Tuesday Tuneage
Count Five - "Psychotic Reaction"
1966

MY TOP FIVE COUNTS WHO AREN'T COUNT BASIE

Count Five. First-wave punk heroes whose awesome Yardbirds-influenced (cough) “Psychotic Reaction” set the template for Ready for the World’s Prince knockoff “Oh Sheila” and Kingdom Come’s we-did-it-before-Greta Zep ripoff “Get It On.” Count Five were also unintentionally hilarious by having an album cover photo taken them from the inside of a grave, showing them looking down into it. But as Lester Bangs pointed out: They were all wearing checkered slacks from Penney’s.

The Count from Sesame Street. In the early days of first grade, it was readily apparent which kids were the Mister Rogers kids: They weren’t very bright. A neighborhood friend once had me tune in Mister Rogers. Geez what a snorefest. In the time we had to watch that train go visit some lame-o king puppet, Sesame Street would have taught us multiplication tables and the causes of the fall of the Roman Empire. Plus Rogers always gave me the creeps with his slo-mo presentation. Didn’t need to hear about the sweater and sneakers he was donning. I was a kid, not a simpleton.

Count Floyd. SCTV is now on Netflix and you don’t need 3D glasses to enjoy Count Floyd’s monster movies.

The Count of Monte Cristo. It’s not “Crisco” as I recently uttered and the Cristo series on PBS looked pretty good, unfortunately I misfired setting my DVR to catch the whole series. Many years ago I did see a movie version of this story featuring Guy Pearce and maybe someday I will read the book as I do remember it influencing the characters in Sleepers and hey I saw that one is streaming somewhere, maybe I’ll give it another shot as it didn’t do much for me thirty years ago, it was made by the guy from Diner and Homicide: Life on the Street and it does have Minnie Driver …

Count Chocula. Makes this list due to his association with the better Frankenberry cereal. I was never much into these sugar-saturated cartoon cereals as a kid. When my mom moved off of the Cheerios monolith, it was into Alpha Bits and Sugar Smacks. T he back of an Alpha Bits box once provided me with a 45 disc of Jackson 5’s “ABC”, which to this day remains a fave song by a fave group. Of such things legendary childhood memories are made.