My Dinner With Milner

No On SOPA !!!

2012-01-18T10:37:00.000-08:00

I said...

No on SOPA !!

Please contact your representative and encourage them to vote against this bill.

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Love...Japanese Style

2011-12-12T10:55:00.000-08:00

American Graffiti has a huge fan base in Japan as evidenced by the mad respect and love shown for the Milner Coupe at last years Yokohama Mooneyes show. And the fascination doesn't stop with the cars. Check out this link for www.americangraffiti.jp . That's the Japanese language version. You can access the English version here.

The translations have to be automated because they are strange at best and hilarious at times. But what comes through is their obvious love for our favorite film by the research they've done and the terrific resources they have provided. Lots of pictures, pages and links to sift through. Have fun and Arigatou gozaimasu to the Facebook friend who turned me on to this.

Aloha.

Instant Karma

2011-11-09T03:23:00.000-08:00

I knew it was too good to last. We're taking my Dad's nice bone stock '38 Ford and souping it up. Do they still say that? I guess so 'cause I just did. Anyway, the engine is tired and we're getting tired of messing with the distributor. It's impossible to reach and we can't keep the s.o.b. timed. We considered running a more recent distributor and upgrading to a 12 volt system. But if we were gonna do that, why not just change the damn engine? It's either stock or it's not. You can't be a little bit stock, pregnant or dead. You is or you ain't.

After the Graffiti Coupe project (okay, there's never really an 'after' with that never ending dream/nightmare project), I was ready to fore-go the whole custom thing for a while and try to face the challenge of restoring something the way God and Henry Ford intended it to be. But this isn't my car, it's my Dad's. And with a gorgeous rebuilt flattie sitting in my office (It's art, baby!), I was losing the argument. And if the truth be known, it's just not in my father's DNA to leave a car alone. If it isn't brand new, it's a project. Who am I to argue after the Naked Milner? And besides, who doesn't need another hot rod... I'm in.

But dropping this motor in isn't going to be without it's own problems. It's sporting dual carburetors on a Fenton manifold. The carbs sit too close to leave the generator in the stock position, so it's offset. But now we have to figure how to mount a mechanical fan on it without getting too goofy. You'd think Fenton would have made a matching adaptor because they put bolt holes on the front, but I haven't been able to find one. Someone must make something that works. We're going to try our damnedest to not run an electrical fan. That would be gay (Oh no! I'll never direct the Oscars now...).

So if you know how this is done, please give a holler. I'll be up. Aloha.

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Talking Shop With Paul LeMat

2011-10-24T14:57:00.000-07:00

Sam Weisberg over at the Hidden Films website had a terrific chat with our favorite actor recently. Sam was kind enough to post the transcript and even took the time to let us know about it. Check it out. Aloha.

Harold Johnson's 1934 Ford

2011-10-14T07:32:00.001-07:00

The car my Dad was driving when he met my Mom (and subsequently made her drive to work after they were married and he bought a Cadillac) was a 1934 Ford 5W Coupe. He took off the running boards, mounted motorcycle/spare tire cover fenders on the front and dropped an Olds Rocket 88 in it for power.

He can't remember what the headlights or back bumper were off of but the rest of the car was pretty much stock. He kept it until I came along then traded up for something my Mom wouldn't be embarrassed in. What was wrong with her?

Blurry picture of Barbie wondering why she has to drive this 'ol noisy thing to work.

Sure wish they had kept it, but that wasn't his way.. Like most hot rodders, he loved getting new toys, but also like most car guys, money was tight and to get something new you had to get rid of something old. These pictures were taken in Westchester, CA in 1955.

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The Milner Coupe 2011 - Hot August Nights

2011-09-21T01:32:00.000-07:00

Cousin JP was in Reno last month during a hot August day and found the Graffiti Bunch alive and well and the Coupe looking spanky clean.

The real Milner Coupe

Pretty awesome site. Looks like a Paradise Road re-dux!

Rick Figari's Falfa tribute is probably alot nicer than the real deal. Haven't heard it run yetthough.

Candy Clark is way too popular to get a proper lunch break.

Paul LeMat looking fit and ready to race. He's always accomodating to Graffiti fans.

Popular Bo Hopkins is always a blur at these fan functions.

Aloha!

'da Hui Rocks!

2011-09-13T01:32:00.000-07:00

This Graffiti Coupe project is like the mob, just when I thought I was out...it pulls me back in.And just when you think there is no more to learn, that there's no more parts to find, nothing to make it more accurate, nothing more to make this thing jump off the big screen into your driveway, nothing more, nothing more... Wham! 'da Hui raises it's head again. RG, you are the man.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Except 'da Hui no ka oi

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Where Were You In '62?

2011-08-30T13:32:00.000-07:00

Riverdale evidently. This is Archie Graffiti drawn by Jeff Shultz & colored by Hedvig Haggman-Sund.

American Graffiti Publicity Still 5144-42

2011-08-24T01:32:00.000-07:00

Give Me A Brake

2011-08-17T01:32:00.000-07:00

Anybody building a period correct hot rod, and especially those building tributes to the Graffiti Coupe have to decide early on how far to go with accuracy. A lot of owners want a car that looks like it was put together back in the day, but want it to drive and handle like a new car. They prefer modern safety features like disc brakes, seat belts and oh... say, parts that don't break. Others try to create a time machine that has not only the right look, but the correct feel of an old rod. As many NOS parts as possible are used. Junkyards and ebay are scoured for old parts with sufficient life left in them. Some even use period correct methods of construction and finish. And in the case of some tribute builders, mistakes and 'boo-boos' are re-created to make it seem as authentic as possible.

The Naked Milner kind of cut the cake down the middle. We tried to stay as accurate to the original Coupe as possible. But we also knew we wanted to build our car right, something the Graffiti Coupe builders could never be accused of. That meant that each part and issue was dealt with on a part by part basis. We knew that sloppy construction was out. Welding would be done tight and right. Most safety decisions fell on the side of common sense as well. But we tried not to change anything that gave the Coupe it's character. Goofy was in as long as it didn't kill us or threaten the longevity of the car. Leave the rear window out? Right... as if. As has been explained here before, the Naked Milner tries to be the car that the character John Milner drove in American Graffiti as opposed to the prop* vehicle that actor Paul LeMat worked in while making the movie.

Today we show some pictures of the rear brake lines. Thrilling I know. But they serve to illustrate our point about upping the quality a bit without compromising the accuracy too much. Where the Coupe's lines hang like telephone wire on a country road, we took the cleaner and easier to maintain route. We figure when our coupe has been around as long as Milner's, it'll start sagging and showing it's age too. Naturally. Then it should be real accurate.

Aloha

* We are not suggesting the American Graffiti Coupe was only a prop. But it was used and treated as one in the film. Hence quite a few left over crew modifications were left in tact on the car after filming. The Coupe was purchased as an existing street worthy hot rod and was used as such after the films.

Elvis Dug Cars

2011-08-16T16:10:00.000-07:00

Like many who didn't start with much, Elvis viewed a nice car as the ultimate symbol of success. Once he had made a little money, he started dressing the part and was never again seen without a cool ride. The cat just flat out dug cars. His taste in automobiles was on a par with his clothes and hair. He set trends without ever seeming to try too hard. No one before had ever looked like him and as far as country boys from the South, nobody had ever had as many nice cars as him either. But he didn't collect them, he just drove 'em for awhile and then gave 'em away. To this day there are old cars and bikes still driven all over Memphis that were once gifts from Elvis. We remember the king on this anniversary of his passing. Aloha.

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The Milner Coupe 2011

2011-08-15T01:32:00.000-07:00

Breath Of Life - Cooper's Still 2011

2011-08-14T19:39:00.000-07:00

Kailua is a cool place now, but Kailua in the early seventies was epic. You could drive when you were fifteen, drink at eighteen, and you didn't have to go to town to hear and see some of the best bands in Hawaii. There was live music everywhere. My favorite place to take a date was Pinky's Broiler at the Pali Palms Hotel. The house band there was a group called Cooper's Still, and they played the greatest version of Sail On Sailor since the Beach Boys.

Recently a gentleman named Jud Haskins started a Facebook page dedicated to a.) remembering those bands and musicians that played in Kailua back then; and b.) finding out what happened to them. The page exploded and turned into a gathering place of not only the members of those bands but the folks who were there enjoying their music. I had thought I was the only one who remembered those days so fondly. Boy, was I wrong.

Not content just to oversee a nostalgic trip down memory lane Jud, a music producer by trade, gathered some of those musicians and created an album of new music called KAILUABANDS named after the Facebook page. It is crazy good and hasn't left my truck's CD player since I picked one up at Hungry Ear Records a few weeks ago. Breath Of Life was the first song released off the album and captures perfectly the sound and feeling of the Kailua I remember from my youth, and maybe more importantly feels like Kailua today. Please enjoy and pick up the album by contacting Jud via the Facebook page.

Aloha

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The Milner Coupe 2005

2011-08-13T01:32:00.000-07:00

We Don't Have Near Enough Pictures Of Cindy Williams On Here...

2011-08-12T19:33:00.000-07:00

What a cutie.

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On Location: Cruising With 'American Graffiti' by Larry Abramson

2011-08-11T08:53:00.000-07:00

This story was broadcast on NPR's Morning Edition August 11, 2011

Cruising on Main Street: A scene from George Lucas's 1973 film American Graffiti.

Watch the opening scenes of George Lucas's 1973 classic American Graffiti, and you will catch glimpses of my hometown, San Rafael, California, as it flits past the windshields of the classic cars that serve as the real set of this movie. As the film opens, Steve, played by Ron Howard, and Curt, played by Richard Dreyfuss, are whiling away their last night home before leaving for college back east. Curt is plagued by doubts, and Steve has to speak a little courage to him. "We're finally getting out of this turkey town and now you want to crawl back into your cell, right? You just can't stay 16 forever! You've got to get that into your head!"
What is it about this "turkey town" that makes it so confining? We never really learn that. We just know that this place, a composite of San Rafael and a bunch of other Bay Area burgs, is nowhere. It is a cultural backwater that drowns anyone who stays there past high school. Take the character John Milner, the town's dominant drag racer. Just out of high school, he's already beset by nostalgia for a mythic past. He can still remember the time when it took a whole tank of gas to cruise the main drag. Even though there's still plenty of action on the strip, it's just not the same.

That sense of nostalgia is why we went back to the strip for our series "On Location," which looks at the places where movies are filmed, and the ones they evoke. American Graffiti was shot in small towns in Northern California, but its real stage is those lanes of blacktop.
So our heroes spend a restless night driving up and back, hooking up, looking for love, searching for some excitement. They have to keep moving, to get to that special place that they never find. It's a familiar feeling to me, and the guy I used to drive around with in high school, Rob Pollock.
Rob and I recently got together for the first time in about 25 years, for a memorial cruise up Fourth Street, to remember our endless wild-goose chases, for the elusive party we had heard was going on somewhere nearby. Usually, it wasn't clear whether there was a party to find, and often as not our drive led us in circles. But the search was all that mattered. If we sat still, we might as well sleep through our youth.
By the time Rob and I could drive, cruising was already in decline. Muscle cars drink a lot of gas, and it's tough to cruise in your mom's Toyota. When American Graffiti came out in our senior year, the movie actually reintroduced cruising, like an extinct plant returned to its native habitat. As Rob recently remembered during our reprise tour, the summer after the movie's premiere, San Rafael's main drag was clogged with cars seeking to reenact the movie's cruising scenes. But soon, the police shut cruising down, and the downtown was left to its inexorable decline.

John Furrer of Petaluma, Calif. in front of his 1955 Chevy pickup.

American Graffiti had that effect in a lot of places, like Petaluma, where most of the film was actually made.
Petaluma is now the staging ground for an annual tribute to the film, full of classic beauties, like a cherry red 55 Chevy pickup that sits in the driveway of John Furrer, who helps organize the American Graffiti event. Furrer likes to give tours of spots where key scenes were filmed, like the final race on Paradise Road.
That race ends in a fiery crash that humbles both racers and helps convince the character of Steve to put off college, and stay with his hometown girl. John Furrer knows that feeling. Like the main characters, Furrer felt the pressure to leave town and go to college. But after two weeks, he turned around and came back. "I wasn't ready to leave home," Furrer says. "Kind of like Ron Howard in the movie, where he wanted to, he was ready to, he thought he could do everything. But yet there were too many things holding him back: his girlfriend, that kind of stuff. And that's kind of what happened with me."
Furrer married, settled down in Petaluma, and appears happy as a clam here.
In the movie, the character of Curt needs a major shove before he follows his destiny to leave this joint. Curt seeks out legendary DJ Wolfman Jack in a lonely radio studio, in hopes of getting a message to the mysterious blonde he has spotted. The Wolfman helps him find that girl, but he also gives Curt some advice. "There's a great big beautiful world out there," he tells him, and convinces the young man to go explore it.
Curt follows that call, and gets on a plane.
This movie, most movies, portrays this as the courageous choice: get out of town. But as we are reminded in the film's final scene, leaving your hometown doesn't change everything. John Milner, the racer, tells Curt, "You probably think you're a big shot, going off like this. But you're still a punk."
That is one undeniable fact I'm reminded of when I go home — no matter how far away you roam, your first step on home territory turns you back into that sniveling punk you were in high school.

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The Milner Coupe 1979

2011-08-10T20:49:00.000-07:00

American Graffiti Publicity Still 5144-10

2011-07-29T13:29:00.000-07:00

1932 Ford 5W Coupe Seat Rails

2011-06-21T12:53:00.000-07:00

Hey race fans, now that the construction of our American Graffiti tribute is complete, it seems we now have a few extra parts (if the definition of 'a few' is... a whole lot). And seeing as how we're pretty sure the world doesn't need another Graffiti clone (if the definition of 'world' is ...me), most of these surplus parts are going up for sale. Since we bought most of them on ebay, that's how we're gonna put them back out there.

Now, not all (or many for that matter) are 'Graffiti Correct'. We went through quite a learning curve during the research of our project. More wrong parts than we'd care to admit were purchased and then discarded into a pile that soon outgrew the stack of parts we would use. And it should be mentioned that when we first started, we had no intention of building an accurate reproduction of Milner's Coupe. We were going for something we called Super Milner. The Graffiti Coupe on steroids so to speak. Hidden Moon Eyes fuel injection, a big 750R automatic tranny, LeCarre steering wheel, remote opening exhaust outlets. But then we caught the bug, and well, you know the rest.

So we thought that when we had something interesting up for auction, we'd post notice here in case any of you folks were looking for something. First up is a set of very Graffiti Correct stock '32 seat rails just like 'ol John has under his bench seat. They're in perfect condition and straight as a... well... a rail. You can check them out here.

Aloha.

Papa Ooh Maui Maui

2011-06-18T18:36:00.000-07:00

Just got back from a quick three day workation in the islands. Spent most of the time addressing a possible new project in Wailea on the island of Maui. It was a tough assignment but somebody had to do it. Even went to Oahu for a few hours for a couple of meetings. That hurt. Didn't want to leave. Felt good to be home, but had to get back to Maui. My little taxi driver from town to the airport hugged me when she dropped us off. Only in Hawaii. Said hello to slack-key guitarist extraordinaire Jeff Peterson. Told him he was a wonderful showmen, he said I was a great listener. We're new best friends.

