Podcast Tuesday: "My Best Mom's Wedding"

Marion Ross and Henry Winkler on Happy Days.

Happy Days is rightfully thought of as a 1970s phenomenon, like leisure suits and disco, but the nostalgic sitcom ran well into the 1980s. It finally expired in 1984 after an incredible run of 11 seasons and 255 episodes. It's weird to think of a quaint, fairly corny show like Happy Days coexisting in the same pop culture landscape as video games, rap music, and Ghostbusters. But it did. 

I wonder if the cast and crew of Happy Days had any trepidations in December 1979 about what the new decade would bring. Big changes were soon coming to the ABC series. Ron Howard and Don Most left after the 1979-80 season, for instance. More broadly, America's TV-watching tastes changed in the early '80s, moving away from traditional family sitcoms and toward nighttime dramas (Dallas, Dynasty, Falcon Crest) and action shows (The A-Team, Magnum PI, The Fall Guy). That was definitely bad news for the Fonz and his pals.

As it turned out, the last episode of Happy Days to premiere during the 1970s was Season 7's "Here Comes the Bride, Again." In my opinion, this is one of the highlights of the season. It tells a sweet story about Marion (Marion Ross) convincing her grouchy husband Howard (Tom Bosley) to have a second wedding, since their original wedding took place in a bus depot and was anything but romantic. Their son Richie (Ron Howard) wants to stage the event in the Cunninghams' back yard, but he has numerous obstacles to overcome, including a grouchy neighbor (played by Ron's father Rance Howard) and two incompetent caterers (played by radio comedy legends Bob and Ray).

You can hear everything we have to say about "Here Comes the Bride, Again" on the latest installment of These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast. Hope to see you over there!

Video held for questioning in mysterious disappearance of radio star

The glorious sight of a radio blowing up.

Behold the glory of Wa Wa Nee.

I don't hate the radio. Really, I don't. When I was an adolescent back in those musty, backwards days known as the 1980s and 1990s, I actually cherished the radio. It was, along with MTV, where you went to hear the latest in rock and pop, an essential part of any clueless white kid's life in the Middle West. 

In those days, the go-to stations for teens in the Flint, MI area were WIOG and the ever-so-slightly hipper WWCK. I used to set my alarm on Saturday mornings so I could hear the beginning of America's Top 40 with Casey Kasem. I think Casey's show ran on WIOG, but I wouldn't bet my paycheck on it. With commercial breaks and long distance dedications and such, the show actually ran for several hours. There was no way to listen to all of it. 

But I definitely wanted to hear the beginning of the show (numbers 40 through 30 ), because that's when you'd hear the newest hits -- the ones that had just crawled into the lower reaches of the Top 40. Sometimes, a song would only stick around for a week or two and wouldn't get past #30. Those were some of the tracks I found most fascinating of all. I was intrigued by the phenomenon of getting so close to the big time without actually making it.

In 1987, for instance, there was an upbeat ditty called "Sugar Free" by an Australian funk-pop outfit improbably named Wa Wa Nee. The song peaked at #35 and was Wa Wa Nee's only appearance on the countdown. Casey Kasem only had to say the name "Wa Wa Nee" for a week or two at the most. He'd always mention which songs had fallen off the charts during a particular week; it was always a moment of somber reflection for me when he read that list. "Sugar Free" was nothing special -- I barely remember it now -- but I went ahead and bought (with my parents' money, natch) a cassette of the group's one album anyway. Did I ever even listen to it all the way through? Probably not. It was just part of my weird Top 40 fetish back then.

I listen to a lot of Top 40 radio now, too, though this time it isn't by choice. The sound of a CHR (contemporary hits radio) station wafts across the bank of cubicles at my workplace each morning. I don't know where it comes from, but it's unmistakable nevertheless. The songs are distinguishable, but the rest of the audio registers in my mind's ear as unintelligible background slush. The station must be somewhere in Chicago, since I toil in the Loop, about a block away from the structure formerly known as the Sears Tower. 

From what I can make out of what I hear, the chuckling deejays banter back and forth, take phone calls from listeners, run some sort of daily contest, and play lots and lots of prerecorded sound effects. I don't know what these purpose these interludes serve, but it involves a lot of loud boinging and twanging noises. 

And in between, of course, there is the music. This being Top 40, they're drawing from a very small pool of songs and playing them over and over, several times a day, for months on end. I have heard "Shake It Off" by Taylor Swift and "Fancy" by Iggy Azalea more times than any human ever should. A few months ago, I grew to hate songs like Pharrell Williams' "Happy" and Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" with a stubborn, iron-clad passion. Some nights, I still wake up with "Roar" by Katy Perry echoing in my head. That song is my Vietnam. Keep in mind, this is at 7:30 in the morning. Nobody wants to hear Pink or Ke$ha at that hour of the day. Not even their own mothers.

Radio, as a medium, has given us lots of great things. For me, it's Bob & Ray, The Stan Freberg Show, and good ol' Dr. Demento. I listen to a lot of podcasts these days. That's not precisely radio, but it's the bastard stepchild of radio at least. The only time I voluntarily listen to regular, over-the-air FM radio these days is when I'm in the car. Then it's just NPR or maybe some classical or jazz station where the disc jockeys talk in those half-whispery, golf-announcer voices. 

I mentioned Stan Freberg a few sentences back, though. He was -- and maybe still is -- a great believer in radio. In fact, he wrote this wonderful little advertising ditty on behalf of the radio industry. It's sung by Sarah Vaughn and conducted and arranged by Quincy Jones. Give it a whirl, won't you?

Do yourself a favor and watch this clip: Bob & Ray on "The Tonight Show"

No better comedy team ever existed than that of Bob and Ray.

For over 50 years, the comedy team of Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding -- better known simply as Bob & Ray -- was a familiar feature on radio and television. With their deadpan, mock-serious style, they were hugely influential on a whole generation of other writers and comedians. It's no exaggeration to say that these guys are two of the architects of modern comedy. Ray passed on in 1990, but Bob's still around. In fact, he started something of a comedy dynasty. Bob's son is Chris Elliott and his granddaughter is Abby Elliott.



The clip above is from one of the team's performances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. There's a lot more of the team at www.bobandray.com.