Rock-N-America

Rockin' America rocks! I loved this late night video show, it's one of my fondest memories of the 1980's! Frazer Smith AKA "The Fraze" was a great iconic 80's host with his Devo shades, skinny ties, and New Romantic suits.

My favorite episode was the detective parody where Fraze was, "Frazer Smith: Private Dick." And who can forget show staples like the Party Vikings and the infamous show catch phrase, "Cheeselog!" I even dug the opening theme song! Fraze, we miss ya, buddy!

HARD TO BELIEVE I STAYED HOME NIGHTS FOR THIS..EVEN THOUGH I LIVED ONLY 10 MINUTES OUT OF MANHATTAN BACK THEN.

---This show was addictive in it's nutti ness and seemingly unconnected ties to any major music studio influence ( a major plus by the way), Ever since I watched this series my eyes caught every little side entertainment thing Rick came attached to. The capper was that the music choices were obscure gold most of the time.. You start to wonder how no one in the music video biz did not catch onto this for an extended time.... On a side note this show lasted less than the words required for the review...geez.

If there's one thing about the Internet Movie DataBase, it's got EVERYTHING! I was surprised to find not only an entry for Rockin' America here, but also a few comments! Very nice that I wasn't the only one staying up late on Friday and/or Saturday nights (I think sometimes it was shown on one or both nights) watching this show in 1984, due to not having cable then (and I probably never will, either), which, other than occasionally seeing some MTV (when they actually PLAYED music; what a concept nowadays!) at a friend's house and watching Friday Night Videos and some other crappy video show that came on Sundays (forget the name of it, but they'd cut off a good minute or so of their videos; real nice!), this was pretty much my dose of (usually) hard rock and heavy metal videos.

At first I thought the show was pretty stupid, but then I later got used to the silly humor, and once the (sadly, only) one year of shows reran, I didn't see why I didn't think the early shows were funny the first time around. I guess I just wasn't used to it at first; after all, how many video shows have shown stock footage of things like cats "boxing", with the hosts pretending to be sports announcers, one of which (Frazier Smith) told the other to "take the cotton out of your mouth!", due to the other's stuffing his mouth with cotton in order to better imitate sports announcer (from back then) Howard Cosell?

And speaking of which, a couple of the main players: there was Smith, who was a bit of a rock icon back then, having a small part in Helix' "Gimmie Gimmie Good Lovin'" video and playing duel parts of an angel (I think) and the devil in Alcatrazz' "God Blessed Video" (where the devil character, of course, predictably called the angel character a "cheeseball" :) ). His co-host (I can't remember his name...the black guy -- I'm guessing it's the one that someone else mentioned earlier in a comment as "Magic" -- who would skewer Michael Jackson) would also add to the humor of their skits as well, most notably in the (aforementioned) skit where they, as private investigators, were trying to find Michael Jackson's other glove, which the look on his face was priceless when he found it. They also did a range of characters as well, especially with returning favorite (of mine) of Smith's bonehead metalhead guy of "Barry Metalnow" (how come no one has mentioned THAT character yet?!).

The boys even made fun of themselves from time to time, like when they broadcast a video clip of Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran being interviewed once, which he said that they were big mostly with the thanks to MTV showing their videos, which you heard Smith off-camera say "that's Rockin' America you dork! Oops!" I mean, what OTHER show would freakin' do THAT? Yeah, nobody!

And then there were the videos...of course, they played some of the bigger (well, they were back then), mostly hard rock and heavy metal acts, such as Zebra's "Wait Until the Summer's Gone" and Honeymoon Suite, but they also ran a good selection of the underground as well, as Suicidal Tendencies supposedly had their world premiere of "Institionalized" on the show, which I didn't get it the first time around with THAT one: a very, very heavy tune with vocalist Mike Muir just yelling the lyrics, but still getting drowned out by the guitars. Say WHAT? I sure as hell hadn't heard anything like that before...or since! But the video was funny as anything.

I also remember the very new Red Hot Chili Peppers, which I also didn't get: the drummer was wearing a baby's bonnet (I think) and the vocalist had on some kind of bizarre mask...which, once he took it off, I was like ugh, put it back on!! Their brand of metal fusing with funk (one of the earliest ever, along with Mordred) was also very different (wish they'd go back to their old days and style, it seems all I've heard from them on the radio for years now is these "I'm so bummed"-sounding ballads!) also confused me as well, since I also hadn't heard anything like that at the time either. And there was some video by some punk/hardcore/possibly "crossover" type band where the entire video was shot with the band and people constantly running along a beach, and people were falling over and all as they were trying to keep up with the band (anybody know what the hell video and/or group this was?!). And on and on and on.

Aside from probably being ignored from being on late at night and the amount of underground videos they played, the show should have been bigger than it was (sad it only lasted a year)...but then, I don't really think it was publicized much anyway, maybe not AT ALL. It would be kind of difficult to do, if you think about it: the scary, evil world (as a lot of people stereotype it to being) of hard rock and heavy metal brought to you every Saturday night, in between skits of silly people making fun of the music world, among pretty much everything else...yeah, right. Saturday Night Live, only shorter, but with much more music?

A shame. Hopefully the hosts from Rockin' America are doing OK nowadays, even if the majority of the planet has either forgotten, or was never familiar with, this show.

Great to see the memories here. Way back when I came up with the idea for RNA and produced the show I hadn't the foggiest idea about what I was doing. At that point in my life having fun was just as important as anything else and living in LA and making RNA for a Brit was a mountain of fun.

We lasted a year by the skin of our teeth. Barely paid the bills, but managed to stay on the air even though we had to change hosts and even concepts mid stream. Long story but suffice to say the palace intrigue with Rick Ducommun was intense. But pulling victory out of defeat we reconfigured with the Fraze and lived happily ever after, at least for a few more months.

Now from the vantage of retirement I can truly say I was never happier than sleeping in my office, eating cold Pad-Thai and rearranging the order of videos for next week's show. RNA was a beautiful moment in time when anything was possible. When a silly show could be a favorite of people like Steven Spielberg and at the same time spark protests in the UK.

Out of all the music variety shows, this is the best one ever. Whenever that show was on, I always used to stay up late night to watch it. Frazer Smith is a real funny guy. I love his phrase "Cheese Log". My favorite episode is when they imitate one of my favorite T.V. shows, "The Love Boat" with Frazer as Captain Stupid, and Magic as Isaac the Bartender. I used to watch "The Love Boat" for years. One of the scenes I find so funny is when Frazer plays the guy who's driving the boat and deliberately crashes into an iceberg, just to get some more ice for Isaac. They have one of my favorite music videos in this episode as well. The hilarious scene of all is when the ship enters the Bermuda Triangle, Frazer winds up in the bottom of the ocean, and it was really funny at that scene when they go into wild panic! Especially when Frazer gets attacked by a toy shark!