Weather was great. Ahahahaha, it's always great. Went by Maui Raceway Park. The good news is that it's still open, bad news is that it was Wednesday and nothing was happening. Stopped at two Longs Drugs magazine stands to show any locals milling around the new issue of Hot Rod Deluxe (Page 12). Seemed like a good idea at the time. Also checked a couple harbors looking for available slips for when I steal my Dad's boat and hide it outer island. Mooring rates are a third of San Diego... crazy. I tried to relieve Maui of it's Jim Beam supply. I was unsuccessful. They have a lot. I'll do better next time.

Aloha

South end of project looking makai

Hot Rod Deluxe - July 2011

2011-06-03T09:46:00.000-07:00

So I'm down in SoCal last weekend and I get a message from John H to check out next month's Hot Rod Deluxe that just came out. Holy cow, what a nice surprise! Not only is there an article about the American Graffiti Coupe with a great picture of Candy Clark, more importantly it's also got a picture of Norm Grabowski and Mamie Van Doren from Sex Kittens Go To College (page 43)!!! Oh... and as a side note it even has a couple shots of The Naked Milner!

Part of the Roddin' @ Random section, the article is about the stars of American Graffiti and the continuing popularity of the film. They took the included photos and talked to Ms. Clark at the Sacramento Autorama that we took part in earlier this year. Now, we had no idea they were doing this (the SOBs didn't even mention our name, mistakenly referring to A&M as the builder, but I digress). And in addition to showing The Naked Milner three times, they closed the article by very generously declaring our coupe as perhaps being "closer to the original version than the yellow survivor itself" and "the best clone" they've seen yet. I'm not sure about that (yeah, right) but it's high praise indeed. Thanks guys.

Aloha

Don't Drink & Drive, You'll Spill On The Seats.

2011-05-26T10:08:00.000-07:00

The previous post generated a couple e-mails from friends asking me how to make a " '57 Chevy With Hawaii Plates". I'm not sure how they made these wicked little bombshells at Lehr's Greenhouse back in the day but according to W. Healy at the Houston Press, this is how you'll get 'em now-a-days;

1 ounce Southern Comfort whiskey

1 ounce Amaretto liqueur

1 ounce Grand Marnier liqueur

Splash of cranberry juice

Splash of pineapple juice

Mix ingredients in a shaker with ice. Strain into shot glass (for those of you not wearing a skirt) or serve on the rocks.

Replay video from previous post, drink, repeat.

Administered as a shot, these things go down pretty easy. On the rocks, they're more of a chick drink in my opinion, so I would recommend the following modifications to give this Chevy a little more torque. First lose the liqueurs and fruit juices; too sweet and caloric. Next upgrade the shot glass to a large tumbler and insert no more than two clear, commercial grade ice cubes. Finally, switch the Southern Comfort to Jim Beam and overfill the glass so you get a good extra 1/2 ounce sip before you even start. Now you've got a '57 Chevy with Hawaiian plates designed by a guy who actually drives one. Enjoy.

Aloha

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I'll have a " '57 Chevy With Hawaii Plates" please...

2011-05-24T12:37:00.000-07:00

My first car (also my youngest sister's first car), this 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air has been sitting in our barn for over thirty years. We took it down to A & M this spring to get rid of some of the Hawaii rust and while there I brought down the power plant that came with our deuce. We'll rebuild our John Joseph built 350 one of these days, but in the meantime this thing sounds healthy enough for some fun.

Hawaii built by my Dad and I while I was in high school, this thing should be back in Kailua in the not too distant future. Big ups to Mark Spurlock for producing this hot rod porn.

Aloha

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Dr. FrankenCoupe's Laboratory

2011-05-09T07:00:00.000-07:00

The boys at A & M are having a little shindig next Saturday at their shop in Cornelius, Oregon. It's a good opportunity to see a bunch of very cool hot rods in progress and a few they've finished already. Their shop also boasts some of the coolest big metal shaping machines on the west coast. Always hospitable, I'm sure they'll provide refreshments and some good car chatter. Bring your ride and make a day of it. The parking lot of these things tend to end up being a show of sorts. Good fun and the price is right. See ya there.

A & M DeLuxe Customs

1134 North Freemont Lane

Cornelius, OR 97113

503 992-1988

The Milner Coupe 2011 (Part 2)

2011-04-16T12:53:00.000-07:00

American Graffiti Publicity Still 5144-35

2011-04-13T08:15:00.000-07:00

Greenline - March 15, 1994 Volume XVIII

2011-04-11T07:30:00.001-07:00

Here's a specialized newsletter for Ford Edsel owners. Can you really blame them for claiming Laurie's car to be the 'real' star of American Graffiti? Not a lot of other famous Edsels in the movies, or anywhere else for that matter. It really wasn't the PT Cruiser of it's day.

And because this featured car has been pretty much ignored at the car shows and Graffiti tributes (Sweden being an exception), we guess it shouldn't be too much longer before the cloners discover this wide open opportunity. It probably had as much, if not more screen time in the film as the more iconic cars. And due to it's relative unpopularity when it came out compared to Deuces and Chevys, it would probably make a highly challanging and interesting project. We can't imagine parts are too easy to come by, especially for the Corsair 4-door.

The presence of one of these parked next to Steve's '58 and Milner's Coupe would sure fill out the next Mel's Drive-In reproduction nicely.

Then someone can tackle Kurt's ride!

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The Milner Coupe - 2011

2011-04-06T17:07:00.000-07:00

The one and only American Graffiti Coupe as still owned by Rick Figari (despite recent heinous rumours to the contrary obviously started by jealous un-desireable types) at the 2011 Sacramento Autorama in northern California.

* It Was April 1st, You Fool, You Fool *

2011-04-02T02:10:00.000-07:00

The first hint was in the headline. As is common practice with pranks of this sort, a clue via an easy to find mistake such as a spelling error was prominently placed. We could have written Sails, but that would have been too easy. Any editor worth his salt would have corrected the banner to read "Figari Sells American Graffiti Coupe! Also, referring to our self in the story as "one of the worst offenders" hopefully pointed to what would have been a terrific coincidence of luck (or ego) since our blog was also the venue for this huge breaking story.

As April Fools jokes go, this was a terrific success. Within moments of posting and sharing on Facebook, traffic at My Dinner With Milner spiked and my phone lit up with all sorts of Graffiti buddies from across the country. I wasn't able to answer all the calls, but those who asked (all of them) were told of the story's origin and set straight. We certainly meant no harm and it seemed that everyone enjoyed the spirit of the prank.

We of course did not hear from Rick Figari or thankfully, his attorneys. And for the record, during the time we spent together at the recent Sacramento Autorama, he was very gracious and most accommodating. He was also extremely complimentary toward the Naked Milner and had absolutely nothing bad to say about the clone builders. Okay, that's a lie, he hates a couple of you. But he really was a nice guy and we thoroughly enjoyed our many conversations with him. In fact he was so impressed by our efforts with our bare metal tribute that he told us that when it becomes time to sale the Graffiti Coupe, he will give us first and last offer. Okay, see that's another lie, he actually reiterated to us very strongly that he will never sell the Coupe. And that's the truth.

Aloha

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Figari Sales American Graffiti Coupe!

2011-04-01T19:54:00.000-07:00

'Keeping the flame alive' says new owner
Popular car to receive upgrades
By Seth Berlestein
AP NEWS WIRE RERVICE
Although quoted many times over the years as saying he never would, Rick Figari of San Francisco, CA has announced that he has sold the 1932 Ford 5W Coupe that stole the hearts of so many car enthusiasts in the 1973 movie American Graffiti. The little yellow hot rod that is credited with reviving the hobby of hotrodding has been under the care of Mr. Figari since he purchased the car in 1985. After using the car as a daily driver while in school, he partnered with actor Paul LeMat and put the car on display at car shows all over the world. This proved so popular with the fans that Figari purchased a replica of the 1955 Chevy that the Coupe raced at the end of American Graffiti. "I figured, why not give the people what they wanted. Seeing these two icons together is always a thrill. Even for me after all these years." But the road eventually took it's toll on Rick and his actor friend.
Attack of the clones

"It was a lot of work for very little money" Figari now says. "But it was worth it. In the beginning the fans were so appreciative, but then around 2005, it seemed like every other car show attendee was building a tribute (copy)" He says that a particular group of hardcore clone builders made his life a living nightmare. Phone calls at all hours, sneaking into the arenas after hours to photograph the famous Ford, these builders were relentless. "They built websites, traded pictures, cloned parts, I even caught one guy trying to steal parts" he sighs. But even with all the headaches, the Graffiti caravan continued on bringing happiness to thousands of fans. But after showing up at a recent car show and being parked next to one of the worst offenders, Figari came to a realization, it wasn't ever going to stop. "I made up my mind then and there to part with my dream car". He has received many solicitations to buy the car and he says he kept them all. A particularly lucrative offer had come from a businessman in Japan. "It's a long ways away, let those clone builders chase it to the far east" laughs Figari. Discretion keeps him from disclosing the sale amount, but he did reveal it was in the eight figures. "That guy really wanted it, and I was fed up" hey says. Will he regret it later? He hopes not. Will we ever see Milner's car again? We can only hope. AP INTERNET 2011

*** UPDATE***UPDATE***

Sacramento Vintage Ford 'Da Kine!

2011-03-30T17:45:00.000-07:00

A big 'da Hui salute goes out to the gang at Sacramento Vintage Ford. They dedicated a big section in their periodic newsletter that went out yesterday to The Naked Milner and it's appearance at the Autorama . It was an unexpected surpise. They also include a bunch of other photos in their gallery. Awesome. So to Darold Kohout and his crew...Sa-Lute!

Also, The Naked Milner is going to streak the Portland Swap Meet this weekend. Basically schilling for A&M, we'll be part of their booth in the main building. Stop in and see us and Mark will buy you a beer. If I'm not there, tell him to throw in a pizza slice too. He's great!

Paul LeMat, Rick Figari, and Mark Spurlock all agree that The Naked Milner is No Ka Oi!

A Pleasant Valley Sunday

2011-03-21T11:56:00.000-07:00

Went down to Portland this weekend to take part in the 55th Annual Roadster Show. The Naked Milner was there, part of A&M's display. This is their hometown shindig so they were all business this year going the whole nine yards on their new show set. There was a retro A&M company sign sitting way atop a new framework that will eventually recall an old service station. It looked great the way it was but Mark and Aaron said that time restraints prevented them from hooking up the electricity to the signage. With lights it should be even cooler. They had current projects there representing all four main food groups, Ford, Chevy, Mopar and Porshe.

Our new undercarriage banner was hung behind the coupe. That picture is sick. Like a giant postcard. It's amazing what can be done with digital photography. We're hoping to add a couple side panels with text and pictures describing the build. That'll make the whole thing about 20 feet long. Yikes. I would have killed to see a picture like that when we were doing the research for our coupe.

Finally got to meet Dave Acheson in person Sunday. Real nice guy. We talked Graffiti Coupe for so long that Gene Winfield gave his seat to my wife Marisa and said "This may take a while". Gene and Candy Clark had adjoining booths and were there signing autographs. Dave had his Graffiti tribute parked in between them as a backdrop. He's on the board of the organization that puts on the show and I guess one of his duties was to make sure those two had a good time. Dave didn't say anything about Candy, but he did mention that Mr. Winfield liked to have fun...alot of fun. Dave looked a little tired. I guess hanging with racing legends is hard work.

The flu bug that I had been avoiding at the office all month finally caught me just prior to leaving for the trip. I was feeling like equine excrement and forgot my camera. So anyway, I ripped off a few pictures online from some guy on the HAMB. I'm sure Mark took tons so I'll try to post later. Aloha.

Travelin' On... The Portland Roadster Show

2011-03-17T18:10:00.000-07:00

Aloha friends, the Naked Milner will be stopping by at this weekend's Portland Roadster Show. We've got a cool new backdrop that features a life size hi-res photo of our coupe's undercarriage. If you ever wanted want a peek at what the American Graffiti Coupe looks like when it's on the rack (albeit sans paint and road souvenirs), come on by. Candy Clark's gonna be there talking story and like-minded individual David Acheson is bringing his Milner tribute to keep her company! Also, Mark and Aaron of A&M Deluxe Customs have a huge new display and will be there showing 3 or 4 of their latest and greatest creations. So if your in Oregon (not Maine), come on by the Expo Center and say hello.

A Hui Hou!

American Graffiti Publicity Still 5144-29

2011-03-14T07:11:00.000-07:00

Love American Graffiti Style

2011-03-11T10:47:00.000-08:00

We've all seen the images this morning from Japan of the devastating effects from this morning's earthquake and subsequent tsunami. Our thoughts and prayers are with all those affected and those who have family and friends in Japan. Thankfully Hawaii dodged a bullet today when the expected tsunami there turned out to be a mere 3 foot swell. As the wave rolls toward the west coast, let's hope they are equally blessed.

We have a couple of regular readers in Japan and one of them let all of us know via Facebook that he and his family were safe and well.

As demonstrated by the huge attendance at last years Mooneyes show, there are a lot of American Graffiti fans over there. The custom car scene in Japan rivals anywhere else in the world. Some of the rods and bikes they are turning out are truly awe inspiring. While we send are best wishes to eveyone in Japan, let's hope those cars were on the high ground.

Aloha and Bonzai!

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One On One With Paul LeMat

2011-03-09T04:37:00.000-08:00

Mark Groesbeck of Kip's American Graffiti Blog talked with our man Paul LeMat at the recent Autorama in Sacramento, California. It's one of if not the most interesting chats on tape that have been posted with Mr. Milner. Take a few few moments and check it out. Aloha.

American Graffiti In 3-D !

2011-03-08T12:13:00.000-08:00

Well not quite but it is finally being released in the Blu-ray format.
Or as it says on Blu-ray.com...
Universal Studios Home Entertainment has announced that it will release American Graffiti (George Lucas, 1973) on Blu-ray on May 31.

Special features include:
U-Control:
Video commentary with director George Lucas
The Music of American Graffiti
The Making of American Graffiti
Screen Tests
Theatrical Trailer
My Scenes
BD-Live
Pocket BLU App

One of the special features is a screen in screen commentary from Lucas on what you are watching at the moment. That should be fun, but I wonder if he'll be able to explain the shots as fast as they're going by. It'll also be interesting to see whether there is a marked improvement in the picture since Lucas originally shot it in a format designed to keep some grain in the finished film. Are all films improved by Blu-ray? Maybe it'll make it easier to see details on the cars. Hope so.

This isn't the be all, end all of Graffiti editions though. There are still those 60 plus minutes missing from the first director's cut. Lucas never throws anything away. They gotta be in somebody's closet. That's when this film will need some commentary. But for now, we get a pristine version of our favorite film and some cool new gadgets. I'm sure the Wolfman will have never looked better.

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The Naked Milner Poster (Number 1) is SOLD OUT

2011-02-21T15:35:00.000-08:00

The Naked Milner may never leave the U.S., but to paraphrase ZZ Top, "We're Bad, We're Worldwide". These posters went a lot quicker than we anticipated. Thanks to all you folks all over the globe for the support and good will. Hope you like them.

Aloha

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The Naked Milner is For Sale!

