I was going to write about a different song tonight, but my brain got hijacked, and ended up here.

I was cruising some of the blogs in my bookmarks, and stumbled across a video of Paul Revere and the Raiders on one of those 60s dance shows, either Shindig or Hullabaloo, with the go go dancers, Mark Lindsay staring soulfully into the camera. It reminded me of Where the Action Is, which was Dick Clark’s after school show, and the Raiders were one of the house bands. In my junior high years, I faithfully watched the lip-synched location performances. Our version of MTV Spring Break.

And when I think of Where the Action Is, I think of the most (and no doubt only) amazing thing I saw on the show. A video (and we surely did not know to call them that then) featuring a young woman with dark ethnic features, and a long dark dress, she totally blew my 7th grade small-town Wisconsin mind. I think she was at an amusement park, or on a carousel. This would have been late 66, early 67, before the Summer of Love, when we all learned what Hippies were. She sang “Wedding Bell Blues”, and while I wasn’t ready to understand what I was seeing, I never ever forgot it.

This is the music I heard:

Laura Nyro Wedding Bell Blues - Song - MP3 Stream on IMEEM Music

It was eventually a Number One hit for the 5th Dimension in 1969, who had already had hits with Nyro’s “Stoned Soul Picnic” and “Sweet Blindness”. I grew to love her soul-tinged melodies and chords, sensuous mysterious lyrics and her song book was one of my prized possessions. And it all started with a video on a shlocky lipsynch music show.

I can’t find that video online. But I found this amazing story

Laura Nyro’s father tuned my piano yesterday.

* * *

It took him an hour to complete the job. When he finished, I pulled out my Laura Nyro songbook, the one with Eli’s Coming, Wedding Bell Blues and Stoney End. A thick slab of white medical tape holds the binding together. Growing up, I played from the book constantly, until it was in pieces. He seemed pleased to hear of my great admiration for his daughter.

“Do you want to see a video of her at age 19 singing Wedding Bell Blues?”

“Sure,” I said, hardly believing that he would carry around the video in his bag.

“Do you have a - a - what do you call it?”

“A VCR. Yes, I do,” I said and led him into the room at the other end of my apartment. I felt slightly awkward inviting this stranger into my bedroom, but he stood politely at the foot of my bed, while I popped the tape into the machine and pressed play.

“This was taped in San Francisco. I’ve never seen it, can you imagine? Someone told me about it and then I contacted the Columbia Records people and they found a copy. They just sent it to me.”

Laura Nyro appeared on the screen, dressed completely in black, with a wide-brimmed floppy hat, like the one in the Cat in the Hat book. Her pale skin contrasted with her dark hair and eyelashes. Soon I heard the familiar Wedding Bell Blues.

“It’s dubbed,” he said. “To the record track.” I felt amazed to see this early MTV-ish version of Laura Nyro singing the song that later became one of the Fifth Dimension’s biggest hits.

http://www.lifechallenges.org/people/MeyerJ.html

Certainly that was the video I saw on Where the Action Is. I wonder if Clive Davis has a copy in his packing crates.