As I pondered such questions I managed to open a flood gate that makes Hurricane Katrina look like one of those clips from America's Funniest Home Videos where the weiner dog runs back and forth between the sprinklers, repeatedly trying to get a drink of water as the family looks on in amusement. As the tidal wave roared, one thing became painfully obvious... I was going to have TV theme songs from my youth stuck in my head for the rest of the day. To most people, this may be akin to some type of torture, but for me it's just a pleasant way to spend the afternoon (who doesn't enjoy humming the theme to "Grand" for half an hour?). And, always being the "lemons into lemonade" type, I decided to turn this affliction into a blog entry detailing my top ten theme songs of my childhood.
Before we get to the list, I'd like to issue a disclaimer. You'll notice that several classics are missing (The Jeffersons, Sanford and Son, Mr. Belvedere, etc.)... this is no accident. I felt that some of the 80's era themes weren't properly represented in modern culture, so this list cashes in on some of my favorites that may have slipped your mind... and a couple that are still classics, but just too funny to pass up. So, enough with that, let's get started.
10. Just the Ten of Us
This spinoff from Growing Pains may have one of the most typical 80's theme songs of all time. It has all necessary componets: The passionate white guy attempting to put some soul into thirty seconds, the synth and above all, that one line that just doesn't seem to make any sense. I can recall being confused by one line of this song as a child, and after listening to it as an adult, well, I'm still perplexed. Does he say "I'm always bringing home second places, at the end of every one of my DAISIES" at about the fifteen second mark? Being that the line immediately following says something about "faces" I probably would have encouraged the songwriter to use something like, I don't know, races?
However, I wasn't as familiar with Coach Lubbock and his giant family as the author may have been... maybe that line was to illustrate his sensitive side. I can't really imagine the bristly, portly coach arranging flowers in his spare time, and with all of those kids I doubt that he did much other than Ms. Lubbock with said spare time. The show really wasn't very good, and let's be frank... the only reason that anyone tuned in was to spend 22 minutes staring at the Lubbock girls, mmmmmm.
Does it count as jailbait if the actors are actually of age?9. Charles In Charge
I can't really remember the premise of this show or exactly how Charles came to be in charge. If memory serves, didn't they have a really hot 16-17 year old daughter? What was Charles, twenty years old!? Who puts a 20 year old beefcake in charge of their daughter? It sounds to me like perhaps social services should have been in charge. Either way, the show had a great theme song and I can't help but think of Chiachi walking out on Joanie to join this family. I can see how it went down...
"Joanie, I've had enough. You're too demanding, you've been trying to run my life ever since your brother went to Vietnam and never came back! I'm leaving you, I'm going somewhere where I can control my own destiny... a place where I can be in charge! Oh, and stop calling me Chiachi, I'm a grown man, my name is CHARLES!"
The rest is history.
8. Gimme A Break
Now, THIS is a theme song! Tony Award Winner Nell Carter's voice has never been put to better use than belting out the soulful woes of a middle-aged black woman just trying to make it in a white man's world. "Gimme a break/The game is survival!" sounds like a cry to women all over the world to stand up and be counted. However, I'm not really sure what it is that she was surviving. All-in-all she seemed to be doing pretty well. She lived in a nice house with a generally pleasant, yet still cantankerous, policeman and his family... not to mention an endless supply of blue dresses.
Honestly, I can't remember a whole lot of "surviving" going on in the show. Granted, that goldfish that she sucked up in the vaccum cleaner certainly had a tough go of it, and the very special episode where Joey Lawrence dressed in blackface for his school's production of... well, whatever his school was producing... would have certainly caused him some problems had they not lived in such an affluent neighborhood. Still, even with those issues at hand, I think that Nell may have overstated her struggle... but what do I know, maybe I SHOULD just give her a break, she sure deserves it.
I can only assume that this prepared him for his future role in "Dancing With The Stars"
Long before Michael Gross went off into the desert to fight off giant worms with Reba McIntyre and Michael J. Fox begain faking Parkinson's Disease to get attention, they starred in what may well be the defining 80's television show.
