The Miracle of Time/Life

I friggin' love Time/Life Infomercials; particularly the ones where they are schlepping music collections of any kind using some haggard looking shell of a former superstar from the genre each represents.

You got your "Best of Country Love Songs" one with Glen Campbell, "Best Rock Ballads" with Kevin Cronin from 'Speedwagon, "70's Music Explosion" featuring Barry "Greg Brady" Williams, "Sprirt of the 60's" with Peter Fonda, and this one -my personal favorite- "Soft Rock Hits" with Air Supply. The words "I can't believe I'm here with Air Supply!!!" will forever race through my mind as something that could be both a declaration of joy or a sorrowful pining of regret, and it gets funnier every time I hear it! My wife and I got hooked on these things while channel surfing at night before bed, and it came to a point where we were addicted.

Not only do many of the songs awaken memories of my California childhood, the footage of each artist performing their tune when it was a hit is priceless, and the "stars" they have reading cue cards and trying their best to sound excited about it are so awesome! "Really, these songs remind me of driving on a smooth summer day as I head to the mall for my next gig" or "Wow, it is so amazing that Time/Life has saved us from the task of looking up all these songs on the internet and downloading them for free!" or "It's so great to hear that song again after the years have wiped it clean from my memory.....and now it's back....again....to haunt me...."

Gotta say the Soft Rock one is my fave if only because Air Supply is so collectively bad at reading their lines, and the film of overly-unattractive one-hit-wonders like Benny Mardones, Gino Vanelli, Leo Sayer, and Rupert Holmes is enough to make you yearn for the days when radio was successful of letting you hear the song rather than see the performer. Amazing.

Our obsession with these multi-song masterpieces stems from an era early in our marriage when there was a channel on LA basic cable called B-Mania (seriously, 24-hours a day of nothing but painfully bad movies? Do the words 'dream come true' mean anything to anyone?) The channel had only two sponsors and ran both commercials every 10 minutes: one for inflatable massage boots, and one for The Best of Conway Twitty. The wife and I ended up buying that one. Now we hunt the airwaves searching for anything resembling a 20-CD collection of original hits by the original artists, just for the entertainment value. I guess you can never have too many collections featuring hits by the Bay City Rollers on them. Luckily, most of them do.