Just Like It Was Before from Bandstand is SO GOOD because so much art from that era romanticized the idea of a post war-life and Bandstand takes that and then contrasts it with the gut-wrenching reality that soldiers were coming home from a harrowing and traumatic experience with scars both visible and invisible and with the loss of so many others in the war. It shows how hard everyone's trying but they're just failing because the goal isn't attainable. You can't send boys to battle and expect them to come back the same. It's fair that people just wanted things to go back to normal, but that was never going to happen.

Me trying to explain Bandstand to anyone: A family isn't always your blood. It isn't just a mother and a father. Sometimes a family is a depressed bisexual war veteran, the widow of his best friend, an alcoholic double bass player who likes Shakespeare, a drummer with memory problems, a gay lawyer who likes checkered trousers, a divorced dad of two who has OCD and a trumpet player with anger issues.

Literally anyone else:...what?

THE EPILOGUE FOR BANDSTAND GOES OVER A SPAN OF AT LEAST FOUR YEARS? HELLO?

The beginning scene takes place a year after the events of the radio contest. We know Act One and the majority of Act Two (everything but the Epilogue) take place in 1945, so that means the Epilogue starts in '46 (see image below).

But we suddenly jump forward FOUR YEARS to not only when The Rainbow Room has opened again, but they've ALREADY PERFORMED THERE?

That's it. That's the post. The band is still together after, like, five+ years. This is fine. This didn't make me almost start crying out of happiness. (<- complete and utter sarcasm.)

The band is so happy together... Oh, they're such a found family...

Johnny Simpson edit

Bracket 6, Round 1

Its late and I’m tried but not enough to sleep so instead I’ll make awful Bandstand art

Enjoy my ✨scribbles✨

Jimmy Campbell - Lonely Norman (1971)

I haven’t been able to get this song out of my head lately.  Sure, Jimmy sounds a lot like John Lennon, with his thick Scouse accent but this tune is really rocking. Apparently this tune was recorded with Rockin’ Horse, the band Jimmy Campbell formed with former Merseybeat Billy Kinsley, and actually is included as an extra track on the re-release of their one LP.

This Otis Redding performance of “Try A Little Tenderness” is from 55 years ago today—December 9, 1967—the day before Redding and most of his band were killed in an airplane crash. _____________________________ Try A Little Tenderness Songwriters: Jimmy Campbell, Reg Connelly and Harry M. Wood

Oh, she may be weary And young girls they do get wearied Wearing that same old shaggy dress, yeah, yeah But when she gets weary Try a little tenderness, yeah, yeah

You know she's waiting Just anticipating For things that she'll never, never, never, never possess, yeah, yeah But while she's there waiting, without them Try a little tenderness That's all you gotta do

It's not just sentimental, no, no, no She has her grief and care, yeah, yeah-yeah But the soft words, they are spoke so gentle, yeah It makes it easier, easier to bear, yeah

You won't regret it, no, no Some girls they don't forget it Love is their own happiness, yeah But it's all so easy All you gotta do is try Try a little tenderness, yeah All you gotta do is, man Hold her where you want her

Squeeze her Don't tease her Never leave her Get to her, try, try

Just try a little tenderness, ooh, yeah, yeah, yeah Don't bruise her, no no You've got to love her, tease her, don't squeeze her Gotta try nah, nah, nah, try Try a little tenderness, ooh, yeah, yeah, yeah You've gotta to know what to do, man Take this advice

i know we talk all the time abt how evil it was for them to cut jimmy’s coming out scene from the pro shoot but we don’t talk enough about them redacting him from proud riff

Josh Canfield (he/him) as Jimmy Campbell in Bandstand

Information

Name: Josh Canfield

Credits: Falsettos (Marvin and Whizzer standby), Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 (Ensemble/u/s Anatole), Doctor Zhivago (Liberius)

Color of the rainbow with which they identify: Gay

Controversial take: Jimmy Campbell would love Legally Blonde (both movie and musical). Like the whole message of it, the fact that Elle originally becomes a lawyer for Warner then becomes one for herself, the message of empowerment, THE SASS. He would love that

Lonely Norman by Jimmy Campbell

Sometimes I think about Jimmy and Donny's dog tags flying out from underneath their shirts when they preform Welcome Home (Finale) in the pro-shot and it hurts every single time I think about it. All of the guys have lost friends, but Jimmy and Donny are the only ones who actively say something about what happened to the people they'd lost during the show, so it means a lot to me that they specifically have this happen. The rest of them are wearing theirs too, but there's just something so unbelievably heart-wrenching about the way that Donny and Jimmy's noticeably fly around.

They were the only ones to make it out of their respective situations, too (the grenade accident and the ship explosion). Their dog tags were ALSO the only ones to make it out.

When the tags fly out, it makes me think of the line "sing because you need to sing". They've all gone through so, so much. And with the Finale, they're finally allowing themselves to let go of *ALL* of the rules because they just *NEED* to.

This leaves them vulnerable, and their tags are emblematic of that. We only see other tags from the guys in the band when they are equally vulnerable (Counterpoint/Pie Jesu, Proud Riff).

Welcome Home (Finale), for Donny and Jimmy, while it makes them feel vulnerable and the dog tags visually represent the people they've lost... They continue to push through and play just because they *NEED* to. They don't *HAVE* to do anything for that competition. They could have walked away. But they went up there and played their hearts out not just for themselves, but for EVERYONE they've lost.

They did it for Michael. They did it for Jimmy's crew. They did it to take care of Julia, like Michael wanted. They did it for the people Davy lost, the people Nick lost, the people that Wayne and Johnny lost. But Jimmy and Donny were the characters whose losses were directly, verbally, specifically established to have directly influenced their waking thoughts, and THEY are the ones whose dog tags fly out.

Because just like they were the only ones to get out alive, their tags are some of the only ones that came back from their respective tragedies (the grenade incident/the ship explosion). And they are letting themselves be vulnerable, they are letting their tags fly out because they *NEED* to play; they *NEED* to tell not only their stories, but the stories of their lost loved ones, whose memory they carry with them with their own tags, since they weren't able to get their fellow servicemen's after their deaths.

God, I know this fandom is super dead, which is unfortunate, but I hope this makes sense.

What is it w Davy Zlatic and doing the craziest shit w his bass?

Like

Throwing it high in the air? Crazy

Standing out it while playing it? Absolutely bonkers

Me after searching up “character name x black!reader” and it gives me some Harry Potter shit