Christmas with SCTV


Okay... technically, this is NOT a Christmas CD... but I did receive it for Christmas and wanted to share some of the treasures that lie inside.

In the 1970s, the Second City Comedy troupe based in Chicago and Toronto was a breeding ground for the next wave of great comedians: John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Dan Aykroyd, and Bill Murray. While these four went off to immortality at "Saturday Night Live", the other members of Second City banded together and created their own TV show in Canada.

"Second City TV" was seen throughout Canada (and in syndication in the USA) between 1976 and 1980. Joining this cast were John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Rick Moranis, Catherine O'Hara, Martin Short, and Dave Thomas.

In 1981, NBC needed a summer replacement for its music program "The Midnight Special". They brought SCTV in, gave them a 90 minutes to fill, and "SCTV Network 90" was born. This ran from 1981 to 1983 - winning two Emmys and garnering 15 Emmy nominations in the process while dealing with constant interference from NBC about content, expense, and the like. In 1984, the show moved to Cinemax for its last year with four stars in tow (Flaherty / Martin / Levy / Short).

The two Christmas episodes on this DVD are from Season 4 and Season 5. If you click on these links, they will transport you to an excellent episode guide where each skit is outlined right down to the bumpers!

If you're a fan of Christmas, you owe it to yourselves to find this DVD and get a copy. There are more belly laughs in this CD than any of the Christmas movies of the past five years starring Tim Allen.

If anything, you need to see John Candy dressed as Divine (in FULL Divine drag) singing "Santa Bring My Baby Back To Me" while ice-skating with the Juul Haalmeyer Dancers! Now THAT's Christmas!

On to the next new Christmas CD in my collection...


Capt

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Christmas Yuleblog Sampler - 2011

Image
Merry Christmas! We've had quite a year here - digitizing all of our Christmas music, a radio show , and remastering yuleblog samplers past.  But I can't complain.   Taking the nine months to get every album and MP3 onto my hard drive (and an external hard drive for backup) was the best decision I may have made in my Christmas life.  To have every song at my fingertips saves me time and led to discoveries of songs I never knew I had.  I thought that what the CD was supposed to do but that only shows you how far in the past I was living. The radio show was very satisfying.  The folks at the radio station were very supportive and thrilled with the end results.  Will it happen again next year?  I'm hopeful but only time will tell.  Lots of things are in store at the station...  Okay... enough about you Capt...  where's the samplers? During a break in digitizing in June, I went back and remastered the Yuleblog Samplers from 2008 and 2009.  Every 45
Read more

2001 Playlist

The 2001 playlist: 1.) 2001 intro My usual intro with the Flat Duo Jets on "Jingle Bells" mixed together with " Also Sprach Zarathustra ". 2.) Monty Python - Christmas In Heaven I waited years to use this one... it fits perfectly leading off the CD. 3.) Wayne Newton - Jingle Bell Hustle At the time, I thought this was the worst Christmas disco song ever (see 2008 below). 4.) Casey Kasem - American Top 40 Christmas bumper (No. 3) Found on Napster (the pre-legal days) from one of Casey's old radio programs. 5.) Dale Monty & The 2x2's - The Lil' Endless Summer Boy Take a surf guitar version of "Little Drummer Boy" and "Wipeout". You get this track. 6.) The Surfaris - A Surfer's Christmas List The same group who originally did "Wipeout"! Great Christmas surf track. 7.) Sleepless in Seattle - Meg Ryan listening to Christmas radio "Coming up, 'Jingle Bells' backwards!"
Read more

Bruce Woodman Presents Christmas Carols With A Latin Lilt

Image
Once again, here is another rescued piece of vinyl from the collection of Ernie (not Bert) . This was part of three albums Ernie shared with a Latin feel (heck, just look at that title above!) and this was downloaded on November 30 th , 2006 at 8:50 AM. To quoteth Ernest: "I guess I should try to squeeze one more Latin-tinged Christmas album here before I move on to something else. This little goody was recorded by a missionary in South America, and he fills it with local songs for the holidays, as well as some familiar Christmas tunes. There is some narration on there as well, my favorite bit being the introduction at the beginning of the LP. That part may make my Christmas CD this year." Beyond that, good people, there's nothing on the Internet about Bruce Woodman. However, the narrator Ernie alluded too has a massive presence online. His name is Luis Palau and has been an evangelist for more than 40 years. The author of nearly 50 books, Palau's radi
Read more