Wayne’s World it ain’t, but Interview columnist and general man-about-town Glenn O’Brien’s public access cable show TV Party, which ran on Wednesdays in New York City from 1978 to sometime in ’82, proves that cracked “basement humor” and pseudo-philosophizing have long had and probably always will have a place close to the American bosom, or at least some of its raging counter-cultural cowboys and cowgirls.

Loosely modeled on Hugh Hefner’s self-touting Playboy After Dark, which was at the cutting edge of the lifestyle trend that would take a generation to fully germinate into the explosion we see before us today, the black-and-white lensed TV Party tapped into the raucous New Wave and punk scenes, and featured a hip guest roster that included everyone from The Clash, Jean-Michel Basquiat and David Byrne to John Lurie, Nile Rodgers, Robert Fripp and Arto Lindsey. Luring (warning?) viewers with the welcoming solicitation to ease into “a television show that’s a costume party, but could be a political party,” O’Brien stirred things up in wild fashion, rocking a sort of Dolly Parton lesbian look for one of his Halloween episodes.

Still, the general consensus portrait that emerges from these various compiled solo discs is one of you-had-to-be-there anarchic silliness and archness — too abstract and dense for casual pop culture aficionados to puncture without an All-Music dictionary, sifter of absinthe and healthy superiority complex. Alongside the release of1979’s “Halloween Show” are two other TV Party compilations — the same year’s “Time and Make-Up Show” and 1981’s “Crusades Show,” on the heels of the release of the American hostages from Tehran. Trippy bonus footage on the latter includes a reading from Walter Steding and “Killer Rabbit,” featuring Deborah Harry. (Blondie guitarist Chris Stein was O’Brien’s pal and frequent co-host.) Housed in regular Amray cases, each TV Party title clocks in from 52 to 59 minutes, and is presented on a region-free disc in all its original cramped glory. There are no supplemental extras masked as academic dissections, however, so you’re watching… well, found footage of a very specific time and place. It’s like going a large, metropolitan high school reunion for a class (and school) of which you weren’t a part. D+ (Shows) C (Disc)