Harry Julius Shearer is an American actor, comedian, musician, radio host, writer, and producer. Born in Los Angeles, California, Shearer began his career as a child actor. From 1969 to 1976, Shearer was a member of The Credibility Gap, a radio comedy group. Following the breakup of the group, Shearer co-wrote the film Real Life (1979) with Albert Brooks and worked as a writer on Martin Mull's television series Fernwood 2 Night.
Michael John McKean is an American actor, comedian, screenwriter, composer, singer, and musician known for various roles in film and television such as Lenny Kosnowski in Laverne & Shirley, David St. Hubbins in This Is Spinal Tap, and Chuck McGill on Better Call Saul.
David L. Lander was an American actor, comedian, musician, and baseball scout. He was best known for his portrayal of Andrew "Squiggy" Squiggman in the ABC sitcom Laverne & Shirley. He also served as a goodwill ambassador for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.
A Mighty Wind is a 2003 American mockumentary comedy film about a folk music reunion concert in which three folk bands reunite for a television performance for the first time in decades. Co-written, directed, and composed by Christopher Guest, the film is widely acknowledged to reference folk music producer Harold Leventhal as the inspiration for the character of Irving Steinbloom and more broadly parodies the American folk music revival of the early 1960s and its personalities. The film stars Guest and Levy alongside Bob Balaban, John Michael Higgins, Jane Lynch, Michael McKean, Catherine O'Hara, Parker Posey, Harry Shearer and Fred Willard.
KWVE is a commercial AM radio station licensed to Pasadena, California, serving Greater Los Angeles as a simulcast of Christian talk and teaching station KWVE-FM. The station is operated by Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa, who acquired the station on September 8, 2023.
Spinal Tap are a fictional English heavy metal band created by the American comedians and musicians of The T.V. Show, who wrote and performed original songs as the band: Michael McKean, as the lead singer and guitarist David St. Hubbins; Christopher Guest, as the guitarist Nigel Tufnel; and Harry Shearer, as the bassist Derek Smalls. They are characterized as "one of England's loudest bands".
The Folksmen are a fictitious American folk music trio, conceived and performed by actors-comedians-musicians Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer. Originally created in 1984 for a Saturday Night Live sketch, the Folksmen have subsequently maintained an intermittent public presence for more than twenty-five years. The trio is best known for its depiction in the mockumentary film A Mighty Wind (2003), but has also made a number of meta-performances on stage and television, often in conjunction with the same creators' fictitious heavy metal band, Spinal Tap.
Richard Paul Beebe was an American radio personality who was on the air for five decades in Los Angeles and won two Golden Mike Awards. A journalist at KRLA 1110, he became a founding member of The Credibility Gap. His experience and wit were key to most versions of the group. He became the link between the original and more famous later lineups when we was joined by Harry Shearer, David L. Lander, and Michael McKean, all much younger than he. He left the Gap in 1975. Some of their early work can be heard at The Paley Center for Media in Los Angeles and New York City.
Len Hunt Chandler Jr. was an American folk singer, songwriter, and civil rights activist. Chandler was known for his powerful voice and socially conscious songs.
John Sanford Gilliland Jr. was an American radio broadcaster and documentarian best known for the Pop Chronicles music documentaries and as one of the original members of The Credibility Gap. He was born and died in his hometown of Quanah, Texas. He worked for a number of radio stations in Texas and California including KOGO in San Diego (1961–1965), KRLA 1110 in Los Angeles (1965–1970), and KSFO (AM) in San Francisco (1971–1978).
The Pop Chronicles are two radio documentary series which together "may constitute the most complete audio history of 1940s–60s popular music." They originally aired starting in 1969 and concluded about 1974. Both were produced by John Gilliland.
Great White Wonder, or GWW, is a rock bootleg album, released in July 1969, containing unofficially released recordings by Bob Dylan. It is the first notable rock bootleg, and specifically the first release from bootleg record label Trademark of Quality. Seven of the twenty-four tracks presented here were recorded with The Band in the summer of 1967 in West Saugerties, New York, during the informal sessions that were later released in a more complete form in Dylan's 1975 album The Basement Tapes. Much of the other material consists of a recording made in December 1961 in a Minnesota hotel room, studio outtakes from several of Dylan's albums, and a live performance on The Johnny Cash Show. It was the first time that these previously unreleased recordings came to the market; many more would be released in similar formats over the coming years, though most were single albums, not double albums like this record.
The year 1968 saw a number of significant events in radio broadcasting history.
Significant events in radio broadcasting in the year 1969 included the debuts of two documentaries on rock and roll.
B. Mitchel Reed was a successful and popular American disc jockey on both Top 40 and album-oriented rock radio stations, working in New York and Los Angeles during his 25-year career.
Lew Irwin has been a Los Angeles–based journalist for more than 50 years. He was the original anchor/reporter at KABC-TV from 1957 to 1962 and the news director of Los Angeles radio stations KPOL, KRLA, KDAY, and KNX-FM. While at KRLA in the late 1960s, he created The Credibility Gap, a 15-minute news program, broadcast every three hours, that integrated topical satire and music with the news. He also has interviewed Presidents Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Dwight Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan, as well as such show business personalities as The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Frank Sinatra, David Bowie, Peter Sellers, Jack Nicholson, Dick Clark and Elvis Presley. He is the author of Sinatra, a Life Remembered, a coffee table book about Frank Sinatra and since 1992 has been the publisher/editor of the daily entertainment industry digest Studio Briefing.
Thom Beck was a founding member of The Credibility Gap while at KRLA 1110 radio, where he also narrated part of the Pop Chronicles. He was kept on as a journalist at KRLA 1110 when Lew Irwin was brought in create the new news program that became the Credibility Gap. He worked as a reporter at KCBS in San Francisco and as a disc jockey at KIIS, 1970-1972 in between stints at KRLA, which he left in 1976. He is deceased.
Cracking Up may refer to:
Hear the Beatles Tell All is an album released in the United States by Vee-Jay Records in November 1964. One side of the album contains an interview with all four members of the Beatles by Dave Hull, and the other side contains an interview with John Lennon by Jim Steck. It became the only album on which Capitol Records could not dispute Vee Jay Records' publishing rights.
Cracking Up is a 1977 American independent anthology sketch black comedy film, directed by Rowby Goren and Chuck Staley. The film was a collaboration between numerous comedy troupes of the 60s and 70s, many of which were former Second City members, including Ace Trucking Company, The Credibility Gap, The Graduates, and The Pitschel Players. The frame story for the sketches is that after California is devastated by a 9.7 earthquake two television reporters Walter Concrete and Barbara Halters conduct interviews with survivors, serving as introduction to the sketches.
