For Now, Dick Clark... So Long

How did I first learn who Dick Clark was? I got sick...

When I was a kid back in the 80s, if I ever got sick and had to miss school, that meant laying on the couch and recuperating by watching daytime television. In the mornings, this meant game shows. Back in the days before you had a Game Show Network, the big 3 TV networks each rolled out a slate of game shows each morning between the morning news shows and the noon local newscasts. For me, I stuck with CBS, which meant that from 10-Noon, Sick Dave was watching "The $25,000 Pyramid," "Press Your Luck," and "The Price Is Right." A lot of people my age did the same thing, which is how we all know to avoid the Whammy, we all remember Bob Barker before he had gray hair... and we all knew Dick Clark as the congenial host of the "Pyramid." The "Mystery 7," the "7-11," the cuckoo noise when someone screwed up a clue, "Here is your first subject... ready... go..." And of course, the signature salute when Dick wrapped up another episode.

I eventually knew he did that "other" show, "American Bandstand," because my sister occasionally watched it on Saturday afternoons, but I was too young to understand what was going on there. I didn't appreciate that show and its contributions to our cultural world until the show had gone off the air and I had to rely on anniversary specials and VH-1 reruns. And of course, Dick Clark did "New Year's Rockin' Eve"... which I didn't watch all that often because if I was staying up on New Year's Eve, I was out doing stuff. Oh, and he did "Bloopers and Practical Jokes" with Ed McMahon... and what kid didn't love watching TV people screw up their lines? In those days, Dick Clark had a regular series on all 3 major networks AT THE SAME TIME. That's how big a deal he was. Even Elementary School Dave recognized that...

Dick Clark passed away this week. Jokes about the Mayans being right aside, it doesn't feel like we should live in a world without Dick Clark. He was so ever-present in culture for so long, even though by the 90s, we really only saw him on New Year's Eve. Then he had a stroke, came back to continue doing segments on New Year's Eve, and a lot of people spent a lot of time talking about whether or not he should be on the air in his post-stroke state. Yes, it was sad, some thought it to be an ego trip, but quite frankly, when you've done so much for pop culture, if you've got your wits about you enough to want to keep doing what you love, don't let comedians and "shock jocks" stop you. So put me down on the side of people who were okay with continuing to see him every December 31st all the way up to the end.

My students and those who are younger will have to rely on YouTube to understand what Dick Clark did before the turn of the millennium... and there is no shortage of stuff to look at, fortunately. I've spent much of the last few days looking at "American Bandstand" clips posted by Clark's production company and others who did so in not-quite-legal fashion. In a world that didn't have cable television, music videos, or even widespread FM radio, Dick Clark introduced America's youth to the greats of rock music and the must-have dance moves of the era. And he did this as the host of "Bandstand" for over three decades. Even after MTV became a central part of the music industry, artists from Madonna to Tears for Fears to DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince all knew that they had to do "Bandstand" in order to reach the masses. Yeah, these video clips now largely look like museum pieces, but I'm a classic TV junkie, and I think that anyone who wants to know where we came from as a culture has to include Dick Clark in that research.

And of course, he gave us the American Music Awards, a made-for-TV event that came to be the anti-Grammys. I may have devoted a blog entry or two to the way Dick Clark ran this show a decade or so ago (most notably, when I squirmed over his appearance in drag to open an AMA show around '01 or '02), but he was always working to get the most popular artists out to the people, even if for a time that included (*shudder*) 'N Sync. The guy could pick a hit, whether it was music or television. His influence continues to this day... did you know he was indirectly responsible for "So You Think You Can Dance?"

Also, I may have spent much of the afternoon watching episodes of the original 1970s "$20,000 Pyramid" on YouTube. There was a time when celebrities on game shows was not reason for a Will Ferrell/Darrell Hammond sketch on "SNL"... it was actually a regular occurrence with halfway decent stars appearing on shows like "Pyramid," "Password," and "Match Game." By the 80s, it was C-listers from "Gimme a Break" and "Webster," but the games were still the same. And the host guided things along, sharing the laughs, asking the questions, setting the contestants down during their anxious moments. There will always be debate about who was the best, but many say it was Dick Clark. I'll bet it's because people of a certain age ALREADY trusted him... because they grew up watching him on "Bandstand." If you trust a guy enough to listen to the songs he plays because "it's got a good beat and you can dance to it," then you're gonna trust him when you're about to face the task of identifying six categories for $25,000.

Most of the obituaries I've read for Dick Clark mention his ties to the payola scandals of the late 1950s and how he survived the scandals while others didn't; they also mention how "cool" or "uncool" he was (or both), the fact that he went to Syracuse University (the first of the many media superstars to come from that school)... and of course, the fact that he never seemed to age. I think a lot of that perception came from the fact that he always looked like he was having a blast at whatever he was doing, be it sitting among a crowd of teenagers and introducing Stevie Wonder or Def Leppard, trading one-liners with Vicki Lawrence about her ability to give clues, or freezing his ass off in Times Square. The guy had FUN. He loved his job... and yeah, he made a ton of money at what he did. But I think the lesson here is that we should all be so lucky to do something we visibly enjoy so much as Dick Clark did. Anyone who saw him on TV noticed that, even a sick kid laying on the couch in suburban Upstate New York... who in the years since has been known to occasionally throw a half-salute of his own to people he knows when passing in the hallways. Yeah, I think I subconsciously ripped that off from Dick Clark... but I love what I'm doing these days, so why not reflect the mannerisms of a prominent someone who lived a good life and did it right for so many decades with so many people watching. So let's all send one nice salute to one of the true greats of the music and entertainment industry, Dick Clark. So long...