Boiler Room? TikTok? They’ve got nothing on Detroit’s “The Scene,” the city’s own dance music show of the 70s and 80s on Black-owned WGPR-TV. And if you need a little groove in dark days, let’s turn the clock back to Halloween and Model 500 techno.
Tresor celebrates both techno and Halloween with this brief clip featuring Model 500, a.k.a. Juan Atkins, and what has to be one of the most irresistible basslines ever conceived.
That clip is found in this upload, which is just… all kinds of awesome:
A history of that program, via native Detroiter Sascha Raiyn for NPR affiliate 101.9 WDET:
DER Weekends: The history and legacy of iconic Detroit TV show ‘The Scene’
And the format made a comeback in 2021 – see Detroit Free Press from that year:
Beloved TV dance show ‘The Scene’ brings Detroiters to their feet once again
For just as much of that bassline and bodies that can’t stop moving, there’s this upload, also from 1985. This show is so fresh, honestly, it almost feels like someone just shot it and added some fake VHS degradation in Premiere. (Probably those awkward hand-zooms give it away.)
While we’re in a Halloween mood, uh, this is definitely peak 80s. Ray Parker Jr.’s song itself has a strange and twisted history – it was a rush job inspired by plumbing ads? And then of course there was the suit and countersuit with Huey Lewis. (Well, yeah, I can hear that, though at least it’s well short of a Vanilla Ice situation.)
1985 Halloween was just… adorable.
Triple threat.
Also, I wish they were in charge of US democracy.
For even more 80s action, this is post-“The Scene” but evidently filmed at The Brotherhood in 1989: