STYX Two-Fer: "Return to Paradise"/"Brave New World"

Yesterday, I went to see Dennis DeYoung, Styx's former keyboardist and lead singer, for the May 4th performance at Rosemont Theater in Illinois. The tickets came from Chicago's PBS affiliate, WTTW-11--only $100 for a front-row seat!

It started me thinking: Styx has a place in the Museum for 1997's Return to Paradise tour (filmed in Chicago on the final night of the tour) and for the 1999 album Brave New World.

Time for a brief history lesson, in which I will make a lot of sweeping generalities from a quick glance at Wikipedia: Styx begins in Chicago (the suburb of Roseland, to be exact) in the early '60s with brothers Chuck (on bass) and John (on drums) Panozzo and their neighbor and friend Dennis DeYoung (on keyboard and vocals). The three of them went to my alma mater, Chicago State University, back when it was a teacher's school. (Class of 2011, by-the-by. I still say, to this day, that Chicago State shall always be better known for three-fifths of Styx than for Kanye West.) In 1970, the band picked up James "J.Y." Young; in 1976, Tommy Shaw. They achieved their big break with the success of "Lady" in 1972...and the rest is history.

Described by YouTube reviewer Todd in the Shadows as "pompous to the point of flatulence1" (I include this quote because it made me crack up completely when I first heard it and even now cracked up while typing it!), Styx is known for a few signature radio-friendly songs: "Come Sail Away," (my least favorite song, because WLS-94.7 insists on playing it twice a day every day) "Lady," "Renegade," and, if you're very, very lucky, "Babe," "Best of Times," and "The Grand Illusion." They had a string of hit albums through the 70s and early 80s, including Grand Illusion, Paradise Theatre, and Kilroy Was Here. This last one had a grandiose tour in which the band members portrayed rebels fighting against a neo-fascist regime. Acting turned out not to be the musicians' forte, and, at the end of the tour, the band split up until 1991's Edge of the Century, the re-recording of "Lady '95" for Styx Greatest Hits*, and the Return to Paradise Tour.

(*Styx's original label, Wooden Nickel Records, held the rights to the original version of "Lady;" within a few years' time, they had migrated over to A&M Records, necessitating a new version of "Lady" for the greatest-hits album.)

Return is notable for being the first tour since Kilroy, and (as far as I know) the last tour to feature the "Classic" lineup: Dennis, Tommy, J.Y., Chuck Panozzo, and new drummer Todd Sucherman, filling in for John Panozzo, who had passed away in 1995. All are in top form, performing perennial hits like "The Grand Illusion," "Rockin' the Paradise," "Fooling Yourself (The Angry Young Man)," "Lady," and, for the grand finale, "The Best of Times."  Edge of the Century's "Show Me The Way" gets a special place in the show for John, friend, colleague, and a hell of a drummer.

The tour was successful enough that they reunited in 1999 for Brave New World. It's an interesting album, I'll say that much. There are traces of Styx's heritage throughout, but it's steeped in that crisp, clean, mid-90s pop sound. One could easily mistake "I Will Be Your Witness," the first track, for a Backstreet Boys song. Perhaps this was deliberate: A few of the other tracks, such as "Number One," "Everything is Cool," and "Heavy Water," read as a lament for, and vivisection of, the decade. "Everything" grouses about runaway consumerism, while the more thoughtful "Heavy Water" ponders over our relationship with technology in the coming century, and wonders whether or not it will outstrip us, which the earlier track "Mr. Roboto" only briefly touched upon in 1983. There, the concern was automation and loss of jobs; here, the concern widens out to the human race's self-destruction.

Also interesting is that DeYoung gets only five songs to his name out of fourteen tracks, and one of them is an early demo for what eventually became a concept album based on Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame (in other words, it has little to do with the overall "Brave New World" theme).

His final original track for Styx is "Goodbye Roseland," a quiet ballad which is at once a requiem for his father, who had passed away in 1997, and an elegy for a now-unrecognizable hometown. That we all have a Roseland of our own makes the song all the more poignant.

