Loew's 46th Street Theatre

sorry… typos above.

Like I said, PKoch… ABC might have picked up Rock Concert after that first season. You’re probably right about Creature Features' time slot, but I think that show bumped around a lot. I clearly remember watching a Creature Feature presentation of Christopher Lee in “Dracula Has Risen From the Grave” one Saturday afternoon when I was about 10 or 11. As for Chiller Theater, I mostly remember that after Zacherle’s departure when the intro was only the 6-fingered hand and that creepy music in the background – then that eerie voice saying “Chil-ler” – man, that really set the mood for one of those old fright flicks. WOR channel 9 had something called Fright Night which featured a skull with smoke coming out of its eyes and WABC channel 7 had the voice of John Carradine introducing their late night horror movies under the title Haunted Hollywood. Now I’m thinking that Vincent Price might have had a voice over on one of these kind of shows… but I can’t quite nail it down.

Sheesh… quite an addictive thing, this digression stuff!!! Can’t seem to stop it…

I have vague memories of Zacherly’s radio and TV hosting chores. While I was too young to have attended any of those shows, I have a Grateful Dead CD from the Fillmore East where the band is introduced by Zacherly – apparently in full macabre regalia as Phil Lesh is heard in the background saying “Nice to see you, Count Dracula” in an exaggerated Lugosi-like accent!

And so it is finally settled. So what was on channel 5 Saturday nights? Anyone remember “Creature Features” with its host “The Creep”? I think that may have been on Saturday mornings or early afternoon. I remember loving it as a kid but in retrospect, the movies were never really that scary (“The Crawling Eye” with Forrest Tucker? I mean come on…) and “The Creep” was just some middle age guy in a black turtleneck and big dark sunglasses with a monotone delivery. I preferred the six-fingered claymation hand that rose out of the swamp in those WPIX channel 11 “Chiller Theater” openers to set the mood for a good ole bad horror movie! “Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror!”

But.. what does this have to do with the Loew’s 46th Street? No more digression from me…

If I recall properly, “In Concert” was an ABC show. When it went off the air, “Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert” started up as a replacement, but was syndicated rather than network.

Just to digress even further… I don’t know if there is a website that details history of local TV listings, but the imdb.com site lists ABC as distributor in the production credits for Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert. That would support East Coast’s assertion that the show was on WABC-TV channel 7 in New York. It’s possible, but doubtful, that the New York affiliate – which is owned by the network – wouldn’t carry its own production and allow it to compete on an independent station like Metromedia’s WNEW-TV channel 5.

Here’s the {url=http://imdb.com/title/tt0252784/combined]imdb page[/url].

Just to make sure we are not arguing at cross purposes mis-informed, I remember Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert being broadcast on WNEW Channel 5 in New York City, starting mid-September 1973.

A few memories of “In Concert” :

Focus, performing their Top Twenty hit, “Hocus Pocus”, Friday April 13, 1973. In retrospect, the lead vocalist reminded me of Robert “Waddy” Wachtel, but I don’t know if it was him.

Chuck Berry, about two weeks later. He performed “Carol” and “My Ding-A-Ling”, referring to the audience as “all my children”.

“The Midnight Special”, 1-2:30 AM, Saturday November 17, 1973 with David Bowie, Marianne Faithfull, and the 1980 “floor” show. A high point of slapstick was Bowie wearing false breasts with hands reaching around from behind.

Pkoch you are wrong. Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert was on ABC back then. It was a NETWORK show and back then Ch 5 was still an independant channel showing syndicated reruns.

I doubt that any network could produce a show with that kind of quality music that was out back when Rock Concert was taped.

“In Concert” was on ABC Fridays at 11:30 PM starting in 1972 or 1973.
“The Midnight Special” was on NBC Saturdays from 1 to 2:30 a.m., “Friday Night”. Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert was on WNEW Channel 5 Saturdays starting 11:30 PM in mid-September 1973. The debut show featured Earth, Wind and Fire, The Doobie Brothers, Cross Country, and special guest stars …. THE ROLLING STONES !!!! (dubbed promotion videos for “Angie”, two of them, the first one, by itself, the second, with Jagger in a Little Lord Fauntleroy outfit, following dubbed videos of “Silver Train” and “Dancing With Mr. D”.)

