Making a go...

It's official, I am now a youtube contributor.

My motive now is to use youtube as a means to the end of self-betterment. I just transferred my Yamaha YDP223 from my parents house to my abode. I have some work left to do greasing the hinges, but soon I hope to pick up where I left off. These are my youtube goals as of now but, as with anything organic, it may very well soon become its own beast.

When going through my old piano books, I was thankful to find Television Showstoppers, a book I pored through as a kid. Between this book and the Television's Greatest Hits, Vol. 1 CD I got soon after my very first CD player in 1991, I've always appreciated theme songs old and new.

For most shows represented in the book and CD, I knew the theme song before I knew anything about the show. I still can't say I've ever seen an episode of Fireball XL-5 or Magilla Gorilla, but I know the theme by heart. For others, the theme inspired me to watch the show - like how I would watch The Patty Duke show on Nick at Nite or wake up early before school to watch a rerun of That Girl.

To me, TV themes were always a musical challenge: they have to capture the feeling of a show; get the viewers excited about what they're about to watch; and bundle it all up with a beginning, middle and end usually within a minute. I particularly like sitcom themes since they tend to be energetic and humorous.

Dramatic shows are also impressive for the same reasons, though I don't make a point to listen to them as often. But just hearing ten seconds of the Quantum Leap theme immediately takes me back to watching Sam Beckett utter "Oh boy!" Friday nights in 1990. (By the way, Quantum Leap reruns now on the ION network every night at 8pm CST)

In the 50s and 60s, the themes were perfectly simple - the best ones stated the point of the show, almost like story telling. Gilligan's Island, Green Acres, The Addams Family, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Car 54 Where Are You are prime examples. Even how they start out shows how they're straight exposition:
- "Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale"
- "Come and listen to a story about a man named Jed"
- "Green Acres is the place to be"
- "They're creepy and they're kooky"

As TV and sitcoms developed, so did the themes. Soon it wasn't just about stating the show's premise, but expressing the heart of the show. There might be earlier examples, but I've always thought of Laverne and Shirley as being on the tipping point: the characters themselves have a role in singing the theme, the song doesn't get into specifics but highlights their attitude.

The 80s is pretty much the golden age. Perhaps I'm biased since I could watch them live and could experience the intent of the themes first-hand. But the roster is impressive: Cheers, Family Ties, Facts of Life, Gimme a Break, Small Wonder. It goes on. I think Cheers marked the last great theme. After that, the biggest shows were Seinfeld, Friends and Frasier: one instrumental, one pre-existing pop song, and one - almost anti-theme - throwaway song.

I have an Energize playlist on my iPod. It currently consists of 369 songs. The point of the list is not that every song will energize me every time I need it, but that if I play it on random and skip threw one or two, I'll find one that really hits the spot -- it's more depth-first then breadth-first. I just looked (without alterations! no quantum 'observing tampers the results' melees) at what theme songs were on the playlist: Blossom, Diff'rent Strokes, Duck Tales, Growing Pains, Hawaii 5 0, Laverne and Shirley, Munsters, Perfect Strangers, Punky Brewster, Silver Spoons, Underdog. (I can already think of a few additions I will make.) Even at this late hour, all of those would get me excited, and have done so countless times.