THIS IS HOW THE POGO STARTED

A few weeks ago I came home to find some friends watching TV Party, a documentary about the TV show of the same name. TV Party was a kind of weird, freeform talk show on Manhattan public access television hosted by Glenn O'Brien, a former High Times and Interview magazine columnist who is now GQ's very own Style Guy, and featuring a bunch of other members of the Lower East Side art scene, like Chris Stein and Debbie Harry from Blondie, Jean-Michel Basquiat (the SAMO graffiti artist), Amos Poe... For a reference point, think of a hipper, more stoned Letterman if he also had a penchant for politics. In the doc, dude is the embodiment New York punk/New Wave cool, but time's certainly been kind to Glenn, and he's still holding himself together quite nicely.



Proof that getting old doesn't have to mean going square.

Since I only caught the second half of the documentary the first time I saw it, I ordered it through Netflix last weekend. I thought it was really well-made; you got a definite feel for what the show was like without having to sit through an entire episode, which can apparently be like sailing rough waters at times. It certainly told a familiar story about Manhattan, and it writes a loving epitaph just like all the others, but TV Party's a cool and mostly unknown proxy to tell the story through. And at the very least, you get to see some cool footage of a bunch of semi-famous to famous people going dumb and making even dumber TV. And, of course, there's Blondie.

Anyway, I've had the song that plays during the credits stuck in my head since I first saw it, and even after watching the trailer for the doc on YouTube, a Google search for the lyrics yielded no results. When I watched it a second time I found out it was by Walter Steding, a frequent guest on the show. Steding actually has it and a few other songs posted for free on his website.

Here it is. Enjoy. I don't know the name of it; let's say "Waterfront," or something.

DNA on TV Party...



Some footage from the film. Blondie playing "The Tide Is High," Klaus Nomi, Debbie Harry pogo-ing...