TV Party Special
After popular demand BrinkDVD is offering the ultimate in the TV Party series collection priced to own, and for a limited time. It includes the acclaimed TV Party Documentary, TV Party Premier Episode, TV Party Halloween, TV Party Time & Make-Up, TV Party Crusades, TV Party Heavy Metal, TV Party Sublimely Intolerable, TV Party Everything for Sale, and a TV Party color poster. Get caught up with the series that critics have called “One of the best shows on TV”.
TV PARTY: THE SUBLIMELY INTOLERABLE SHOW
The first 10% of this show sums up what we don't get on TV anymore. Technical difficulties. TV Party was live and improvised, and this meant casual disaster. This early episode gets off to an artistically agonizing start--the sound person is late, overdosing on drugs or both. Or it was the broken down equipment. Once the sound kicks in the show gets lively. Compton Maddux, a droll singer songwriter, is backed up by Debbie Harry and Glenn; the unique futurist soprano Klaus Nomi does one of his post-modern arias; Adny Shernoff, of the Dictators, plays the Beach Boys' "Be True to Your School" backed up by pom pom girls Tish and Snooky, the Manic Panic designers. Downtown legend director Eric Mitchell announces the opening of the now famous New Cinema theater and shows a clip from his film "Kidnapped" with Arto Lindsay, Duncan Smith and Anya Phillips. Brit director David Silver and photographer Kate Simon do the "white people talk about reggae" segment. Blondie's Chris Stein and Debbie Harry and the Patti Smith Group's Richard Sohl drop in to smoke a reefer and take calls from all the crazies in cable land. Chris explains all this isn't chaos, it's art.
TV PARTY: EVERYTHING FOR SALE SHOW
TV Party's final season was broadcast live in color on Channel J, a public access "commercial station." TV Party tried to pay the extra expense of going to color by selling ads to downtown clubs and underground record companies. "Everything here is for sale," Glenn announces. Desperation is in the air. Glenn is missing a tooth and needs a haircut. The party is spunky but the cast is depleted and possibly drugged. The TV Party theme, music by Walter Steding and rap by Glenn O'Brien opens the show. The show features the TV Party Orchestra, with Lenny Ferrari and guitarist Karen Geniece joined by Charles Rocket on heavy metal accordion, played through a stack of Marshall amps and an array of guitar pedals. Rocket had just been fired from Saturday Night Live for saying "fuck" live on air, and his performance of "Wild Thing" is a triumph of post-modern drollness. He actually gets screaming feedback out of his squeezebox. Jeffrey Lee Pierce of Gun Club shows up with a broken guitar, but borrows one and does a soulful Robert Johnson country blues. The half Japanese New York band Eel Dogs plays. Lothar Manteuffel, one of Germany's top new wavers, ends the show jamming with Rocket on one of the latter's compositions "Why Can't I Get Laid." Who knows what he's singing in German.
TV PARTY: THE HEAVY METAL SHOW
There were two TV Party Heavy Metal Shows: one taped at the Mudd Club, now lost, and this live studio sequel. At Mudd the TV Party Orchestra featured ten guitars and Charles Rocket on heavy metal accordion. This show, with a “Mock Penis Envy” backdrop by Jean-Michel Basquiat, features a guitar line up of Chris Stein, Lenny Ferrari, Patrick Geoffrois of the Contortions, plus Glenn, Basquiat, Snuky Tate and Walter Steding on guitar and vocals and Bradley Field on electronic drums. As Glenn and Walter send up rock clichés and discuss the nature of electricity, the band churns out a harrowing electronic miasma somewhere between the Velvets and static interference, deconstructing Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple. Writer Cookie Mueller appears discussing heavy metals that a medical lab found in her blood. Other guests include the editor of Heavy Metal Magazine, and graffiti artists Futura and Ali. Diego Cortez appears as guest cameraman. Five years before Spinal Tap, TV Party hailed this incipient folk movement. Actually the term Heavy Metal was originated in the sixties by William S. Burroughs and the TV Party Orchestra was probably the only heavy metal band to know Burroughs personally. Highlights include an actual fight between Fab Five Freddy and Jean-Michel Basquiat over a guitar and Walter Steding destroying his “extra wide deluxe” guitar.
TV PARTY: THE DOCUMENTARY
TV Party was more than a new wave Tonight Show. It was modeled on Hugh Hefner's Playboy After Dark, a TV show in the format of a party. Every week hipsters tuned in to follow the antics of the TV Party gang and such guests as Iggy Pop, David Bowie, P-Funk's George Clinton, The Clash's Mick Jones, artist Chris Burden, James Chance, Kid Creole, Klaus Nomi, actor Robbie Coltrane, writer/actress Cookie Mueller, fashion guru Steven Meisel and catch performances from acts like Tuxedo Moon, the Brides of Funkenstein, Alex Chilton, Tuxedo Moon, Jeffrey Lee Pierce, Tav Falco, DNA and the Funky Four Plus One More.
After two decades as a cult rumor, the TV Party archives have been digitally resurrected and made available by Brink Films. Leading off the TV Party bandwagon is TV Party, the movie, which made its world premier at the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival.