It could also be an elegy for a now-unrecognizable band. Styx supported the new album with a tour, but, in the tour's earliest days, he contracted a viral infection which rendered him exhausted and sensitive to light. The search for a replacement led the rest of the band to Canadian singer and keyboardist Lawrence Gowan, who had already enjoyed a successful solo career in the 80s and 90s. Styx to this day tours with new material and hits from the classic Shaw/Young catalog, and DeYoung tours with his material.

As 1999 ended one century and 2000 began a new one, so did those pivotal years do the same for this uniquely American band.

1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvZPaH7QIVI

A Record Book About the Turn of the Millennium

Though this one sounds similar to The Book of Millennium Records, the two could not be further apart.

A few years ago, I kept going on and on about "The Millennium is about time capsules and the preservation of history." The Record Book is a time capsule in book form.

I like the formatting: The left page of each section is for 1999, and the right page is for 2000. Surprisingly, it's intended more for older children (and teenagers and adults) than the younger ones I'd initially assumed: There are sections for politics, news, TV, and sports, things which I wouldn't normally expect children to follow (or to at least have only some vague idea about). This is most apparent in the last sections, which force some rather deep introspection: Entries include "Greatest lessons learned this year" and "Personal accomplishments."

The section "The Conversion" presumably refers to going from 1999 to 2000, but I suspect it's more of a reference to the Y2K problem. There are sections labeled "Preparations made before the conversion," "Supplies acquired," "Expectations of the conversion," "What actually happened," and "What were the effects?"

The last few sections are reserved for pictures taken in '99 and '00; descriptions of how the reader spent New Year's Eve on those years; and goals for the new millennium.

The back page lists other Millennium products sold by the manufacturer, Havoc Publishing, including a photo frame and keepsake box. The company also sold record books for subjects like weddings and pregnancies.

"...The marvelous surprises that await you..."

The Easter season is almost upon us, and you know what that means: The shelves will be stocked with lots and lots of brightly-colored candy. Cadbury Creme Eggs. Marshmallow Peeps and Bunnies. Malted-milk Robin's Eggs. Chocolate bunnies, hollow and solid, milk chocolate, dark chocolate, peanut-butter filled, endless varieties.

This next article is about a now semi-defunct brand that had a big impact on me around the early-to-mid 2000s.

Courtesy Pinterest

PROLOGUE

As far as I know, Wonka never really had any notable Millennium celebrations; it's more that a brand which had existed two decades before went into overdrive at the time I normally cover anyway.

 

PART ONE: A BRIEF HISTORY

In 1971, Quaker Oats wanted to get into the candy business. There were already Hershey's bars, and Mars' M&Ms, and Nestle's Crunch and Baby Ruth bars, and the market seemed pretty crammed. Someone at Quaker had the bright idea of financing a movie to advertise a candy bar, and the obvious vehicle was Roald Dahl's children's book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The candy bar in question was, of course, the Wonka Bar, so the name Charlie and... had to become Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory to better advertise the candy. I remember this quote from the 30th Anniversary DVD's featurettes (paraphrasing here): "They had a disposable movie and a candy bar that would last forever. But something was wrong with the formula, and the bars melted on the shelves. So they got a disposable candy bar and a movie that would last forever!"

Quaker abandoned the trademark, selling it a few years later to Chicago-based Breaker Confections, which manufactured now-familiar sweets like Shock Tarts, Tart-n-Tiny's, Dina-Sour [sic] Eggs (later to become Runts Easter Eggs), and such. In 1980, Breaker became The Willy Wonka Candy Factory, which Nestle purchased in 1988. An excellent website called Collecting Candy has a lot of Wonka wrappers, ads, and other ephemera spanning from the brand's earliest days in the mid-70s to the present day. Strangely, the brand started out heavily chocolate-based with Wonka Bars and Scrumdiddlyumptious Bars, but gradually abandoned this in favor of tangy and fruit-flavored confections--presumably these were far more cost-effective.

PART TWO: THE GOLDEN TICKET IS MINE

And then, in 1996 or 1997, I became acquainted with Wonka. Nerds, Bottle Caps, Everlasting Gobstoppers (in real life, nowhere near everlasting, but the name stuck), Tart-n-Tiny's, Shock Tarts, Runts...The brand name had an effect that no other did: You could sort of imagine the candy actually coming from Willy Wonka's factory. For example, Runts grew on trees in the Chocolate Room, and the Gobstoppers came from the Inventing Room. Of course, that's not really how it works, but the idea was too good not to believe in. (At one point, I'd worked out an idea based on those "Fruit Gushers" snacks, based on the evil "Vermicious K'Nids" from the book. Here's a mockup of what that might have looked like.)



