It's been a busy week, so this is the earliest opportunity I've had to pay tribute to singer and songwriter Chip Taylor who died towards the end of March. I write a lot of these eulogies lately, and every one of them affects me in some way or other (otherwise, I wouldn't write them), but even then... the news of Chip's death hit me hard. Because through the songs he wrote in the latter part of his career, I felt like I knew him. Whenever I listened to one of his new records, it began to feel like I was catching up with an old friend. I felt like we had a certain simpatico, even though he was thirty years older than me and lived half a world away. I knew where he was coming from.
I only really discovered Chip Taylor in 2019 when I heard the above song on the radio. But it turned out that I'd known his songs much, much longer.
And then, a couple of years later, he wrote this, a song I became very familiar with as a child because the 1981 version by Juice Newton was a firm favourite of my old friend Tel...
Chip released a number of solo albums in the 70s, and then apparently spent most of the 80s playing blackjack and betting on horse races, only curing himself of that particular addiction following the death of his mother in the mid-90s. After that, he returned to recording and released some wonderfully individual and idiosyncratic solo records, as well as a string of excellent collaborations.
French metal band 6:33 welcome us all to #33 in our Hot 100 countdown. I understand their cover of Silver Lady by David Soul is especially worth seeking out.
33 (and a third) is the number of revolutions per minute made by a long-player / vinyl album. Young people will probably need to consult iffypedia about this, unless they're a hipster, in which case they probably know more about it than I do.
Since I think it's fair to say that hipsters do not read this blog, what do all you old non-hipsters recommend?
The Swede kicked us off this week with a veritable plethora. (Well, a "ple4a", anyway.)
C popped up next with an offering that Charity Chic swiftly declared "the winner!" If only he was compiling these posts. (He's welcome to take over now that he's finished the already much-missed Double Letter Saturday feature. Save me the extra work as we get nearer to #1. Hint hint.)
How about when Grace Jones sounds a lot like Dusty Springfield in I've Done It Again from Nightclubbing?
I was there when Jenny Lind first sang First to feel the cold Alaskan white man First to take a trip on LSD First to vote for Roosevelt back in '33
Next up was Rigid Digit with three solid suggestions...
At the age of 33 and a third, the time that Christ spent on earth, I decided to cut all ties with showbiz. As the awards piled up in the bath, well I started to laugh At all those who died in the name of light entertainment.
That came very close to winning this week, for obvious reasons.
Then came Deano, who explained this week's selection thus...
Before he became outlaw country music's
resident eccentric that would do anything for a publicity stunt, his
debut album was actually some really good blues material, including this
song about a fragile prisoner that has just received some bad news.
Finally came Douglas, who decided to try playing the Canadian card again this week.
For
starters, I wish there were recordings available of any of Gordon
Lightfoot's renditions of "The 33rd of August" which he apparently
undertook in studio in 1969 as an attempt to put together a final
contractually obligated album of covers for UA, which sadly was aborted
and the decision was made to deliver with a live album instead. The
recordings are out there somewhere... anyway, for the record I prefer
the original Mickey Newbury version of this song to others out there.
(See above.)
But
for Canadian content, I am left suggesting Stars' song Personal, which
is a very sad short story of a song told back and forth through
his-and-hers personal columns responses which ends with the heartache of
being stood up. It starts thus:
28 and bored, grieving over loss, sorry to be heavy
But heavy is the cost, heavy is the cost...
Now that might not have won this week, but only because it's not yet in my collection and the winner must always exist in my own library. That said, it's a bloody good tune, so thanks for introducing it to me, Douglas... and it will come in very well on the Top Ten Lonely Hearts Column Songs I've been trying to compile for months now. (Note to everybody: I need another three good ones.)
Speaking of songs from my own library, here's what it threw up this week (along with many of the ones above)...
All of which brings us to this week's winner, which was a real toss-up with Luke Haines, but in the end Frank edged it with an equally biting open line that sums up the state of the world at the moment... and offers good advice for anyone who ever thinks of interviewing He Who Has Fallen From Grace again...
"Stop asking musicians what they think" He said softly as he poured himself a second drink And outside, the world slipped over the brink
We all thought we had nothing to lose That we could trust in crossed fingers and horseshoes That everything would work out, no matter what we choose
The first time it was a tragedy The second time is a farce Outside it's 1933 so I'm hitting the bar
Don't go mistaking your house burning down for the dawn!
Last Friday Night, Part Of Me wondered if anyone would get this week's Saturday Snapshots clues. Luckily, once the Fireworks kicked off yesterday morning, you made short work of them. Alyson and C were the early risers (Alyson even drafted in her London hosts to help) with two points each. Lynchie beat them by half a point, Charity Chic got another two and Chris was brave enough to admit to remembering Deep Blue Something. In the end, nobody guessed the song from #1, but that was probably my fault for not pointing out in the comments that nobody had got it. There were certainly plenty of guesses. Hopefully the explanation below will suffice.
Compiling my Top Ten Instrumental TV Themes was a pretty easy job. Most of you agreed with at least some of them. Much harder has been the long hours of consideration I've given my Top Ten Sung TV Themes. It'll probably prove a far more divisive list too. But as with everything else on this blog, it's just one man's opinion, reflecting my age and youthful viewing habits, and I don't claim it to be worth any more than the cyberspace it's written on.
To make the job easier, I had to draw up a few rules...
1) Only original compositions were allowed, i.e. songs that were written and recorded specifically for the show. So I haven't allowed the theme to The Sopranos (Alabama 3) or The Wire (Tom Waits) or The Wonder Years (Joe Cocker) or True Detective (The Handsome Family) much as I might like the songs in question.
