Who remembers Saturday mornings as a child?
Before 24-hour "toon-a-thons" and the magic of "On Demand", all we had were after school cartoons and Saturday mornings. Let's see what I can remember...
"The Smurf"s, "Super Friends", "Pac-Man", "Scooby-Doo" (an American Icon..thank you!) and many others.
My Saturday mornings in the 1980's consisted of some yummy cereal, my pajamas and my cartoon favorites. As I got older, I still enjoyed some ink and paint, but as all pre-teens do, I began to gravitate towards pop culture. So I took the step of watching TV beyond Noon. Even then, options were limited. There wasn't as much pop culture in the media as we know it today. MTV was in its infancy and there was no internet to speak of. We had the radio, cassette tapes and TV.
Growing up, music was very segregated. There was "Black music", basically R & B with a younger, hipper sibling called hip hop, and there was "White music" generally pop music, rock and dance music. These were very clear barriers that were seldom crossed...
...until "American Bandstand".
Dick Clark made the impossible possible in my eyes: creating a level of musical diversity that I never experienced before. For years, I watched such artists such as Madonna, The Gap Band, Rick Springfield, and Sheila E., all of whom performed on the same stage.
I'd never seen anything like it.
Young people have so many options where music is concerned these days. My daughter, for example, can be watching Drake on BET, texting her friends about Kesha, has Mindless Behavior on her desktop and download all kinds of music to her computer (with my approval of course!). I wish I had it so good at her age. All we had were "American Bandstand", "Soul Train" and (for those from the "D") "The Scene".
I'm very grateful for what I had.
My first and lasting exposure to diversity in American music is credited to Dick Clark. Thank you for bringing rap music to TV, thank you for allowing me to appreciate pop groups like Wang Chung and Talking Heads. Thank you for putting my favorites on the air: New Edition, Bobby Brown, The Time, Madonna, Stevie Wonder, Blondie, Prince, Cyndi Lauper, Jody Watley, The Gap Band and so many others...
You changed the game forever. Spin the hits for the angels, Mr.Clark.
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