2011-02-18T18:23:00.000-08:00

The two faithful readers of this blog (Hallå Sven and howdy Mom!), know that one of the goals of the Naked Milner project was to eventually make a poster of our car while it was in bare metal. We were fortunate enough to have Ron Kimble take some great photos of it a few months ago and were so pleased with the results that we decided to write a book about this build and use the pictures as illustrations. When we found out last Friday that we would be sharing a parking space with the American Graffiti Coupe at the Autorama, we decided to get a poster put together as a souvenir of the event.

We only had a couple of days but with the help of Ron's staff we were able to get it done. Most of them are now adorning the more cooler garages of Sacramento, but a few remain and those we offer to you now. Just click on the Pau Hana Garage tab above and you can get these hot rod bird cage liners while they last.

Our Débutante Ball...The Sacramento Autorama

2011-02-04T13:32:00.000-08:00

The Naked Milner will be a proud participant at the 2011 Sacramento Autorama in NorCal next week. Originally honored to be a part of the Suede Pavilion, it seems we are now going to be part of an American Graffiti display with a few of the film's actors and actresses in the main arena.

If you can make it, come on by and say hello. I'll be the guy standing there with a goofy grin on my face. Probably all moon eyed staring at the famous car parked next to us. It's one of my favorites, I can't quite remember the name of it though... you know the one, it looks just like mine... but it's yellow.

Egads, it's exciting...

American Graffiti Publicity Still 5144-14

2011-02-02T13:32:00.000-08:00

Memories Of El Monte - The Penguins 1963

2011-01-31T07:11:00.000-08:00

El Monte is out in the valley east of Los Angeles in California. The one and only Frank Zappa along with Ray Collins, a future member of The Mothers Of Invention, wrote this in 1963 as a tribute to the dances that used to be held at the old El Monte Legion Stadium. They got the feel of the old doo-wop just right and had The Penguins sing it. A local hit, it's still big with the older lowrider crowd in SoCal.

As a side note, my Uncle Bob went to Fremont High School in L.A. with the original Penguins. Their biggest hit was Earth Angel. Enjoy

The Penguins - Memories of El Monte 1963

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American Graffiti Publicity Still 5144-07

2011-01-30T16:12:00.000-08:00

Hot Rod New Zealand - April 1992

2011-01-21T07:11:00.000-08:00

Or...

"Connecticutt Yankees in King Pōtatau's Court"

All the way back in 1992, these guys had it going on Graffiti style way down in New Zealand.

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American Graffiti Publicity Still 5144-05

2011-01-16T07:11:00.000-08:00

Crawdaddy - July 1978

2011-01-12T07:11:00.000-08:00

Here's an article that came out just before the re-release of American Graffiti. We also put up a little homemade radio tribute to Stockton California. You know, the home of Herbie & The Heartbeats.

KSTN Stockton, CA 1962 - Big Daddy Radio

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Happy Elvis Birthday Milner...

2011-01-08T07:11:00.000-08:00

The Naked Milner All Pau

2011-01-05T01:32:00.000-08:00

That's the island way of saying were finished. Done. Fini. No mas. Kaput. We came, we saw, we conquered. Whew!

Is my Graffiti Coupe tribute done? Nah, not quite. Still needs paint. But as we are scheduling the work, it occurred to us that as a project, or perhaps better described as a goal, The Naked Milner is complete. Really, when we left Ron Kimball's studio, the final bell had been rung. It's only been as we prepare to disassemble it that the realization of a job done is setting in. The application of color, while important is somewhat anti-climatic. Were it not for wanting to participate in the festivities in Petaluma, we might have let it wait a while. It will be nice to be able to drive it, let it get dirty... use it.

So we are now putting all the photographs and research in order to finally put to bed what has been an obsession for the best part of the last decade. Are we ready for that? Oh yeah. It's hard to maintain a passion for anything for five plus years, let alone something that required so much effort, moola, and singular devotion to cause. So after putting the period on the last chapter of The Naked Milner story, We will tilt our head and try to shake out all that we have learned that now keeps us from being able to look at any thirties coupe without asking where the firewall mounted dual master cylinder is.

Any feelings of regret? Pangs of nostalgia and wishing it didn't really have to end? No way José. When I see how much fun guys like David Atcheson and Mario Calabrese are having with their coupes it makes me wonder how we got caught up in all the minutia. Well, I do know how, and I'll be explaining all that in the near future, but I really do want to get some kicks on Route 66 (or more accurately Paradise Road) before I'm too much further into my social security.

Pau.

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...And We're Back

2011-01-03T07:11:00.000-08:00

2011! Great things ahead...

First we wanted to share part of an an e-mail we got over the Christmas break from the one and only Johnny Holliday;

"Just got word that you had posted Cruisin 64 on your website back in October and just wanted to say thank's......

It was and still is quite an honor to be among those chosen by Ron Jacobs to be part of his brilliant series.

Those days were some of the best I've experienced in all my years in the Biz.
All the best and Happy New Year.

Johnny Holliday"

Having been a legendary disc jockey in radio's early rock & roll heyday, Johnny is now and has been for some thirty odd years, the voice of University of Maryland basketball. He's written a couple of books about his experiences, "From Rock to Jock" and "Hoop Tales" that you can get Amazon or at his website jholliday.com.

If you get a moment, go back and check out Johnny circa 1964, or tune in this season to the Terrapins games. A true voice for the ages.

Merry Christmas

2010-11-25T07:11:00.000-08:00

Here's wishing that you and yours are enjoying a peaceful and safe Holiday Season.
Aloha

Five Summer Stories - 1972

2010-11-24T21:00:00.000-08:00

I saw the surf film Five Summer Stories at the Aikahi Park Theater when it first came out. I was never really the same after that. I love the original soundtrack and still listen to it often, but someone overlayed some Jack Johnson over this bitchin' scene with Gerry Lopez at Pipeline and it feels a lot different, but right too.

I also linked the original song, Pipeline Sequence" by Honk. For an old timey feel, turn off the volume on the first screen and play them both at the same time. Aloha.

Harold Gets His Snow Day

2010-11-23T13:32:00.000-08:00

1931 Ford Model A Snow Car

My Dad's been waiting all year to get this duel axle, tracked Model A on the street. Last night we had a pretty good cold front move in. And with Western Washington all but shut down this morning with iced roads (this ain't Chicago), it was a bit of a slack day at work. 19 degrees in the sun, 2 inches of packed ice and conditions were go. We won't put the front skis on until we get some real snow (don't want the local heat accusing us of tearing up the pavement), but according to the forcasts, it won't be much of a wait. This old beast really scoots and you haven't lived until you're heading down hill and you realize you have two brake handles on your right, but only one right arm. Steering wheel or brakes? Oh 'da thrills. Everybody had a lot of fun until we had to abandon the un-heated cab and head for the Bookers.

Harold Johnson On The Cold Streets Of Puyallup

Beau & Grampa Snow Car-ing

Ski Wheels

Back To The Barn

The Best Of Street Rodder - 1982

2010-11-22T13:32:00.000-08:00

Kris Erik Stevens - WLS, Chicago 1970

2010-11-21T07:11:00.000-08:00

Cruisin' 1970 was produced in 1995, long after the original series had been put to bed by the originator, KHJ's Who-Da-Guy Ron Jacobs. We haven't found it on vinyl but did crab the CD a few years ago. It has some great tunes on it but they included a long-ass political advertisement that makes you want to make sure you never move to Chicago. But these shows are supposed to give us a taste of how radio really was and I guess the good comes with the bad.

1970 was the official end to the sixties and the music we were listening to illustrated the changing times. This volume's eleven songs could easily be expanded by an enterprising audiophile with Sound Forge.

But still a nice trip down memory lane before we have to put away the rods for the winter. Enjoy.

WLS, Chicago 1970 - Kris Erik Stevens

Liner notes by Sean Ross - They were talking about weightier things, the Temptations were, riots and the environment and Vietnam and so forth, but their "Ball of Confusion" didn't just describe the world in 1970. It was also a pretty good metaphor for the state of the music industry and top 40 radio at the time.

It would have been simple if every 14-year-old had heard "Whole Lotta Love" in 1969, decided that top 40 radio as they'd known it was basically irrelevant, and made a beeline for the FM rock side. But that didn't happen - for one thing, most kids had to hear "Whole Lotta Love" on AM because there wasn't an FM rocker in their market yet. Besides, transitions take time. Remember that Doris Day was still having top 10 hits even after Elvis went into the Army.

That's why top 40 spent the next five years looking over its shoulder at rock radio but not, until the end, looking up at its rival. And that's why, during that time, almost anything went.

In the early 70's, you could say that top 40 tried to become FM rock radio and you'd be right. Listen to a tape of nights on KHJ, L.A.'s original "Boss Radio," in the early 70's and you'll hear a ton of album cuts - things that wouldn't even make the cut at classic rock radio today. You could say that top 40 radio went more bubblegum than ever in 1970 and, given the Osmonds, The Partridge Family, the Poppy Family, Bobby Sherman, Tony Orlando & Dawn, The Archies, and the Brotherhood of Man/White Plains/Edison Lighthouse/Pipkins (who were actually one British studio group), you'd be right, too.

There were a lot of chart acts in the early '70s that could work both sides of the dial. Chicago, The Guess Who, and especially Three Dog Night all did a pretty good job of living a double life for a while. And just like a lot of the commercial attempts to cash in on "Generation X" already look bogus, there was also much in the early 70s that was "hippie" without ever being "heavy."

After all, nothing could be more ache typically early 70s hippie than a song about a guy, his gal, and their dog truckin' aimlessly around the country, until you consider that the song in question was "Me and You and a Dog Named Boo." We all know how to categorize Lobo now, but it wasn't so simple then.

The same goes for Olivia Newton-John covering Bob Dylan, the Osmonds copping the guitar riff from "Immigrant Song" for "Hold Her Tight," or, for that matter, the entire singer-songwriter movement. James Taylor and Carole King seemed pretty heavy at the time; now you're most likely to hear them on your market's "Lite FM" station.

There was similar confusion in radio itself. In 1970, the shot heard around the broadcast industry wasn't fired by an FM rock station. It was fired by a top 40 Am station in San Diego that responded to the seeming irrelevance of screaming DJs by screaming even louder. San Diego's KCBQ threw out the jingles that had gone between every record and took a lot of its vocabulary from the hippie movement -- i.e., "Boogie on over to the phone and rip me off for your 'Keep on Truckin' Q-Shirt!!!" -- and in doing so, energized top 40 AM radio to fight on for at least another three to four years.

And if you were Kris Erik Stevens, night-time dominator at WLS, Chicago's 50,000 watt blowtorch, you probably didn't know there was a problem aanyway. If WLS was any less of a dominant force in the early 70s than before, why was it hard for Kris to make it from the elevator of the Stone Container Building to his Corvette at night without running a gauntlet of female admirers? Why was he, by his recollection, No. 1 at night in Nashville? No.1 at night in Amarillo?

Stevens joined WLS in 1969, just as the AM blowtorch was shedding a lot of the DJs who ahd been there since its conversion from country to top 40 in the early '60s. WLS was never as overbearing as KCBQ -- it was always the thinking man's screaming top 40 station - but around that time, PD John Rook picked up WLS' tempo, streamlined its presentation, and traded its old jingles featuring the Anita Kerr Singers for ballsier ones.

What you'll hear on this volume represents Stevens on WLS in the years 1970-1972. At the beginning of that era, WLS was "The Big 89." (Detroit's equally monstrous CKLW was the "Big 8." KHJ, by that time, was the "Big 93.") By 1971, WLS had changed slogans and jingle packages again, becoming "The Rock of Chicago." You won't hear WCFL, Chicago's other 50,000 watt blowtorch, on this album, but it's always hovering just in the background. "Super 'CFL" went toe-to-toe with WLS - even stealing Stevens away at one point - until becoming one of the first top 40 AMs to throw in the towel in 1976.

The record that kicks off this volume represents 1970's confusion as well as any.+ On paper, Mama Cass' "New World Coming" is a hippie manifesto - "There's a new world coming/This one's coming to an end." On wax, however, it's straight MOR from the Brill Building pens of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weill, and seems to have had an undue influence on Barry Manilow's "Daybreak" some seven years later. Cass had the biggest solo hit of any of the former Mamas & Papas - 1968's "Dream a Little Dream of Me" - before turning out a string of easygoing singles in a similar vein to this one: "It's Getting Better," "Make Your Own Kind of Music," and the unfortunately titled "A Song That Never Comes." Cass would collaborate with Dave Mason on an LP, and take part in an unsuccessful Mamas & Papas reunion before her mysterious death in a London hotel room - heart attack? ham sandwich? worse? - in 1974.

On the R&B side, there was definitely a new world in the making in 1970. Contrary to popular belief, Motown's hit assembly line didn't grind to a halt with the advent of the hippie era: Norman Whitfield's Temptation hits, Edwin Starr's "War," and the Jackson 5's four #1 hits in 1970 all would have borne that out, even if Berry Gordy hadn't finally decided to put Marvin Gaye's "What's Goin' On" out after all. But the seat of power did shift from Detroit to Philadelphia in the early '70s, especially after Motown left town anyway.

Philly was where Wilson Pickett went to revive his career in the early '70s. After a series of (usually) ill-advised pop covers in the late '60s (i.e., "Sugar, Sugar"), Pickett called on Kenny Gamble & Leon Huff, then in the process of making the transition from hired guns (Jerry Butler, Dusty Springfield, Archie Bell & The Drells) back to label magnates (The O'Jays, Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes, Billy Paul, etc.) and defining the Philly sound in the process. "Don't Let The Green Grass Fool You" is the lightest, jauntiest Pickett hit ever, but that's because of the track and not because Picktt's flamethrowin' vocals are toned down any. Pickett next headed to Muscle Shoals and cranked out a few more terrific singles, including a (literally) incendiary cover of Free's "Fire and Water" before leaving Atlantic records and sinking into a morass of personal and legal problems.

Joe Simon's career is associated with another 50,000 watt powerhouse, WLAC Nashville. Whether it was Bob Seger growing up with WLAC in Ann Arbor - where it came in better at night than the Dteroit R&B stations - or Millie Jackson hearing WLAC in Augusta, Ga., after the R&B stations in her town had signed off, WLAC was an influence on more than one artist, but it was influential for Simon was managed by legendary WLAC DJ John Richbourg, one of the guys who hawked baby chicks and White Rose Petroleum Jelly to a nationwide audience and may have been the closest thing Amercian radio had to a Wolfman Jack. Richbourg himself produced Simon, fashioning him as a deep soul man and frequently going to the country charts for material (Simon's earliest R&B #1 was a cover of Waylon Jennings' "The Chokin' Kind"), before turning over the keys to Gamble & Huff in late '71. Again, they came up with a lighter, less greasy Simon sound - keeping the singer's trademark vocal tension, but changing the groove to something airier for "Drowning In The Sea Of Love."

