Showing posts with label Theme Songs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Theme Songs. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Jazz Legend Dave Brubeck Dead at 91

http://www.mercurynews.com/entertainment/ci_22130066/obit-jazz-legend-dave-brubeck-dead-at-91

I was wanting to post the opening credits to Mr. Broadway, but it I could only find it attached to a whole episode.I'm hoping to find one of the Sears ads Dave Brubeck and his wife did in the late 60s.

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

I AM NOT ASHAMED PART 3


More songs that "I AM NOT ASHAMED" to like (What most people call musical guilty pleasures).

"Lake Shore Drive" Aliotta Haynes Jeremiah (Country psychedelia with a ragtime piano? You knew a radio station was cool if they played this. KSHE & KFBD are two of those radio stations.)
"I Eat Cannibals" Total Coelo (British girl group with a sexually suggestive song and tacky 80s video)
"Living On A Prayer" Bon Jovi
"Don't You Want Me" Human League
"Mary's Prayer" Meet Danny Wilson
"I Fell In Love" Carlene Carter (Besides being a great song, Carlene Carter looks like Jennifer Sims, the first girl I ever kissed. She is on Mad Men some times.)
"Boy On the Roof" The Outnumbered (A Paisley Underground group singing about life as a gay teen - great fuzztone guitar fiff. I first heard this on KSMU in Springfield.)
"That Same Old Feeling" Pickettywitch
"I Know a Heartache When I See One" Jennifer Warnes (I heard this on KGBX-AM coming from an emergency doctor's visit to Springfield. The sun was setting in the fall. So I always think a sunset when I hear this sexy song from that nerdy, little, blond girl from the Smothers Brothers show.)
"Tight Fittin Jeans" Conway Twitty (Memories of the 80s and those designer jeans.)
"Raise A Little Hell" Trooper (A great lost heavy metal anthem)
"Like To Get To Know You" Spanky & Our Gang (Sunshine pop/psychedelia/lounge music)
"Chemistry" Semisonic (A power pop/Beach Boys-influenced minor hit that is 10 times better than there big hit "Closing Time")
"Glamorous Life" Shelia E (I had a crush on Shelia E when this was a hit. She was Prince's main squeeze at the time.)
"Rico Suave" Gerardo
"No Rain" Blind Melon (I wonder what the bee girl is doing today?)
"Hair" The Cowsills (How did the Cowsills get to record the coolest Broadway show tune ever?)
"The Warrior" Scandal
"Working On a Groovy Thing" The 5th Dimension
"Euro-Trash Girl" Cracker (Kerouacian song that beats, no pun intended, their big hit "Low")
"Jingle Jangle" The Archies (Is that Betty or Veronica singing with Archie on this? Saturday morning cartoon memories.)
"Solfeggio (Song of the Nairobi Trio)" - Robert Maxwell Orchestra (Ernie Kovacs & Sammy B. Goode fans know this song.)
"Stumblin In" Suzi Quatro & Chris Norman (Not only is this a great song, but it proves I still have a crush on Leather Tuscadaro.)
"Tragedy" The Bee Gees
"Lightening Strikes" Lou Christie
"Walking On Sunshine" Katrina & the Waves (Memories of drivers ed with Eunice Moneymaker-the summer of 1985)
"Tomorrow Never Knows" The Beatles (The beginning of the psychedelic music revolution)
"Close To You" Maxi Priest
"I'd To Teach The World To Sing" The New Seekers (The best soda pop jingle ever - Anybody that hates this song is stupid!)
"Artificial Flowers" Bobby Darin (Bobby Darin had a knack for making morbid subjects into great toe-tapping hits. Dickie Goodman used this in one of his parodies of The Untouchables.)
"La-La-La-La-La" The Blendells (A Hispanic garage band singing a Stevie Wonder song-that is just cool all over.)
"It's a Heartache" Bonnie Tyler (She looked like Eunice Moneymaker but sounded like Rod Stewart's sister-one of my favorite teachers, Mr. Thieman, used to play this for girls in our class experiencing relationship drama.)
"Tighter" Paul Revere & the Raiders (A psychedelic/sunshine pop love song that isn't heard enough)
"Makin It" David Naughton (The only big hit for the star of Dr. Pepper commercials and American Werewolf in London. This song was a major part of my childhood.)
"Out of the Question" Gilbert O'Sullivan (You never hear this song today-It is the one of the few songs of his that isn't politically correct in some way.)
"The Tra La La Song (The Banana Splits Theme)" The Banana Splits
"Super Freak" Rick James
"Loser" Beck
"Ebony Eyes" Bob Welch (Great guitar riff - RIP Bob)
"Beg Borrow and Steal" The Rare Breed
"Feed The Tree" Belly
"Precious To Me" Phil Seymour
"Pretty Flamingo" Manfred Mann
"Magic" Olivia Newton-John
"Paradise Garden" Peter Jay (An early 60s Joe Meek masterpiece)
"Gimmie! Gimmie! Gimmie! (A Man After Midnight)" ABBA
"Jungle Rock" Hank Mizell (A rockabilly tune that hit about 20 years after its release)
"Edge of a Broken Heart" Vixen
"Diggin For Gold" David John & the Mood (More Joe Meek stuff)
"Lonely Days" Bee Gees (Pre-disco hit of the 70s)
"In a Gadda Da Vida" Iron Butterfly (All 19 minutes of this psychedelic heavy metal masterpiece!)
"Mickey" Toni Basil
"You Are the Woman" Firefall
"C'est La Vie" B*Witched
"Barnabas Theme" The First Theremin Era (A disco version of the Dark Shadows theme song from 1969)
"Coronet Blue" Lenny Welch (Cool theme to a 60s TV show about a guy with amnesia- Cee-Lo Green needs to do a cover for a new movie version) 
"Don't Touch Me There" The Tubes (Best of the Phil Spector homages of the 70s. Sorry Carpenters.)
"Love Potion Number Nine" The Clovers ( I prefer the version that mentions Love Potion Number Ten)
"Marrakesh Express" Crosby, Stills & Nash
"Wigwam" Bob Dylan (Dylan as the Trololo Guy)
"Superstar" The Carpenters (Made famous by Chris Farley and David Spade in Tommy Boy)
"The End" Earl Grant      

