Dreamy...

In 1983, I was smack-dab in the middle of my Duran Duran worship phase, and was also quite into taping the videos on late-night shows such as Night Tracks and Friday Night Videos. As luck would have it, one night, while recording Night Tracks, a very rare D2 video, Save a Prayer, aired. To say that I was in heaven would be a complete understatement -- the adolescent girl hormones were raging. I was well aware of the song, having played the album Rio ad nauseum, but the song had not yet been released as a single -- when it was, the video released was a concert video that had shots of the original Russell Mulcahy-directed video on the big screen. Not nearly as cool. I had never seen it the video, and I wouldn't again, without renting Duran Duran's VCH collection, anyway...

Then my world was shattered when my brother, Dave, taped over the beloved and rare Save a Prayer Video. He thought the newly saved program was more worthy of the spot on the tape, and it was really good: An episode of Late Night with David Letterman where the entire show was dedicated to the show's audio assistant -- regular guy Bob Rooney. Given three wishes, Rooney asked for a beer, a submarine sandwich -- and another beer. We had seen it before and were greatly amused, so when it re-aired, taping was in order. Had I been there at the time, I would have agreed with taping it, but not over Save a Prayer. No way.

I got him back by taping something over Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds -- a movie he was quite excited to have caught on video. I'm not sure what I taped over it, but I'm sure it wasn't nearly as good as either Bob Rooney night or The Birds.

25 years later (excuse me while go take my Geritol and fetch my walker), I can see Save a Prayer all I want on YouTube. No such luck with Bob Rooney night -- but we do still have the video tape around here -- maybe some of Bob Rooney night will find it's spot on YouTube one of these days.


Ah, those were the days...


And as an added bonus, here's the opening for Night Tracks.