It would have been harder to come up with a lighter 5th Dimension record than "One Less Bell To Answer." The Burt Bacharach/Hal David song - originally recorded by Keely Smith (of Louis Prima duet fame) in the late '60s - is always thought of as the on where the group made that hard right turn toward Vegas MOR territory, losing any R&B credibility they might have managed to scrape together in between Jim Webb and Laura Nyro covers. Yet, 25 years later, "One Less Bell To Answer" is the one 5th Dimension song that gets a significant number of requests at stations specializing in R&B oldies. I once asked a listener why and she told me that it was because Marilyn McCoo clearly sounded like she'd been done wrong by the man involved and if that wasn't the essence of R&B, what was? The 5th Dimension - minus Marilyn McCoo & Billy Davis, Jr. - would later make an attempt to head off Diana Ross by covering "Love hangover" before she released it as a single - not that covering Diana gives you automatic R&B credentials either - before releasing their last chart single on Motown in the late '70s.

The early '70s were banner years for "Jesus rock," represented by everything from George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" to B.J. Thomas' "Mighty Clouds of Joy" to the singles from "Jesus Christ Superstar" to Judy Collins' improbable hit with an acapella "Amazing Grace" to Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky." Thomas would later make the transition to the Christian pop cahrts, but I had a friend in those circles tell me that most of the other Jesus rock hits wouldn't qualify, especially "Spirit in the Sky," because Greenbaum's contention that "I've never been a sinner/I've never sinned/I've got a friend in Jesus" denies a key tenet of Christian theology: that man is conceived in original sin and must work, unsuccessfully, toward perfection in Christ. Greenbaum, whose previous chart appearance had been on Dr. West & The Medicine Show's mid charter, "The Eggplant That Ate Chicago," was produced by Bay Area legend Eric Jacobsen, whose career spanned the Lovin' Spoonful to Chris Isaak.

Sugarloaf's "Green-Eyed Lady" is another one of those records that straddles the line between the hippie and the straight world - enough heaviness and mysticism for the heads - a friend remembers seeing them in Detroit opening for Styx and Roxy Music (!) - but not enough credibility to make for a long career. Sugarloaf's Jerry Corbetta would, however, have the last laugh about being a one-hit wonder, coming back in 1974 with a great single about being a one-hit wonder, the much bubblegummier "Don't Call Us, We'll Call You."

Jim Peterik and the Ides of March were hometown heroes at WLS, having already bounced from label to label and style to style several times before breaking through with the Blood, Sweat and Tears influenced "Vehicle." Peterik, of course, would resurface in the early-to-mid '80s as the leader of Survivor, but the WLS connection here is that the Ides' Frankie Rand produced Kris Erik Stevens' one shot at pop stardom, a song called "Training Wheels" that Stevens says went top five in Detroit.

One of the things that inevitably happens during a period of transition is that records that wouldn't have been mass-appeal before or after manage to break through, and there's always a quasi-folk record in there somewhere. In 1979, it was Steve Forbert's "Romeo's Tune." In 1995, also a time of great confusion at top 40 radio, it's Freedy Johnston's "Bad Reputation." And in 1972, there was Jonathan Edwards's "Sunshine." Even in the singer-songwriter era, "Sunshine" wasn't the kind of song you'd expect 12-year-olds to buy, unless they just like hearing the word "damned" on the radio. Others, however, found Edwards' verbal assault on "Vietnam, the draft board, my father, and the police" to be a pretty good channel for their own frustrations. Edwards, originally a bluegrass artist, continues to record as a folkie, also venturing into country for awhile in the late '80s/early '90s.

Three Dog Night's "Celebrate" is one of the rare songs by the band that didn't already exist somewhere on vinyl. Three Dog Night was known for its covers - often whipping them together just in time to snuff out competitors like Leo Sayer's "The Show Must Go On" or B. W. Stevenson's version of "Shambala" or Greyhound's reggae original of "Black and White" - but "Celebrate" actually came to them in demo form from songwriters Alan Gordon & Gary Bonner (also known for the Turtles' "Happy Together," "She'd Rather Be With Me," and "She's My Girl") who originally envisioned it as a slower number called "Celebrity Ball." Three Dog Night's string of hits lasted through the mid-'70s. They recorded again briefly in the mid-'80s. Now Cory Wells and Danny Hutton, two of the three original leads, are touring together again.

For the few early '60s pop stars who had some how managed to withstand the British invasion, surviving the hippie years was harder still. The late Del Shannon hung in there by working with other artists, first arranging Smith's rocked-up version of "Baby, It's You," then producing Brian Hyland's simmering, mid tempo take on the Impressions' "Gypsy Woman." Writer Mike McDowell, who has interviewed both Hyland and Shannon, claims the bass line in Hyland's version is stolen from The Archies' "Sugar Sugar." There's also a cut on Hyland's "Gypsy Woman" LP called "Mail Order Gun" about the JFK assassination - which Hyland witnessed first-hand while on tour in Dallas - which is light years removed from "Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini."

As for the women who gave us the original "Baby, It's You," The Shirelles' careers were about to receive a boost in the early '70s from rock promoter Richard Nader whose revival pop tour packages were one of the first sightings of nostalgia for all things '50s-related and paved the way for "Grease" on Broadway in 1972 and "American Graffiti" in the movie theaters 18 months after that. "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow," their breakthrough hit, as well as the breakthrough for Gerry Goffin and Carole King, is included here as this hour's "WLS Yesterday" record.

As the decade turned, the notion of a wave of nostalgia for The Shirelles seemed as likely as, well, the notion of a wave of nostalgia for '70s pop. Over the last two years, however, oldies stations specializing in the '70s instead of the '50s and '60s have popped up across the country. (Chicago was one of the first markets to get one, by the way.) That in itself proves that top 40 radio was still hanging in there in the early '70s, because if it hadn't, there wouldn't be anything for a '70s pop oldies station to play. Top 40 in the early '70s was only dented. If you really want to see the format smashed to bits, look at it today when many cities, including Chicago, don't have a top 40 station per se.

Stevens and another of WLS' stars, "Superjock" Larry Lujack, crossed the street to WCFL shortly after the last of these tapes were made. Lujack came back after "Super 'CFL"'s demise, but Stevens headed to California and tried his hand at acting. Now he's heard as the voice of stations nationwide and has, at various times, also been the voice of Orkin, Pontiac, Sherwin-Williams, and scores of others. He's also back on the airwaves in Chicago as the voice of WPWR-TV and, in the late '80s, had the now-ironic distinction of co-hosting a syndicated radio show with a former football legend called, "Breakfast with O.J."

The early '70s lineup - Art Roberts, Chuck Buell, Joel Sebastian, Steve Lundy, J.J. JeffriesWLS staff until the early '80s when the station finally made a transition from top 40 to AC and then to the talk of Chicago, making it one of the last to do so. Until 1982, WLS had never been beaten by an FM top 40 station.

Waimanalo Blues - Country Comfort 1974

2010-11-20T19:11:00.000-08:00

Hawaii time again. With songs like Pretty Girl, We Are The Children and this one, the beautiful and poignant Waimanalo Blues, Country Comfort established a huge presence in the Hawaiian culture of the '70s. Billy Kaui and the boys deserved a long successful career but alas the excesses of the times were too much. A re-upping of the older Nanakuli Blues, this song spoke of the locals dissatisfaction with the development of the islands. Boy, if they could only see it now. Aloha

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Can You Dig It?

2010-11-19T09:11:00.000-08:00

A Tribute Poem for American Graffiti
by Sam Pierstorff, City of Modesto's Poet Laureate, 2004-2008

Can You Dig It?

If you unearth the body parts buried beneath G street,

you will find a hot rod's canary yellow doors,

the steel wings of a white T-Bird, the tire tread

of a '55 Chevy still smokin' like the Sixteen Candles

you let burn on the last night of summer, 1962.

These are not footprints or fossils.

These are the birthmarks of Modesto.

Rest your ear against the hot asphalt of McHenry Ave.
and you will hear Wolfman Jack spinning At the Hop, and
Johnny B. Goode, and That'll Be The Day when cruising
meant living and death was a finish line no one saw coming.

And if you look closely at the exhaust curling
out of the tailpipes of yesterday's vintage cars,
you might see George Lucas rising like a genie,
and your first wish will be to rewind—

turn back the clock so you can rock around it again
and erase every name in your Book of Love because you
were the fool who kept falling for great pretenders.

But you knew that every stoplight was a fresh start;
every turn could lead you to your goddess.

People say that "You can't stay 17 forever."
And you believe them, but American Graffiti
is spray-painted on the walls of your whole body.

The engine that roars loudest is your own heart
beating, beating. Do not wait for the checkered flag.
Do not look over your shoulder. Look ahead.

The fastest thing in the valley is life.
Don't let it pass you by.

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The Milner Coupe - 2009

2010-11-18T13:32:00.000-08:00

2009 Yokohama Hot Rod Custom Show

Yokohama, Japan

Here are some terrific photos we found on the net from the Coupe's trip to Japan last year. The Japanese really gave it the star treatment and the Coupe never looked better. Owner Rick Figari looks justifiably proud as his cars sit in front of a great Mel's Drive-in back drop.

American Graffiti Press Book 2 (Part 2)

2010-11-17T13:32:00.000-08:00

Here are a few more bubble ads and an article from the #2 press book for the initial release of American Graffiti. These are from back in the day when your hands would get ink on them from reading the newspaper. As mentioned in the first post, these publications were rendered obsolete by the advent of digital artwork, and with the proliferation of the Internet, not all theaters even advertise in their local papers anymore anyway. But they are fun to look at and you can see not a whole lot has changed in movie advertizing whether you see it in the paper or on your laptop.

American Graffiti Publicity Still 5144-38

2010-11-16T01:32:00.000-08:00

Aloha Andy Irons

2010-11-15T13:25:00.000-08:00

Harv Moore - WPGC, Washington, D.C. 1969

2010-11-14T07:11:00.000-08:00

This radio show is the perfect accompaniment to our nations capitol. Bright, bubbly and happy, it has a lot of bread and not much meat. Though 1969 had a lot of terrific rock music, you'd never know it by listening to WPGC. It does contain some great pop like Stevie Wonder's My Cherie Amour and The Israelites by Desmond Dekker, but is mostly filled out by oldies. A lot like a politician, easy to listen to but slightly out of date.

About the closest this edition comes to relevance in 1969 is Dion's Abraham, Martin & John. Some AM radio was still diverse and hip, but as FM radio was gathering steam with album orientated cuts, some AM stations headed for lighter fare.

Turn it up, drive fast and sing along.

WPGC, Washington, D.C. 1969 - Harv Moore

Album liner notes by Robert Scherl - ............."Good morning, Washington!"

No, it's not Adrian Cronauer (or alter-ego Robin Williams). Back in 1969 Harv Moore gave listeners in Baltimore-Washington their morning wake-up call just this way. Bright and upbeat, Moore's "Boy Next Door" approach kept him, and radio station WPGC, the number one rated AM station throughout the Top 40 era.

Harv Moore started his tenure at WPGC in 1963, initially as the all-night jock. Before the year was over, General Manager Bob Howard recognized that Harv's style was a winner for the key morning slot, and in November he made the shift.

WPGC was a perfect example of the newer, slicker Top 40 approach of the era. In the face of burgeoning competition from the new FM rock outlets, AM rockers were tightening their format - less talk, less jingles, more music - a seamless (albeit less personal) approach. Harv, however, was one of the first announcers to develop a regular cast of comedic characters Kay Sera, The Colonel, Orville, Pronto, et al), and listeners loved them as well as Harv. This apparent conflict did not stymie Moore in the least, and it is a testimony to his canny instincts that he was able to integrate his style with the new approach and remain the city's top radio personality.

It was Moore who was requested to introduce The Beatles at their Washington Coliseum appearance, as well as host The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds, Herman's Hermits and many more. Always a recipient of awards for his innovative and appealing approach, this was capped when his peers from all over the country voted him "Radio Personality of the Year."

Just as GI's in Vietnam required a morale boost from Adrian Cronauer, listeners on the home front needed just the same from Harv Moore in 1969. Domestic and international tensions were at an all-time high, with the Vietnam "conflict" heading the list. In Washington, D.C. protest marches and demonstrations were virtually daily business, and the heat generated within the Pentagon walls could have almost melted Antarctica. In Berkeley there were riots over the removal of Eldridge Cleaver from teaching his class "New American Revolution" (he was replaced by Tom Hayden). In New Orleans. the District Attorney Jim Garrison had investigated Clay Shaw for conspiracy to assassinate President John Kennedy, and after his acquittal alleged (with good reason) that the Warren Commission had deliberately covered up evidence. In California, then-Governor Ronald Reagan asked the California legislature to help him drive "criminal anarchists and latter-day racists" off California campuses. In other words, the student body!

On the bright side, 1969 was also the year of the Apollo 11 moon landing by astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on July 20th. Broadcasters agreed to ban cigarette advertising. Golda Meir became Israeli Premier. Mariner 6 and 7, the first Mars probes, were launched. Paul McCartney married Linda Eastman, and John Lennon married Yoko Ono, only weeks apart from each other in March. The first synthetic heart transplant took place at St. Luke's Hospital in Houston, Texas. Woodstock drew 400,000 rock fans to Yasgur's farm for the largest (and peaceful) rock event in history.

At home the top rated TV shows were "Get Smart", "Mission: Impossible", "Hogan's Heroes", "Laugh-In", "Ghost and Mrs. Muir", and "The Carol Burnett Show." Films were better than ever and breaking free of past restrictions with "Easy Rider", "Midnight Cowboy", "Alice's Restaurant", "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", "The Wild Bunch", "Take the Money and Run", "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" and "Z." Mario Puzo saw publication of his epic "The Godfather" and Kurt Vonnegut achieved new fame and many readers with "Slaughterhouse Five."

Clyde McPhatter preceded Ray Charles as the first of the gospel/church influenced secular black singers from which sprang the soul explosion of the 60's. In 1950 Clyde became lead singer for Billy Ward's Dominoes delivering astonishingly impassioned vocals on such hits as "The Bells" and "Harbor Lights." By 1953 Clyde was ready to go off on his own (he was replaced in the Dominoes by Jackie Wilson), and formed his own group, The Drifters. He immediately scored a series of hits for Atlantic Records with such classics as "Money Honey", "Such A Night", "Honey Love" and more. He was drafted into the Army at the height of this success, and then discharged, returned to Atlantic as a solo artist. He scored with many hits, including "Without Love", "Seven Days", "A Lover's Question", "Since You've Been Gone", "Treasure of Love" and more. he scored his biggest hits for Mercury Records in the 1960's, and was one of the first black artists to record in Nashville at that time. Billy Swan ("I Can Help") wrote his first song in study hall at age 16, and it became Clyde McPhatter's most successful record, "Lover Please."

The Champs topped the Billboard Hot 100 for five weeks running in 1958 with their smash hit, "Tequila". However there was no such group! Producer Dave Burgess was cutting some tracks on country-pop singer Jerry Wallace for Gene Autry's Challenge label. At the end of the session he had some time, and wanted to cut a quick instrumental throwaway for a "B" side. Session musician Danny Flores suggested a tune he had written in Tijuana. Burgess quickly cut it, asking Flores to holler "Tequila" at every break in the song. Somewhere along the line, it was decided to release "Tequila" as an "A" side. There was no artist, so Burgess invented a name, The Champs, from Gene Autry's horse Champion. After its' surprising climb to number 1, Burgess formed a real Champs, including future stars Glenn Campbell, Jim Seals and Dash Crofts. They had only a few marginal hits, and after many personnel changes, the group was permanently retired in 1965.

