Glenn O'Brien was in the middle of the Punk scene, writing a column for Andy Warhol's Interview Magazine. One night Glenn was a guest on a cable show If I Can't Dance You Can Keep Your Revolution.
This early episode gets off to an artistically agonizing start--the sound person is late, overdosing on drugs or both. Or it was the broken down equipment. Once the sound kicks in the show gets lively. Compton Maddux, a droll singer songwriter, is backed up by Debbie Harry and Glenn the unique futurist soprano Klaus Nomi does one of his post-modern arias Adny Shernoff, of the Dictators, plays the Beach Boys Be True to Your School backed up by pom pom girls Tish and Snooky, the Manic Panic designers. Downtown legend director Eric Mitchell announces the opening of the now famous New Cinema theater and shows a clip from his film Kidnapped with Arto Lindsay, Duncan Smith and Anya Phillips. Brit director David Silver and photographer Kate Simon do the white people talk about reggae segment. Blondies Chris Stein and Debbie Harry and the Patti Smith Groups Richard Sohl drop in to smoke a reefer and take calls from all the crazies in cable land. Chris explains all this is not chaos, it is art.
This episode plays with ideas of time and space, time is money and dead air, alternating between aggressive boredom and quick wit. The TV Party Orchestra, Walter Steding on violin, Lenny Ferrari on the New Yorker magazine, and Tim Wright on guitar, jams while host OBrien performs the sublime feat of rolling a joint blindfolded while smoking a joint.
Halloween 1979 happened to fall on a Wednesday, which means it was TV Party night. Glenn is dressed in a casual Dolly Parton lesbian look. Chris Stein is a wicked witch. Debbie Harry is an umbrella. Richard Sohl is a top model from the Candy Jones Agency and teaches a new dance called The Subway. Teri Toye is as a fairy princess. Fab Five Freddy is a nickel bag, interviewed on the dangers of things put into Trick or Treat bags. The TV Party Orchestra looks brilliant, with Lenny Ferrari as a cubist painting and Walter Steding as a computer containing a gelatin capsule. This is TV Party at is most dense and abstract, filled with cross-talk, double entendre and obscure information.
February 17, 1981. Reagan was the new President. Iran had just released its American hostages, and Israel and the PLO had rejected Egypt's peace plan.