Posted on 12/28/2007 10:39:39 AM PST by Cagey
Now, when you flip on your favorite TV program and it starts right into the plot, it almost feels like something is missing.
I write today about the passing of something special, fading away so subtly many of us have failed to take proper notice.
The death of the TV theme song.
Everybody's got a different story about that one composition that sticks in the head. My story reaches back to a childhood as an aspiring musician in hardscrabble Gary, Ind. - where negotiating the fluid, driving bass line of the theme to Barney Miller was an odd rite of passage in a community where your mettle was often tested more directly.
That's how it is with these songs; they worm into your heart and mind in the most unexpected ways.
There's the wonderful anticipation kicked off by the first notes of explanatory themes such as Gilligan's Island ("Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale ...") or The Brady Bunch ("... till the one day when the lady met this fellow ..."). You never grew tired of hearing the entire premise of the TV show you were about to watch, laid out in same catchy song every week.
There are the sleek jams, ranging from Barney Miller and Mission Impossible (did a trilling string tremolo ever sound cooler?) to the Theme From Ironside and even the junkman's comedy Sanford and Son.
Producer Quincy Jones was a master at this craft, cranking out themes for Ironside, Sanford and Police Woman that are so cool, listening to his box set sometimes feels like channel surfing through Nick at Nite.
Some themes even became hit records. Duane Eddy's signature guitar twang powered the theme for Peter Gunn to Grammy awards in the '50s and the '80s; the themes for Welcome Back Kotter, S.W.A.T. and Miami Vice all reached No. 1 on singles sales charts.
So why do so few current TV shows have memorable themes?
Fox's medical hit House starts with a few snatches of Massive Attack's instrumental tune Teardrop, barely enough music to cover the list of actors. CBS's blockbuster CSI franchise just stole popular hits from classic rockers the Who, including Who Are You? (C.S.I), Won't Get Fooled Again (C.S.I.: Miami) and Baba O'Reilly (C.S.I.: NY).
One version of the theme for NBC's Scrubs lasts less than 13 seconds. TNT's hit police drama The Closer hardly bothers with opening music at all, displaying the names of the cast over each episode's first scene, a lone guitar twanging in the background.
My hunch is that modern TV producers fear flip-happy viewers will take any excuse to surf away from a show and sample other channels. Eliminating the theme song is just another way to deal with the multitude of channels and remote control technology offered today's consumer, locking them into an unfolding show before they even realize it has begun.
I also blame Frasier - which may have started the anti-theme trend by taking its own cute tune (the jazzy shuffle Tossed Salad and Scrambled Eggs, sung by the star, Kelsey Grammer) and sticking it at the back of the show, to play over the closing credits after the episode was done.
And the three or four of us who still watch ER have noticed that the theme song, which once featured a fresh-faced George Clooney charging through the halls of County General Hospital with his co-stars, now all long gone, has been reduced to a single chord of music.
It's hard to describe the loss to pop culture when TV stops cranking out classic songs like the theme to All in the Family or The Jeffersons. But there's little doubt we've lost something special.
I wasn't singing Baba O'Reilly when I stepped inside the doorway to the first house I ever owned. I was shouting proudly about "movin' on up/to the East Side."
I finally had a piece of the pie. It's too bad the TV industry doesn't give us that flavor anymore.
Eric Deggans can be reached at deggans@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8521.
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Eric Deggans' top 10 TV theme song list
Let's admit upfront that my list of TV's top 10 theme songs is completely subjective, created mostly according to my nostalgia and musical preferences. Here's we go:
10. Sanford & Son - The swampy groove. The loopy melody. Toots Thielemans' amazing harmonica work. There are 10,000 reasons why Quincy Jones' theme helped make Redd Foxx the coolest junkman in TV history.
9. The Addams Family/The Munsters - Both tunes meld campy horror gloom with wacky comedy touches. And the Addams Family even tacked on classic lyrics: "They're creepy and they're kooky/Mysterious and spooky/They're all together ooky." Use of the word "ooky" = instant TV legend.
