertheless, it
is very interesting and should be seen by all Punk and New Wave fans, as well
as those curious about early analog TV production.
The 1.33 X 1 image was shot on an old reel-to-reel black
and white machine the cable station was lucky to barely be able to afford. This is a muddy 240 lines of NTSC analog
definition at best and is lucky it even looks this good. It even looks a tad older than 1978, but
more video like this keeps surfacing on DVD.
The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is a little better, but shows its limits in
the few music moments on the show.
Extras include Steding’s composition Skylab, one with John Lurie,
one with Kate Simon & Mick Jones, one with David Walter McDermott and one
with Glenn discussing “sub-realism”. I
would now like to see the rest of the shows, if they survived.
- Nicholas Sheffo
