Article 55ZYV This video for "Classical Gas" debuted on The Summer Brothers Smothers Show (1968)

This video for "Classical Gas" debuted on The Summer Brothers Smothers Show (1968)

by
Mark Frauenfelder
from on (#55ZYV)

From my favorite subreddit, r/ObscureMedia: "Classical Gas - 3000 Years of Art in 3 Minutes." I think I saw some Lascaux cave paintings in there so it really should be "20,000 Years of Art in 3 Minutes."

From Mason Williams YouTube page:

During the time that CLASSICAL GAS was a hit I was also the head writer for THE SMOTHERS BROTHERS COMEDY HOUR on CBS. I had seen a film titled "GOD IS DOG SPELLED BACKWARDS" at The Encore, an off beat movie house in L.A. The film was a collection of approximately 2500 classical works of art, mostly paintings, that flashed by in three minutes. Each image lasted only two film frames, or twelve images a second! At the end of the film the viewer was pronounced "cultural" since they had just covered "3000 years of art in 3 minutes!"

The film was the work of a UCLA film student named Dan McLaughlin. I contacted Dan and told him that I was interested in the idea of using his film as a visual for CLASSICAL GAS to air on THE SMOTHERS BROTHERS COMEDY HOUR. (His original sound track had been Beethoven's 5th Symphony.) THE COMEDY HOUR offered him the money to finance a new film he wanted to make in exchange for the right to change the original soundtrack from Beethoven's 5th Symphony to CLASSICAL GAS and air it on the show. As a music video" it was first shown on THE SUMMER BROTHERS SMOTHERS SHOW (Glen Campbell was the host) in the summer of 1968.

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