Should Have been a rock star 4 - Video Kills the Boy Scouts

How video killed the Boy Scouts

By 1969, I had turned 13 years old. I was obsessed with a couple of things. I played football, and catcher for the summer league baseball team. My friends (especially Larry Lutts), two younger brothers and my sister Mary and I spent hours and hours playing a board baseball game called “Stat-O-Matic Baseball.” It was a game based on the stats of the major league teams and we dived into the game like it was popcorn.

I was becoming more and more obsessed with the Beatles. I spent hours sitting in a junk car in our pasture sorting through old damp smelling newspapers searching for articles about the travels of the Beatles over the past several years. Luckily for me, my family tended to pack rat things, so I discovered gold in that spider infested car. The car was filled to the brim with every old Tulsa world or Tulsa Tribune that had been carried home from work by my Dad.

I tore out stories about the Beatles landing here and there, but never any where close to the state of Oklahoma.

My older cousin Sharon fed my obsession by giving me tons of “16” magazine that had dozens of pictures of the Beatles and stories of their exploits. I dared the ridicule of salespeople when buying magazines intended for young girls that taunted them with date promises with Paul or John and Davey Jones of the Monkees… anything to get another picture or story of the Beatles. I bought “Tiger Beat,” “16,” and even one called “Datebook” because it hosted a Beatles Monthly publication in its pages.

I papered my walls above the bunk beds with their pictures, including the coveted psychedelic photos from “life” magazine. I made scrapbooks. I sat and carefully scrutinized every song on the Beatles White Album after I could finally afford it. I rated the songs with stars written in the margins of the huge photo fold and lyric sheet that opened like treasure from King Tut’s tomb. I spent hours drawing their pictures and cartoon figures from “The Yellow Submarine” and the Saturday morning Beatles cartoon.

The Beatles cartoons aired on ABC-TV from September 25, 1965 to April 20, 1969. It was based around 2 or 3 episodes a show of a simple story with the “Hard day’s Night” type frolic at the end accompanied by a song. My little brothers and sisters all gathered in our Saturday morning underwear in front of our black and white TV to watch the show and sway to the tunes. Ringo squeezed by a romantically inclined snake as “You’ve Really Got a Hold On Me” played. Paul, always chased by girls as the “Cute One.” In the summer of ’68, my brother Keith, older than I by 10 years, found a part time job for me working Saturdays cleaning cages in a chinchilla farm. I was very distressed about missing he cartoons, but with the dollar fifty an hour I made, it did mean more records and magazines.

In 1966 the Monkees also premiered on TV. The show only lasted a couple of seasons. It was 30 minutes of chaotic romp modeled after the Beatles’ movies. It too was centered around a few specific songs each show. So, we had two entertaining weekly sources of music that meant something to me. It was something that continued to feed that spot inside of me that yearned for something musical, something rebellious, something different than the life of a small town teen in Oklahoma.

In 68’, not only did I get the job, and not only did the Beatles White album come out, but two other things stretched my head a little. The Beatles released a pop psychedelic cartoon based upon the “Yellow Submarine.” The Monkees also released the movie “Head,” which was much more mind bending than any of their mild, inoffensive TV shows had been. It was co-written by jack Nicholson and had appearances from the strange and unusual. Cameos by artists like Frank Zappa confused the Monkee’s typical fan, I am sure.

While my thoughts were changing, I, the good son of the Southern Baptist Deacon and Church song leader secretly made notes in the margins of his Bible asking questions such as “if the flood is true, then how can this be true about the family of giants after the flood?” A scary thought, to think that maybe all of the things I had grown up with and accepted so easily might not be the answer, or the only answer. The music was exposing me to a world far beyond the borders of a dying oil town. Meanwhile, raging across the TV news were scenes of beginning student unrest, race riots and fiery speeches from a black man named Martin Luther Ling Jr. King’s name would be splashed across the news that year with his tragic death. The race questions seemed so far away to a kid who lived in a small all white town where the word “nigger’ seemed to come out of Grandpa’s mouth pretty often. I never really thought about race while I sang along with the Temptations or the Supremes on the radio.

We only had one movie theater nearby. Kiefer was too small to have a theater, Sapulpa had the Criterion Theater, an old downtown building that housed a mysterious darkness where we watched a few movies flicker by. The old floors were sticky with ages of spilled sodas and candy, leading to speculation that small kids probably left the theater with their shoes still glued to the concrete floor. With such a big family, we didn’t go to the movies often, but I did watch any movie I could find on the three channels we got on out small black and white at home. A movie with music was a real bonus.

We had been to see a few Elvis movies because my sister Kathy, who is deaf, loved to see him. I managed to talk Dad into taking me to a few, such as an old Herman’s Hermits movie. I still remember “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter” from the film. Now, when I think back, I imagine my Dad must have wondered what we had walked into when we went to see the “Yellow Submarine” and it’s Peter Max-like colors and images. The disjointed images and segments of the “happening” type movie the Monkees made must have seemed like gobbledygook to someone expecting a storyline.

