Disco

Fans of Annapolis native and longtime local leading man David Bosley-Reynolds can catch his Olympian performance as Zeus along with his dual role as solid businessman Danny Maguire in Toby's Baltimore Dinner Theatre's area premiere of "Xanadu. " Always charismatic — beginning with the Chesapeake Music Hall, the Annapolis dinner theater that closed in 2004 — Bosley-Reynolds' memorable performances included his nuanced characterization of Jud in "Oklahoma," his Cowardly Lion in "The Wizard of Oz," his Tevye in "Fiddler on the Roof" and his Fred Graham in "Kiss Me Kate" — the final Music Hall performance.

It was time to flip the groove, strip it down and build it up again. In 1979 and 1980, black music, which has always dictated what's next in pop, broke free of disco's velvety excess and polyester pretensions. The melodramatic strings and relentless 4/4 beats of the music had grown tired as Afros across the country shrunk into tight, greasy Jheri Curls. And blacks and Latinos in the South Bronx - folks who couldn't afford the admission into the posh discos of Manhattan - planted the seeds of hip-hop, a movement that would eventually flower into a billion-dollar industry.

IF IT GETS any more face lifts, WSSF (104.3-FM) may be known as the Zsa Zsa Gabor of Baltimore radio stations.This is the station, you might recall, that ran the same five songs over and over for days last winter as if trying to drive Noriega from Panama. That bizarre interlude preceded the station's switch from adult contemporary music to so-called "soft" listening. The station hitched its wagon to the stars of Barbra Streisand, Neil Diamond and Barry Manilow. You probably saw the trio's faces peering out Mount Rushmore-like on area billboards this year.

It was an era when polyester double knit was the height of fashion, when men started blow-drying their hair and Farrah Fawcett set the standard of female beauty. In short, it was the 1970s, and it wasn't pretty. But it was also an era with a beat, and you could definitely dance to it. The beat was disco, and it's pulsing with a vengeance in the stage adaptation of the 1977 movie Saturday Night Fever at the Lyric Opera House. The chance to see live disco dancing is the chief - and, for the most part, the only - attraction of this musical, which was adapted by native Baltimorean Nan Knighton and which retains and slightly augments the movie's Bee Gees-laden score.

A GROUP of hard-working teen-agers at Northeast High School has been preoccupied over the past three months, honing disco moves, learning dialogue and preparing for the Dionysus Club's spring production of Friday Knight Fever, a musical comedy tribute to the 1970s. The musical joyfully parodies a time when mood rings and Magic Eight Balls revealed the wisdom of the world, Women's Lib empowered a new generation and disco music reigned. "Disco is not dead at Northeast," said Martin Le- Francois, teacher and club sponsor.

It's going to be a very Brady Monday.From dawn to dusk, and beyond, you won't be able to get away from actor Barry Williams, aka Greg Brady of "The Brady Bunch," who will be in the Baltimore area for a series of promotions.The much beloved, much mocked "Brady Bunch," about a mother of three daughters and a father of three sons who marry and produce the most ickily perfect blended family, is enjoying a resurgence of popularity about 20 years after its original airing. Mr. Williams is behind much of that wave -- his recently published book, "Growing Up Brady: I Was a Teenage Greg," is currently on the best-seller lists.

Have you heard the one about the woman with the ham in the grocery store? It goes like this: A portly woman wearing an overcoat is walking down a supermarket aisle when a full-size ham falls out of her coat and lands on the floor. Fearing she'd be caught shoplifting, the woman looks around and yells, "Who threw that ham at me?" The story, which has gone around for years, was the basis for the new single by B-52s frontman Fred Schneider. Schneider filmed the music video for the song "Who Threw That Ham At Me?"

What is this?" I wanted to know. I was at a friend's studio apartment in Philadelphia and he had slipped on a mix tape of some of the most urgent music I'd ever heard. It was repetitive, the layered, cheaply produced beats booming with angry energy. "That's from B-more," he said. "This is what they play in the clubs down there." I frowned. "Not feeling it. What else you got?" Five years later, I move to Charm City and go out to a dingy little downtown joint with another club-music-loving friend.

It has been a dreadful network television season, and the malaise only deepens as we head into its final days, with the start of big-ticket May "sweeps" programming this weekend. Three very expensive productions from what were once known as the Big Three start tomorrow, and the toughest call for this critic is deciding which is worst: NBC's vapid miniseries "The '70s," CBS' weepy bio-pic on the life of John Denver, or another miniseries from the dreaded Robert Halmi Sr., who has gotten rich turning the Great Books into prime-time mush.

When Randy Fogle returned to his job in January, it made headlines around the country. He was among nine coal miners trapped underground last summer for more than three days. Fogle is back underground again in the Quecreek Mine near Somerset, Pa. "It's like a car wreck; you have to go forward," Fogle told the Associated Press, adding that he tries not to think about the 77-hour ordeal that riveted the nation in July: "You can't keep going over it in your mind or you'll drive yourself crazy."