The Uncle Floyd Show

As a teenager growing up in northern NJ in the 70s, The Uncle Floyd Show was THE thing. Always on at parties, or turned to in basements and bedrooms late at night while we were sneaking weed and beers. It was a ridiculous, serial comedy show with a zany cast of characters, led by Uncle Floyd Vivino - a really good pianist ("Where's Wild West City at??" - who remembers his bit part in this commercial except me??)

Anyway, for a while one of my friends attended college in Newark, and it was filmed not far from where he lived. We actually went and saw it taped a few times, a bunch of hammered college kids, drinking and laughing and cat-calling. It was huge.

Recently obtained a DVD compilation of the show from Vivino's website. It's just as goofy as ever - if not more so. It hasn't aged very well, but then, it was completely ridiculous and only appallingly funny back then. It's like watching some absurd, amateur variety show. Perfect, because that's exactly what it was - all inside jokes and home-town references. Being sober 21 years probably helps form my current impression. Twinkle-twinkle Uncle Floyd.

Cool regional show.

I began watching Uncle Floyd back when I was 9 yeas old or so.

It was completely irreverent wonderful and fun. Uncle Floyd reach out to his fan base like no other performer of the day. Any fan could create a local fan-club. I was president of fan club 186 which was part of my street address and had no reality on how many clubs there were.

Every week he featured a viewer and I will never forget when I was chosen as viewer of the week and received an award.

When I was 10 years old I got very sick and had brain surgery. Uncle Floyd got a letter from my father asking if he could send me a t shirt. Floyd Vivino did one better. He called me up and told me that Skip Rooney visits the same hospital sometimes but in the closed ward of the loony bin.

Uncle Floyd came to visit me in the hospital and gave me the first copy of his first 45 "Deep in the Heart of Jersey" by Cowboy Charlie and La De Da Da by Oogie on the flip side.

Gosh I love what that man did for me and the show never stopped being fun.

Someone told me about this TV show that very underground that was being shown on a UHF station. My friend told me that there were cool bands to see and that it was really a show for adults because of the many dirty and off the cuff jokes that were made. Needless to say, I saw the show and was hooked on it. Part of the show always seem to have Uncle Floyd singing and playing the piano to some song. I used to love it when Uncle Floyd would sing "Pennies from Heaven" and the cast would throw real pennies at him and he would duck while singing. Some of the skits were really off the wall. I remember the skit "The Dull Family", where the cast would dress up as red necks and debate if they should turn on the TV. Just my two cents here, I think that the fascination that so many people had with this show was the bad production. The show in the beginning of it's run had only one camera and it was not uncommon to have something fall down or apart while the cast was doing a skit. As teenagers we would just start laughing at things like that. The fact that it was a NJ show was important as well. Keep in mind that NJ has always had an identity crisis. In northern NJ, we watch New York stations because New York City is not far away and it's news media has always been criticized for not reporting enough on NJ. So to watch a home grown TV show like Uncle Floyd seem to be a special treat. It was like your own underground TV program that you could watch that promoted and made fun of New Jersey. I miss you Uncle Floyd.

Uncle Floyd Show had some of the great punk musicians for the late 70's early 80's including The Dead Boys , Blondie, and the Ramones (more than a few times) His pal Uggie would haunt my dreams for years, bring me back to a time I did not want to stay in. I loved Floyd and hid gang and hoped he would find stardom when he appeared in Good Morning Vietnam. But alas, so did he. I wonder what Floyd is doing today. I occasional see reruns in my twisted mind. but wish it would come out on DVD...Hear that Floyd..do a DVD. It will make you some cash. So bring Uggie and a few of the gang out of retirement from Bloomfield NJ and do a compilation DVD. Look, if Joe Franklin can do one, so can you.

You know, to be honest, I can't really remember this show very well, other then it was one of my favorite shows on television when I was young. I so remember Oggie, I was such a big fan my brother made me a clay bust of him.

Whenever the show came on, I would run around the house screaming "it's the uncle Floydy show!" Another plus was that is was on right around the time Doctor Who was. So I was always watching that waiting for my favorite show to come on.

I saw Uncle Floyd recently and I was really suprised about how little I remembered from it. But still, I have enough vague childhood memories relating to it to last a lifetime~