I use artistic license here--the design lends itself more to a 90s sensibility than the more unified early 2000s look.

1999-2001 saw the lead-up to the 30th anniversary of the movie, and Nestle really ramped up the brand-awareness with new products such as "Fruitastically Chewriffic" Oompas, Nerds Rope, Lik-m-Aid Fun Dip (a case of reviving an existing though long-dormant brand), and, of course, the Wonka Bar. There was a Golden Ticket sweepstakes, but every bar had a Golden Ticket (a golden wrapper, but still), and the grand prize was, I believe, scholarship money. Yay. (NOTE, 3/4/19: I just remembered that there was indeed an Easter egg similar to Cadbury's in the mid-2000s, and you could pretend that, if not a golden goose like in the movie, then maybe a golden hen had laid it!)

There were "Invention Room" toys, battery-powered contraptions that could dispense Nerds or Tart-n-Tiny's and mix Pixy-Stix flavors. There were "Beanie Babies" in the shape of the Oompa-Loompa characters. And then there was Wonka.com, a grand and glorious website that made you feel as if you were going level by level through the factory itself. On each level there were games: Nerds Rope Follow-the-Leader; Gobstopper Gobbler; Laffy-Taffy-tris; Wonka Air Hockey; Chocolate Pipe Madness, and dozens of others. I found all of these games online a couple of days ago, but I won't post the link here. However, if you went to YouTube, searched for "Willy Wonka games" and did a bit of digging around in the comments, there's really nothing I could do to stop you.

(Side note: There was a Wonka.co.uk as well, which had different games and a little more of a narrative surrounding it. There was a gremlin in the factory or something, and you had to find it by playing different games, like the famous "shell game." I only visited it about once or twice in late 2000, and it was less fun than the US version.)

EDIT, 1/30/25: In the years since I published this piece, a YouTube user named Mumbly Joe posted a video detailing the websites for Wonka.com and Wonka.co.uk:

CHAPTER THREE: AN ALL-TIME HIGH...AND THEN A FALL

 

The brand expanded further into the 2000s with the XPloder Bar, Donutz, Nerds and Shock Tart Gumballs, Puckerooms (sour mushroom-shaped gummies), and Wonka Randoms, an attempt to bring a British candy to the States, and with the new treats, there were new games on the official site. The brand eventually diversified into frozen treats and higher-end chocolate bars and candies called "Wonka Exceptionals," a way to get in on Ghirardelli's upscale market. Now there was a chocolate bar so delicious and so smooth, you'd swear it had been mixed by waterfall!

Sadly, the good times were not to last: In 2015, Nestle abandoned the brand and re-dubbed the candies under the "Nestle Candy Shop." I haven't bought any Nestle-made sweets in a long time for a few reasons, chief among them the loss of the Wonka brand. Then again, it's understandable why the brand had to go: Nestle had to pay royalties not only to the Roald Dahl estate for the name but also to Warner Bros., because their designs had taken inspiration from the 1971 movie from the brand's inception. The Candy Shop sticks mainly to Gobstoppers, Runts, Nerds, Spree, Bottle Caps, and SweeTarts. Most of the seasonal variations--Spooky Nerds, Gobstopper Hearts, Runts Easter eggs--have fallen by the wayside as well.

Yes, the candy is still functionally the same, and yes, it's just a brand name slapped onto some junk food, but it made a boring, humdrum world a little more magical and colorful because of the association. That world is just a little poorer without it.

...And the less said about that infernal "Tom and Jerry in Willy Wonka," the better. Dear, oh, dear.

Dick Clark's Countdown to the Millennium Ornament

At last! The long-awaited "Dick Clark's Countdown to the Millennium" ornament!!

I bought this on eBay several months ago, and have been waiting for the perfect opportunity to post it. Now that it's New Year's Eve, what better time to give it a spot in the Museum?

