I am glad to see that there are already 18 reviews of the ramshackle production that was Andy's Gang, since nobody I describe it to can ever get what it is that I am talking about unless it was part of their youthful TV diet, too. Once in a while "Plunk your magic twanger, Froggie!" will get the appropriate reaction of "I'll be good, I will, I will, I will" in the dialect of B. S. Pulley, but trying to explain what Midnight the Cat was all about is really not possible (what was with the violin and "niiice" anyway and was't there also a Squeaky the Mouse; there certainly should have been if there wasn't?). Reading some other review descriptions, it is interesting to see that I was unaware that the screaming bunch of kids was canned (more likely,embalmed) from some other decade old show, but it was early Saturday morning and I was, like, six or seven so I'll give myself a pass. I feel like the serial that that was part of each show was called Rama the Elephant Boy or Raymar of the Jungle, but that may be just what formulated in my febrile brain. Froggie's tormenting of Billy Gilbert was especially haunting. To this day, I can mentally recreate GIlbert's personification of a prissy French (or maybe Italian) chef whose recitation of his recipe for a chocolate cake is skewered by Froggie jumping in when the recipe gets to "and now you take an egg.." saying "and you break it on your head", which, of course, the chef does, causing him to sputter and bewail the egg now dripping down all over his face. Froggie croaks his obscene sounding "ha ha ha". Comedy, pathos and a bit of horror in equal portions.
Saturdays in front of the big box Zenith started early in the AM. Sometimes the test pattern was still on, sometimes just snow, when I settled in down in the knotty pine (actually it was something called pecky cypress, but you probably never heard of it) paneled basement. The lineup began at 6:30 or 7 with "The Big Picture" (WWII stuff with lots of B-17s, things being blown up and troop ships landing somewhere or other) and then came the Farmer Gray cartoons that must have dated from the silent movie era. I guess my local station didn't have the budget for Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies or maybe they thought that kids watching at that time of day will watch anything if it was on the only channel broadcasting at such an hour. Mostly they were just a bunch of chickens and cows running around with old Farmer Gray chasing them or threatening them with his pitchfork, or at least that is all I remember. According to wiki, he was named Farmer Al Falfa in the original Terrytoons starting in 1915, but had become Gray by the time of Andy and his gang, probably due to some copyright business. These cartoons were my first exposure to classical music, though. Bizet's Jeux d'enfants and Mendelssohn's Midsummer night's dream are what still stick with me.
So, when I finally heard the melody that accompanied the immortal words "I've got a gang, you've got a gang, everybody's got a gang", it was the culmination of an already eventful and overstimulating couple of hours or so. From the vantage point of the final year in the second decade of the 21st century, it all seems a surrealist fantasy. The total illogicalness and non-sequitur is what sticks with me.
Saturdays in front of the big box Zenith started early in the AM. Sometimes the test pattern was still on, sometimes just snow, when I settled in down in the knotty pine (actually it was something called pecky cypress, but you probably never heard of it) paneled basement. The lineup began at 6:30 or 7 with "The Big Picture" (WWII stuff with lots of B-17s, things being blown up and troop ships landing somewhere or other) and then came the Farmer Gray cartoons that must have dated from the silent movie era. I guess my local station didn't have the budget for Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies or maybe they thought that kids watching at that time of day will watch anything if it was on the only channel broadcasting at such an hour. Mostly they were just a bunch of chickens and cows running around with old Farmer Gray chasing them or threatening them with his pitchfork, or at least that is all I remember. According to wiki, he was named Farmer Al Falfa in the original Terrytoons starting in 1915, but had become Gray by the time of Andy and his gang, probably due to some copyright business. These cartoons were my first exposure to classical music, though. Bizet's Jeux d'enfants and Mendelssohn's Midsummer night's dream are what still stick with me.
So, when I finally heard the melody that accompanied the immortal words "I've got a gang, you've got a gang, everybody's got a gang", it was the culmination of an already eventful and overstimulating couple of hours or so. From the vantage point of the final year in the second decade of the 21st century, it all seems a surrealist fantasy. The total illogicalness and non-sequitur is what sticks with me.