In 1969 it was still possible for a local group to have a major local hit without national promotion, though national homogenization of play lists in the early 1970's soon put an end to that. "He Will Break Your Heart" first hit the charts in 1960, reaching No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100. Produced and written by Curtis Mayfield (who also played guitar) and sung passionately by former Impression Jerry Butler, it was destined to become a standard. The Groovers took it to No. 1 in Washington in 1969, but it was to be another six years before it became a national No. 1, this time by Tony Orlando and Dawn.

The Fifth Dimension began as a group called The Hi-Fi's. In the mid-60's they backed Ray Charles on a tour, after which they split into two groups, The Versatiles and Friends of Distinction. The Versatiles were signed by Johnny Rivers to his new Soul City label at about the same time Lou Adler signed the Mamas and Papas to his Dunhill label. Rivers disliked the name "The Versatiles", feeling (correctly) that it was outdated. Everybody was pleased with the new name, Fifth Dimension. Noting the similarity in sound, Rivers first recorded the group in a cover version of the Mamas and Papas' first release "Go Where You Wanna Go." The two records more or less canceled each other out. The next Fifth Dimension single established their own sound and the group with Jim Webb's "Up Up and Away". "Working On A Groovy Thing" followed their Number 1 "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In", but not to the top of the chart, as did "Working"'s follow-up, "Wedding Bell Blues."

When Harv Moore took over as WPGC's morning host, the top single as Sunny and the Sunglows' "Talk To Me." The song was originally recorded by its composer, Joe Seneca (who portrayed legendary bluesman Willie Brown in "Crossroads") in 1958. When it failed to chart, Syd Nathan cut it for his King label with Little Willie John ("Fever", "Leave My Kitten Alone"). It became a pop and r&b smash in 1958, and again when reissued with string overdubs. Sunny and the Sunglows, a San Antonio based Tex-Mex band, had featured the song in their live act, and decided to record it, stealing the string overdub arrangement from the reissue of the Little Willie John record.

In late 1968 Dion made a stunning comeback after a 3 year hiatus with a song written by his pal Dick Holler, "Abraham, Martin and John." Unlike so many songs of a similar nature, Holler had written, and Dion had sung with a genuine passion and sincerity. This was not lost on millions of record buyers, as well as fellow artists and writers. Lead singer, producer and songwriter for the Miracles, Smokey Robinson (whom Bob Dylan called "America's greatest living poet") was moved so deeply by Dion's record that he recorded a new arrangement for a new Miracles album. Berry Gordy, recognizing that Dion's record had never penetrated the black community, decided to release it as a single. Not only did it become a major black market smash, it was the 22nd Miracles single to reach the Pop Top 40, a string of hits that began in 1960 with "Shop Around" and included Robinson-penned classics like "More Love", "Tracks Of My Tears", "Ooh Baby Baby", "You've Really Got A Hold On Me" and "Tears Of A Clown."

The Angels are one of the best-remembered girl groups of the 1960's, mostly for their number one smash (on Smash Records) "My Boyfriend's Back". Also a chart-topper in Harv Moore's first year at WPGC, the Angels had their first hit in 1961 with "Till" and again in 1962 with "Cry Baby Cry." Riding on a wave of girl groups that included The Shirelles, The Ronnettes, The Crystals, the Cookies, The Chiffons, the Marvelettes and many more, the Angels were the only group of white girls to top the chart in that era, as well as make the R&B charts.

Desmond Dekker was the first artist to introduce reggae to the American public. Record executive Russ Reagan was (is) always an individualist, and took chances based on his instincts which set him apart from most record men of his era. In 1969, as head of newly-formed MCA subsidiary UNI Records, he had already weaned Neil Diamond away from tiny Bang Records to major success, and signed Elton John after he had been turned down by many major labels, (including MCA subsidiaries) Decca and Kapp. No other record executive saw commercial potential in reggae either - but Reagan heard Desmond Dekker's "Israelites" and licensed it from Jamaica, feeling it was a hit. Proven right once again, Dekker hit the Top Ten with this American release. While his followups never matched this success, he paved the way into the 1970s for acceptance of Jimmy Cliff, Bob Marley and The Wailers, Toots and the Maytals, and other Jamaican reggae artists.

Sky Saxon and the Seeds were one of the most interesting groups to surface in the first wave of Los Angeles musicians who were influenced by the Stones and other British groups. Saxon was a true blues fan (he recorded an album with Muddy Waters), as well as an innovative and eccentric exponent of garage-band rock. All these influences came together with a dash of protest, and independent label owner Gene Norman to his small GNP Crescendo label. "Pushin' Too Hard" was the only Seeds single to crack the Top 40 (in 1967), but their albums sold quite well to a large and loyal following.

Steveland Morris was born blind in 1950 in Saginaw, Michigan. As a child he learned to play a multiplicity of instruments, including harmonica, piano and drums. He began recording for Motown's Tamla label at the age of 11, but had to wait until he was much older, at age 12, to score his first number 1. Impressed with his talents, Berry Gordy assigned him the name Little Stevie Wonder, and tried (unsuccessfully) to find a proper direction for his young protege. Stevie supplied it himself, when a live concert recording of a song written by Stevie, "Fingertips (Part 2)", became his first smash. It took a while for this to sink in on the generally canny Gordy, and other producers followed this with only mild success. It wasn't until 1966, when Stevie again took hold of writing and producing (in conjunction with Clarence Paul), that his career really took off. "Uptight", "I Was Made To Love Her" and more established his credibility and streak of hits. "My Cherie Amour" was Stevie's (he had dropped the "Little" by now) 15th pop smash, and he has gone on to over 50 top 40 classics at the time of this writing, including "Superstition", "Overjoyed", "You Are The Sunshine Of My Life", "I Just Called To Say I Love You" and many more. He is also one of the major album artists of the modern era, and remains one of the great musical geniuses of our century.

Rod & Custom - August 1991

2010-11-13T22:00:00.000-08:00

Tiffany Knight

2010-11-12T19:11:00.000-08:00

Tiffany Knight is a SoCal artist who creates by the name of DJ Coulz. And like every guy in this town, she has the same secret dream... to be a Pharaoh. Well maybe not, but she definitely loves American Graffiti and she shows it with her mondo talent. We came across this beautiful print, Ace Of Spades, at DeviantART. She says she is working on an Ace for each of the four main characters story lines. Can't wait to see them. Enjoy.

The Punks Are Winning

2010-11-11T18:00:00.000-08:00

What's wrong with America is this. The kids that used to get beat up in school are now running the place.

Less than a month ago some college kids at a party up in Seattle drank too much and got sick. I use the term kids, but they were all adults. They went to the hospital then home. Because they had been drinking an energy drink/beer combination product, a bunch of parents and school officials started screaming for an investigation into the beverage. Quicker than you can say "I'll blow for votes", local politicians got into the act and called for the outright ban of this and other like products. I wrote about it a couple weeks ago, "Sick As A Dog".

I won't rehash the facts or rant much further. I just thought I'd let you know that they did it. Those beverages are no longer legal to sell in this state. The State of Washington in less than thirty days, changed a law as a knee-jerk reaction to something that happened to a dumbass. Nine dumbasses to be exact. Look, I could care less about the beer, it's what the state's action represents in principle that is alarming.

This country was formed and used to be led by the world's bad asses. The ones who put "Don't Tread On Me" on the flag. They wanted the freedom to live there lives in peace without tyranny. They kicked the shit out of several oppressive governments/countries to allow themselves and their neighbors that right. Now, what England, Mexico, and Germany and Japan couldn't do, the mealy mouthed, politically correct, bed wetting punks from within our own shores have done, put all of us under their thumb. It may not be as bad where you live. I hope not. The state of Washington is a beautiful place. The State Of Washington is fucked.

Our Leaders

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

2010-11-10T20:00:00.000-08:00

My son is training for the Carlsbad Marathon. His running schedule is dictated by how much money he collects for the Children's Cardiology Foundation at his website Five Rolled Tacos. He adds a mile for every 2.50 donated. Then he creates a humorous thank you video for each contributor. This one is for our modest tithing. It's a good cause and these little movies make it a lot of fun. Aloha

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Mad - No. 166 April 1974

2010-11-09T13:32:00.000-08:00

Good afternoon race fans!

You're still number one with us. And to prove it, we're re-upping American Confetti for all of you high cultured types. Now, Cracked a couple weeks ago went over big with our pub crawling mates across the pond so here's to you boys, our one fingered salute just for y'awl!

We're real popular in the UK. A few years ago when I was tooling up from London to Harrogate to visit some friends, everyone who passed us held up two fingers. I thought it meant 'V" for victory, a hold over from the war. I waved back and smiled. My buddy later explained that it wasn't as kind a gesture as I thought and that it was probably because I was driving in the fast lane. A big no-no in Europe. Passing only f&$#ing yank!

Enjoy.

American Graffiti Publicity Still 5144-46

2010-11-08T07:11:00.000-08:00

Johnny Dark - WCAO Baltimore 1968

2010-11-07T07:11:00.000-08:00

The Cruisin' series shifts gears here as this 1968 edition is the first year that the original creator and producer, Ron Jacobs was no longer involved. Though it could be argued that without him, the rest of this series did not portray the definitive radio shows of the era, the casual listener should still enjoy the fun of hearing radio when AM was still the king and stations were for the most part still unbound by the rigid formatted playlists that would eventually kill the medium's relevance as required entertainment. Rock, pop, soul, even country could be heard all together on your favorite station as the DJs still played what was most popular locally regardless of genre.

This album really represents that attitude well and gives us a great sampling of what we were hearing during an important time in our country's history.

Enjoy.

WCAO Baltimore 1968 - Johnny Dark

Liner notes by Robert Scherl - 1968, the year it all came together or the year it all came apart, depending on your point of view. The reality is that either point of view would be unnecessarily one sided; for if the year 1968 can be summed up at all, it is as a catalystic year of cathartic national and international change.

The year was one of astounding energy, vitality and change. More happened in that year than has happened in entire decades, and to much greater effect. It was in 1968 that the Tet offensive in Saigon doomed forver the political rightness of America's participation in Vietnam. Large segments of the American public, together with the still-uncontrolled media forces and ever-growing pockets of the country's elected representatives protested and condemned the increasing bloody illegality of the war. There was protest and rioting in the streets, and much of a similar nature behind the increasingly isolated walls of the Pentagon. On March 31, Lyndon B. Johnson announced he would not run for re-election, acknowledging his failure and inability to deal with the situation at hand. This was no more evident as when peace candidate Eugene McCarthy won 42% of the votes in the New Hampshire Democratic primary.

Within a week after Johnson's announcement, freedom leader Martin Luther King, Jr. was gunned down by an assassin's bullet as he spoke of peace and love at a Memphis hotel. Two months later the hopes of Americans longing for intelligent and compassionate leadership were dashed when Democratic presidential hopeful (and probable winner) Robert F. Kennedy was felled by an assassin's bullet after making a speech in Los Angeles. This series of events culminated in the savage spectacle of the Chicago Police Department, under the (mis)guidance of Mayor Richard Daley, coming on like the Nazi gestapo at their most violent, gassing, clubbing and beating citizens who were gathered to protest the war and make their views known. Within the convention halls Senator Ribicoff denounced the "gestapo tactics" of the police, as Daley responded with a scream of obcenities and ethnic slurs that put an end to a century of backroom politics.

The deaths of King and Kennedy brought about the rapid erosion of idealism as well, as the body politic became more fractionalized, and those who had espoused "peace and love" began to imitate their oppressors with equally blatant shows of violence and non-understanding. This was a time when anything could, and much did, happen.

Internationally things were nearly as chaotic, with student protestors almost bringing down the DeGaulle government in France singlehandedly, and the Soviets invading Czechoslovakia to end Prague Spring and dash hopes of a free and healthy eastern European community. The result of this chaos left Americans with hand-me-down President Nixon, who sevreal years earlier was washed up and couldn't even win a local California election, and the loss of a dream of political change.

While Nixon's 1968 win dashed the revolutionary dreams of a generation, in small ways, and some large ways, personal and artistic freedoms expanded dramatically and forever changed the face of America. For the first time large pockets of artists and public both ignored the restrictions of the past, and freedom of expression in lifestyle and art became the order of the day. As our political heroes fell and demagogues replaced them, we learned to become our own heroes. Television broke through old restrictive barriers to conservatively embrace the counter-culture with such shows as "Laugh-In" and "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour". Best of all, CBS aired "The Prisoner," starring and created by British actor Patrick McGoohan, which incisively and entertainingly gave us a hard look at dangers of big brotherdom and mind control.

Films were just beginning to break free of old-fashioned constraints, and while independent film makers such as Roger Corman dealt with reality in such low-budget programmers as "The Trip" and "Wild In The Streets", the last bastion of old fashioned Hollywood continued to churn out fodder for the comatose. Ex-patriate American director Stanley Kubrick made the most significant contribution to the new era with "2001: A Space Odyssey", a film easily understood by and relevant to the younger generation, and unintelligible to the masses weaned on "Andy Hardy" films.

Musically the year was profound, with some of the most exciting music in history being created, much of it inspired directly by the seeds of revolution in the streets. The Beatles created their(arguably) finest hour with the release of the double "White Album". Bob Dylan, wisely knowing he had scored with political and social rage in recent years, tried to bring people back together with an album of religious and moral parable, "John Wesley Harding". The album was highly successful, although it had no apparent social effect, unlike his groundbreakers of the previous five years. Artists such as The Rolling Stones, The Doors, Simon and Garfunkel, Aretha Franklin, Steppenwolf, Stevie Wonder, Cream and James Brown, among dozens of others, were at the height of their creative powers. The year found artists of all persuasions sharing the charts. Perhaps never before, and never since, has there been such a comfortable gathering of musical styles from both black and white artists sharing the charts.

1968 was a year when you could tune into Top 40 ratings burner WCAO in Baltimore and hear a mix of sounds in an average day that ranged from The Beatles to Otis Redding to The Doors to Percy Sledge to Steppenwolf to Glen Campbell. This was not an era for labels and pigeonholing. It was an era of free musical expression, and everyone was welcome aboard for the greatest creative musical explosion of the modern era. At WCAO, Baltimore listeners heard it all and more, as the station, guided by Number One Dee-Jay Johnny Dark took the lead in exposing this vast array of musical treasures to our ears. Dark was a leader, not a follower, and WCAO was a key station, not only in 1968 but throughout the 1960's in breaking new artists and new records. The expression "You heard it first here on WCAO" was really the truth, and at WCAO one could hear it all. When you wanted to hear what was new that week, whether it was psychedelic Bay area rock or Memphis soul, WCAO was the place to be.

As much as music spoke of the times and reflected them in 1968, it was equally as a means to take us away from everyday realities for three or four minutes, and often the best recordings managed to do that very well. For all the political prosletizing that came wrapped in the guise of entertainment, the best remembered and loved records were infused with a sense of life and hope, rather than a sense of death and despair. This is reflected in the selection of top chart records from 1968 as brought to you here by award winning DJ Johnny Dark.

