My Geeky Past

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When I was younger, say 8th-9th Grade, I was addicted to Saturday Morning cartoons.  That was back when they started at seven in the morning and went until one in the afternoon.  You could have several bowls of cereal and a stack of pancakes by lunchtime, which was usually when mom sent us outside because we were crawling up the walls.

My favorite during the season 84-85-86 season:

(photo credit: Kidd Video Flipside)

That’s right, Kidd Video – truly the pioneers of fighting corporate rock conglomerates as they fought the Master Blaster who kept trying to steal their musical magic by sending the Copy Cats to trap them.  Evil never sends anyone *smart* or *motivated* or not from Jersey, which is how the Copy Cats always sounded to me, and that’s why evil always fails. 

At first the animation was typical of DIC and Saban, first squared off and clunky and then in the last season, very rounded and sparkly. And then the show was canceled.  I’m pretty sure I cried.

I didn’t watch for the animation though – I watched for the music and the videos.  It was probably the first band I really went nuts over not because I had a crush on any one particular band member (I really didn’t) but because I really, really liked the music.  

Also, as a consequence of not having a job, I taped all of their songs from the television show, from broadcast to VCR and from VCR to audio cassette, with my tape recorder held up the speaker to record the music. 

I never got all of the music from my video tapes, either an announcer was talking over them or the video was abbreviated for time.  It’s one of those shows that will probably never be released to DVD because of the royalties that would have to be paid to the various artists who lent their video clips to the show.  I still have those cassettes, though the sound is a little muddy, I’ll still pull them out once in a while. 

The band’s sole album soundtrack was only released in Israel on CBS Records, and while I could probably find it on eBay, I haven’t had a turntable in fifteen years.

(photo credit: Kidd Video Flipside)

I did manage to find mp3s on Kidd Video Flipside, which made me ridiculously happy. This was what I listened to as a kid when left to my own devices – happy, poppy music that made me want to dance.

Listening to it again this morning, I still wanted to put on my boogie shoes.