A Família Dó-Ré-Mi

I was 5 years old when this show debuted, and can remember the popularity of it unlike any other show to date. The bubble gum cards, the records, teen magazines-everything to do with "The Partridge Family" was a hot commodity! "I Think I Love You" was the first song I ever knew all the lyrics to. This was due to my friends and I piling onto the swingset in my backyard, which included a 4 seater lawn swing which we made fit 8 kids, and sing "I Think I Love You" over and over again while pumping the lawn swing way into the air. Some of my friends would take the end cones off and sing through the top bar to get a reverb effect! Seeing the show in reruns throughout the '70s & '80s, it still had it's charm. It wasn't mean't to be an emmy award winner, but it served it's purpose-to be lighthearted and funny. The music showcased on the show was memorable too. Try watching an episode, and not have their songs replay in your head long after watching it. To me, "The Partridge Family" will always have a special place in my heart because it invokes happy memories from such a great time in my life.

Many people love to dismiss "The Partridge Family" very quickly for some reason, while the truth is this is a pretty decent show which featured some great music during its run.

Of course, David Cassidy is the star, very good looking and talented with a great voice and lovable screen presence. The rest of the cast is also strong for the most part. Shirley Jones plays a great and caring mom, Susan Day is good as Laurie, and of course Danny Bonaduce is fantastic as the money-hungry Danny. The Ruben dude is good as is the second Chris, but the Tracy girl really is kind of stiff.

The stories were a lot of fun, especially the ones that revolved around their performing somewhere. How cool was it that they performed on TOP of the bus that one time? The show was innocent and showed good morals in the stories.

The show has a lot of future stars appearing, among my favorites are Mark Hamill, Rob Reiner (GREAT as "Snake," remember that funky music every time he appeared on screen?) and Tony Geary, who would later find megafame as Luke Spencer ("Luke and Laura") of General Hospital.

The bus was great. I always wondered who did the "roadie" work? Did David carry all the equipment? And if the band had all these big hits, how come every gig was seemingly at a dinner theater in front of 60 people? But that's just some of the fun stuff to think about.

The kids actually got pretty good at faking the playing, even the second Chris doing the drums like the record often.

Now, the music. This is not "The Brady Bunch" here. These songs are great songs, and there's a lot of them. Forget the TV show for a minute, just concentrating on the music. Those first four albums especially are incredible, with the album "Sound Magazine" from 1972 probably being one of the greatest pop music albums ever made. That album contains gem after gem, classic after classic, and is nothing less than a pop music masterpiece, perfect from start to finish.

My personal Partridge Family song is "I Would Have Loved You Anyway," written by Tony Romeo, who wrote most of the band's greatest songs (including "I Think I Love You"). I spoke to Tony Romeo once a long time ago and it was a blast, he was telling me how he and others in the studio would have to teach David Cassidy the songs right on the spot because David had such an incredible touring schedule on days he wasn't filming.

"Summer Days," "Rainmaker," Together We're Better," "Hello Hello," "I'll Meet You Halfway," "Brand New Me," "One Night Stand," the list of great songs just goes on and on.

This is a show that REALLY needs to be on DVD. And when it does, I really hope the disks have a feature where they can play the "music videos" only, and the set gets to at least the third season so we can have those music sequences on disk.

Nowadays a show gets a gimmick and beats it to death. The Partridge Family gimmick was they were a singing family. However, the shows main joke wasn't about the fame but the family antics. The cast had a really goid chemistry and acted like real brothers, sisters and a mother. Dave Madden comic timing was fantastic. His scenes with Danny were comic gold. My only nitpick would be the two youngest kids who were basically background. They were rarely given anything to do.

The Partridge Family premiered in 1970. Sure, it was sort of corny. But most TV shows back then were. It was a more innocent era then, and so was television. It revolved around the misadventures of a squeaky-clean, middle-class family, who decided to form a band and make records. It was based on the real-life rock-n-roll family, the Cowsills. David Cassidy, who was a teen heart-throb on the show, played the eldest brother, Keith Partridge. Laurie Partridge, played by Susan Dey, was his cover-girl-pretty younger sibling, and tended to annoy Keith on a frequent basis. His other siblings were cute, precocious-types, especially Danny Partridge (who was the 10-year-old financial wizard).

The family was headed by widow, and cool mom, Shirley Partridge (played by David Cassidy's real-life step-mom, Shirley Jones). The cast was rounded-out by their hapless Manager, Reuben Kincaid (played by rubber-faced comic Dave Madden), who always made a perfect comic-foil for Danny. The whole family sang and played instruments. They cut several albums during the course of the series, that spawned some hit singles. Their songs to me, were really quite good, especially if you like soft-rock and love ballads.

I could identify with the Partridge's suburban life-style, having grown-up in a solid middle-American, middle-class suburb myself. Some of the kids on the show were my age, and some were the same ages as my own siblings.

This show came on ABC on Friday night, following another family sitcom with several kids, the Brady Bunch. The Partridge Family even had many episodes that were so similar to some Brady Bunch episodes, they could only be called shameless rip-offs. Still, it was a gentle, family-oriented show, with good music and good acting by the cast. I always looked forward to Friday nights back then, just so I could enjoy the Partridge Family on TV.

for kids, and wish there were more like this today.

Shirley Jones, David Cassidy, Susan Dey and Danny Bonaduce are the primary characters; This show competed with the Brady Bunch when it first aired. It had the usual teen conflicts, Keith (David Cassidy) and his dating conquests. Danny and his latest scheme. The music was fun (so innocent- compared to what is offered up today!) Basically a good nostalgia show. The Reuben Kincaid interactions with Danny (Danny Bonaduce) are some of the best. Funny and cynical, Kincaid is the cranky old uncle, Bonaduce the trouble maker.

I don't know if this show is still available on cable regularly, but it is well worth watching. 9/10.