Soundtracks to Copaganda
Theme music from police procedurals, mystery series, and adjacent TV programs, occasionally with commentary.
- When I was a kid KOJAK (1973-78) had a rep for being too intense for younger viewers; watching clips of Telly Savalas harassing witnesses and suspects showed me why that might have been so. (Also the pilot was based on a real-life rape & murder case.) www.youtube.com/watch?v=HY2r...
- The theme music doesn't sell the intensity, though; it has the big-city vibe you might expect from a show set in New York but none of the grime and funk that '70s NYC had to offer, and there's some tension in it but not *that* much. It's no STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO, that's for certain.
- Abby Mann wanted the series to take seriously police corruption and disregard for the rights of the accused (the Wylie-Hoffert case that inspired him included a false confession extorted from a Black suspect); I don't know how long that spirit may have reigned in the writers' room.
- Season 5 featured a revised, disco-era theme with lots of strings and a funkier backbeat. After a promising opening it too drops the tension levels and focuses on Telly's star quality instead of gritty police work. www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_e6...
- OK, finally getting around to SPENSER: FOR HIRE (1985-88). Urich also played the character in a series of TV movies during the early '90s. www.youtube.com/watch?v=69WB...
- Robert B. Parker's novels about the literary-minded tough guy detective are set in Boston, and most of the location shooting was actually done there (instead of, say, Toronto), which pushed costs up and contributed to the series' demise.
- This show also gave Avery Brooks his breakout role (as Spenser's buddy Hawk), before he went on to DEEP SPACE NINE.
- Musically, the theme is pretty straightforward action jazz - pleasant to hear, but not super interesting.
- Reposted by Soundtracks to CopagandaZuckerberg is Edison, Musk is DW Griffith. Thank you.
- I got distracted by Robert Urich a couple days ago, but mentioning Raymond Burr's huge office in KINGSTON: CONFIDENTIAL reminded me of Tia Carrere's implausibly large office in RELIC HUNTER. www.youtube.com/watch?v=gq4J...
- You don't really get a sense of it in the intro, but I have degrees from three different institutes of higher learning and I have *never* seen a professor's office one-*quarter* as large as Sydney Fox's. And she's not even the department chair!
- This show is really pretty tangential to the account's mission, I will admit--even MACGVYER is more of a cop show than RELIC HUNTER--but I wanted to get that out of my system.
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View full threadWhich means a Canadian production company said, "Tia, we want to build a show around you. What would you like to do?" and she basically said "I wanna be Lara Croft," and they said "sounds great" and all of that is beautiful.
- In between VEGA$ and SPENSER: FOR HIRE, Urich played former CIA operative and current action oceanographer Robert Gavilan in one season of GAVILAN (1982-3). www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY1_...
- The music leads off with a nice fat beat, which steps back a bit for a brass riff that a couple of other instruments (tuba, maybe? then a flute). About midway through we get a crew of disco backup singers singing "Gavilan" repeatedly, which feels a little passe for 1982, but in a charming way.
- *that a couple of other instruments *pick up*, excuse me
- The disco singers are accompanied by strings to heighten that disco feel.
- We've already seen early-career Robert Urich in the ensemble cast of S.W.A.T. A few years later he moved into a lead as PI Dan Tanna in VEGA$ (1978-81). www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD-w...
- The theme music alternates between action-funk (including an Isaac Hayes-style strings spiral*) and glitzy jazz (also with strings, but here used to signal luxe). *I'm sure there's a technical term for this, where the violins etc seem to ratchet upward before starting again at their base note
- After IRONSIDE, Burr's next series was KINGSTON: CONFIDENTIAL (1977), in which he played a newspaper magnate who solved crimes through his editors and reporters. www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2m-...
- I like the opening of the theme, with the bass drums and the trumpet riff, but then it shifts into more generic TV drama mode and stops being interesting until they bring back the riff in the middle. Toward the end we get Big City Horns for the SF skyline shot and Burr in his private jet.
- Note also the strings kicking in to signal luxe as we cut to Big Shot Rich Guy in his ginormous office.
- IRONSIDE (1967-75) put Raymond Burr back in crime drama just a year after the cancellation of PERRY MASON. Here he plays a police chief who returns as a consultant after an assassin's bullet leaves him paralyzed from the waist down. www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtgQ...