First things first: Let's unpack this. It's an "Orna-Music" ornament, sold by Sterling Giftware, Inc. A quick search for this particular Sterling Giftware revealed that the company is defunct, along with the Orna-Music trademark. There were a few other ornaments in the line, in the shape of an old jukebox, a television set, and a Christmas fireplace. All are pretty common on eBay and other online shopping sites. 

There's a bit of a history between this one and me: It first caught my attention at the Kohl's in Chicago Ridge, and it was one of the first things I thought about when I pulled the concept of the Museum out of nowhere. The Year 2000 thing was something I just didn't put much thought into at the time. Still, no time like the present.

At the top of the ornament, there's a two-inch-long plastic capsule with a tiny Times Square ball inside it. The capsule was originally filled with water, so that, when you turned the thing upside down, the ball would float "up" into the capsule, and when you turned it right side up, it would float down like the real thing does. Unfortunately, my ball is firmly stuck in the "up" position, the water having dried out (or spilled!) ages ago. 

Also, it's supposed to play a pre-recorded message by Dick Clark, while another button plays a snippet from Kool 'n' the Gang's "Celebration." Mine just plays "Celebration"--I have to work on the Dick Clark function. If I can restore that, then I'll post a video review. Remember, this thing is going on twenty years old.

A Christmas Carol 1999 and 2000 two-fer

Since this is Christmas Day, I thought it a good idea to take a look at two adaptations of Charles Dickens' novel A Christmas Carol.

It's a story that everybody is familiar with, whether from reading the original book, watching one of the many adaptations on TV, or (if you're from the Chicago area) going to see the Goodman Theater's annual production, which I and my family went to see in (surprise, surprise!) 2000. It was the last show ever at the Old Goodman Theater, which was to be torn down in 2001; thereafter, the New Goodman Theater would hold all shows.

My overriding memory of that one is that a hearing-impaired gentleman played the Ghost of Christmas Past. At the end, the entire cast sang and signed "We Wish You A Merry Christmas."

Dickens' tale has become part of my Christmas ever since I found a copy of The Annotated A Christmas Carol six years ago at a library book sale. The volume contained the full, unabridged novel, plus a mini-biography of Dickens and why his book is so important: It. Saved. Christmas.

You see, before Dickens' time--way before his time--the holiday was a time of drunken revelry not unlike what follows after a Super Bowl victory. "Disapproving Puritans," writes Ransom Riggs of The Daily Beast, "pointed to the traditional (and traditionally bawdy) pagan winter celebrations of Saturnalia and Yule, and accused modern revelers of carrying over bad pagan habits. (They also referred to the Christmas celebrations as "the trappings of Popery" and "rags of the beast.")1

"The trappings of Popery." Let's unpack that one. What I remember of the Puritans is that they wanted to keep the faith pure, get away from the glitzy accoutrements of the Church of England and, by extension, the Roman Catholic Church. The stuff we now associate with Christmas--Christmas trees, mistletoe, even nativity scenes--all were verboten to the Puritans. After the English Civil War2, they appeared to have gotten what they wanted, and banned Christmas from 1647 to 1660. To keep things brief, let's simply say that the ban was lifted, but things just weren't the same. Christmas kept on fading in England; it was hardly celebrated in America following the Revolution in an effort to maintain that "clean break" between the nations.

There's a wealth of scholarship about A Christmas Carol, but, in a nutshell, Dickens writes his novel, it proves wildly successful, and, within a few years, Christmas as we know it returns in full force. He reimagined the holiday as a time to give selflessly and to celebrate with friends and family, and that struck a chord with his readers. It's of its time yet timeless, and it's been immortalized and reimagined on stage, on television, and in many, many movies.

Let us today look at two adaptations, the first from 1999; the second, from 2000.

STAVE ONE: THE PAST

Image borrowed from EW.com

This first one was made for TNT in 1998 or 1999, and it's one of the most faithful and most complete adaptations I've ever seen. Headlining the all-star cast is, of course, Sir Patrick Stewart as Scrooge. His take on the character surprised me: Most actors play up the "cruel miser" aspect, and take on a cold, mean affect. Here, though, Sir Patrick demonstrated a damaged soul whose bad memories are particularly nasty at the holiday season. I throw much of my praise at his eyes and posture in the first few scenes at his business: His eyes are squinting, as if he's marshaling all his efforts into fighting back tears, and his back is arched so that his head is close to his heart, as if his burdened heart is weighing him down.