8. The Love Boat - Looking back, this lounge lizard classic ("Love . . . exciting and new") nails the faded '70s celebrity vibe of the series so well, you'd almost think it was intentional.
7. M*A*S*H (Suicide is Painless) - Transformed an elevator music classic into a resonant, powerful theme.
6. The Benny Hill Show (Yakety Sax) - No composition in the history of television so quickly communicates the idea: "wacky comedy ahead."
5. Gilligan's Island - Among all the explainer theme songs - Beverly Hillbillies, The Brady Bunch - this is most hallowed. And effective.
4. Miami Vice - What hipster didn't walk into a club during the '80s, pastel shirt and loafers securely in place, without this song playing in their head?
3. The Jeffersons - Only in the '70s would a sitcom about a successful black businessman come complete with a gospelized theme song ("Movin' on up!") straight from the pulpit.
2. The Sopranos - A3's throbbing, dance floor masterpiece Woke Up This Morning stands as the best modern-day TV theme song, for the best modern TV drama of all time.
1. All in the Family - Those Were the Days may be the best explainer theme song that wasn't, nailing the wistful anxiety of Edith and Archie Bunker so well, you loved hearing it week after week.
Thanks pookie18!
I just figured out why that (Outer Limits) scared me so much. I was born during the era of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Sputnik, the Cold War, “duck and cover”.
When that voice came on saying “we control the transmission” he sounded just like the guy who came on TV saying “This is the Emergency Broadcast System – This is Only a test…”
When the EBS came on and the TV screen went to a test pattern with a high shrill and that guy started saying “This is the Emergency Broadcast System” I always held my breath thinking he might say – “This is Not a test…”
The Seventies were a groovier, mellower time.
Here in the west
We're livin' in the best.
Bonanza!
With a saddle and a rope
And a hat full of hope
We planted our family tree.
Hoss and Joe and Adam know
Every rock and pine.
No one works fights or eats
Like those boys of mine.
(That's all I remember.)
The Twilight Zone marathon starts on New Years Day on SciFi.
How bizarre! “ ... 7. M*A*S*H (Suicide is Painless) - Transformed an elevator music classic into a resonant, powerful theme. ...”
Elevator music classic? When? As I understood it, it was written expressly for the movie. I remember the Painless character, a dentist, big old goofy guy, who couldn’t get dates (and then, couldn’t “perform” when he did). He decided he was going to commit suicide, so Trapper, Hawkeye and friends went ahead and planned his funeral and wake.
He was even laid out on a catafalque and mosquito netting formed a kind of “veil” around him. That was when they first played “Suicide is Painless,” with the words and everything. *suicide is painless, it brings on many changes and I can take or leave it if I please .. dah dah duh dah.”
*He* was Painless the Polish dentist and he was grousing so much that he thought he would be better off dead, a la George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life, that the other docs decided to have a little fun with him and do him the honor, giving him a black pill to take.
In fact, I think Robert Altman’s son wrote the song - I’m sure of it. He was spending a lot of time here in Houston back then and I remember that story.
I loved the movie M*A*S*H so much that I sat through all the first showings from the first one, the day it opened. Missed all my college classes that day - and I wasn’t the only one who did. Seems like I saw it 6 times back-to-back, or something like that.
Anyway, I don’t think it was any old “classic” Muzak tune. How old is this article-writer?
Love it, thank you! Favorite show back then. I was kind of a kid and thought he was “living on Jackson Queens” - thinking perhaps they were riverboats on the Mississippi, lol.
I have several CDs of TV themes, all in storage, unfortunately, where I can’t get them - and I don’t have a sound card on this computer so this thread is excruciating for me, except for the few I can “hum” in my head, lol.
When I hook up the sound computer, I’m coming back to this thread!
