I didn’t remember the Jimmy doll, but we had the D&M set.
Also:
(by LiartownUSA)
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And now I have Pat Boone doing Anarchy for the UK in my head also. Jeebus. And Andy Williams … no no no stop it!!
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Oh, I’d thought about WKRP but then figured it was a little later, I loved that show and Soap as well.
Parliament-Funkadelic was brilliant in '78, The Police released Outlandos d’Amour, Kraftwerk released The Man-Machine, Devo existed and was on SNL in '78 (and SNL had an amazing cast), as @anon61221983 mentioned, Joy Division was around.
Also Animal House was released.
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The Police released their first album during this time, I think. but Devo came along earlier. It was the year of “Are We Not Men…” though.
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I’ve heard people say that WKRP hasn’t aged well.
What they don’t realize is that any rerun or DVD isn’t showing the original episodes. The music was a BIG part of the show, and they only licenced it for the first run. The reruns and DVDs have much of the music replaced with an in-house band, and scenes cut out where that wasn’t possible.
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1978 gave us the Star Wars Holiday Special. You could merge it with a Donnie and Marie show and still be trying to figure out which bit is from which show when the convulsions start.
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The loss of the original music really hurt the show a bit. But lately reissues have tried to remedy the situation. Licensing got easier. At the last time I checked, the latest version of the show has all of the original music except Pink Floyd. It ruined a funny bit concerning the song “Dogs”.
The show was prescient on a lot of points which people didn’t realize at the time:
-The rise of talk radio on AM
-Automated popular music stations (seen in horror in 2 separate instances)
-The utter dependence on the ratings book (also referenced least twice in detail)
-The seductive evil of disco
-Sexual harassment is more pathetic than humorous
-Bible thumpers still feel the need to censor popular media
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I saw that show when it aired. I was in grade school at the time. It took me 38 years of therapy to repress those memories. Thanks for nothing. 
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Dude! I ran out of likes! So here’s some 
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I’m all about artistic interpretation for damned near everything, but when it comes to Fagen and Becker it’s sometimes best to leave well enough alone. Also, this song is nothing without Elliot Randall.
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Did the newest set come up short, too? I bought season 1 when it came out the first time on DVD, about 9 years ago. My wife didn’t grow up in the US, had never seen WKRP and isn’t familiar with a lot of the missing music. The show still held up all right on its own, but I’d held off on buying the new DVD. (They were also showing reruns on Antenna TV)
(Edit: didn’t see @Mangochin’s post)
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No Sex Pistols, but Mr. Boone did cover Ozzy, Judas Priest, KISS, Metallica, and a few others on his '97 release “In a Metal Mood”. It’s the perfect CD for irritating the audiophiles at high-end stereo trade shows.
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Becker. You’re not wrong about the rest of it though.
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The 70ies were horrible but at least they had hair. Now two out of three human males of all age groups look like they joined the USMC after serving a lengthy prison sentence.
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See what happens when I don’t play Android Warehouse at least once a year?
Looking at that, one thing that really strikes me is that Marie isn’t half naked, the way women routinely are now in videos and song/dance numbers on TV. Personally I think it looks a lot better: costumes are more diverse and thus more interesting than yet another torso or decolletage.
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Some slinky outfits would really enhance their thing. But the Rockettes did steal their Mojo with this number:
I started it at the coolest part for you:
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Well at least you know head lice is much less of an issue now than it was in 1978.
Had anyone at the time made the connection between William Burroughs’s “Naked Lunch” and the term “Steely Dan” which figures briefly in the novel?
Mary is strapping on a rubber penis. “Steely Dan III from Yokohama,” she says, caressing the shaft.
“What happen to Steely Dan I?”
“He was torn in two by a bull dyke. She could cave in a lead pipe.”
“And Steely Dan II?”
“Chewed to bits by a famished candiru in the Upper Baboonsasshole. And don’t say ‘wheeeeeeee!’ this time.”
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Next time you’re watching some insane program on Chinese or Japanese television and you think “WTF?” just come back, watch this, and think, “oh, right.”
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