One of his best scenes occurs when he and Christmas Past witness Belle turn Young Scrooge down, for she saw that his love of money outweighed his love of her. Old Scrooge knows that his younger self can neither see nor hear him, but still he cries out, "Go after her!" It's not in the book, but it establishes that Scrooge is already starting to change. 

Elsewhere, there are scenes that other adaptations usually leave out, such as--and this is the big one--a series of vignettes showing lighthouse workers, coal miners, and sailors celebrating Christmas by singing "Silent Night" in their own idioms. I understand that it's usually left out to speed things up and to keep things in-studio, but it shows that one doesn't need a Christmas tree to keep the holiday spirit.

And then there's the montage near the end of Scrooge singing with street carolers, having snowball fights with kids, and going to morning church services, all before going to have dinner with his nephew Fred's family. He knows that the chances of their turning him away is 99.9%, yet he bravely does it all the same....and he gets the .01% chance that they'll forgive him! 

It's an absolutely solid take on Dickens' tale, and I absolutely recommend it. It's still in print, too, so you might be able to find it at premium prices wherever videos are sold. (My local Meijer had it on the shelves for $5.)

STAVE TWO: THE PRESENT

Image borrowed from Mike's Movie Palace

This second version aired on Britain's ITV in 2000. I had no idea it even existed, and I'd like to thank Shout!Factory for giving it a home on their streaming service, because it's...unique.

It might be one of the first modernized takes on the classic tale, and it handles the changes in a way that recalls to mind Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss' Sherlock (2010-2017). The setting update brings with it a number of character and plot twists, so I'm going to try to not give too much away, tempting though it is. As I said, look online for it; it's also available for free on Shout!Factory's streaming service.

Accountant Ebenezer Scrooge is now loan-shark Eddie Scrooge (played by Mark Kemp from EastEnders). He is, I have to say, a nasty piece of work, personally ruining his clients' Christmases as he repossesses (and then destroys!) a TV set from a young woman and takes a large payment from an elderly couple, money which could have gone to a much-needed stair-lift. His work is decidedly illegal, and his long-suffering employee Bob Cratchit finds a little more of his soul eroded with every day that he remains in employment.

His surroundings are no better: Amid the carolers trying to spread a little cheer, naughty boys draw rude graffiti onto a nearby pound-store's Christmas decorations and freely shoplift from the store itself. The book says that Scrooge lives in a bad part of town; his apartment is in a large house that's now being used for office space. In this version, however, he appears to live on the lowest floors of a council estate (read: the projects). It's more of a hideaway than an apartment, and most of his money goes to security features like his money-safe and closed-circuit camera system. 

The "Three Spirits" concept gets a twist here. In the original story, the spirits visit him over three consecutive nights. This time around, everything takes place on Christmas Eve, but Eddie has to do a Groundhog Day after each spirit visits him. He's supposed to have changed in some way within each iteration of the loop, and the changes take a long time to kick in. 

What struck me the most about this version was the ways in which it found new ways to incorporate the novel's events. Since this Scrooge has many decades to look forward to, the character of Belle from the original story goes from the final "brick in the wall" (to quote Pink Floyd) for Scrooge, to the driving force for him to mend his ways. She's a much stronger character for it, refusing to fall back in love with him until he undergoes a genuine change of heart, without thought of winning her over. That means letting go of his baggage and making peace with his clients and underlings.

Finally, one of the best things about it is how it uses snow as part of the story. Scrooge's part of town never once sees snow until the very end, when he's finally shed all of his troubles and learned to let love in.

I learned in at least one chemistry class that the clouds in the sky shrink when cold and expand when warm, and when they're too small and compact, they cannot let rain or snow down. The same applies here: Eddie's heart and soul are so tight and compact as to be impermeable, but once he lets go, everyone gets a white Christmas.

STAVE THREE: THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS?

Together, these movies are book-ends, in a way, for the Millennium. The 1999 one preserves the story by being the...If not the definitive take, then certainly the most faithful to the novel. The 2000 one looks ahead to the present day to show how past and present rhyme.

Classic Scrooge has to be a hard businessman, but he's unnecessarily hard about it because he thinks only in terms of numbers, not in terms of human lives and souls. Modern Scrooge pushes people around because he actively enjoys throwing his weight around...or so he keeps telling himself. Neither are truly happy with themselves, and both have a lot of issues to reconcile.

