Amen on the host issue. One of the side effects of Netflix’s surprisingly engaging doco on “We Are the World” was seeing Lionel Ritchie in action as host of the rather silly American Music Awards. He was terrific. (The other side effect was to send me off searching Steve Van Zandt’s all-star anti-apartheid banger, “Sun City” which was even better - and hipper - than I remember it.)
Smokey Robinson and Helen Reddy co-hosted the American Music Awards in 1974. It might have been the first one. Whenever someone tells me things are just getting worse, I think about this kiss he gave her at the end of the show and the angry arguments on the elementary school playground the next day because a surprising number of people (read: 10-year-old white boys) were outraged that a Black man had touched a White woman.
Smokey and Helen (and Roger Miller) were excellent hosts.
Amen on the host issue. One of the side effects of Netflix’s surprisingly engaging doco on “We Are the World” was seeing Lionel Ritchie in action as host of the rather silly American Music Awards. He was terrific. (The other side effect was to send me off searching Steve Van Zandt’s all-star anti-apartheid banger, “Sun City” which was even better - and hipper - than I remember it.)
Smokey Robinson and Helen Reddy co-hosted the American Music Awards in 1974. It might have been the first one. Whenever someone tells me things are just getting worse, I think about this kiss he gave her at the end of the show and the angry arguments on the elementary school playground the next day because a surprising number of people (read: 10-year-old white boys) were outraged that a Black man had touched a White woman.
Smokey and Helen (and Roger Miller) were excellent hosts.