Tampa Bay Times from St. Petersburg, Florida • 54

GOOD Ann Landers, 3-D Television, 15-D Movies, 10-D Comics, 17-D oilTULOJ section FRIDAY, JULY 4, 1986 0 ST. PETERSBURG TIMES F6? RECORDS rr. KAPH 1 Hdvmoiw.v i GRAPH, r- i 1 i i i i im I 1,1. Yi 1 1 If 3 11 If loom 7 I i lirtr -w" a. III nil 1A man ft m4 Davy Jones, Mickey Dolenz and Peter Tork (sans Mike Nesmith) in their TV heyday of the late '60s.

r4 By PETER SMITH St Petersburg Timet Correspondent ox early days, sounded a little dazed in a recent phone interview by the recurrence of Mon-keemania. "It's reminiscent of the first time, but that time, we knew it was going to be big, because of the TV show," Tork said. "When we started getting this together, the promoter didn't know what kind of draw we'd be, but then MTV happened." The music video network ran a Monkees marathon (all 59 episodes of the TV show) one Sunday, ran the shows two a day for a month, and repeated the marathon last Sunday. The good-natured silliness of the shows and nostalgia for the '60s combined to make the tour popular beyond anyone's expectations. Please see MONKEES 4-D Three Monkees hop the revival train; one stays home sprightly ditty called "Last Train to Clarks-ville." Now 20 years, 59 TV shows, one movie, nine albums and 35-million record sales later, the Monkees (on their 20th anniversary tour) are one of the hottest tickets in America.

Again. Their show Saturday at Ruth Eckerd Hall has been sold out for weeks, and tickets for a show today at the Sarasota County Fairgrounds are moving fast. Peter Tork, the Monkees' bassist, key- board player and archetypal hippie in the Here we come, walkin' down the street We get the funniest looks from everyone we meet theme from the Monkees, by Tommy Boyce, Bobby Hart On Sept. 12, 1966, those people who were able to tear themselves away from Gilligan 's Island saw the first episode of an NBC series called The Monkees. Charming, bouncy and above all cute, The Monkees was an obvious riff copped from A Hard Day's Night, the first film from the Beatles.

The Monkees received barely above average rating. But three weeks later, the Monkees had the number one record in America, a St Petersburg Time JOE WALLES Surrounded by inventory, Ginny Sullivan of Safety Harbor holds one of the Elvis discs containing an interview in 1956 when the rocker played the Florida Theatre in St. Petersburg. When St. Petersburg and Elvis got together Pinellas partnership is putting a bit of Presley memorabilia on the market Haute tUhxay (Eomro By THOMAS FRENCH St Petertburg Timet Staff Writer 7 --1 I it The 21-year-old Presley, who performed three shows at the Florida Theatre that afternoon and evening, was already well on his way to becoming a legend.

He had just released "Hound Dog" and "Don't Be Cruel," he was about to begin filming his first movie, and in a few weeks he would make his first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. "How do you manage the confounded rest on these tours?" asks the interviewer, a local disc jockey named Bob Hoffer. "Well," says Elvis, polite but still with that unmistakable trace of danger in his voice, "I don't." Hoffer, who assures the young star that there are no "anti-Elvis Presley fan clubs" on his radio show, covers it all in the interview. He asks Elvis about his high school days, his gold records, Hollywood, Ed Sullivan, an alleged feud with Pat Boone and the controversial appearance the month before on Steve Allen's TV show. Allen, an infidel in the eyes of many rock 'n' roll believers, had put Presley on the show with orders to not move that famous pelvis.

"The kids didn't like it, you know," Elvis says to the interviewer. "In other words, they were writing letters in, telling him to leave me alone, leave me the way I was and all that." Please see ELVIS 2-D A hotbed of rock 'n' roll fever it has never been, but one day back in 1956, St. Petersburg went wild over a visit from a young, hip-shaking sensation named Elvis Presley. Now, 30 years later, a piece of that day is on the open market. Two Pinellas County antique dealers and a St.

Petersburg marketing company are trying to sell close to 50,000 unopened discs, cassettes and eight-track tapes of a collector's item called The First Year, Though the album's main attraction is a March 1955 performance in Houston supposedly the earliest known recording of a Presley concert it also includes a seven-minute interview with the King on Aug. 7, 1956, from his dressing room at the old Florida Theatre in St. Petersburg. It's likely, though, that only diehard Presley collectors will be buying the album. Worldwide Marketing of Florida, the company that's selling the package for the antique dealers, has priced the discs at $139 each.

