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Caloroga Shark Media. Hey, I’m Johnny Mac. This is a bonus episode. This episode’s going to be a very very loose Uncle Floyd. Floyd Vivino has passed away to age seventy four, So to a large portion of view you’re like, who’s that.
But if you’re from the Tri state New York area, you’re going to feel this one. I’ll share my experiences later in the episode because I don’t want to at all make this about me, but I worked with Floyd and new Floyd. Floyd’s numbers in my phone, but to. Catch everybody else up a late night er, I think may have done the best obituary of them all. They explain.
Floyd Vivino debuted the Uncle Floyd Show on local cable TV in New Jersey in nineteen seventy four, launching the program at his own expense. So I’ll jump in there. Just picture a bear bones TV show, A guy sitting at a desk wearing a colorful jacket and a mismat colorful hat, and he’s got a puppet. The puppet is Ugie, and Floyd would stick his hand through the puppet shirt, so the puppet’s right hand was really Floyd’s right hand, but it totally worked. It just looked like he was kind of snuggling with the puppet, and the puppet would speak in a falsetto that also had a thick New Jersey accent.
Ridiculous. So I thought about pulling clips, but any clip I pull, You’re gonna be like, what the heck was that? That was crazy? But the charm of the show was how low budget it was. It wasn’t trying too hard.
And these are just guys from New Jersey banging this stuff out every day and kids like me are watching it. Hi, boys and girls, I’m Uncle Floyd. Then this is my partner, Ugie. Now before we start the show, I should apologize to everyone. Ugi is gonna be very upset today.
You could tell by his face. Look at that face, look like, don’t start telling everybody. I’m fed up. But I’m tired. I’m gone again.
Get paid around here. I want to get paid for my contribution to the show. I want my money putting the bank for me. I want it putting a trust fund. Why a trust fund?
Because I don’t trust you? Love So The Uncle Floyd Show debuted in nineteen seventy four, late Night, it writes. The variety show, which was formatted as a children’s show but often appealed to an adult audience with its absurdist humor, featured vivino and sketches, musical numbers, puppetry skits, and viewer interaction segments, and then the show also featured musical guests. Now, some of the musical guests who came on included the Ramones, Blondie and Elvis Costello. So where did you find the show?
I grew up in Queens, New York City. We didn’t get cable until I think it was nineteen eighty seven. We definitely didn’t have cable in nineteen eighty six when the Mets won the World Series, which as a kid who could see Shay Stadium, Home of the Mets out my bedroom window, was incredibly frustrating. Here they are the Met’s playing a mile away, and I can’t watch seventy five of the games. But I digress.
So as a kid, I would sit there and play with the UACHF button. You know, in the seventies you had in New York City two, four, five, seven, nine, eleven, thirteen, and then whatever you found on UACHF. So you know, One night i’m dialing around, I put on channel thirteen. I discovered Monty Python. One night I’m playing with the other dial and I think it was channel twenty one, the PBS station from Long Island.
I find Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
And then on channel sixty eight there was the Uncle Floyd Show.
Now I don’t remember being honest here Chicken or the egg for Channel sixty eight total side by here. In the days before cable in Queens, you could get HBO the HBO man. I’m not still sure how this would work. The HBO man would come and they would hook some kind of antenna up on the apartment building where I lived, and on channel six you could subscribe to HBO. But if you slipped the cable guy or the HBO guy a couple bucks, you would have HBO forever.
So my dad may have done that. So we had HBO, but other people had something called WHT with mech go Home Theater. But the thing about WHT is they would show nazy films after midnight. Okay, but how did WHT work? I’m going somewhere.
Channel sixty eight during the daytime was a normal channel. Then at some point they would scramble the signal, so you had to have a box and the box would de scramble the signal so that you could watch movies on WHT and they had real movies. It was like an HBO equivalent, except on WHT you had the naughty stuff at midnight, but it was still over the air, just scrambled. So if you were up around midnight and you put on U sixty eight, it was scrambled. But if you were a young man, occasionally you might see, you know, a little scrambled nudity, which was very exciting.
