In the late Seventies, two revolutionary trends emerged in New York City, public access cable TV and punk rock. Public access was about do-it-yourself television. Punk was about do-it-yourself music (and do-it-yourself everything.) These two phenomena were made for each other and they came together spectacularly in Glenn O’Brien’s TV Party.
Glenn O’Brien’s was to cool downtown Manhattan what Ed Sullivan’s and Walter Winchell’s columns had been decades before, the barometer of what was happening. O’Brien decided to emulate Sullivan (and Johnny Carson and Hugh Hefner) and create a variety show that would spotlight the coolest of the cool. Every week a who’s who of bohemia congregated to “have your party on TV,” as Debbie Harry would sing. Debbie was a regular, along with such luminaries as Jean Michel Basquiat, Robert Fripp, David Byrne, banned SNL-er Charles Rocket, John Lurie, Richard Sohl of the Patti Smith Group, artist David Walter McDermott, Fred Schneider of the B-52s, Nile Rodgers of Chic, Tim Wright of DNA, sax genius Robert Aaron and Fab Five Freddie.
and its now available on dvd at Brink.com