(Oh, also about 2-1/2 Men - I’m glad they haven’t changed it as the kid has gotten older, and it just cracks me up that they’re so high-pitched and singing “manly men” woh-oh-ho.)
*Johnny YUUUU — MAH ... was a rebel ... he rode through the West.*
As a kid, I thought they were telling Johnny “your Ma was a rebel” and it didn’t make sense. (Yes, I did watch the show with Nick Adams and knew his name was Johnny Yuma, but it still sounded like “your Ma” to me, lol.)
*When you hear ‘here I come to save the day’ ... you know that Mighty Mouse is on his way!*
*M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E, Mickey Mouse (Donald Duck) Mickey Mouse (Donald Duck) ... we’ll forever hold our banners high, high, high ... come along and join the song ... oops, can’t remember all of that part ...
*Now’s the time to say goodbye to all our family ... M-I-C ... see you real soon! ... K-E-Y ... why? because we like you! ... M-O-U-S-E.* Sung slowly and sadly, of course.
*Meese-ka, moose-ka, mouse-ka-teer ... Mouse Cartoon Time now is here!*
Johnny Yuma: The Rebel. Don’t ask me what the video’s all about. The show was pretty good. It starred the same guy who wanted to be in the infantry in No Time for Sergeants. Nick something or other.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpUhDS6DqK4
and then there was Friday:
Geddeup Suzie, Jack and Joe.
Ask everybody you may know.
We’re gonna’ have a great big show.
Join the Talent Round Up.
Round ‘em up
Bring ‘em in.
Everybody’s sure to win.
Step right up
Here we go.
Oooooh, what a Rodeo!
Bring along ??? Bob, and Bill.
Ask everybody on the hill.
We’re gonna’ have a great big thrill.
Join the Talent Round Up.
I can’t remember the others...
Any idea’s?
Nick Adams...
I’m really surprised you never mentioned:
http://www.nelsonriddlemusic.com/Nelson%20Riddle%20-%20Track%2003.mp3
See comment #64...
JERRY: Eckman? I thought he was doing time?
KRAMER: No, no, he's out. He got out. See, the medical establishment, see, they tried to frame him. It's all politics. But he's a rebel.
JERRY: A rebel? No. Johnny Yuma was a rebel. Eckman is a nut. George, you want to take care of your tonsils, you do it in a hospital. With a doctor.
I don’t have a sound card on this computer, but I’m going to take a very wild guess at what that is, lol!
*plinkety plink-plink ... *
No, wait, that was “seventy-seven” ... Sunset Strip.
Lessee, hmmm. Hearing the lush Riddle intro ... dooh, doo, dooh do ...
*Well, if you ever plan to motor West ... travel My way, that’s the highway that’s the best! Get your kix on Route Sixty-Six!
It winds from Chicago to L.A., over 2000 miles along the way ... get your kix on Route Sixty-Six!
It goes through Saint Loo-ey, Joplin, Missour-ee, OKLAHOMA CITY looks mighty pretty ... you’ll see Amarillo, Gallup, New Mexico ... Flagstaff, Arizona, don’t forget Winona ... Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino ...
Get hip to this timely tip ... if you take that Kalifornia trip ... Get your Kicks on Route Sixty-Six! Yeah!*
Of course! One episode was filmed in my little OK hometown way back then. Have also been to every place named in the song! Rte66
Ha ha! Didn’t remember that.
*He’s a rebel and he’ll never ever be ... any good ... he’s a rebel ‘cause he never ever does what he should ... just because he doesn’t do what everybody else does ... that’s no reason why I can’t give him all my love ... no, he’s not a rebel, oh no no no, he’s not a rebel, oh no!*
LOL!!
That TV show sold more Corvettes than all the advertising in the world could have.
Are they wav files? I can’t click, if so, as it screws with my no-sound-card computer. Tell me what’s there!
“...Dallas” had an excellent theme...”
And a REALLY GOOD NFL team.
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