It goes without saying that if you were from Detroit, you knew about The Scene or The New Dance Show. Airing on WGPR throughout the 70s well into the 90s, TS/TNDS were two of Detroit's most important and original dance music programs. Yes, there were others that came before (Swingin' Time, Teen Town etc.) in the 60s, but none managed to capture the raw energy that Nat Morris/RJ Watkins managed to during this magical period. It also was a bonafide phenomenon. From a recent passage in Gordon Castelnero's excellent book TV Land Detroit, Detroit DJ Scott Gordon (the guy who, in my opinion, schooled a young Richie Rich Hawtin on the decks) sums it up very accurately:

"It had a lot of impact on me as far as being a deejay and being exposed to music I wouldn't ordinarily be exposed to...and incorporating that into my own shows at the weekend teen clubs I was playing for. All these very lily white kids from neighborhoods like Waterford and these far outlying suburbs at the time loved the sutff that they had never heard before. Alot of subcultured white kids were affected by The Scene, and I was one of them."

Below is an excerpt of an on-location shoot of the New Dance Show at Detroit's Cooley High, and the play list is Grade A all the way through. Following that, another excerpt of an on shoot location from 1992 and 1989, respectively.







And of course, this post that's been making the rounds like wildfire.. a clip from 1982 featuring another one of Detroit's finest, A Number of Names' single "Sharevari".



The BEST part could very well be the commercials from that era:




And finally, if i haven't worn your attention span down enough...a dance line



Thanks to the generosity of a few kind souls these videos and more have been making the rounds on YouTube, and have been a kind comfort in the midst of a rather brittle and cold winter.