Jesse Singer articles

If you watched Saved by the Bell in the late 80s and early 90s, Elizabeth Berkley was impossible to forget. From the curly hair to the unforgettable caffeine-pill meltdown, her intense and ambitious Jessie Spano became one of the defining faces of Saturday morning TV. But that was more than 30 years ago—and seeing Berkley today is a reminder that time really does fly.

There are plenty of modern bands that sound close enough to the old-school greats that fans will feel right at home. So we paired the boomer bands you grew up with with their modern-day doppelgängers you should check out. Do you agree with our choices?

The 70s gave us plenty of TV classics that ran for years and are forever engraved in our minds—but it also produced some truly fascinating shows that disappeared almost as quickly as they arrived. Some were ahead of their time. Some were just plain weird. And honestly, pretty much all of them deserved a much longer run. How many of these do you remember?

Coming up with a band name is hard. Coming up with a song title is also hard. Well, in a two-birds-one-stone kind of move, some artists solved both problems at the same time—by just using the same name for everything. It’s bold, a little shameless, and sometimes surprisingly great.

For a while in the 80s, Jan-Michael Vincent seemed untouchable. But away from the cameras, a very different story was already unfolding—one that would soon turn his life into one of Hollywood’s most turbulent cautionary tales.

Mud. Half a million people. Hendrix at dawn. That’s the Woodstock we remember. But there were several major artists invited who didn’t make it—for one reason or another. Imagine if every confirmed invitee had said yes? We did.

In the 70s, The Carpenters felt untouchable. Hit after hit. Television specials. Karen’s voice drifting from car radios across America. Then, in 1983, everything stopped. The world mourned her—but few stopped to wonder what happened to the brother who built the sound beside her. For Richard Carpenter, the future suddenly looked uncertain in ways no chart could measure.

For years, Jon Walmsley felt frozen in time—forever strumming a guitar on Walton’s Mountain, forever part of one of television’s gentlest families. But life after the cameras stopped rolling didn’t follow a script. At least not the one most fans expected.

There was a very specific moment every 70s and 80s TV fan experienced. You’re watching The Love Boat and then Fantasy Island and suddenly you think, “Wait… weren’t they just on the boat?” You weren’t imagining it. ABC recycled guest stars like it was part of the business model—and honestly, we loved them for it.