So I can’t remember if I came to channel sixty eight for Floyd or if I came to channel sixty eight for the you know, the scramble. And I’m not the only one. You all know the deal anyway, Uncle Floyd was on at six o’clock after s speed Racer. I hated speed Racer. Speed Racer sucks, but speed Racer was the thing I would stare at killing Thomas six o’clock and then Uncle Floyd come on Channel sixty eight for half an hour back to late nighter, reaching viewers in the New Jersey and New York areas.
The Uncle Floyd Show became an underground favorite throughout the seventies and eighties. In nineteen eighty two, and I’ve mentioned this too much, Chisholm from The Letterman Show, this is the thing that happened. In nineteen eighty two, the show expanded its reach around the country with a seventeen city syndication deal. In New York, it became part of WNBC’s late night programming following Saturday Night Live. That deal only lasted a year.
The Uncle Floyd Show kept going in the Tri State area on various cable UHF and VHF channels. I don’t remember any VHF channels, but I won’t argue with Late Nighter. The Uncle Floyd Show continued into the nineties, the final new episodes in nineteen ninety eight. Floyd’s brother Jerry posted on Instagram early Friday with a heavy heart, I’m sad to announce the passing of my brother and everybody’s favorite Uncle Floyd Vivino. After two and a half year battle with ongoing health issues.
His curtain peacefully closed at six oh five pm on Thursday in January twenty second. Floyd was born in Patterson grew up in multiple towns in New Jersey, including Glen Rock, where he went to high school. One of his fans, David Bowie, said, back in the late seventies, everyone that I knew woul rush home at a certain point in the afternoon to catch the Uncle Floyd show. He was on UHF Channel sixty eight. The show looked like it was done out of his living room in New Jersey.
All his pals were involved in. It was a hoot. It had that soupy sales kind of appeal and that ostensibly aimed to kids. I knew so many people my age who just wouldn’t miss it. Would be on the floor.
It was so funny. I loved that show. David Bowie said it may have been John Lennon who introduced David Bowie to the show. Bowie has a song, slip Away, released in two thousand and two. Some of the lyrics to slip Away include Oogie waits for just Another Day, Oogie is the puppet that I referred to earlier, the chorus sailing over Coney Island, twinkled twinkle, Uncle Floyd, We were dumb, but you were fun boy.
How I wonder, How I wonder where you are? Oogie Waite for just enough day, Dred Speones. To see the Yay kids play. Now, I’ve been doing this. My daughter got me into this song of the day thing.
You just add a song every day to your playlist. That’s going on my playlist today. All right. Cripping from Wikipedia here they talk about some of the cast. Now, as a kid, we always liked the cast members.
There was Scott Gordon, but then the other guys had names like Muggsy and Netto and Loony Skip Rooney, so it was all characters. Floyd would come out, he would do the opening bit with oogie, and he would sometimes sing these like old timey songs, and some of them were naughty. I pulled one and this is a song called shaving Cream. And let’s let uncle Floyd take the first verse. I have a sad story to tell you.
It may hurt your ears just a bit. Last night, as I walked in my bathroom, I. Stepped in a big pile of shaving cream. Be nice and clean, shave every day and you’ll always be. In later days.
From nineteen eighty seven to twenty thirteen, Floyd Vivino broadcast on WVIPFM from Newrochelle, New York, where he played a wide range of Italian music on a Sunday afternoon program, The Italian American Serenade, and that will become relevant to my own career in a bit. Floyd claimed to have the largest collection of Italian records in the world. In twenty thirteen, Uncle Floyd’s Garage Sale Music began on WVOX fourteen sixty. That show featured an eclectic variety of records from Floyd’s large personal collection, most of which he found in thrift shops, yard sales, and curbside garage piles. In twenty thirteen, Floyd began the internet based radio program The Uncle Floyd Radio Show, which I did not know existed and was streamed twice a week.
I just found five episodes of what I Think is that on Spotify, so you can look that up. Let me get the break in. What’s talk a little more about Uncle Floyd. So I knew Uncle Floyd a little bit. I’ve told you a lot of his career and I had a few years where we cross paths.