2) No kids' TV shows - I might save those for a separate list. The hardest thing of all was banning the Spider-Man theme tune from this list.
(Maybe I'll do a Top Ten for each of the above one day.)
I rejected the following memorable theme tunes because...
The Protectors : Avenues & Alleyways is a great Tony Christie romp, but it's absolutely the only thing I remember about this show... and then I discovered it was produced by Gerry Anderson, which I'm afraid was a mark against it. At least it didn't feature puppets.
M*A*S*H* Though I remember it as the sung version of Suicide is Painless, they only ever used the instrumental on TV.
Ditto Twin Peaks, which Julee Cruise only sang in the show, never on the opening credits.
All of which leaves me with this rather odd collection. A few of these I would count as great TV shows. The rest were nowhere near as good as their theme songs...
While many of my schoolmates were big fans of The Dukes of Hazzard, I never really got the appeal. You can't argue with a Waylon Jennings theme tune though, composed specially for the show.
Goodbye grey skies, hello blue... if ever there was a show that convinced us 50s America was as good as it got, Happy Days was it. Eyyyyyy!
The theme song had a rather convoluted history. Written by film & TV composers Gimble & Fox, it was originally recorded by session musician Jim Haas, although for the show's first two seasons the song was only used on the closing credits: Bill Haley's Rock Around The Clock was the opener. By the time I started watching the show regularly, Happy Days the song was all-encompassing. It was re-recorded and became a hit record for Pratt & McClain. Then Fonzie jumped over a shark on water skis and it was all over.
I vaguely remember watching this cheesy superhero action comedy on a Saturday morning when I was a kid, but even though I only saw a few episodes, the theme tune really stuck in my head. Up until compiling this post, I was under the mistaken belief that the song was composed and performed by John Sebastian of The Lovin' Spoonful, but it turns out it was actually written by A Team composer Mike Post (with lyrics by Stephen Geyer) and sung by Joey Scarbury.
(John Sebastian sang the theme to Welcome Back, Kotter... a great song, but I don't remember that show ever airing in the UK.)
I've written before about my deep love of Moonlighting, and how it led me to buy my first ever single. Al Jarreau's theme tune sounds very 80s soul now, but it's impossible for me to hear it without remembering my obsession.
Around the time of the late Garry Shandling's pre-Larry Sanders sitcom, I was really into postmodernism. I was a teenager. It was a phase. Anyway, I found much to appreciate about a sitcom character who knew he was in a TV show - knowledge he didn't share with his supporting cast. The theme tune reflected this perfectly...
"This is the theme to Garry's show, the opening theme to Garry's show, this is the music that you hear as you watch the credits..."
The one that blurs the rules a little bit. Was it a pop song? Was it a hit record? Were they actually a group? Does it matter? The Monkees were brilliant.
"Write the theme tune, sing the theme tune..." What a true Renaissance Man was Dennis Waterman. Really though, if you want a theme tune to get you revved up for a big night out, it's hard to beat a good strong blast of "I could be so good for you!"
When I first heard this theme, I scoured the net for Randy Newman's original, convinced there must be a full length version out there to enjoy. Apparently not, 90 seconds is all you get.
People think I'm crazy, 'cause I worry all the time If you paid attention, you'd be worried too You better pay attention Or this world we love so much might just kill you I could be wrong now, but I don't think so It's a jungle out there
Once upon a time, I almost convinced myself I was a cross between Adrian Monk and Gregory House (whose dull Massive Attack theme failed to make either list). Yes, I was 'Mouse'. But certainly not 'Hunk'.
Monk wasn't a big hit in the UK, but it lasted 8 series in the States and I watched them all, wherever the BBC buried it in the schedules. It was easygoing, feelgood TV at its best. Monk was a genius detective who nobody took seriously because he was seriously OCD - this was a high concept pitch (Sherlock Holmes meets Rain Man with a splash of Columbo) that hit gold through Tony Shalhoub's sensitive, layered performance. I still miss it.
Cheers remains my all time favourite sitcom - because it was the bar where everybody knew your name. There's a theory that great British sitcoms involve situations no one would ever want to be in, and all the characters want to escape from - whereas great American sitcoms are exactly the opposite. Who wouldn't want a bar like Cheers at the end of their street? Anytime you liked, you could pop in for a cold one, share a friendly greeting with Woody, talk shit with Norm and Cliff, watch Sam hitting on some babe or squabbling with Diane or Rebecca, hear Frasier spouting his pompous opinions... and just feel welcome. "You wanna go where you can see troubles are all the same..." Don't you?
I probably have more affection for The Fall Guy than is healthy. Is that down to Lee Majors and his sardonic eyebrow? Douglas 'Howie Munson' Barr and his unique brand of tree trunk acting? Heather Thomas, who stirred many a pre-adolescent boy in strange and unprecedented ways?
Or could it all come down to this song...?
Well I'm not the kind to kiss and tell
but I've been seen with Farrah.
I've never been with anything less than a nine, so fine.
I've been on fire with Sally Field
gone fast with a girl named Bo.
But somehow they just don't end up as mine.
It's a death defying life I lead I take my chances.
I'd die for a living in the movies and TV.
But the hardest thing I ever do is watch my leading ladies
kiss some other guy while I'm bandaging my knee.
I might fall from a tall building
I might role a brand new car.
'Cause I'm the unknown stuntman
who made Redford such a star.
I never spent much time in school but I taught ladies plenty.
It's true I hire my body out for pay. Hey Hey!
I've gotten burned over Cheryl Tiegs
blown up for Raquel Welch.
But when I wind up hittin' the hay, it's only hay. Hey Hey!
