Spanky and Our Gang

Spanky and Our Gang was an American 1960s folk-rock band led by Elaine "Spanky" McFarlane. The band derives its name from Hal Roach's popular Our Gang comedies of the 1930s (known to modern audiences as The Little Rascals). The group was known for its vocal harmonies.

History and work

The group's eponymous first album was released by Mercury Records on August 1, 1967, and included three popular songs that were released as singles. These were "Sunday Will Never Be the Same" (their biggest hit, which reached number No. 9 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart in the summer of 1967), followed by "Making Every Minute Count" (reached No. 31 (no. 23 Canada)) and "Lazy Day" (reached No 14). Both "Sunday Will Never Be The Same" and "Lazy Day" sold over one million copies. "Sunday Will Never Be the Same" was written by Terry Cashman and Gene Pistilli. In an interview by Cashman with the Songfacts website, he revealed that the song was originally written as a ballad, however, the group "changed it, and they added the vocal, 'Ba-da-da-da-da,' which was a great hook."

Spanky and Our Gang (album)

Spanky and Our Gang is the debut album by Spanky and Our Gang, released on August 1, 1967. The album was released by Mercury Records and included three songs that were released as singles. These were Sunday Will Never Be the Same, their biggest hit, which reached number Number 9 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart in the summer of 1967, Making Every Minute Count, which reached Number 31, and Lazy Day, reaching Number 14.

Sunday Will Never Be The Same and Lazy Day both sold over one million copies. Sunday Will Never Be the Same was written by Terry Cashman and Gene Pistilli. In an interview, Cashman said that the song was originally written as a ballad, but the group changed it and added the vocal - 'Ba-da-da-da-da' - which turned out to be a "great hook" for the song.

Track listing

Our Gang

Our Gang (also known as The Little Rascals or Hal Roach's Rascals) is a series of American comedy short films about a group of poor neighborhood children and their adventures. Created by comedy producer Hal Roach, the series was produced between 1922 and 1944 and is noted for showing children behaving in a relatively natural way, as Roach and original director Robert F. McGowan worked to film the unaffected, raw nuances apparent in regular children rather than have them imitate adult acting styles.

In addition, Our Gang notably put boys, girls, whites and blacks together as equals, something that broke new ground, according to film historian Leonard Maltin. That had never been done before in cinema, but has since been repeated after the success of Our Gang.

The franchise began in 1922 as a series of silent short subjects produced by the Roach studio and released by Pathé Exchange. Roach changed distributors from Pathé to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in 1927, and the series entered its most popular period after converting to sound in 1929. Production continued at the Roach studio until 1938, when the series was sold to MGM, which produced the comedies itself until 1944. In total, the Our Gang series includes 220 shorts and one feature film, General Spanky, featuring over 41 child actors. As MGM retained the rights to the Our Gang trademark following their purchase of the production rights, the 80 Roach-produced "talkies" were syndicated for television under the title The Little Rascals beginning in 1955. Both Roach's The Little Rascals package (now owned by CBS Television Distribution) and MGM's Our Gang package (now owned by Turner Entertainment and distributed by Warner Bros. Television) have since remained in syndication. New productions based on the shorts have surfaced periodically over the years, including a 1994 Little Rascals feature film released by Universal Pictures.

Our Gang (novel)

Our Gang (1971) is Philip Roth's fifth novel. A marked departure from his previous book, the popular Portnoy's Complaint, Our Gang is a political satire written in the form of a closet drama. Centered on the character of "Trick E. Dixon", a caricature of then-President Richard Nixon, the book takes its cue from an actual quote from Nixon:

As the book is written entirely as dialogue, Roth uses stage directions, such as "impish endearing smile", when Dixon is talking.

Summary

The book is six chapters long. Chapter one is entitled "Tricky comforts a troubled citizen". In the chapter, the citizen in question is concerned with William Calley's killing of twenty-two Vietnamese villagers at My Lai, but he is "seriously troubled by the possibility that Lieutenant Calley may have committed an abortion". Throughout the chapter, Dixon defends the notion that Calley may have killed a pregnant woman, covering many factors; If the pregnant woman was showing or not, if Calley could have communicated with her, if he really did know she was pregnant, whether the woman asked Calley to give her an abortion or not, etc. In true Nixonian style, Trick E. Dixon manages to defend Calley well until the citizen asks if Calley could have given her an abortion against her will, as "an outright form of murder", and Dixon gives the following answer, which is supposed to reflect his background as a lawyer and his hard-to-pin-down nature:

The Cleveland Show (season 1)

The first season of The Cleveland Show, an American Animated television series created by Seth MacFarlane, began airing on September 27, 2009, and ended after 21 episodes on May 23, 2010. Production of the 22 episode season began in May 2008 and was expected to begin broadcast in January 2009 but was later pushed back to September 2009.

The DVD was released as a "Complete Season" featuring all of the aired episodes. It was released in the Region 1 on September 28, 2010, and was released in the Region 2 on October 11, 2010.

Reception

The season started off with mediocre to above average reviews. On the series premiere IGN wrote "While it seems to be missing some of the over-the-top offensive bite we're used to on Family Guy, and Cleveland's new drinking buddies aren't quite as amusing as the Quagmire, Joe and Peter combination - there's a lot to like here. It might take a while for the show to grow out of its Family Guy shadow, but with a greater focus on wacky family focused stories, we might get to see much personality burst out of the normally sedate Cleveland."