Thursday, March 29, 2012

COOL TV SHOW OPENING - THE NAME OF THE GAME



I have noticed many people on various lamenting the disappearance of theme songs and opening sequences on TV series. The truth is I don't get to see very many current TV shows due to work and I don't count some of the comments on these websites vallied. There are so many Freepers, rednecks and paid right-wing hacks commenting of the web these days that it is disgusting.

For some reason, maybe related to my recent viewing of The Untouchables, I thought about another Robert Stack series The Name of the Game. This was followed The Virginian as one of Universal Studios attempts at a 90 minute long program and like Four-In-One and NBC Mystery Movie, it was a "wheel" concept. However, unlike Four-In-One and NBC Mystery Movie, The Name of the Game centered on two journalist (Stack and Tony Franciosa) working for the same publisher (Gene Barry). Each week concentraited on one of the characters. Journalist as heroes? That was the good old days.

Like The Virginian, McCloud, and Colombo, The Name of the Game is rarely seen in syndication because of its 90 minute length. If it does turn up, it is on Saturday or Sunday afternoons or late nights. I remember seeing this show as a kid locally on KOLR-TV, Channel 10 in Springfield, MO. It usually aired on Saturday after cartoons.

I don't remember any of the stories, but the thing that always stuck with me was the opening credits and the jazzy theme song. Looking at the credits on You Tube, I find they are an amazing and very complex design. The use of color and the names of the actors forming their faces is very elaborate and must have been very complicated to create in 1969.

Sadly, The Name of the Game isn't on commercially produced DVDs yet. One episode I want to see is an episode where Gene Barry's character is in a car accident on the way to a symposium on environmental concerns. He wakes up in a dytopian future where the hippies are all old and facist psychiatrist control the government. It was directed by a young guy at Universal Studios named Steven Spielberg.

Also you cannot find a good commercial full length version of The Name of the Game theme song by Dave Grusin. He apparently released one version of it as the B-side of a 45 version of the theme from It Takes a Thief back in the early 70s. The only version I can track down for download is by (I'm not kiding) Dickie Goodman, the guy behind the cut-in novelty records "Mr. Jaws" and "Flying Saucer." Luckily, I have a copy of the original that was on Televisions Greatest Hits 3.

BTW: If you like full length versions of TV themes of the 70s, check out this Retrospace post of Charlie's Angels themes.    
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