The Box Tops, featuring Alex Chilton, followed their first smash "The Letter" with an even better example of blue-eyed Muscle Shoals soul, "Cry Like A Baby". Written and produced by top soul producer-writers Dan Penn and Chips Moman, The Box Tops were the epitome of blue-eyed Southern soul. No one did it better before or since, and the Box Tops recordings were equally at home on both the pop and r&b charts. Dissention split the group in 1970, but Chilton is still active, and the group has been a major influence on many contemporary artists.

Marvin Gaye, ex-backup singer with The Moonglows, became one of Berry Gordy's earliest stars, beginning in 1962 with hits like "Stubborn Kind of Fellow" and "Hitchhike". By 1968 Gaye was as much the king of the city soul sound, as Otis Redding was of Southern soul, and both found themselves topping both the pop and r&b charts. Gaye had his biggest hit to date in the Number One smash, "I Heard It Through The Grapevine", previously a hit for Gladys Knight and The Pips (also on Motown). Gaye's version was recorded before Knight's, but was held back. In spite of the success of Knight's recording, Gaye's version was deemed sufficiently different and strong enough to make it. Perhaps even Gaye and Gordy were surprised as it rocketed to Number One and stayed there for weeks.

The "bad boys" of L.A. rock, Steppenwolf, were a cross between acid-rock and biker-punk. In those days, however, no one assigned such irrelevant labels, so they were merely hardcore rock and roll. "Born To Be Wild" became their first monster hit, and it was followed by another just as big, "Magic Carpet Ride". "Magic Carpet Ride" was one of those examples of single versions of a very long album track becoming a smash single with extended solos edited out. Pop buyers bought the single, "heads" bought the album, and everybody was happy all the way around.

Back in Memphis, Chips Moman took a chance on a new white girl singer who sang with a hearty dose of soul and innocence and wrote some exceptional tunes. Her first recording became her biggest, as Merrilee Rush will be forever remembered for the beautiful and honest "Angel Of The Morning". The song has been recut many times, most notably by Juice Newton, but Rush's 1968 original remains the definitive version of an exceptional song. Curtis Mayfield had singlehandedly created a revolution in soul music in Chicago, with his spare and upbeat songs and productions for his own group, The Impressions as well as artists like Jerry Butler, Gene Chandler, Major Lance and many others. The O'Kaysions adopted that spare, almost under produced upbeat sound for their only smash, "Girl Watcher". One of the catchiest and happiest songs of the year, it proved to be a last gasp for that spare r & b sound, as producers bogged their artists down with more and more heavy-handed overproduction.

Bobby Goldsboro was an unprepossessing writer-guitarist-singer who received his start as a member of hitmaker Roy Orbison's band, The Candymen. Orbison was always the type to encourage his fellow artists rather than consider them competition, and it was at Orbison's urging that Goldsboro struck out on his own. He achieved a string of hits throughout the 1960's, all recorded in Nashville, and many self-penned. His biggest hit was the Number One "Honey", one of the great tear-jerker ballads of all time, written for him by his friend Bobby Russell, who was a successful Nashville writer at that time. "Honey" proved to be the biggest success ever for both, proving that a three-minute soap opera sung with feeling could still reach the top of the charts even in this "enlightened" era.

The Classics IV, featuring Dennis Yost, were discovered by Atlanta record man Bill Lowery, who also discovered such talents as Joe South, Ray Stevens and Mac Davis. Yost had a unique delivery, and his material fell into an ambivalent place somewhere between pop balladry and rhythm and blues. "Spooky" became one of 1968's biggest hits, and was followed by an even bigger hit, "Traces". Yost split from the group after that success, and as often happens, neither entity was successful on their own. Nevertheless, the group's two-year hit legacy is still well remembered and well loved for its uniqueness and soul.

1968 was one of Motown's biggest years, but then virtually every year in the 1960's was rich with hits from the Detroit hit factory. "I Wish It Would Rain" became one of The Temptations' biggest-ever hits, a chain that began in the early 1960's with classics like "My Girl" and "Get Ready". "Rain" was one of the first Motown records to show the influence of acid rock on its patented Motown sound, and was the precursor for such forthcoming Temptaions groundbreakers as "Papa Was A Rolling Stone" and "Psychedelic Shack". The group was at the peak of its power with David Ruffin on lead and they never sounded better.

The Grassroots were a slick L.A. pop group who scored an astounding number of smash hits, all produced by Steve Barri and that "Eve Of Destruction" man, P. F. Sloan. Ironically, their biggest hit was the only one that didn't belong originally to them. A Chicago group called Evergreen Blues wrote and recorded the original version of "Midnight Confessions". Producer Barri lifted the arrangement, both vocal and instrumental, and re-created the recording with The Grassroots. While both versions sounded almost identical (with an edge on soul to The Evergreen Blues), this was an example of name value taking the prize, as The Grassroots scored a smash and Evergreen Blues slid quickly into obscurity. "Midnight Confessions" remains an exciting record, and one of the best the group ever made.

The Supremes became Diana Ross and the Supremes, as the leading lady prepared for her solo exit. Before she left her former friends behind, the group recorded some of their finest records, with producers Holland-Dozier-Holland at the helm. Reflecting the social consciousness of the era, "Love Child" dealt with a real situation in an intelligent manner, and was extremely groundbreaking and controversial in 1968. Not only did the record have a message, but you could dance to it, attesting to the unlimited talent of the Motown writer-producers of the era. "Love Child" became a major hit, and its success encouraged more black artists to record material of a more realistic and daring nature.

By the end of 1968 we were getting close to a moon landing as Apollo 11 circled the moon, and Woodstock was just around the corner. But that's another story, best left for Harv Moore on Cruisin' 1969.

American Graffiti Press Book 2 (Part 1)

2010-11-06T11:38:00.000-07:00

Before the eighties, movie studios would send out press books to the theater owners to help them promote the showings of their film. These manuals contained pictures, articles, and newspaper/magazine ads about the subject film and exhibitors would cut out what they liked and take it to local publishers to use in advertisements. Those of you old enough to remember will recall seeing these grainy 'bubbles' used on the movie page of their morning newspapers accompanied by theater show times. The books also contained ordering information for promotional related items like posters and those 8x10 publicity stills theaters would mount under the poster boards.

Press books have gone the way of the covered wagon and digital pagers now, but back in 1973 they were still an important part of the studio's promotion machine. Universal Studios certainly used them to great affect for their little movie, American Graffiti. We've got a few of them and we'll post parts of them from time to time. They are an interesting look at a time gone by not unlike our favorite movie itself.

Good Golly, Miss Molly - Little Richard 1958

2010-11-05T19:11:00.000-07:00

Though he stood shoulder to shoulder with the original pantheons of rock & roll like Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis and Ray Charles, Little Richard sometimes gets left out of the casual history of the music. Maybe it's because he's just always been so damn... weird. Where Elvis might have kicked down the door of mid fifties white bread sensibilities, Little Richard was right behind him screaming and firing a pink bazooka loaded with 'I-don't-give-a shit-what-you-think-I'm-here!'.

Always at war with his inner demons, his catalog is not as extensive as it could have been. But he recorded enough classics when he was rockin' that no jukebox worth it's salt is spinning less than a couple of his early hits. This one's on ours and comes from his super prolific Specialty Records tenure. Enjoy.

Good Golly, Miss Molly - Little Richard 1958

The Milner Coupe - 2005 (Part 7)

2010-11-04T13:32:00.000-07:00

2005 Seattle Roadster Show
Seattle, WA

When we took these photos of the American Graffiti Coupe's undercarriage, we were shooting blind. Not able to actually get under the car, we set the articulating lens at a 45 degree angle and shoved our camera under as far as we could. Clicking pictures in a sweeping 'second hand' motion, we hoped to get as much visual information as possible. We had to work from the drivers side as that was our only access without violating the roped off boundaries. We rationalized that as long as our feet did not enter the area, we were still playing by the rules. Upper appendages didn't count. A slight liberty? Yes, but we could live with it.

Once the pixels were uploaded on the 'ol computer, we were pretty surprised (horrified) how cruddy it all was. Sure it was dirty. That wasn't unexpected seeing as how unpolished the engine had been. But the loose bolts, leaky seals, ragged cuts and popcorn welding took us back a bit. We knew the Coupe was no trailer queen. Owner Rick Figari had used it as a daily driver for years. That's cool, but show or no show, this car was seriously un-babied. And this characteristic brought up new questions as to how close were we going to build our tribute. I mean, where do you get that green gunk dripping off the tranny?

Andy Irons 1978 - 2010

2010-11-03T01:32:00.000-07:00

This is a nice profile of the late Andy Irons. Late... Shouldn't have to describe a 32 year old man that way. Andy passed yesterday on his way home to the islands due to a virus stemming from a mosquito bite in Puerto Rico. Damn.

As a competitor, Andy was nearly unstoppable the first half of this decade winning three world surfing championships. A native son of Hawaii, he leaves behind his wife, Lyndie, who is hapai with their first child. Prayers go out to to all his friends and family on Kauai. Aloha

Vote! And Send A Sign To The Incumbents...

2010-11-02T15:57:00.000-07:00

A & M Deluxe Customs

2010-11-01T13:40:00.000-07:00

A & M Deluxe Customs

1134 N. Fremont

Cornelius, OR 97113
503 992-1988

That's it. The contact information above is the best advice I can give anyone who needs help with their hot rod project. The Naked Milner attests to their skills, and I am here to testify to their character. Owners Aaron Atnip and Mark Spurlock are good, honest people. They do what they say they will do. Anyone who's been into cars for any amount of time knows the importance of that quality. And whether you're looking to stay traditional or go all out Darryl Starbird Superfleck Moonbird custom, if it rolls on wheels and moves on gas, they can do it. Metal is their passion and specialty but I know for a fact that one of the boys, who shall remain nameless (shhhh...it's Aaron!) drives a certain Chevrolet made of fiberglass and they are not above helping out fellow afflicted rodders.

They've been invaluable to our project and we have enjoyed working with them every step of the way. We look forward to the future and a few more of these builds while we can still reach the pedals.

Dr. Don Rose - WQXI Atlanta 1967

2010-10-31T07:11:00.000-07:00

1t's 1967 and radio is growing up. Whether it's because of the newly turbulent times or just that the 'kids' of the fifties are now family raising adults is not known. Our DJ is still cracking corny jokes and keeping the mood jovial, but the music is definitely more mature and serious. This week the Cruisin' soundtrack comes from the capital of the early Man-A-Fre manifolds, Atlanta, Georgia. Enjoy.

Liner Notes by Jerry Hopkins - 1967 is the CRUISIN' year when "Haight-Ashbury" and "hippie" became household words, when the Human Be-In was followed by Monterey Pop ... But first, a word from our guide, Dr. Donald D. Rose of WQXI in Atlanta, known to its listeners as "Quixie in Dixie," a station that personified East Coast Top 40 AM radio and probably used more echo than any other during that period.

Rose was the early morning jock (6 to 9 a.m.) and believed the best way to get things cracking was to load up the airwaves with groaning puns and corny jokes, punctuated by the sound of a mewling cow named "Lulubelle."

If you asked him where he got the "Dr." in his name, he'd answer: "I studied medicine in Cairo ... I'm a chiropractor. I could probably be a pretty good bone doctor ... people say I have the head for it. But I've always specialized in psychoceramics ... crackpots!"

Mooooooo.

"My voice reassures everybody that everything is okay and that we made it through the night," the Doctor explained. "My motto is: Smile even though it kills you, and you'll die with a silly grin on your face."

Of course it wasn't all smiles in 1967, for this was the year fire killed three astronauts on the Cape Kennedy launch pad, the year of the six-day Israeli-Arab war, the year 66 were killed and 3,500 injured in racial rioting in Newark and Detroit. Still, it was also when Thurgood Marshall was sworn in as the first black Supreme Court justice, Dr. Christian Barnard performed the first successful human heart transplant, and 35,000 Vietnam protestors marched on Washington in a gallant attempt to levitate the Pentagon.

Down in Pop Cultch Gulch, meanwhile, "Bonnie & Clyde," "Blow-Up," "Don't Look Back" and "The Graduate" were among the favorite "youth" films released, and the year's top three albums also were linked to Hollywood too: "Dr. Zhivago," "Sound of Music" and "A Man and a Woman."

North, in San Francisco, everything was incense and music and dope, paisley, flower-power, lightshows and, for a short while, banana peels. This was the Summer of Love. LSD Not LBJ, and Take a Hippie to Lunch. And Rolling Stone (the magazine) was born.

In the music world, Aretha Franklin recorded Respect, A Natural Woman and I Never Loved a Man ... Jimi Hendrix released his first album, "Are You Experienced?" ... Jim Morrison sang Light My Fire ... Jefferson Airplane cut "Surrealistic Pillow" ... Janis Joplin and Otis Redding were "discovered" at Monterey ... the Beatles blew all minds with "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" ... and don't forget Bobby Gentry's saccharine Ode to Billie Joe. Was it any wonder that record sales passed the $1 billion mark for the first time?

Radio was changing, too, with the birth of the "underground" FM sound, also in San Francisco. But, oh, the abundance of one-hit acts, groups that failed to make it into the Seventies and usually played for the youngest listener. For instance, whatever happened to the Happenings, the Casinos, the Soul Survivors, Don and the Goodtimes, Every Mother's Son, the American Breed, the Blades of Grass, the Lemon Pipers, the Love Generation, the Candymen, and the Fifth Estate — all of whom made debuts on the '67 charts, and departed shortly afterward? In CRUISIN' 1967, Dr. Don Rose's show presents several of the whatever-happened-to's, showing clearly the year's teeny-weeny appeal.

WQXI Atlanta 1967 - Dr. Don Rose

The Robb Report Collection - October 2004

2010-10-30T07:11:00.000-07:00

"Sick As A Dog, That's For Sure"

2010-10-29T07:11:00.000-07:00

Teenagers have been drinking too much and getting sick as a result of it for as long as moon has been making shine. I did it, you did it, it's almost part of the college curriculum. And most of us by far learn a good lesson from it and temper our imbibing accordingly. Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating it, just acknowledging that it's not unusual by any stretch of the imagination. Nothing to panic about.

Last weekend, nine dumbass students at the UW were taken to a hospital as a result of excessive drinking. A huge investigation took place and it was discovered that these kids had been pounding an energy drink/beer call Four Loco. Since then, every school official, politician, or general busybody has been on the stump hollering for the ban of such drinks. "Why, these drinks are like consuming four beers in one can!" Uh, excuse me Einstein, they're malt liquor. People drink the stuff to get drunk faster. Just ask the brothers on the stoop circa 1972. It's cheap. Ain't no secret. Where you been? Haven't you ever enjoyed the big-mouthed wonderfulness that is a Mickey's? Nine stupid young adults over indulge and you want to punish the nation. It was nine, not nine thousand people. The stuff isn't poison. It's legal to sell. You know, people have died from drinking too much water trying to win contests. Good thing you didn't ban H20, we'd all be de-hydrated and smelly to boot.

The point is...let it be. It's none of your business. All of these youngsters suffered the next morning and probably vowed to never drink again. Til next time anyway. And I'll bet that if there is a next time, it won't be Four Loco. And if it is and the same thing happens? Well, I'm a big believer in the natural order of the universe and God's ability to weed out the herd.