No price has been set yet for the cassettes or eight-tracks. "Somebody wanted to buy the whole inventory for says Hal Cubbedge, the company's president. "I already turned it down." Still, the interview in St. Petersburg captures a historical moment that many in this area remember well. id i ,1 I Now, 20 years later, Jones, Tork and Dolenz take the stage again.

They play today at the Sarasota County Fairgrounds, where tickets are still available, and Saturday at a sold-out Ruth Eckerd Hall. 'China' a campy, roller-coaster kind of romp A REVIEW or mourn Big Trouble in Little China Cast: Kurt Russell, Kim Cattrall, Dennis Dun, James Hong, Victor Wong Director John Carpenter Screenplay: W.D. Richter Rating: PG-13 Running Time: 100 minutes Theaters: Tyrone Square 6, Movies at Pinellas Park, Movies at Largo, Sunshine Mall 5 'Mi, By HAL UPPER St Petertburg Timet Rim Critic Are you ready for a movie that's accurately billed as an "actionadventurecomedykung-fumonsterghost Fine. Then climb aboard Jack Burton's Pork Chop Express as he wheels his semi-trailer into San Francisco's wholesale market and Big Trouble in Little China. This is no tame tale of piggies going to market.

The last porker has barely been pulled from Jack's truck when he's whisked into Chinatown's labyrinth underground and given a crash course in Chinese mythology. Prepare to visit the River of Ashes, the Mansion of the Disloyal, The Iron Basin and The Great Arcade where Jack meets an evil Mandarin lord who can transform himself from a hairless old duffer into a 7-foot-tall warrior. The spirit plans to marry a green-eyed maiden Jack's buddy's girlfriend because she unknowingly possesses the power to free him from an ancient curse. Confused? Good. It gets more complicated, and that's the joy of Twentieth Century Fox Kim Cattrall and Kurt Russell escape their captors through a subterranean aqueduct.

Rap music is a "fad" that's lasted more than 10 years and grown from a New York block-party ritual into an arena attraction. L.L. Cool and Whodini comprise a second generation of rappers fueling an unprecedented commercial push for the style. is on stage July 10 at the USF Sun Dome. Tickets are $12.50 plus service charge through Select-a-Seat, Pritchett's Records in St.

Petersburg and College Hill Pharmacy in Tampa. ERIC 3NIDER What's distinctive about today's Farm Aid II, another all-day philanthropic concert, is the lineup of terrific young American rock bands. You have your Willie Nelsons and your John Cougar Mellencamps, but you also have the Blasters, Joe Ely, Los Lobos, Lone Justice, Jason and the Scorchers, Brian Setzer (the onetime Stray Cat) and X. The follow-up to last year's fund-raiser for American farmers airs on cable TV's VH-1. The concert starts at 9:30 a.m.

and is scheduled to run until 2 a.m. Saturday. KELLY SCOTT Among the "huddled masses" welcomed by Lady Liberty over the last century have been countless composers and performers. Appropriately, then, the classical-music world is joining in the festivities this Independence Day. Locally, the Florida Orchestra, directed by Irwin Hoffman, will present a free program entitled "Cinema Stars and Stripes" at 7:30 p.m.

at Coachman Park in Clearwater. And among the day's events carried on FM, pay particular attention to the live broadcasts by the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, conducted by Mstislav Rostropovich (8 p.m.), and by the Minnesota Orchestra, conducted by Kenneth Jean (9:45 p.m.). MICHAEL FLEMING Excellent Very good Good Mediocre it Poor John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China, a campy, convoluted series of outrageous adventures that careens through an imaginary world for two hours before depositing you, breathless, back in your seat. We're not talking art. We're talking heavy-artillery violence, hairy beasts and Chinese grandmasters who burst through walls on bolts of lightning.

We're talking Chinese street gangs, sewer monsters and Oriental herbal potions that might be misconstrued as racist fantasies if the movie weren't a camp send-up from Frame One. Big Trouble in Little China hardly is flawless. But it moves with the urgency of Carpenter's best work (Halloween, Starman and the overly graphic The Thing) and the offbeat humor of The Adventures ofBuckaroo Banzai, (The similarity to Buckaroo Banzai is no surprise. Buckarod director, W. D.

Richter, re-wrote Big Trouble's screenplay.) Please see CHINA 3-D li.