February 12, 2008

Where Creed got the acting bug?

No offense, but the only reason I really have to care that the television writers' strike may be close to an ending is there will be new episodes (hopefully) of The Office. One of the great things about The Office is the "character" named Creed Bratton. Creed Bratton is of course portrayed by Creed Bratton.

Anyone who has watched the show for a while knows Creed was a member of the rock band The Grass Roots (from 1966 to 1969). But how many know The Grass Roots showed up in the last movie (after a twenty year film career) made by Doris Day? Hmmm?

With Six You Get Eggroll was released in that culturally confused year of 1968. Cocktail culture was getting its behind kicked by counterculture. The death of cocktail culture, and the moving of the national zeitgeist towards the tastes and sensibilities of the counterculture, was one reason why With Six You Get Eggroll was Doris Day's last film.

I think Day must have sensed the cultural plates shifting beneath her feet. For example, she and her manager/husband Marty Melcher turned down the part of Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate (1967) because they thought it was, heh, "vulgar." Oh the times, they had a-changed.

During this scene from With Six You Get Eggroll, set in a nightclub, Creed and The Grass Roots perform "Feelings," which is sort of like a poor man's "Under My Thumb." I don't know a whole lot about The Grass Roots, like how accomplished they were as musicians, for example. And I realize they were lip syncing, but it sure looks like they either aren't trying very hard to play along with the track, or they don't know how to play their parts. Perhaps studio musicians recorded the tracks for them, a la The Monkees(?). Again, I really don't know. Though as a guitar player, I can't help but notice such things.

After listening to "Feelings" several times during the creation of this post, I must admit--it's pretty catchy. I just wish I could tell who's playing that riff! There were bus tours people could take through Haight-Ashbury back during the '60s so as to gawk at all the hippies. That's sort of what the main cast (Doris Day included) does in this nightclub scene:


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