My son, who lives in San Diego and saw it on the news, commented that all this outcry has accomplished is what the owners of Four Loco never could. Make all of us aware it exists. You just know that every college dorm in the country is now stocking up just in case. And that in itself is stupid. Have any of you tried Four Loco? It taste like shit. It's gross. My brother-in-law once served up a concoction called an Ala Wai, named after a famous polluted waterway behind Waikiki. It instantly induced projectile vomiting. But even it tasted better than Quatro Crazy.

This crap will play it self out. Self important community leaders need not protect us from us. Back off assholes. What we need is a ban on politicians. That would immediately improve the world and probably make it less necessary for people to drink in the first place.

Now...what'd I do with my coffee & Kahlua?

Aloha

American Graffiti Publicity Still 5144-47

2010-10-28T07:11:00.000-07:00

Moonlight Lady - The Gabby Pahinui Hawaiian Band 1975

2010-10-27T19:11:00.000-07:00

It's Hawaii break time again. Chicken skin music from Gabby, his son Bla and Ry Cooder. Moonlight Lady was a monster hit in the islands back in my school days.

Found this terrific picture of Mr. & Mrs. Pahinui at their home in Waimanalo. They used to host legendary kanikapilas in their backyard that would go on for days. The family is again gathering musicians once a year for a tribute to 'Pops' down the street at the beach park pavilion named after Gabby.

The video is sort of lame but the music is no ka oi.

Aloha

Back To The Future (or Ahead To The Past!)

2010-10-26T19:11:00.000-07:00

As some of you know, just as Milner's Coupe did, our tribute to the American Graffiti Coupe has a radio in it. Unlike John though, we cannot tune in to find the Wolfman howling as we cruise the mean streets of the Pacific Northwest and all points south. Well, maybe we couldn't, but now we can. Kinda

Unwilling to compromise the period correctness of our build, we decided early on not to install a stereo. But to drive this particular hot rod without music would be out of sync with the film that inspired it. And just listening to oldies compilation CDs in perfect clarity also seemed a cheat. It may be ironic that what we found to help us re-create the past is some of the latest and most popular technology around.

Brew City Engineering sells a device that sits between the antenna and the radio and allows one to listen to any device through a car's stock radio. In essence, you can broadcast your own media. We have made a hobby of collecting old radio shows, and more particularly, creating new shows from pieces of old airchecks. We've made some killer faux Wolfman shows as have others like the Kipster of Kip Pullman's American Graffiti Web Page . We can download these programs onto our ipod and plug it into the RediRad. For all intents and purposes, that mini-computer becomes a mini radio station. Throw the ipod under the seat and turn your radio on. The hum, slight static, or just the general ambience of that old AM radio is left intact. As close to the real McCoy as we could find anyway.

I know, I know, you other coupe builders may be asking "What antenna?!!" "We didn't see no #%@&! antenn-eye on Big John's deuce!". You're right and there are probably several ways to do it, but our antenna will sit unseen diagonally across the insert opening between the headliner and the exterior vinyl. "Not Graffiti correct!" "Un-clean!" Yeah, yeah. We crossed that river a long time ago.

We installed a RediRad today in our '56 F-100. We turned the key, hit the dial on that old stock two-piece AM, the light came on, the low hum increased as the radio warmed up, and suddenly it was 1962 again. Way cool. Then my Dad said "Enough of this old shit" and tuned in Michael Savage. What are you gonna do?

Cracked - No. 121 November 1974

2010-10-25T07:11:00.000-07:00

Pat O'Day - KJR Seattle 1966

2010-10-24T07:11:00.000-07:00

Pat O'Day is still such a popular figure up here in the Northwest that I was riding around listening to this in my truck one day and we were a half an hour into it before my passenger realized that it was from 1966. His voice may be a bit deeper now and a tad road worn but the enthusiasm that was so catching in the sixties is still present. This week's Cruisin' has some great music and more than a couple cool car commercials, so down-shift, roll the window down and turn it up.

LP liner notes by Jerry Hopkins - The CRUISIN' series goes to KJR, "serving the Pacific Northwest from Seattle," and Pat O'Day, the disc jockey filling the afternoon driving hours of 1966 with an always cheerful shout.

It would be a little more than a year before an underground FM radio sound would begin to provide counterpoint to AM's Top 40 formula. In 1966, pop radio was, in the most literal sense, programmed; the playlist was rigidly limited to hits past and present, and the rap was equally sparse. As a result, many radio jockeys seemed as interchangeable as the bass lines of the records they played. KJR was as Top 40 as they came in those days, but Pat O'Day kept his personality intact, lacing his record introductions and public service announcements with corny jokes and puns, cryptic references to specific Seattle neighborhoods (puzzling unless you were living there) and sendups of fellow KJR staffers.

O'Day was 31 and had ten years in radio when he first played the records in this collection. His father had had a daily religious program on a Tacoma station when Pat was growing up, and he says it never occurred to him to try any other medium. Pat served his apprenticeship in smaller Northwestern cities, starting in Oregon the year Elvis hit, 1956, moving to Seattle and KJR three years later. He's still there today, as station manager.

In 1966, the album market was still "middle-aged." Of the ten best-sellers of the year, only two were rock and roll. (Best of Herman's Hermits, Best of the Animals.) The other eight were Herb Alpert (who had five!), soundtracks (Sound of Music, Dr. Zhivago) and Bill Cosby, all of which had almost nothing to do with the top-selling singles charts, from which KJR and the rest of the Top 40 stations in America took their collective musical cue. Here the blend was a more variant one, as shown just by the acts that had their first big hits this year —the Mamas and Papas, the Mindbenders, the Association, the Monkees, Simon and Garfunkle, Percy Sledge, and Tommy James and the Shondells, to name a few. This was also the year that Frank Sinatra sang Strangers in the Night and the Lovin' Spoonful recorded both Daydream and Summer in the City, while the top of the charts position went to, among others, the Beatles (We Can Work it Out, Paperback Writer), the Beach Boys (Good Vibrations), the Supremes (You Can't Hurry Love, You Keep Me Hanging On), the Rolling Stones (Paint it Black) and — of course — the Troggs (Wild Thing),? and the Mysterians (96 Tears) and S/Sgt. Barry Sadler, the deep-throated patriot who for five long weeks slogged through The Ballad of the Green Berets.

No less imposing was the wide range of news stories in 1966 when first the Soviet and then the U.S. made unmanned landings on the moon, Medicare went into effect for the over 65s, Lenny Bruce died of an overdose of society, Massachusetts elected the nation's first black Senator, and brutal, random violence claimed grim headlines as eight nurses were slain in Chicago and a youthful sniper at the University of Texas picked off 44 persons, killing 14.

Many of the headlines topped lighter stories, as when the Capital of England became "Swinging London" and Batman captured the largest television audiences in America; when "The Story of 0" became a controversial best-seller and after school the streets were a sea of granny dresses and Byrd glasses, pea jackets and bellbottoms. In Hollywood, Elizabeth Taylor won her second Oscar (for "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?") and Ronald Reagan gave up his role as host of "Death Valley Days" to run for governor. Don Adams of "Get Smart" put it nicely: "Sorry about that, Chief."

KJR Seattle 1966 - Pat O'Day

Jim Kirstead

2010-10-23T07:11:00.000-07:00

1939 Chopped Mercury
Barris Brothers Custom

Jim Kirstead brought his 1939 Mercury into the small Barris Brothers shop in Compton to have it chopped and customized. When finished, it was the first chopped Merc out of their young enterprise. Never heard of it? Not many have. It was 1946. Jim had just gotten out of the Navy after having served on a submarine during World War II. He had a gorgeous new wife and was making pretty good money as a lather in post war Los Angeles.

Jim spent a lot of time with the Barris Brothers. He would spend hours with Sam explaining just what he wanted and stayed around to make sure it came out that way. He would sometimes take my young Dad with him and they would sand while Sam would be welding or leading. George was around, but while he helped with the sanding, he wasn't much into the heavy cutting and metal work. When the thing wasn't in pieces, Jim would drive it home.

The picture at the right was taken in 1947 at the races out on the dry lakes outside of LA. The car was in primer then almost ready for paint. Jim drove his car and Sam took his customized '41 convertible Cadillac. They made quite a splash. to be continued...

You can see the somewhat primitive work on the chop. But they had that roof down so low, the windshield was only 4" vertical. The running boards are off it and the glass seems to be up front. Good thing rain wasn't much of a problem in Los Angeles, even before global warming.

The Milner Coupe - 2005 (Part 6)

2010-10-22T01:32:00.000-07:00

2005 Seattle Roadster Show.
Seattle, WA

Our leisurely visit (fireman and movie stars take long lunches) with Milner's Coupe in the Great Northwest continued as we zeroed in on a few details on the firewall. The bell crank throttle was of special interest. We had not yet identified what car it was off of. These photos helped with that. The condenser also came into close view. We got a great look at the fuel filter although that was an addition added after the original film. Considering most of these were taken at arms length and out of reach to the viewfinder, it was lucky we got what we did. These close-ups provided countless hours of study material and debate topics. Not to mention years of ebay battles.

An Open Letter To George Lucas

2010-10-21T23:11:00.000-07:00

Dear Mr. Lucas,

We have read recently that your production company is currently preparing to release the original film Star Wars in 3-D. We certainly wish you the best of luck and know that it will be a tremendous success yet again in this new format. And though we are sure that there are still many different ways in which you can tweak and re-edit the Stars Wars saga and it's many prequels and sequels in the future we were wondering if we may be so bold as to suggest something a little different.

First let us express our appreciation for the extras and upgrades to your other classic movie American Graffiti. The beautifully re-colored sky over Mel's Drive-in and Harrison Ford's unforgettable take on 'Some Enchanted Evening' were certainly reasons enough to purchase our favorite flic again. But wasn't your original edit over three hours long? Where is that cut? It's apparent from the endless varied editions of all your sci-fi films that you rarely throw anything away. Someone swept up the carnage after you cut it down to it's release weight. How about throwing a bone to the fans who made Star Wars possible? The folks who love American Graffiti. And we're out here. Hell, most of the cast is still making a living off of personal appearances. The cars make more money per annum than most of us.

We are not suggesting that you monkey with the orignal American Graffii what-so-ever. It is a bon-i-fied classic and deserves to remain untouched. But how about a Director's Cut Special Edition? And you've got the scratch now to add those Elvis songs you wanted! If not that, how about a simple disc of un-released scenes? We'll edit them ourselves.

We know you don't need the money. It's just that we need to know. What's the rest of the story? You can't just go and tell everyone that you had almost four hours of this beloved story and than never share it. It's not fair. Lord know's we've earned it. I'm not even one of the dialogue quoting nuts and I'm on my umpteenth purchase of the film (VHS, Laser Disc, DVD, 16mm, Netflics, Cable). I'm sure that the Milner Coupe builders alone are responsible for a wing or two of Skywalker Ranch.

So how 'bout it? One for the OG Lucas fans.

A devoted Graffiti-ite,

'da Hui.

American Girl - Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers 1976

2010-10-20T07:11:00.000-07:00

This song was an instant classic. Just one of those records that jumped out of the radio and forced your foot all the way down on the accelerator. Completely unique yet still reminiscent of Gene Clark and The Byrds with it's Rickenbackers ringing like a bell, and Tom Petty's pleading vocals starting with that way cool 'Chuh'. I love this song.

Happy birthday Mr. Petty and thanks for the rock & roll.

American Girl - Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers 1976

American Graffiti Publicity Still 5144-24

2010-10-19T19:28:00.000-07:00

Ciao - June 2, 1974 N. 22 Anno VI

2010-10-18T07:11:00.000-07:00

Listen, Professor... No really. Listen to this radio show 'da Hui found (stole, made up, who cares?). Yeah sure, the magazines cool and all but while you're lookin' at it pretending to understand Italiano, play this faux radio show like you were buzzin' the piazza in your modified Vespa. Buonanotte!

Italian Graffiati

"Una Storia Antica Dell'altro Ieri" Roughly translated, it means "An Ancient History Before Yesterday". We asked our buddy Guido over at the horse farm, what this magazine was saying. He said that the author claimed the Coupe was Italian because of the Dago front axle and the noise coming out of the exhaust. We think Guido's been in the molasses again.

'da Hui no ka oi

Robert W. Morgan - KHJ Los Angeles 1965

2010-10-17T14:51:00.000-07:00

This is a great one. The producer of this Cruisin' album series, Ron Jacobs, was the originator of the "Boss Radio" format. Imitated in every major and minor market in the English speaking world, the fast moving and jingle heavy pop rotation formula became the radio style we would remember as AM radio. And KHJ Los Angeles was the epicenter. Smooth and hip, the Boss KHJ DJs were a perfect representation of sunny Southern California in the mid sixties and they made whoever was listening want to be a part of every wacky thing KHJ was doing.

Whodaguy Ron Jacobs has a new book out about the creation of the KHJ juggernaut. You can check it out at the KHJ site. In the meantime, take a listen to AM radio at it's best. Enjoy.

LP liner notes by Pete Johnson - The kind of radio known as Top 40 (though its practitioners might vary from Terrific 20 to Boss 30 to Fantastic 50) never got much better than it was in 1965, the year this volume of the CRUISIN' series alights at Los Angeles radio station KHJ amid Robert W. Morgan's morning show.

KHJ was a miraculous overnight success in the competitive Los Angeles radio market, an area which for nearly a decade had been dominated by KFWB, its Fab 40 and a roster of disc jockeys whose names were as familiar as the offramps of the Hollywood Freeway.

KHJ's "Boss Radio" was introduced to Los Angeles at 3 p.m. May 5, 1965, at 930 kilohertz on the AM dial — a mere 50 kilohertz sneeze away from KFWB/Channel 98. Within five months, 93/KHJ had surged past the rock competition — KFWB, KRLA and KBLA — to inaugurate a rule over Southern California Top 40 radio which has extended well into the 1970s. So profound was KFWB's ignominy that it changed to all-news a short time later, retiring from the musical fray.

KHJ was the flagship station of a chain programmed by Bill Drake (whose voice opens this record with the announcement, "And now, ladies and gentlemen, Robert W. Morgan!"), a man whose sense of pop music radio was so acute that he became the most influential person in Top 40 radio — and hence in the making of American hit singles — in the latter half of the Sixties. During this period he programed or consulted stations which dominated Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Detroit, Memphis, Fresno and San Diego.

KHJ was strong, shiny, clean, bright and tight. Its structure was so precise that the disc jockey became just another element in its flawless mix, a resonant, friendly, professional voice blending between music, commercials, contests ("The Big Kahuna is coming!" "Here's another clue in the Batphone Secret Number contest!"), 20/20 News, public service announcements and station identifications and promotions. He became just another element, that is, unless he were someone on the order of the The Real Don Steele ("Tina DelGado is alive!!!" a lady would shriek mysteriously, prompting a shower of exclamation-pointed, high-velocity, loosely-rhymed ejaculations from The Real) or Robert W. Morgan, CRUISIN's host for 1965.

Morgan (and Steele, and Sam Riddle, and a few others) was able to assert his identity through the fractions of minutes the Bill Drake format allowed disc jockeys. His confidence drove him to take chances few others would dare within those small crevices of time and his wit enabled him to make them good. Robert W. Morgan was among the first to take telephone calls over the rapids of Top 40 radio, bringing the idea of the vastly popular radio talk shows into a new area. His quick intelligence is coupled with a near-perfect radio voice: rich and deep and clear, with the uncolored enunciation which is the inheritance of those raised in Ohio.

