B.J. & Dirty Dragon - "Demo Reel" (1972)

Here's a demo reel for B.J. & Dirty Dragon featuring Dave Dillman, director of the show, which aired on WFLD Channel 32. It features two examples of musical numbers from The Thumptwangers with Maynard the Crow, preceded by technical descriptions by Mr. Dillman. This was transferred from a 2" quad tape, which starts off with color bars and accompanying (approx.) 400 Hz tone.

First up is the Thumptwangers' lip-syncing (or beak-syncing, if you will) to Ray Stevens' "Freddie Feelgood (And His Funky Little Five-Piece Band)," as seen during Part 3 of this rare surviving episode from 1972. Also seen is their acting out to Stan Freberg and The Toads' 1954 parody of the early rock 'n' roll hit "Sh-Boom" (originally recorded by The Chords and later covered by The Crew-Cuts).

I asked Dave why this was made and he replied, "It was made for an National Association of Television Program Executives interchange on local production to show them what we were doing."

Technical Side Note From Dave Dillman: "The first electronic editors worked by putting the VTR into edit, playing up to the edit point then pushing the record button (as I remember 1.5 seconds before you wanted the edit). Editec was an advance on that in that you could lay down cue marks and the machine would do the edit offset. You could also lay down a number of cues and Editec would count them and do the edit on the correct cue mark (usually).

This reel did not air anywhere, but the routines were shown at varying times on local Chicago TV around 1972. The record date on the Quad reel is January 26th 1972. "VTR by A.H." (Dave thinks that was probably Art Halvorsen)

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