It just goes to show how universal A Christmas Carol is. No matter what happens, it will always be a part of everyone's Christmas traditions. And for that, I say, "God bless us, everyone!"

Happy sixth anniversary!

Can you believe it? The Millennium Museum turns six years old today. It's an eye-opener, it really is.

Six whole years of covering the lead-up to the year 2000...Every year it's open is an accomplishment, and I have no plans to close its doors anytime soon.


One more announcement, and this is a big one.

2019 marks the 20th Anniversary of the change from 1999 to 2000. With that in mind, I now declare the Millennium Museum's anniversary celebrations...BEGUN!

First things first: For the first time in a while, you're getting an all-new custom logo!

Q: Why not have the actual logo as the "0" in "20"?
A: I'm saving that for the Museum's 20th Anniversary. :)

Second: I've just now started playing with a new toy called "Schedule Post." With any luck, this post should appear on 12/22/18, at 2:49 PM, which is when I hit "Post" for the first time!

And I've got a lot of content planned, most of which is in a post from earlier this year.

With that, I'm taking a little break from updating and posting. Lots of things to do in the lead-up to Christmas, you see.

Until then...Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Thomas the Tank Engine Millennium Annual

The Millennium Museum has always been at the intersection of history and memory, and this entry is much more memory. More specifically, my own childhood memories.

I was a PBS Kid starting at four or five years old or so. Though I remember watching things like Pee-Wee's Playhouse, Tiny Toon Adventures, and such, a lot more of it came from Public Broadcasting: Sesame Street, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, and, of course, Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends, localized for us Yanks as Shining Time Station. Out of all those shows, the one with the Really Useful Engine is the one that really resonated. I had a few of the die-cast models, a large plush Thomas, and several of the original stories by Reverend W. Awdry.

(Funny and interesting side story: In 2004, back in high school, I'd been inducted into the National Honor Society. Our big group service project in October was to go and do WTTW-11's pledge drive for the morning and afternoon. One of the many toys the station had to offer was a pop-up Thomas play tent, like those laundry hampers you find at the dollar store. A little girl called in demanding one, and I said, "Can you get your mother or someone on the line?" The voice comes back, "I get my gramma. She got the money," and promptly hung up.)

Flash-forward several years, to about 2015. I'm now in my mid-to-late twenties, racking my brain for stuff to put on the blog. Since the site had already featured things like Millennium-themed Barbie dolls and a Monopoly set, it seemed logical that Thomas the Tank Engine should find a place in our exhibits.

Then, in 2017, I became a fan of Leo Kim Video's The Dark Side of Thomas YouTube series, which showcases the best of the worst bootleg Thomas toys. Unsuspecting parents think they're getting a great deal, but their savings are only short-term: The toys are made with brittle, easily-shattered plastic and their battery compartments are poorly soldered. Not only are they cheaply-made and frequently off-model (but with packaging that's just convincing enough to fool even the most savvy shopper), they are potentially lethal.

Having browsed through several of these videos, Thomas started popping up in my "You might be interested in...." video feed. One of these was a review of the Thomas Millennium Annual. A cursory eBay search revealed a copy for about $5, and that's what you're looking at right now.

Annuals are a Christmas tradition in Great Britain. They're usually hardcover books about sixty pages long, and aimed at children up to about twelve years old. They feature stories, puzzles, games, coloring pages, and they're packed with either colorful illustrations or photographs.

One can find an annual for just about any pop-culture figure: Doctor Who, The Amazing Spider-Man, James Bond, Justice League, and, of course, Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends.

I thought this volume would have just a little bit more to do with the year 2000, so I was a little disappointed that the stories didn't revolve around it, but then the Thomas stories shouldn't "date" themselves like that. Also, it is obviously aimed at very young children, who might not get the significance of the imminent event.

Right at the beginning, though, there's a special place to write your name: "My name is ________ and I will be ____ years old in the year 2000."

There's also another feature: "Make a Special Millennium Door Hanger," which I have reproduced here.

Other features include simple prose stories, puzzles, coloring pages, and a miniature board game. In the final analysis, it's a curiosity.