So the other evening as I was making my toilet before bed, I sang to myself, “Doh doh it doh doh. Good night, sweetheart, well, it’s time to go….” And I will leave it to you to wonder if I flexed my bicep as I did so.
Because that’s the closing number from the television program Sha Na Na:
I saw that a time or two on a Saturday afternoon back in the day. I was not the target audience–it was probably geared towards my grandparents’ generation or maybe the early boomers who remembered doo-wop from their younger years–but as a kid, I am sure I watched anything.
So I went looking on YouTube for a complete episode, and I watched it.
The first one I found had the added benefit of having Barbi Benton as the guest star:
She was a Playboy model who also released some records, and so she did a number on the show. She had the country rock sound so common of the era (says the man who also owns Lynda Carter records).
Additionally, someone probably used a new VCR to tape this off of television, so you get all the period commercials as well. Man, I was young once, but that was long ago.
It looks like YouTube has other episodes, but I don’t know that I’ll watch many of them, and I’m certainly not going to seek out a box set (which does not seem to be available, although they have a bunch of records out). Because one or two episodes would be a nostalgia trip, and more than that might indicate a problem (says a guy who watched a bunch of The Best of the Dean Martin Variety Show on videocassette).
I watched that with my parents when I was little. Probably saw almost all of them
According to Wikipedia, they were on the air for four years, 97 episodes total, which is just short of the 100-episode magic threshold for syndication/repeats. I don’t remember repeats on television in the 1980s in Missouri, but they’re not what I would have sought out when we had cable.
They sure had a run, though; it looks like they (or a subset thereof) did shows until, what, 2022? And they have a pile of records and whatnot. Not a lot of video releases, though.
Also, admit it: You wanted to be Bowzer, didn’t you?
Also, note the stealth editing of the original post, where I misspelled it as Bowser even though I am not a Nintendo kid.
I won’t say that I wanted to be him, but I do remember thinking he was really cool