Welk: A bum rap for music lovers.

There seems to be a belief that if you don't like rock music and you do like the old standards and revere such giants as Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, the Gershwins, Rodgers and Hammerstein and all the other great lyricists and composers of the past century, you're square. And, being square, you must also like The Lawrence Welk Show. Wrong! As much as I don't like rock or rap or heavy metal, these are all preferable to the sickening treacle of The Lawrence Welk Show. Every now and then, out of sheer fascination, I turn on the PBS reruns of this stultifyingly awful show and am stunned by the level of blandness evinced by this long-running nightmare. There isn't a classic standard this army of mediocrities cannot ruin with their insipid orchestral arrangements, or turn into an unintentional satire with their overly made up and pouffed singers always comically dressed in matching, wrinkle-free polyester suits, floor-length chiffon gowns or such evocative theme outfits as lederhosen and dirndl skirts. Altogether it is a ghastly collection of evangelical church soloists elevated to TV stardom by a native American with a thick something accent. Stardom? Bobby and Cissy are the least-talented dance team that ever saccharined their way through a peppy routine. Watching this twosome is made even more horrifying by Bobby's need to always face the camera with his maniacal 62-tooth grin. Equally pathetic is the show's token, and untalented, black: that buck-and-wing wonder, Arthur Duncan, who only knows one arm-swinging tap dancing number which he thinks will seem different if changes his hat. I know there are millions of people who watched this horrid show religiously (religiously being the operative word) and I am sure millions of mid-Americans still do. But I can't imagine what they get out of it, because every episode is a not a tribute to, but a mockery of, American music. Each show is a pageant in celebration of Aqua-Net, Maybelline, and pancake makeup; a glorification of the accordion; a paen to the polka and an absolute bore. So don't think that The Lawrence Welk Show is the opposite of contemporary music. It's the opposite of good music of any era.