The “Angie” videos had Mick Taylor sitting at the piano, with the string backing deleted from the soundtrack. All the videos had different vocals, and slightly different lead guitar, than the original backing tracks from “Goats Head Soup”, their then-latest album.

David Sanborn had a late-night talk show in 1989. I taped it on Sept. 3rd when he had Lou Reed and Mike Rathke with him and the holuse band doing “Dirty Blvd.” and “the national anthem”, “Walk On The Wild Side”, also Lou Reed and John Cale doing two “Songs For Drella” : “You’ve Got The Style It Takes” and “Nobody But You”, about the late Andy Warhol.

I subsequently saw Reed and Cale do “Nobody But You” on David Letterman’s show, but the performance was better on Sanborn’s.

I also saw Sanborn’s show when he had bassist and James Brown band alumnus Bootsie Collins as a guest, urging, “Dave, get ready to roll, Dave get ready to roll !”

Sanborn also played sax on the track “Pretty Beat Up” from the Stones' fall 1983 album “Under Cover”.

East Coast… a history of hostility towards theater buffs on the part of the furniture store owner/manager has been noted in comments above. Thanks for the info. Yeah, I thought that Kirschner was on ABC, but I wasn’t 100% sure. I thought that maybe David Susskind’s interview show was on Channel 5 during that time slot, but I think Susskind’s show was on Sunday nights at 11:30. I’m still fuzzy on which show ran on which night. I’m thinking “Midnight Special” was Friday nights on NBC and “Rock Concert” was Saturdays on ABC.

ABC tried a show called “In Concert” for a while during the ‘90’s. I think they might have even had it on prime time at some point. And NBC used to carry an excellent and eclectic series on late nights called “Later” that was hosted by the former Squeeze keyboardist Jooles Holland. I recall that show mostly in the '80’s with David Sanborn as a co-host, but I have recently seen more recent episodes (featuring bands like Foo Fighters, Wilco and Coldplay) airing on the cable station Ovation. I think the show has been running in Britain for some time and only breifly made it on American network TV.

Kirshner was also the man behind The Monkees! I remember the Rock Concert show. I recall it from the late ‘70’s mostly. If I’m not mistaken, it competed with a show called “Midnight Special” on WNBC channel 4 that featured Wolfman Jack as announcer and a variety of rotating guest hosts (I recall folks as diverse as Helen Reddy and Todd Rundgren taking turns). Both of these shows lasted until the very early '80’s – when the rising popularity of MTV probably took whatever remained of the wind out of their sails.

I forget which show it was, but one of them advertised that it would have the Grateful Dead on the following week – I was a burgeoning young Dead-Head at the time – and when I tuned in, it was merely some clips from the upcoming Grateful Dead movie that were shown. I’m trying to remember what the time slots were… I’m thinking Saturday nights, but then… channel 4 would have had Saturday Night Live on from 11:30 to 1am. Did they run on Friday night? I don’t think so…

Anyway… did Kirshner’s “Rock Concerts” always originate from the Loew’s 46th Street?

I used to go to movies at the 46th st in the 60’s and then later on in the early 70’s i got to see the Gratful Dead along with the New Riders of the Purple Sage with Jerry Garcia playing pedal steel for NRPS. I m et Micky Hearts grandmother who had baked a batch of Alice B Tokeless brownies and also met Allison Steele The Night bird from WNEW FM 102.7. I have fund memories of that show. I also wound up doing some stage work at the time Don Kirshners “Rock Concert” was being taped there.

The manager (who is religous)of the now furniture-warehouse of former Loew’s 46th theatre is extremely negative and insulting when it has anything to do with the history of the building. He said, (See Theatrerat’s post of April 28th,2005)
“I am tired of wierdos and cultists trying to see what is left of the theatre. It is closed, and that is that!”