Born in Mansfield, Ohio, Morgan grew up in nearby Galion, a small town. He attended the College of Wooster, 45 miles east of Galion, but his studies succumbed to his interest in WWST-AM/FM, which served Wooster's 15,000 population and the surrounding agricultural area.

After a spell of reading Farm Reports over WWST, Morgan moved to Los Angeles, determined to make it in the Big City. The Big City wasn't listening to Robert W., though, so he headed north to Oxnard, Cal. (pop. 40,000), where he landed at KACY. The Army intervened for three years, during which he managed to do two shows a day at KMBY at Monterey (pop. 22,000) by sneaking off-base from Fort Ord, using the name Mark Caroll on the air. Next came KMAK in Fresno (130,000). He moved to KROY in Sacramento (190,000) in 1963, working there as Program Director and as Morning Man. This stint was followed by eight months at KEWB in San Francisco. In each market, Morgan earned top audience ratings. Then came KHJ in Los Angeles (pop. 2.4 million).

By the time he returned to "Boss Angeles," Robert W. Morgan was a polished pro, ready to joust for ratings with the formidable phalanx of Morning Men already arrayed on the city's asphalted turf. He Morganized his competition within a year and maintained powerful ratings over the length of his 8-year association with KHJ. His mastery of the morning was officially proclaimed in 1973 when Morgan was named Top 40 Air Personality of the Year by Billboard, the music trade publication.

The biggest crop of 1965 was probably hair, as American youth fully succumbed to Anglomania, much to the grief of those barbers who weren't quick enough to set themselves up as hair stylists. In January of the year, President Lyndon Johnson, not yet a Credibility Gap victim, outlined plans for the Great Society, a vision which was to fade in the glare of a domestically-divisive war in Vietnam. Medicare was signed into law on July 30. Winston Churchill, Malcolm X, Adlai Stevenson, Albert Schweitzer, Nat King Cole and Stan Laurel all died in 1965

KHJ Los Angeles 1965 - Robert W. Morgan

Jack Pulliam

2010-10-16T07:11:00.000-07:00

1966 Ford Fairlane GT

My cousin Jack, who lives in Arizona, spent three years looking for just the right car for him to rebuild. He found it in Greene, Iowa. Bringing it back to the desert, he spent the next three years cutting and welding to get rid of the rust that had accumulated in this vehicle's earlier life in Minnesota. As you can see in these photos, Jack did an awesome job that he says continues even as he tries to drive the wheels off it. He even drove all the way to Nevada to show off his GT's badass stance at this year's Hot August Nights in Reno.

Powered by the stock big block 390, this GT has none of the girly amenities like power steering or power brakes that tend to weigh down less serious muscle cars. That has tended to inhibit his daughters somewhat from asking to borrow the car (smart choice Jack). But ever the caring father, Jack is currently restoring a '66 Fairlane GTA ragtop that sports all the power gizmos plus air conditioning and even an automatic transmission. What an old softie.

White Sandy Beach - Israel Kamakawiwo`ole

2010-10-15T07:11:00.000-07:00

The great 'Bruddah Iz'.

Aloha

Esquire - October, 1973

2010-10-14T07:32:00.000-07:00

"The continuous circling around the main drag in various more or less prestigious
vehicles; the flirtations, provocations and downright insults hurled from car to
parallel-running car; the periodic encountering of the same faces and places in
the course of this endless-seeming ballet on wheels give the film an
exhilarating rhythm, but also a hallucinatory character as of a gay, silly dream
that nevertheless threatens to spill over into a nightmare."

Hey, who you calling more or less?

'da Hui no ka oi

The Milner Coupe - 1976

2010-10-13T13:49:00.000-07:00

Studio City, CA

Not really sure where these pictures originated. Doug Bjorn sent them to me about five years ago. They've been the subject of countless debates and extreme scrutiny as all of us gleaned them for any possible information about The Coupe. We knew that the photos were taken between films but exactly when and where remained a mystery.

This year it came to light that a scene from the old television series Emergency! was filmed in this garage with the Coupe as background. In the story, a garage mechanic was injured while mounting one of the cheater slicks onto the wheel. In the show the car was turned around and the tire changer was closer to the door. And if anyone is curious as to what became of the original slicks, well unfortunately the tire was shown with a huge hole in it to tie in with the story. Yikes.

Anyways, that episode, entitled "Captain Hook', was filmed and aired in 1976. The two young ladies may or may not have been extras in the show as they are dressed in what appears to be nurses uniforms. Of course they could have been studio commissary workers as well in those get ups. Regardless, they were obviously cool enough to recognize the real movie star in their midst.

Wolfman Jack's American Graffiti Contract - May 8, 1972

2010-10-12T07:11:00.000-07:00

You know now-a-days before you can have any fun you gotta make it legal. Shown here is the original contract for the acting services in American Graffiti of one Bob Smith aka Wolfman Jack. Also we have an additional agreement allowing American Graffiti to use Wolfman's original XERB tapes in it's soundtrack. As you can see, the Wolfman wasn't in it for the bread. But as we know, George Lucas later made a gift to each of his stars of a tenth of a point on the back end. Doesn't sound like much, but pound for pound American Graffiti was one of, if not the, most profitable movies in history. In his autobiography, Wolfman Jack made a point of stating how grateful he was for that gesture.

These are scans of the actual papers that we were fortunate enough to acquire a few years ago.

John Hillier

2010-10-11T07:11:00.000-07:00

1964 Mercury Comet Cyclone

While in Spokane yesterday we stopped by John Hillier's place to get a look the progress he's made on his period correct tribute to those monster A/FX gassers like the Saux & Sons, Don Nicholson, and Hayden Proffit cars of old. Down to the skinny details, he's had it at the track a few times already running high nines. He figures to add a bunch of ponies and trim some of that time when he mounts the injection stack he's just finishing up.

Unfortunately I didn't have my camera so these are courtesy of my iphone. I managed to click a few of the cool details like the fuel shut-off coming out the tail light, front axle, headers, and his "I Like Mine Injected" on the hood. He's getting ready to add artwork to the sides, re-upholster the front seats, and top off that mean 427 this winter so we should be back to take a run and get some better pictures in the spring.

Johnny Holliday - WHK Cleveland 1964

2010-10-10T10:10:00.000-07:00

On 10-10-10 at 10:10, more of the Cruisin' series from Who Da Guy Ron Jacobs. This is radio as it was in 1964 sans The Beatles who were played just about every other song and then some. Johnny Holliday may be familiar to some of you as the voice of University of Maryland sports which he has broadcast for over a quarter century. Enjoy.

LP liner notes by Jerry Hopkins - The Johnny Holliday in CRUISIN' 1964 was the "original" Johnny Holliday — lots of disc jockeys were "assigned" that name in later years — and in this, the year the Beatles invaded the U.S., he was No. 1 in the ratings from 3 to 7 p.m. on WHK, Cleveland.

Holliday, if possible, went even faster than B. Mitchell Reed (CRUISIN' 1963), probably thanks to his experience announcing sports in Cleveland, and every word was perfectly enunciated, thanks, perhaps, to his two seasons of Cleveland summer stock. Plus: he savored the rhymed cliche unlike any other ("let's click the turnstiles in our wax files," "headed for the tippety-top of the ol' pop crop") and went absolutely bananas over alliteration (he broadcast not from a studio, but a "platter pad," conducting a "platter patrol"). In the vales of verbal virtuosity, Johnny Holliday was the Master Mouth, a Tour de Force de Tongue.

Holliday, who had been with WHK since 1959, wasn't just known for his delivery speed and sleight. Over the years he'd won dozens of public service awards and while with WHK organized station basketball and softball teams which raised over $100,000 for local charities.

For much of America, 1964 moved almost as rapidly as Holliday's mouth, for this is when Top 40 radio stations began clocking the time in "Beatie minutes before (or after) the Beatie hour" and reported the temperature in "Beatle degrees." For a while there, the four "mop-tops" had five of the top 10 places in the singles chart, three of the top five albums. And when the "fab four from Liverpool" appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show," an astonishing 73 million people were watching — nearly 45 per cent of the entire U.S. population! Beatlemania had struck.

Of course the Beatles didn't control the record charts, they merely seemed to. Roy Orbison was back with Oh Pretty Woman; Marvin Gaye, Mary Wells and the Supremes were there for Motown; the Four Seasons sang Dawn and Rag Doll; Barbra Streisand recorded People; the Drifters cut the classic Under the Boardwalk; the Beach Boys continued their '60s chart run with I Get Around; Ray Charles released Busted; Nino Tempo and his sister April Stevens won the "best song" Grammy with Deep Purple, and all were joined by the Swingle Singers, Tony Bennett, Al Hirt, Andy Williams and the Singing Nun.

As is often the case, TV Guide probably told more about America than any other text, for here were listed "The Man from U.N.C.L.E.," "The Munsters," "Bewitched," and "Peyton Place." And between those wonderful shows came charging the White Knight and the White Tornado and, singing and grinning insipidly, the wonderful Doublemint Twins. Only "Shindig" and "That Was the Week That Was" seemed related in any way to youthful reality.

And reality was grim, as three civil rights workers — Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James E. Chaney — were murdered by the KKK in Mississippi ... the Warren Commission Report made the claim that Oswald did it alone ... Lyndon Johnson stormed into the White House over Barry Goldwater ... and the U.S. began bombing North Vietnam — four of several incidents that put young America on the march again.

Such matters were seldom mentioned on Top 40 radio, certainly not on Johnny Holliday's "wonderful funderful platter patrol." Here everything was designed for your driving and dancing pleasure. One of the most unusual songs on CRUISIN' 1964 isn't a "song" at all, but a commercial for Rambler, an automobile whose ad agency acquired the rights to a 1958 hit by the Playmates called Beep Beep (CRUISIN' 1961) and wrote new lyrics. Of course the "song" was still about the mighty little Nash.

WHK Cleveland 1964 - Johnny Holliday

He's awfully close...

2010-10-09T07:11:00.000-07:00

Here's a screen shot from American Graffiti where Falfa is gettin' all up in Milner's business right before they play the dozens. Early in our coupe build I got the notion that I was going to insert this picture in place of my interior rear view mirror glass. With the 3" chop, it's pretty much a useless apparatus. That and a couple other stupid ideas came and went as the project dragged on. I guess when you're up all night staring at parts photos and hunting on ebay, your mind tends to ferment.

Anyways, we got over it and stayed the course. It's a cool shot through the back window though.

American Graffiti Publicity Still 5144-37

2010-10-08T07:11:00.000-07:00

Ku'u Home O Kahalu'u - Olomana 1976

2010-10-07T20:58:00.001-07:00

Missing the islands a bit today. This is what Hawaii sounded like when I was growing up. Still does to me. The group Olomana was named after the mountain that looks over our hometown of Kailua. Enjoy.

Aloha

Ku'u Home O Kahalu'u - Olomana 1976

Mark Groesbeck

2010-10-06T07:11:00.000-07:00

Kip Pullman's American Graffiti Web Site

The Kipster is back! Mark Groesbeck (aka Kip Pullman) has redesigned and re-invigorated his highly regarded study of yours and our favorite film, American Graffiti.

Now if My Dinner With Milner is the nachos appetizer and Jeff Hamrick's All Graffiti, All The Time 2 page is the before dinner Margaritas, Kip Pullman's new site is the whole Enchilada so to speak. A well thought out menu of entertaining tidbits, deliciously rare photos and thesis-like essays all guaranteed to satisfy your AG knowledge appetite. Mark turns the film inside out to see what makes it tick. And while we already know that we love the film, he helps explain why we do. His look is from a film student's perspective while ours mostly come from inside the Coupe. To celebrate his return, we offer one of Mark's Greatest Hits for your listening pleasure. Easily one of the most played musical selections on our site, this record is the perfect aural accompaniment while reading Professor Pullman's musings. Enjoy

Coke and Old Harper - Kip & The Rippling Biceps 2005

My Dinner With Milner

No On SOPA !!!

Love...Japanese Style

Instant Karma

Talking Shop With Paul LeMat

Harold Johnson's 1934 Ford

The Milner Coupe 2011 - Hot August Nights

'da Hui Rocks!

Where Were You In '62?

American Graffiti Publicity Still 5144-42

Give Me A Brake

Elvis Dug Cars

The Milner Coupe 2011

Breath Of Life - Cooper's Still 2011

The Milner Coupe 2005

We Don't Have Near Enough Pictures Of Cindy Williams On Here...

On Location: Cruising With 'American Graffiti' by Larry Abramson

The Milner Coupe 1979

American Graffiti Publicity Still 5144-10

1932 Ford 5W Coupe Seat Rails

Papa Ooh Maui Maui

Hot Rod Deluxe - July 2011

Don't Drink & Drive, You'll Spill On The Seats.

I'll have a " '57 Chevy With Hawaii Plates" please...

Dr. FrankenCoupe's Laboratory

The Milner Coupe 2011 (Part 2)

American Graffiti Publicity Still 5144-35

Greenline - March 15, 1994 Volume XVIII

The Milner Coupe - 2011

*** It Was April 1st, You Fool, You Fool ***

Figari Sales American Graffiti Coupe!

Sacramento Vintage Ford 'Da Kine!

A Pleasant Valley Sunday

Travelin' On... The Portland Roadster Show

American Graffiti Publicity Still 5144-29

Love American Graffiti Style

One On One With Paul LeMat

American Graffiti In 3-D !

The Naked Milner Poster (Number 1) is SOLD OUT

The Naked Milner is For Sale!

Our Débutante Ball...The Sacramento Autorama

American Graffiti Publicity Still 5144-14

Memories Of El Monte - The Penguins 1963

American Graffiti Publicity Still 5144-07

Hot Rod New Zealand - April 1992

American Graffiti Publicity Still 5144-05

Crawdaddy - July 1978

Happy Elvis Birthday Milner...

The Naked Milner All Pau

...And We're Back

Merry Christmas

Five Summer Stories - 1972

Harold Gets His Snow Day

The Best Of Street Rodder - 1982

Kris Erik Stevens - WLS, Chicago 1970

Waimanalo Blues - Country Comfort 1974

Can You Dig It?

The Milner Coupe - 2009

American Graffiti Press Book 2 (Part 2)

American Graffiti Publicity Still 5144-38

Aloha Andy Irons

Harv Moore - WPGC, Washington, D.C. 1969

Rod & Custom - August 1991

Tiffany Knight

The Punks Are Winning

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Mad - No. 166 April 1974

American Graffiti Publicity Still 5144-46

Johnny Dark - WCAO Baltimore 1968

American Graffiti Press Book 2 (Part 1)

Good Golly, Miss Molly - Little Richard 1958

The Milner Coupe - 2005 (Part 7)

Andy Irons 1978 - 2010

Vote! And Send A Sign To The Incumbents...

A & M Deluxe Customs

Dr. Don Rose - WQXI Atlanta 1967

The Robb Report Collection - October 2004

"Sick As A Dog, That's For Sure"

American Graffiti Publicity Still 5144-47

Moonlight Lady - The Gabby Pahinui Hawaiian Band 1975

* It Was April 1st, You Fool, You Fool *