So I’m it’s serious. And I get tagged to work with Stephen van Zandt on something called The Wise Guy Show. This was right in the middle of Sopranos Mania, and Steven van zandt as you know, was on The Sopranos. So Steven had the idea, all right, what if we created a radio show that just sounded like the Fellas hanging out at the botta, being that was the premise of the show. So I worked with Stephen Vinnie Pastor, who was Big Pussy on The Sopranos.
He was the star of the Wise Guys show h New York City DJ Joe Causey, who’s a great guy. He was brought in to be, you know, keep the trains on time, try and make this an actual radio show, because it was Joe the radio professional, and a bunch of people who were not radio professionals. So Joe would keep the trains on time, you hat, Vinnie and then a bunch of other character actors, including a guy that went by the name Cha Cha who appears in the later episodes of The Sopranos, Vinnie Vella Giorgano. A lot of the like secondary characters on this Pranos would come up and do guest spots. So I spent a little bit of time just immersed in that world.
In all ways, I could tell you some stories some other day. But at one point I suggested to Steven that we bring in uncle Floyd. Now I loved working with Steven van Zanda. I’m a big Springsteen fan, but when you work with me, I’m also a professional. And I was just saying to my wife last night, I don’t know why, for some reason, Steven’s name came up, and I said, I think it was five years before I said anything like Bruce or Springsteen.
It’s not why we were there, you know. Our relationship was he was Steven, and it was his show and his vision, and I was the guy producing it, and we just had that relationship. Good guy to work with. And I went to him and I go, why don’t we bring it Floyd? And he was like Floyd, And I explained him that Floyd was doing the Italian American show and that Floyd could play piano and could bring it in a little more entertainment to the show and bring in some more laughs because the show was airing on one of the comedy channels, and just make the show just a touch bit lighter without totally telling the original BOTA being premise in.
So we brought in Floyd and he fit like a glove, because the guys would still sit at the table and do their thing, and Floyd would sit at the piano, and then Vinnie Pastor could throw it to Floyd, who just knew how to play all these songs off the top of his head, and he could do these really wonderful short bursts. And you know, Floyd being a pro, new one to get in and new one to get out, and knew his role. On any radio show, you want to know your role, so he knew what he was there to do, would do it and execute flawlessley and then throw the ball back to Joe Causey and Vinnie Pasteur. And he was able to hang with those guys, and when they were getting a little rough and tumble, some of them were character actors who may have been more characters than actors, if you know what I mean, Floyd could hang with them, and then Floyd could sit at the piano. A late night er, UH dusted off an interview they did with Chris Gethard, also a Jersey guy, who said, Uncle Floyd is probably, in my mind, the most underappreciated entertainer of recent memory.
He was huge for me. He’s kind of cut from a different cloth. He’s very versatile. He’s absolutely a genius. There’s a number of people in comedy, especially if they grew up in the Northeast, who really obsess over Uncle Floyd.
A lot of people who think differently point to Floyd to someone who was doing stuff that was really original, really hilarious, and really pure, like really cracked open from his own brain and it didn’t always make sense, but boy, it was effing awesome. So if you’re from the New York City ish New Jersey area, you get it. And if you’re not from around here, this is the first time you’re hearing of this guy. I hope I was able to bring a little bit of how awesome Floyd was to you. There are clips on YouTube, but it’s one of those things that you had to be there, and if you were there, it was awesome.
Uncle Floyd’s gonna take us out here. Rest in peace, Floyd Vivino. Uncle Floyd and the crazy hissing you hear is, of course an inflatable dinosaur. Boys and Girls. This is my last show here on New Jersey Network, and that’s.
All there is. There is no more. My contract has not been renewed here at New Jersey Network. I thank everybody for so many nice times. But we’ll meet again, as we always say whenever we’re going, will meet again.
Don’t know where, don’t know when, but. I know will meet again some nonny days. Keep smiling through, just like you always do, till the blue skies chase the dark clouds so far away. So won’t you please say hello to the folks that I know. Tell them I won’t be long.
They’ll be happy to know that. As you saw me go, I was singing this song. Will need again, Don’t know where, don’t know when. That I know will need again. So see you day M hm