THE RED BANK ORBIT – 29.12.2009 – In an interview that appeared here in Red Bank oRBit last July, Johnny Lyon characterized his annual December 31 appearance at the Count Basie as “an act that I stole, as you know, from the late Guy Lombardo.”

Don’t remember Lombardo, the Canadian big-band leader they called “Mr. New Year’s Eve” back in the day? His signature hit was the definitive version of “Auld Lang Syne“ — a tipsy anthem propped up against a wall of woodwinds as warm and flush as a gin-drunk high. He and his Royal Canadians used to do an annual New Year’s dance at Manhattan’s Waldorf-Astoria ballroom; a stultifyingly square affair that inexplicably became a nationally broadcast embarrassment — and after the bandleader’s death in 1977, his nephew attempted to jizz up the act by adding an element of then-fashionable disco to the mix.

If you’re way too young for all that, you’ve still been exposed to another annual event to be filed under Things That You Can’t Un-See — the spectacle of Dick Clark, executive producer of the excruciatingly un-hip New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, and as such a TV institution who can’t be fired and won’t step down from his Times Square perch…

Read the whole article at THE RED BANK ORBIT >>