FLOYD “UNCLE FLOYD” VIVINO – 1951 – 2026

Profonde Musique

January 27, 2026

In the late 1970s, before cable was a thing – at least in our home – we had something called Wometco Home Theater, which was a precursor to the HBO model of having closed circuit concerts and first run (and cheesey) movies streamed into your home. There was this separate audio box and a descrambler, and all that archaic stuff no one not old as hell remembers. Broadcast on there before the WHT switch-over was local TV – or what eventually became “public access” in the 1980s, where I got my second life in media – specifically Channel 68 out of Newark, the first station anywhere to air a barely controlled asylum called The Uncle Floyd Show.

Every night around six or thereabouts, without warning or context, would appear this extremely low-budget DIY variety “kiddie-style” show (pre-Pee Wee Herman satire) that had the look of a bizarre mix of a ransom video meets your neighbor’s cramped basement security footage. The damn thing was so Jersey, using the basis of the very early days of television (the innovative brilliance of Ernie Kovacs) that we grew up on in the 1960s (the jovial Captain Kangaroo), with the added irreverent and biting humor, music, and general mayhem of people screaming off “stage” and jumping in and out of the barely focused camera shots.

Bad jokes, ham-fisted songs, cheap toys as props, and a host of homemade puppets; I was smitten from the get. Hell, it changed my entire comprehension of words like entertainment, broadcasting, or presenting anything in traditional ways using this format forever. Uncle Floyd was my Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show. Mind blown. World changed.

Floyd Vivino, a master pianist and songwriter, has a place in Profonde Musique beyond my being smitten as a teenager looking to break into broadcasting, radio specifically. The Uncle Floyd Show was extremely musical, infiltrating the underground NY/NJ scene seamlessly. I first became aware of the Ramones on Uncle Floyd! What? Yeah, the Ramones set up in that confined space and tore through songs like nothing I had ever seen or heard before. The show’s connection to the band expanded over the years, as both lead singer, Joey proudly displayed an Uncle Floyd Show button on his standard-issue leather jacket, and guitarist, Johnny wearing his Uncle Floyd tee shirt on stage. Eventually, they dedicated a song to Uncle Floyd, “It’s Not My Place (In the Nine to Five World).”

Later, David Johansen of the New York Dolls appeared on the show, as well as a very young and un-famous Jon Bon Jovi, who, as I remember it, plugged his up-coming gigs and gave a shout-out to a music paper I would eventually write for, The Aquarian Weekly. I often wondered if Bon Jovi got their Slippery When Wet idea from a sign just above Floyd’s piano on his West Orange set. Another NJ original, the Smithereens made their television debut on the show, and later British pop band, Squeeze, former Turtles and protocomedians, Flo & Eddie, Peter Tork of Monkeys fame, and so many more. I think the last big-time rock act who appeared on the show was Cyndi Lauper, long before she hit with She’s So Unusual, who found Floyd’s twisted humor expressed her frustration with traditional pop culture and where she would go with her straight-from the-New-Yawk-streets image as an anti-pop star.

All the coolest people knew about Uncle Floyd. John Lennon, the ex-Beatle then in the midst of semi-retirement living in the Upper Westside of Manhattan, and by all accounts TV-obsessed, was apparently such an avid viewer, he told David Bowie about it, who loved it so much that years later, as you might imagine when considering his interest in fringe art, ended up writing a song about it, “Slip Away” for his 2002 album, Heathen, referencing Uncle Floyd and his puppets Oogie and Bones Boy in the song’s first verse. Bowie then told his pal and sometimes collaborator, Iggy Pop, who, again, when considering Iggy’s penchant for chaos, adored it.

Finally, alternative-rockers from Wayne, NJ, Dramarama, made their television debut on Uncle Floyd, later dedicating their own tribute in song, “Work for Food,” a 1994 review of their early days, inviting Vivino to appear (very quickly – you have to really pay attention) as his Cowboy Charlie character in its music video.

I ended up meeting Floyd in the late 90s when I was working as a writer for the adult men’s magazine, Genesis penning features on sports, entertainment, cigars, shit like that. By that point in my career as a journalist and a local television personality, I had been ripping off The Uncle Floyd Show in every which way on local cable, hosting live sports shows, wherein the crew would shout from off-camera, and working as part-time camera man on my friend, Al Quagliata’s wacky Exactly 29-Minutes, which was a homage to all those barely coherent underground comedy excursions.

Interviewing Uncle Floyd for a skin-mag made more sense than I realized, as he was a big hit at strip clubs and men’s clubs, and had a ribald and deviant side to him that was equal measure charming and disturbing. And Uncle Floyd turned out to be everything I hoped he would be, funny, insightful, and refreshingly honest, as we kept chatting long after I turned off my tape recorder about his brothers, Jerry, a wonderful sax player, who incidentally adorned my band, Satyre’s original rough-mix album in 1987, and Jimmy, who played guitar in Conan O’Brien’s talk-show band for years. At the time, Floyd was still touring the clubs with his persona taking on all manner of subjects in his bizarre and endearing way.

After the show wrapped up 1995, Vivino’s career was a peripatetic swing through music, comedy, and guest appearances, mostly around the tristate area, where he remained our NJ treasure. He was always dubious of his impact on a generation that stumbled on his daily mayhem that he would record in the middle of the night over five-hour periods (a full week’s worth in a marathon taping). As we parted ways, I remember him telling me, “We had no idea that we were influencing a whole comedy generation, we were just trying to survive.”

In 2013, my only work of fiction, Y was published, and at its core is a study of What is Art? What constitutes “performance” or “entertainment” and what level of subversion there is in sabotaging that for nothing more than joy’s sake. Always on my mind when I worked on the manuscript was The Uncle Floyd Show, the memories of which reminded me that borrowing from the best of the Dada movement or cabaret hijinks and morphing it with late 20th century sensibilities can make its mark – if not a monumental one, but a lasting one. For those whose minds were blessedly warped by Floyd Vivino and his cast of crazies, we shan’t forget it so easily. As Hunter Thompson was quoted and remains my mantra to this day, “When the going gets weird, the weirds turn pro.” And so went the art and legacy of Uncle Floyd, if not a true original, an original truth.