- The synthesized klaxon and staccato piano riff at the beginning--especially paired with the graphics--are some of the most effective tension-builders I've heard in TV music. Quincy Jones composed the theme and scored several episodes before the workload became too much.
- As we've seen in some other shows of the era (e.g. HARDCASTLE & MCCORMICK), the late '80s was more open to theme music with lyrics. Fox's MOD SQUAD update 21 JUMP STREET aimed for younger audiences and I'm a bit surprised they didn't release the theme as a single. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekfL...
- The music is so very, very late '80s, for good or for ill. (Also probably for ill, making one of its leads a *very* popular teen idol)
- looks like nobody released dolls, but there was a trading card license: i.ebayimg.com/images/g/~T4...
- Oh, and the series ran on Fox from April 1987 through the 1990-1 season. One of the cool things about the theme is that the cast sang it: Holly Robinson took the lead vocal and the guys sang backup. You can pick out Peter DeLuise's voice without much difficulty.
- THE ROCKFORD FILES (1974-80) gave James Garner his first TV his since MAVERICK, in the role of an ex-con (wrongfully convicted and pardoned) PI working low-rent cases in Southern California and living in a trailer. Very mid-70s. www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1zY...
- The theme tune was released as a single and spent 16 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, rising as high as #10. I don't know what kind of synth Mike Post used for the first part of the tune, but it transitions well to the harmonica and then the sort of country-rock guitar.
- As a kid I *really* liked this theme (not enough to shell out for a 45 of it, but tbf I was seven years old when the show premiered and by the time I was in a position to buy records it was no longer on the charts).
- HART TO HART (1979-84) belongs in the same "rich people solve crimes" subgenre as MATT HOUSTON (and Batman, I guess), but was more successful. Note the use of strings here to suggest luxe (and perhaps femininity, Stefanie Powers being a lead) www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kPv...
- It's not a given, but I've found that in general the likelihood of an opening expository narration is proportional to the preposterousness of the show's premise.
- HART TO HART was created by Sidney Sheldon, who had written a thing or two about preposterous rich people (and, speaking of preposterous, also came up with THE PATTY DUKE SHOW and I DREAM OF JEANNIE).
- Sweeping horns and strings laid over a disco beat make the CHARLIE'S ANGELS theme one of the most 1970s things ever. www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtaE...
- Another instance of (male) composers (Jack Elliott and Allyn Ferguson) using strings to signal femininity. (Cop show composers also used them to connote luxe, which we'll see in future posts.)
- (Actually I already posted MATT HOUSTON back in September, but there'll be others, fear not.)
- Oops, forgot the run dates: 1976-81, during which five seasons there were three major cast changes. (Farrah Fawcett left after s1, replaced by Cheryl Ladd; Kate Jackson was fired after s3 and was replaced by Shelly Hack, who in turn was replaced by Tanya Roberts for s5.)
- Like superhero stories, Westerns often embody law-enforcement themes but have their own set of tropes, so OI haven't been super interested in posting any music from them. One exception is WILD WILD WEST, because "science fiction spy Western." www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuCu...
- Sadly, the *music* and the opening animation are pure horse opera, as if the producers were worried about scaring off some of their audience by putting the gonzo content on the packaging. It's fine, but a real missed opportunity if you ask me.
- I've been steering clear of superhero stuff so far because it's a totally different vibe, but I do want to post THE GREEN HORNET (1966-7). www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIws...
- "Flight of the Bumblebee" had been the Hornet's theme music since the radio show of the '30s, but Billy May's arrangement gives it an extra wallop by sandwiching the Rimsky-Korsakov trumpet solo (played by Al Hirt) between a jazzy rhythm section (driven by an upright bass) and an equally (cont.)
- jazzy brass fanfare. The result goes *hard.*
- Producer William Dozier was hoping to capitalize on the success of BATMAN with this show, but the more serious tone didn't catch on (though it did help catapult Bruce Lee to fame in the US).
- A less successful POLICE STORY spinoff was DAVID CASSIDY, MAN UNDERCOVER (1978), in which the former Keith Partridge tried to shake his teen-idol image through the time-honored vehicle of a police procedural. www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmFe...
- The premise foreshadowed 21 JUMP STREET in that Cassidy's assignments usually had him infiltrating young people's spaces. It only ran six episodes. The pop-soul theme song was apparently sung by Cassidy and suggests he wasn't trying *that* hard to escape the shadow of Keith.
- *and of course in turn followed MOD SQUAD, duh
