I saw him live.<\/p>\n
Must’ve been the summer of ’66.\u00c2\u00a0 He was already on the downward slope.\u00c2\u00a0 But for a year or so there, he was the sixties "South Park", the hippest show amongst the barely pubescent.<\/p>\n
Oh, Mr. Sales had been on TV for years.\u00c2\u00a0 But it was a children’s show.\u00c2\u00a0 Until he got kicked off the air for asking his viewers to go into their parents’ wallets and send him "all the green pieces of paper with the pictures of guys in beards".<\/p>\n
There was no TiVo, no Internet to see if it was true.\u00c2\u00a0 Word passed in the classroom.\u00c2\u00a0 Was the story to be believed?<\/p>\n
All we knew is he was off the air.\u00c2\u00a0 For a week.\u00c2\u00a0 And when he came back, there was not a kid in junior high who was not tuned in, to see the dancing girls kicking it up to "Happy Days Are Here Again"!\u00c2\u00a0 It HAD to be real!\u00c2\u00a0 Soupy was winking at us!<\/p>\n
They beat the irreverence out of adults.\u00c2\u00a0 We depend on children to challenge convention.\u00c2\u00a0 A child can’t understand injustice.\u00c2\u00a0 An adult can explain away the lack of health care reform by talking about self-reliance, the political process…all a kid knows is he’s got an owiee and he wants it fixed!<\/p>\n
That’s kind of what killed the music business.\u00c2\u00a0 Outsiders ruled in the sixties and seventies, then there was so much money involved, especially after the advent of MTV, that wannabe stars asked "where do I sign?"\u00c2\u00a0 They were willing to do anything and everything to make it.\u00c2\u00a0 They lost touch with their audience.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, they paid lip service to their fans, but truly they were in bed with their advertisers.<\/p>\n
Not Soupy.\u00c2\u00a0 With a collection of barely physically there characters, Soupy was akin to radio.\u00c2\u00a0 It was theatre of the mind, on an incredibly stupid level.\u00c2\u00a0 And kids love stupid.<\/p>\n
But stupid with a twist.\u00c2\u00a0 When Bon Vivant recalled cans of vichyssoise for botulism I knew what the potato soup was because of Charles Vichyssoise, who appeared on Soupy Sales’ show.<\/p>\n
You went to school every day and imitated White Fang.<\/p>\n
It didn’t last for long, but longer than the hula-hoop.\u00c2\u00a0 Soupy Sales was our hero.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe because our parents hated him so much, they couldn’t see the brilliance underneath the idiocy.<\/p>\n
Soupy was so big, he recorded a record.\u00c2\u00a0 Entitled "The Mouse", we performed it faithfully.\u00c2\u00a0 Didn’t take much.\u00c2\u00a0 Hey, do the mouse, you can do it in your HOUSE!<\/p>\n
And we did.<\/p>\n
But that’s not what brought me to Fairfield U. that late summer day.\u00c2\u00a0 No, I rode my Raleigh down the hill to see Simon & Garfunkel.<\/p>\n
They’d already had a number of hits, a veritable catalog, but it was before "Bookends", they were in a bit of a lull, they could be seen as an evanescent pop act.<\/p>\n
I locked my bike to a fence.\u00c2\u00a0 And Simon & Garfunkel blew my mind.\u00c2\u00a0 Paul Simon was not yet precious.\u00c2\u00a0 And they could already sing and play.\u00c2\u00a0 I thought of leaving after their performance.\u00c2\u00a0 I wanted to maintain the high.\u00c2\u00a0 But I stayed.\u00c2\u00a0 To relive my junior high school days.<\/p>\n
Soupy was frenetic.\u00c2\u00a0 It was entertainment more then music.\u00c2\u00a0 But when he did the Mouse, I did too.<\/p>\n
Eventually Soupy’s sons migrated from the pages of "Tiger Beat" to play with Todd Rundgren.\u00c2\u00a0 We paid attention to their careers because of their legendary father.<\/p>\n
But Soupy had peaked.<\/p>\n
But he’s never been forgotten.<\/p>\n
Watching clips today I’m jetted back to an era when TV meant black and white.\u00c2\u00a0 When an aged hipster, a living "Mad" magazine character, could be the leader of millions.<\/p>\n
That’s what stardom is.\u00c2\u00a0 When your fans are like putty in your hands.<\/p>\n
It’s not about exposure, it’s about creativity.<\/p>\n
Soupy may have aired a stupid show, but the creativity positively beamed from the screen.\u00c2\u00a0 It was not hip to be dumb, you wanted to be smart. So smart, you could be stupid.\u00c2\u00a0 Not so media would trumpet your successes, but so insiders would feel like members of a club.<\/p>\n
Soupy Sales had a huge club.\u00c2\u00a0 We graduated from "Mickey Mouse" to him.\u00c2\u00a0 Long live the inanity!<\/p>\n
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