I have to confess something, I actually HATE this song. As a child I spent six months in the hospital trapped in a diabetic coma after accidentally hearing the full thirty seconds. My prognosis wasn't good, but I pulled through in the second season when Johnny Mathis was brought in to sing the theme. As bad as the song actually is, it's really the final three or four seconds that make me hide under the table in fear... the "shalalala." It's as if someone said, "Y'know, we've tried every thing that we can to make this the ultimate wuss song, but something's missing. I mean, we got that 8th grade girl's poetry notebook for the lyrics, we threw in the soft synth, hell... we even got Johnny Mathis to sing it, but something's missing. I've got it, could Johnny throw in a "shalalala" at the end? That would knock it out!"
At eight years old I thought this theme song was just absolutely fantastic. It actually did sound like something that you'd hear on the radio (which, in hindsight is scathing commentary on the music industry) and I wasn't altogether sure that the cool dad wasn't the one singing. Their voices were similar, and he was such a COOL dad. I was sure that he was dividing his time between caring for his daughter, keeping up his cool loft apartment and cranking out cool jams like this one.
I can't remember exactly how she came to have two dads, but I'm going to bet that it wasn't some sort of cutting edge, socially relevant show dealing with two gay men struggling to raise their adopted teenage daughter in the city... in fact, her mother was probably just a whore. If only we had Maury Povich back then to settle this. What I DO remember is the hard-nosed judge with a heart of gold that stopped by once an episode to check on the situation, almost always finding that some sort of wackiness was afoot. These guys seem like fairly good parents, judge, why don't you just take Nell's advice and give 'em a break. Or better yet, why don't you stroll over to the 8 o'clock time slot and see what the hell's going on in that house that left Charles in charge? That girl's probably pregnant by now!
Oh, I also managed to forget that this show, inexplicably, featured Dick Butkus... and Giovanni Ribisi.
There are many things that I miss about the 80's, but perhaps none more than the starring roles of chest hair
Who didn't love this song? That jazzy bass line, that kick-ass cowbell (was that a cowbell?) and that, uhm, clarinet (maybe)! There were only a few things certain in the 80's and one of them was that once that bass kicked in you were only thirty seconds away from antics the likes of which you've never seen. Dan would say something dirty (that I wouldn't get... I was eight), Christine would take offense, Roz would get sassy and Harry would bring it all back home with a set of chattering teeth. And who could forget the ending music, after you'd laughed yourself silly, when that creepy laugh would kick in? "Huh-huh, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!" would bellow through living rooms all across America, just in time for Murphy Brown... or whatever it was that came on after Night Court.
As a child I always thought that if I ever ended up in legal trouble I'd try to get my hearing moved to night court, it just seemed so much more fun than regular court. I'm 27 now, and I've never been to a night court, but I figure they probably just operate in much the same way as a regular court. However, I assure you, if I ever end up standing before a judge at midnight I'll make sure to ask him to do a magic trick.
I know, I know, this shouldn't make the list. It's arguably one of the most famous television themes of all time. However, I just couldn't possibly make a list having anything to do with television without mentioning John Ritter. However, all sexual innuendo and Ropers aside, this theme song has to be one of the biggest disappointments in history. Before you crucify me for that statement, think about it.
The Three's Company theme kicks up with one of the funkiest, sexiest and most groove-a-licious guitar tracks in the history of TV. However, just as soon as you get settled in for some sexy funk, it takes a drastic turn and out steps the whitest lounge singer to ever put on a ruffled tuxedo shirt. What!? Where'd my funk go? How did that happen? The Three's Company theme is also famous for that uninteligible "dammagabadebouuuu" that comes right after the line "laughter is waiting for you." After more than 20 years of listening, then finally asking someone, I'm informed that it actually says, "down in our rendezvous." I'm not sure if it's actually satisfying to know that or disappointing to realize that the secret of life wasn't hidden in there.
227 is, without a doubt, the single greatest show ever made on the topic of four sassy black women sitting on the porch. All sass aside, it also gave the world a weekly glimpse at Jackee', and who wasn't thankful for that? At six years old I was pretty sure that Jackee' was the sexiest woman alive, even though I wasn't sure what that meant or what I would do with her if she was my girlfriend... but that's okay, she's Jackee', she'd show me. Even more than Jackee', this show was a vehicle for Marla Gibbs, something that allowing TV audiences to revisit that sass that we'd been missing since The Jeffersons went off the air.