There were so few opportunities to see musicians on TV. There was, of course, “American Bandstand.” But, even to a young kid who watched it from desperation, it was obvious that they were lip-synching. I always cringed when some weak song would beat out a rock tune for the number one song of the week. Sometimes, the Carol Burnett Show or the Red Skeleton show would dare a pop music act. Rarely. But, I searched for every one of them. The Ed Sullivan show probably had the most live acts on TV of the time, but since we were at the church every time the doors were open, there was no way that I would ever see a show that aired on a Sunday night. Good Southern Baptists were in the pews on Sunday morning, Sunday night and Wednesday evening. The only thing that might interfere with a Wednesday night service would be two-a-day football practices, but even God understood football in Oklahoma.

1969 began, and starved for something to do, I joined the new Boy Scout troop that met at the Baptist church. I became a member of troop 262. I did enjoy the handbook and “Boys Life” magazine. Of course, I read everything I could get my hands on, from newspapers to sci-fi novels to the backs of boxes in the bathroom while I took a dump. I was frustrated with the tying of knots, but did earn my Tenderfoot badge and eventually became a Boy Scout First Class.

We did a couple of summer cookouts and campouts. We hiked to explore “Fat Man’s Misery” outside of town. It was a collection of small caves and passageways that were rumored to be the site of the unfortunate death throes of a fat man who became lodged between the stones and starved to death.

In the Fall of 69’, a new TV show premiered. For weeks the channels had been promoting the new season, which always began in September. As a younger boy, I had waited impatiently for the new seasons of cartoons to be gin in September, and now with my eyes and ears on for rock music, I was excited to find that “The Music Scene” with host David Steinberg would host music acts each Monday night for 45 minutes. The kicker was this – The first show was a blockbuster, featuring a promo film of the Beatles playing their new song “The Ballad OF John and Yoko.”

I was giddy with excitement. A Music show? A Music show with a Beatles film? This was like the second coming that the Baptist minister gesticulated and roared about each and every Sunday, but instead of inspiring dread, guilt and fear, this time I was overcome with a true rapture. Finally, a show for me, and the Beatles would be there!

I could hardly wait to share the news! I told Larry. He shared my love of music. I knew that he would be glued to the tube to see the show. I told my Grandma and brothers and sisters. I told my mom. I am sure that my constant barrage of trivia and discoveries about these things that they had absolutely no interest in left them weary, but they politly listened and nodded.

The only complication was this. It was well known at the Dugan household that Mom and Dad did not push you to be a football player, or a baseball player or join this or that, but if you did, you were going to stick it out. Sticking it out meant getting you there, wherever that might be, even though Mom and Dad were juggling the schedules of church, home and every thing that every kid at the house was involved in. When I finished telling Mom about the show, she said,” But isn’t that on Boy Scout night? You can’t miss scouts.”

The possibility that tying knots and camping in uncomfortable bags and sleeping on hard ground might keep me away from the Beatles never occurred to me. Something in side of me deflated. Suddenly, the universe was not a rapturous thing, but a dark and cold abyss. I was stunned and retreated to the little turntable to sooth my pain with Beatle album after Beatle album.

It was there, that I became bold with the idea of rebellion. I couldn’t wear my hair long. I couldn’t skip church to see Ed Sullivan. I couldn’t do a lot, but the “Music Scene” commercials beckoned to me. They called me. They demanded that I be in front of that TV set on Monday night at 6:30 whether there was boy scouts or not. It was the Beatles, by God!

MY mom finally said, “You either be a boy scout or watch rock and roll.” An ultimatum.

I know now that Mom gave me the choice feeling that I, the responsible son, would choose boy scouts over rock and roll.

Monday night, I sat in front of the black and white TV set as David Steinberg introduced the Beatles and their new song. The tape rolled and I absorbed every small detail, captured every scene, feeling almost guilty with pleasure as if I had become some great heretic by abandoning the boy scouts for the man who had dared to say the Beatles were more popular than Jesus only four short years before. And, at the same time, fearful of some heavenly retribution because John sang, “Christ, you know it ain’t easy. You know how hard it can be. The way things are going, they’re gonna crucify me!”

I had tied my last knot. I had pitched my last tent as a boy scout. Some how, I had made the choice that was incomprehensible to my mom and dad and survived. No bolt of lightning. No fires of hell. No earthquakes and fear of being swallowed up by the earth, as were the errant Hebrews on exodus.

My scout career was over.

Rock and Roll was to blame.

Eventually the television stations started their rock and roll soup kitchens to feed the starving rock fans. In 1973, “Don Kirschner’s Rock Concert” aired live performances and concert segments. It ran at a late night weekend slot for about eight years. “In Concert,” and eventually “Solid Gold” followed it.

In August of 81’, music lovers got the ultimate dose on music on television with 24-hour videos on music television. The early days of MTV featured live performances and theatrical clips. On that August day, the Buggles used their video to kill the radio star, but for me, video had killed the boy scouts some twelve years earlier.