TV Party, 1978-1982
New York
Glenn O’Brien’s TV Party was a public access television variety and talk show hosted by celebrated writer, editor, and creative director, Glenn O'Brien (1947-2017), and Chris Stein, the co-founder and guitarist of the band Blondie with Debbie Harry. Downtown filmmaker Amos Poe frequently directed the show with a rotating cast of camera men and women, including Diego Cortez, Lisa Rosen, and others, including Basquiat. Fred Braithwaite, aka Fab 5 Freddy, who had an important influence on the artist, was also a cameraman and made occasional appearances on the show. Walter "Doc" Steding was the leader of the TV Party Orchestra.
Guests included David Bowie, Chris Burden, David Byrne, James Chance, George Clinton, Debbie Harry, Mick Jones, Kraftwerk, Robert Mapplethorpe, Klaus Nomi, Iggy Pop, Nile Rodgers and Steven Meisel, among many other notable figures. While Jean-Michel Basquiat appeared nine times on the program, the first instance on April 24, 1979 (Buchhart, D., Eleanor Nairne, eds., with L. Johnson, Basquiat: Boom for Real, Barbican, London, p. 270), he was a constant presence behind the scenes after he met O’Brien.
Randy Gun was an occasional musician in the TV Party Orchestra and Bobby Grossman was the photographer of the show, which featured live music, interviews with artists and creative personalities, wacky theme shows, and general substance-inspired zaniness. In a particularly charming and raucous episode of 1978, Gun can be seen on guitar behind Debbie Harry as she demonstrates the pogo, the British precursor to the slam dance of a mosh pit.
Debbie Harry demonstrates The Pogo dance on TV Party, 1978, photographs by Bobby Grossman of Debbie Harry and the TV Party orchestra. © Estate of Glenn O’Brien
Gun recalls his experience with TV Party:
“I knew Glenn through Ernie Brooks who was a big shmoozer... I really don’t know when I met him, most likely [at] the Mudd Club. My initiation into the TV Party experience was usually encouraged by Brooks. He would call me a couple hours before show time to meet at the Blarney Stone on 23rd street. He would ask if I was available and bring my guitar. ...The music was always an absolute car crash. Walter Steding was the Doc Severinsen [bandleader of The Tonight Show, 1967-1992] of the show. Let’s say he played discordant music. There was never a plan or a key to play in. As a result the music was a bunch of jangle.” (Written communication, April 6, 2021)
O’Brien, in an article about the inspiration and aesthetics of
TV Party, commented, “Often the sound was bad but we embraced poor quality in homage to Warhol’s early films. I wanted the show to look like art. Our production values might have been crude, but I preferred to think of it as minimalism.” Recalling Basquiat and
TV Party, O’Brien wrote, “Jean-Michel Basquiat first came on the show to be interviewed when he was eighteen years old and writing graffiti under the name SAMO©. He loved the scene and became a regular, sometimes appearing on the air, but usually sitting in the control room at the character generator, typing surreal subtitles onto the screen.” (Both quotes, Glenn O’Brien, “TV Party: Memories of Making Television History,”
L’Uomo Vogue, 2006, as reproduced in Glenn O’Brien,
Intelligence for Dummies:
Essays and Other Collected Writings, ZE Books, Houston, 2019, pp. 26, 25). As a viewer of these episodes of
TV Party, one would see Basquiat’s language on the screen through his use of the character generator, including text that would later appear in his paintings. Phrases similar to his SAMO© graffiti would pop up, such as “DEATH IS ROLAIDS” and “GAMMA RAYED PROSTITUTES LOOKING TO A CROWD OF FISH ON BEING A DOG.” Glenn O’Brien’s TV Party offered this early, live glimpse of Basquiat’s talent, evident on the street, now available with technology in the studio.
Janis Gardner Cecil
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Photos by ©Bobby Grossman (unless stated otherwise)