[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIAY32BTxLs[/youtube]

Bob and Ray, SCTV and The Simpsons all echo a comedic world view, that people are fundamentally good-natured but inept. The world won’t die by evil design but because someone had an oopsy. These thoughts come to mind while watching the Barry Richards TV Collection Vol. 1, a DVD/CD collection of segments from disc jockey Barry Richards‘ various television shows throughout the years. Richards started his career as a disc jockey in the 1960s in Washington, D.C., and though he worked around the Northeast, it’s the market he’s most associated with.

Richards used his radio fame to transition into television, first Groove-In, a teen-oriented show, here memorably captured with a student reviewing 2001: A Space Odyssey and a panel of students interviewing Cliff Nobles after he did a great dance while his band lip-synced to “The Horse.” Starting in 1970, he did late night, “free form” television, mixing episodes of Flash Gordon serials with music spots, and those provide the bulk of the clips on this compilation. The musical highlights are bands you’ve likely never heard of (I hadn’t): The Flavor and Jamul, the former being a perfectly credible garage rock band while the latter stomped out a heavy blues-rock version of “Tobacco Road.” A band called Zephyr with pre-Deep Purple Tommy Bolin on guitar perform an almost unrecognizable version of “St. James Infirmary” with a female vocalist Janis-ing all over it while a soprano sax adds a gently jazz-like dimension.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaNX_eFDPbo[/youtube]

The draw, though, is footage of Little Richard, Bob Seger, Humble Pie and Fats Domino, though each is less impressive than it sounds. Domino is backed by the Byrds, which promises to be interesting but while Fats sounds and plays great—not lip-syncing—the only thing Byrds-like about their backing is the sight of Roger McGuinn playing the Ric 12-string. Little Richard had just signed to Reprise Records and was clearly doing anything to promote his continued existence, but sharing screen time with Richards and a George Carlin-lite Uncle Dirty (just add jokes!) sapped his irrepressability. Until he goes to the electric piano to play “Good Golly Miss Molly” backed by Jamul, he’s almost morose on camera.

He likely knew how low-rent everything about the show was as he was interviewed by Richards while sitting on swings hung from the ceiling in the studio. Alice Cooper met a similar fate when he performed very heavy versions of “Eighteen” and “Black Juju.” When shot with three distant cameras while playing on a three-inch riser with 20 or so people in the crowd sitting cross-legged in front of him, Alice ended up looking foolish and odd.

It’s hard to imagine that Richards and his shows weren’t an inspiration for Rick Moranis’ Gerry Todd on SCTV, as time and again, his and the show’s straight-faced attempts to be a part of a youth culture moment are woefully, obliviously at odds with the results, making everything on the disc entertaining, if not in the way Richards hoped. When interviewing Humble Pie, he asked Peter Frampton what instrument he played, evidently not noticing the Les Paul he had strapped on.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDojwQ8cJC4[/youtube]

I haven’t got to the CD yet, but it includes interviews with the Beatles, and talk and performances by Little Richard and Dr. John.

Richards would go on to host Video Disco and Studio 78 when disco was hot, and as corny as that sounds, I understand a guy doing what he had to to stay in a youth-oriented business that had already pink-slipped or marginalized many of his peers. While trying to find out more about him, I found a clip of Richards as a wrestling announcer and discovered that he made a stop in New Orleans, where he was a DJ on WAIL, hosted Live at the Famous from the Famous Disco, and Video Trax in the early 1980s on WDSU. Here are two episodes of the show minus the videos. By this time he’d graduated to Cosby sweaters, but the fast-talking hipster DJ spouting nonsense handles is the same guy who’s all over this fascinating collection.