Can you imagine a sass competition between Marla Gibbs and Nell Carter? I'm picturing it looking like the battle scenes from 8 Mile. Dark club, the beat drops, Nell steps out in a giant blue dress and walks up to a waiting Marla. They bob their heads and start to sass it out when all of a sudden the record scratches! A hush falls over the room as heads start to turn to the back of the club. The crowd parts like the Red Sea as a dark horse contender walks through the door. The music to "Lose Yourself" kicks in as we see a defiant, yet determined Bea Arthur stomp through the crowd, there's vomit on her t-shirt, Sofia's spaghetti. Bea takes the mic from Nell, puts them both in their place, drops it and walks back out as the crowd erupts.
She loves reefer, but she loves coffee even more
Sass matters. If there was one dominant female theme in the 80's it was certainly that. No television show before or since has captured that kind of female sass quite like The Golden Girls, and very few shows had a theme song as memorable. Right now some of you are shaking your heads, trying to prented to yourself and those around you that you didn't watch The Golden Girls... oh yeah, well, if I started singing "Thank you for being a friend..." are you going to keep shaking your head or chime in with a "traveled down the road and back again?"
You know the answer to that question.
It was one of those rare moments when the song matched the show perfectly. Everyone watched this show, everyone knows that opening shot of Miami and everyone remembers Rue McLanahan storming down the hallway in her pink nightgown with that matching pink sleep mask on her head. Alright, I'm not defending it any longer, I love the show, I love the song and I'm humming it right now.
Finally, we've reached the number one spot in our top ten countdown. What could be left? What could possibly beat out these nine stellar candidates?
There's only one answer...
Oh Balki, how in the world will you and Cousin Larry EVER get out of THIS wacky mess?
From the opening harmonica to the last "nothing's gonna stop me now," the Perfect Strangers theme is pure perfection. I can't think of a more memorable, more enjoyable or flat-out better prime time jam. I can remember being a kid, probably about six years old, listening to my dad explain to me exactly how a record store worked. I'd just gotten really into music and he wanted me to know exactly what section was what and how to find what I was looking for. He got to "soundtracks" and explained, "this is where they keep records with songs from movies, plays, tv shows and things like that." I remember like yesterday looking up at him and saying, "you mean that I could get the theme song to Perfect Strangers!? ON A TAPE!?" Much to my disappointment, a quick check of their inventory showed that no one had the foresight to release a soundtrack (or even a cassette single) featuring the theme song to Perfect Strangers... I'm still pissed off about that one.
The song isn't just good, it's REALLY good. It sounds like something that really should have been sung by Neil Diamond (hey Neil, there's still time) and just has "80's TV" written all over it. Perfect Strangers was undoubtedly my favorite show as a kid, Balki was my hero. The music on that show had staying power, to boot. Don't believe me? Well, a few months ago I was in our local wing-joint when the topic of Perfect Strangers came up in conversation. Somehow we had all managed to forget the lyrics to the theme song, a fact that clearly shamed each one of us. Thinking quickly, Kevin grabbed the nearest waitress and asked her if she could remember the words to the song. A few seconds later we had her singing the theme like a pro to the entire table as we joined in, one-by-one. I should also point out that Kevin remembered the words to the "Bipi-Babka Song" that Balki would belt out while cooking his favorite Meposian treat.
I hope you enjoyed the stroll down memory lane. Feel free to add comments on your favorite themes, ones that I may have missed or issues with the rankings. Prepare yourselves, Nathan is going to say something about "Small Wonder" any second.
posted by Cory | 5:32 AM
3 Comments:
Best. One. Ever.
I still remember the day we figured out the myserious lyric in the Three's Company theme. We pored over those lines like '60s-era students listening to Beatles' records trying to determine who was the Walrus. Screw John and Paul. John Ritter — and Crazy/Horny Neighbor Larry — was both the Walrus AND the Man. Meet us at the Regal Beagle.
And for a nominal fee, I'll sing Balki's song for you.
Let's not forget Balki's dance of joy. Classic.
Upon the advice of my friend John, I should point out what an object of desire Staci Keenan of "My Two Dads" happened to be in the 80's. As I pointed out, I was a bit partial to Jackee', but Miss Keenan was certainly a close second.
As John put it, "I wanted her more than I wanted that GI Joe tank with the big gun."
I couldn't have said it better myself.
Post a Comment
<< Home