What's With the Big Glasses?

Tags:


1970s Eyeglasses

Every morning as I drive my kids to school I listen to Q107 with John Derringer. Partly for the classic rock, but mostly to listen to the very funny The Last Word with Auntie Mo' (Maureen Holloway) which comes on at 8 am. Like clockwork, the last commercial break before Maureen comes on is a commercial for "Korry's Men's Clothing", a store on the Danforth, always read by "Korry" himself. I always think, "...good for him, I wonder how long he's been in business..." Well, now I know.


Last night I finally got around to watching one of four The Songwriters -- An Intimate Evening of Songs and Stories DVDs that my wonderful husband bought for me. I thought they were some kind of rediscovered PBS specials, and they are DVDs that profile legendary theater/film songwriting teams performing their own material. We started with the Kander and Ebb/Alan Jay Lerner edition. Liza Minelli starts off the Kander and Ebb portion and by her good condition the date seems to be somewhere in the late '70s. Oh, didn't you know that you tell the time by a sundial, and the year by Liza Minelli's physical condition? The next hour wasJohn Kander (aka The King O' Vamps) at the piano and Fred Ebb singing and sweating at the microphone. At Fred's request this was shot in one continuous take. It was so, so, sooo amazing!

There is nothing -- I mean nothing -- like hearing great songwriters talk about their songs and then sing them with the intensity and meaning and the inflection they had imagined when they were writing. I didn't want it to end. Fred's voice was fine, but his enthusiasm and commitment to a song was so compelling.

I only wish that some of the sad-excuse-for-singer tarts today would watch this kind of stuff to get a clue on how to perform. Ooops, did I say that out loud? Sorry. Anyway, after watching them, I wish I knew these people.

And why doesn't somebody do a production of Flora The Red Menace instead ofBat Boy? My seven year old has fallen in love with the score of Flora ("You're a Communist, sign here!").

Fred Ebb talked about how they wrote a song about BoBo's Bar and Grill after receiving the news that one of their mutual friends had committed suicide. At the other end of the spectrum they did one of their "party songs", an ode to Sara Lee. What a joy.

As the credits rolled on this program (still no idea where it was shot) it said "Guests stayed at the Inn On The Park in Toronto" and John and Fred's clothes were done by "Korry's Menswear"! Oh my gosh, this was shot in Toronto! And they were dressed by Mr Korry-on-the Danforth himself, no less! Kewl.

OK, here's what I was talking about in the title of this post. All the audience shots during the Kander and Ebb performance showed everyone (well almost everyone) wearing huge eyeglasses! Not sunglasses but prescription glasses. I know that this was the fashion then, but to see a whole audience with these big beauties is a bit freaky. Are the glasses so big, so you can find them easily when you're not wearing them? Or did the bottom fall out of the glass market in the 1970s making it really cheap to buy a lot of glass? Or were they doubling as ski goggles? Inquiring minds want to know. Inquiring minds NEED to know.

Miss you Fred.
By Suzy Conn on February 27, 2005 9:28 PM | | Comments (0)


Leave a comment