The TV Party documentary was produced by Kai Eric and Danny Vinik ("Spun") and directed by Vinik. It mixes interviews with O'Brien, Harry, Stein, Steding, Poe, Brathwaite and company with hilarious footage from the show's four year run (1978-1982.) BrinkDVD is releasing a DVD series of the best episodes from this historically hilarious collision of TV, rock and roll and pop art. 4 episodes are available now!
TV PARTY: TIME & MAKE-UP SHOW
Glenn O’Brien says “TV Party is interesting as a TV show, but it’s a pretty good painting too.” This show opens with a still frame. Just when you’re ready to go nuts, a voice reassures: “There is nothing wrong with your television set.” And mad action begins. TV Party was cable TV as pop art. It appeared sloppy and crude but it was deliberate sloppiness and crudeness. This episode plays with ideas of time and space, (“time is money” and “dead air”) alternating between aggressive boredom and quick wit. The TV Party Orchestra (Walter Steding on violin, Lenny Ferrari on the New Yorker magazine, and Tim Wright on guitar) jams while host O’Brien performs the sublime feat of rolling a joint blindfolded while smoking a joint. The now legendary fashion photographer Steven Meisel joins the gang, performing a makeover on a hillbilly gal found in the bar across the street. Percussionist extraordinaire David van Tieghem makes music with toys and kitchen utensils. Tim Wright and his girlfriend Marianne are “Fifi and Claude” performing a punk Parisian accordion/guitar duo. Ferrari’s “Italian cousin” sleight of hand artist Luigi Ciccolini performs magic. Richard Sohl of the Patti Smith Group, artists Fab Five Freddie and Ronnie Cutrone and guitarist Robert Fripp answer phone calls from home viewers. It’s all about “the makeup of time.”
TV PARTY: HALLOWEEN SHOW
Halloween 1979 happened to fall on a Wednesday, which means it was TV Party night! At 11PM, when White House records show that President Carter had retired for the night, Glenn O’Brien welcomed viewers to, “the TV show that’s a costume party, but which could be a political party.” Glenn is dressed in a casual Dolly Parton lesbian look. Chris Stein is a wicked witch. Debbie Harry is an umbrella. Richard Sohl is a “top model from the Candy Jones Agency” and teaches a new dance called “The Subway.” Teri Toye is as a fairy princess. Fab Five Freddy is a nickel bag, interviewed on the dangers of things put into Trick or Treat bags. The TV Party Orchestra looks brilliant, with Lenny Ferrari as a cubist painting and Walter Steding as a computer containing a gelatin capsule. Glenn and gang talks about Halloween as All Soul’s Eve, how to tell a god from a goblin, and the effects of drugs and costumes. Lenny performs a snide magic trick. But what makes this a great episode is that it’s a real party, featuring lots of home viewers on the telephone. This is TV Party at is most dense and abstract, filled with cross-talk, double entendre and obscure information. Particularly amusing is a long stretch with Jean-Michel Basquiat talking to home viewers on the phone, talking them out of their negativity.
TV PARTY: PREMIER EPISODE
In 1978 New York City was the scene of a movement called “punk” or “new wave” --an explosion of rebel music, underground art and new cinema. Glenn O’Brien was in the middle of it, writing his column, Glenn O’Brien’s BEAT, for Andy Warhol’s Interview Magazine. One night Glenn was a guest on a cable show “If I Can’t Dance You Can Keep Your Revolution” hosted by Yippie pot advocate Coca Crystal. The next day he was approached by friends and strangers alike who had caught the show. Glenn thought “Hmm, people are watching public access cable TV.” So he started his own show, Glenn O’Brien’s TV Party. His best pal Chris Stein, Blondie’s guitarist, became co-host and Walter Steding, Warhol’s painting assistant, became leader of the TV Party Orchestra. Regulars included Jean-Michel Basquiat, Fab Five Freddie, Debborah Harry, John Lurie and Tim Wright of DNA. TV Party was “the cocktail party that could become a political party.” The rest is TV history. This was the premier show.
TV PARTY: CRUSADES SHOW
February 17, 1981. Reagan was the new President. Iran had just released its American hostages, and Israel and the PLO had rejected Egypt's peace plan. It was a grim moment and TV Party decided to do something about it. Glenn announced a new Crusade to take back the Holy Land. "There are a lot of old things there," summed up Walter ‘Doc' Steding "that I have discovered are really mine." It was a bitter cold snowy night and the studio audience was a small group of hearty partiers, but the TV Party gang made up for it in merriment. The TV Party Orchestra, featuring Chris Stein (in monk's hood) on harmonium, Lenny Ferrari (dressed as a Knight of the Red Cross) on flute, sorcerer Patrick Geoffrois of the Contortions on slide guitar and Walter Steding on organ, performed punk medieval music, including the Holy Land Funk rap delivered by Fab Five Freddy. Famed DJ Johnny Dynell made a guest appearance as an angel. Glenn, crowned with a pre-cable rabbit ears antenna, performed the first live TV mass orgone transmission, combining the theories of Wilhelm Reich and Marshall Macluhan, and the screen was punctuated by the wry words typed on screen by Jean Michel Basquiat.
TV PARTY POSTER
As a barter deal between India and the States, we managed to get our 27" X 40"movie posters printed in India utilizing the latest in Indian Bollywood poster printing techniques. Printed on bible thin paper and with real Indian inks, this poster is guaranteed to light up any living room or dorm, and all for this very very low price.
