The Golden Age of Music Television

I visited Dobie Gray's Web site tonight after listening to a collection of his greatest songs. I was happy to see that the veteran soul singer will be releasing a new album this spring. But the bigger payoff, at least for me, was a pointer to a youtube video that featured Gray singing "Twist and Shout" with the Shangri-las on "Shindig."

It's clips like this that make me realize just how lucky I was to grow up in the '60s and '70s. My parents never got cable until long after I'd graduated from college, but I still had a choice of the greatest music television in history: "Shindig," "Hullabloo," "Soul Train," "American Bandstand," "The Johnny Cash Show," "The Glen Campbell Show," "The Midnight Special" and, yes, "The Monkees."

Kids today have a choice of hundreds of channels, but when it comes to music television they're stuck with "Hannah Montana," "American Idol," MTV, VH-1 and their imitators. What kind of choice is that? There are a lot of good young bands, but MTV ignores most of them.

Perhaps I'm missing something because I don't watch much TV, but why don't the networks bring back "Shindig"? Mary Weiss of the Shangri-las and Dobie Gray are still around, and you can bet it would be magical to see them perform again.