Archive for October 9th, 2013

October 9, 2013

Gemini Man

By the late seventies, and with the success of Lee Majors in The Six Million Dollar Man, the networks were all jumping on the ‘ordinary superhero’ bandwagon. Some unassuming protagonist is dowsed in either a radioactive ‘elixir’ or rebuilt with means beyond his physical ken. Well NBC in ’76 came up with this gem. The titular character, one Sam Casey, had a handy condition that allowed him to be invisible (including his clothes!) For 15 minutes a day, with a wristwatch countdown controller. If he went over that though he was in danger of becoming permanently invisible. Tsk!

He was a good lookin’ denim wearin’ motorcycle ridin’ bloke, played by Ben Murphy, who got into a scrape or two… At least until the show was canceled nine episodes into its first season. I can just about remember it as a kid escaping into the few episodes that made it across the Pond.

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The actor was Ben Murphy and the bike? Why a Triumph of course!

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October 9, 2013

If you can remember it…

There are some people come and go with out so much as a blip on the public conscious; but their impact is felt way beyond their reach. One such character is Gram Parsons (born Cecil Ingram Connor III). Musician who influenced the “cross pollination” of two very different music genres: country and rock. He rolled in as the lead singer and guitarist of The Byrd’s in the late sixties just as the youth were learning to tune in and drop out. And, of course, motorcycles allowed the freedom of escape; Triumph being at the fore! Mick Jagger and Keith Richards saw his genius and used his melding of country rock to progress their music from their emergent sixties sound to a more mature tune of the seventies.

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“Look at him here, he’s wearing a cape! And a Triumph motorcycle T-shirt, smoking pot through a mug, and wearing my mother’s promise ring.” Polly Parsons (daughter)
Photography by Andee Nathanson

Gram went a little too far in ’73 however overdosing on morphine and alcohol in a room at the Joshua Tree Motel CA at the young age of 26.