Neville's Column

Rip It Up, Issue 14, 1 August 1978, Page 18

Neville's Column

Ken Williams

NEVILLE PURVIS AT YOUR SERVICE ...

News of the break-up of THE FLYERS recalls the time Midge Marsden and Richard Kennedy just failed an audition for the GREAT ROCK'N' ROLL BAND IN THE SKY. It was back when I was doing my Stand-Up Comic act with Red Mole at the Balcony. The Flyers were doing the end-of-the-night dance bracket when something screwed up in the electrics and the vocal mikes became live . . . Half-way through the fast-rocking “Too Much Fun” there was a flash and down they went. At the hospital they told Richard Kennedy there was a fifty-fifty chance it could have gone the other way. When he woke up Kennedy’s first thought was for his guitar which had been thrown several yards ... It was undamaged and the next night they were back up their playing . . .

NEVILLE PUTS HIS FOOT WHERE HIS MOUTH IS: In the last issue I talked about

The movie FM is no Network. It’s not even kissing kin to Sidney Lumet’s sour look at network television. FM harks back to a grand, and hackneyed, Hollywood tradition: the amateur show. You know, the wholesome kids who are denied their chance to take part in some social event like the college prom by the fuddy duddy adults so they decide to hold their own show and are a sell-out. In the case of FM, the kids are this bunch of disc jockeys who run this hot FM station in Los Angeles. They work pretty hard, but it’s not really work. I mean they’re on the radio,

and they smoke a lot of dope, and they get laid a lot (sometimes even while they're on the air), and, well gee whiz, it looks a whole lot of fun. The hard-hearted adults are these backstabbing sales guys from Chicago (out-of-towners) who aren’t satisfied with being number one in “the second biggest market in America,” but are ravenous for profits. They clash with swinging station manager Jeff Dugan (Michael Brandon) when they try to invade the airwaves with a series of albums-oriented Army recruiting commercials. But it’s all for the larfs. Fast-moving absurdity there’s even a car chase with a strong American Graffiti-type rock soundtrack (you must have seen the TV campaign) and Martin Mull, wickedly funny as a jock who intones preciously about his "art" and has a hilarious breakdown on air when his girl deserts him for his agent. Of course, everything works out in the end. As you knew it would, as it always does in Hollywoodland.