PVC fashions never really caught on.
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I’m older than he was, when he made this. (In fact, I was just a few years younger than this, when I started piano lessons…)
ETA:
I like this, for some reason:
I used to watch LW as a kid, I believe it was on every Saturday evening. I liked watching all the different types of instruments. IIRC my parents went to a taping (while we lived near L.A.) and this would have been before they turned thirty. (Their record collection consisted of things like Henry Mancini, Al Hirt, Enoch Light, Ferrante & Teicher… [maybe they were hand-me-downs from their parents] OK so nowadays I can appreciate Henry Mancini… but to their credit, we spent a short time living in St. Croix so they did bring back some Byron Lee and steel pan records.)
Furthermore I’m going to hazard a guess that LW was on TV way more than, say, The Beatles but that’s not how we remember the 1960s.
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My Dad’s uncle played saxophone with Liberace at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music. That saxophone ended up being passed down to me when I started band in 5h grade and I still have it, but haven’t played it in a long long time.
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Eehhhh - in some circles it has…
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Are you alluding to activities that require safe-words and being a good sport? That would be a relatively small group, and not within the “caught on” bracket… so to speak.
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“Hello young folks, whatchya taking?
I gotta try that scene you’re making
Liberace turning on…”
Maybe it was “what’s a shaking?”? Pretty weird lyrics either way.
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Not necessarily, there are also Goth and Dance type outfits. But yeah, it it isn’t mainstream, but has its niche.
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This is what you get when old square white men at the network make the programming decisions and hand them off to middle-aged square white men to produce and deliver to their square white audience.
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Performing “Feelin’ Groovy”
It’s called “the 59th Street Bridge Song”. I mention this not to be pedantic, but in case anyone wanted to google the track, and also to be pedantic.
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Feels like footage of a Manson Family celebration before things got dark. Very culty.
Pretty sure things like this were what Iggy Pop was reacting against.
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There were so many weird layers to this. A square, sanitized version of a counter-culture (that we now know would curdle into the ur-square Reaganite boomer yuppie culture), deployed to make an older performer seem hip in a “How do you do, fellow teens?” tone-deaf way. BUT that older performer was actually a closeted member of a population whose existence was genuinely counter-cultural during such a repressive time, and that identity is tacitly expressed in the camp qualities of the performance and production.
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Well, at least Liberace didn’t say “fellow young people” he spoke to the young people. Yes, it was awkward and forced, but that is pretty much how it always looks when you’re 20 years past being a young 20-something and you join in with them. If I started quoting Kanye West my kids’ heads would probably explode. I try to stay in my lane. It’s harder for entertainers to age with their audience.
I watched that with the sound off while I listened to “The four Horsemen” by Aphrodite’s Child.
Huge improvement.
As someone who has recently been through his late-forties, I can confirm that being in your late-forties is nothing like what your 25-year-old self imagines being in your late-forties is like. In fact it’s much closer to how you feel as a 25-year-old. You still engage with popular culture but, remembering your youthful attitudes to “old” age, you do so in a way that is often parodic or self-deprecating, because nobody wants to be Steve Buscemi with a skateboard over his shoulder.
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Well, I =loved= it. I want those dresses! Heck, shirts & pants too, but definitely not the PVC waistcoat. A girl’s gotta draw the line somewhere.
I loved this song when I was a kid (in the 70s), and when he sang “Liberace’s turning on” I immediately imagined tripping with him, which would have been something. Sadly, I missed my chance.
In any case, it did give me a laugh and relieved some of today’s work stress so thanks for that, @Rusty_Blazenhoff 
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Why am I thinking that, somewhere, there’s footage of Phyllis Diller – no, wait, Ethel Merman – no, both – performing “Good Day Sunshine?”
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Ok, so once we all started going Lawrence Welk, I can’t believe this hasn’t been posted yet. 
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