Speaker 1: Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Shirley You Can't
Be Serious Podcast. I'm so excited we are back for
part two of our gen X TV theme series. Guys,
if you missed part one, we covered the top five
TV themes from nineteen seventy five to nineteen seventy nine.
Today we are here to talk to you about the
top five TV themes from nineteen eighty to nineteen eighty four.
And this is just this is Jason's opinion, this is
my opinion. You may have a different opinion. You go
ahead and let us know what you think. You can
reach us on Twitter at Shirley Podcast, on Facebook at
Shirley Podcast, or if you want to email us, you
can email us at Shirleypodcast at gmail dot com. Jason,
how excited are you to talk about early eighties TV theme?
Speaker 2: Dee? I'm so excited because now we are really entering
our sweet spot here. We were pretty young in the seventies,
but now this is really where Friday night in front
of the tube, you know, the giant, five hundred pound
furniture television that everybody had in their living room.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm laying on the floor.
Speaker 2: I've got oreos and a fantas strawberry and I'm watching
whatever coming on you know that night.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm pretty sure that my dad still has the
same coffee table that I would sit on top of
or eat cereal off of or whatever. For the entire time.
I grew up watching TV, and I will tell you,
like most Gen X kids, I watched TV all the
time and I love the theme music, and the theme music
that we've got for this episode is some of the
best in history.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: So TV has its ups and downs on whether it's
popular or not, and sometimes it's kind of thought of
as a lower art form. But you just got to
think about the fact that the guys who had to
come up with the themes for these TV shows had
to give you a hook in somewhere between forty five
ninety seconds.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely they did it.
Speaker 1: They put their art into the art of the TV
show and gave you something to latch onto so that
you wanted to keep watching.
Speaker 2: Just a little side note, Yeah, my wife and I
were going through Hulu last night. We're looking for something
to watch, and we're like, hey, we haven't watched Justified
in the long time. So we started episode one of
Justified and they're riding the big bold letters in the
opening credits theme song by Steve Picaro.
Speaker 3: There you go, Toto. Yep.
Speaker 2: Kind of fun.
Speaker 1: It is fantastic. So, guys, we've got a few rules
that we abide by in this particular series that we
are doing. Number One, it doesn't have to be strictly
between eighty and eighty four for this. It can overlap
into some of the other years. But we just kind
of feel like this is the kind of sweet area
that this TV show is in.
Speaker 2: For example, if it started in nineteen seventy seven ended
in nineteen eighty three, really you could have put it
in the previous episode or in this episode.
Speaker 1: Can I just tell you not bringing it up? I
hope it's not on your list, Okay. I was actually
kind of hoping to surprise you with this one. I
looked at this one because I remember this TV theme
growing up, because we used to watch it all the time. Okay,
but it ran from like nineteen sixty three to I
don't know, like nineteen eighty nine or maybe even into
the nineties. Oh, but it was a TV theme for
Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. I mean that kicks, But
I don't care who you are, I don't care what
decade we're coming from.
Speaker 3: That is a fantastic theme.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a show that came on I remember
on Sunday afternoons, and I remember like lots of times
pleading with my parents, like could you guys go to church?
Try watch Mutual of Omaha? You know Wild Kingdom Marlon Perkins, Baby,
I know, right, hey, before we get started. Yeah, you're
sitting on your coffee table. You're turning the knob on
the television to get it to the right station.
Speaker 1: Yeah, scooting the coffee table inch by inch forward so
that I can just lean over to do it instead
of standing up.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, what cereal do you have in your bowl
while you're watching television?
Speaker 1: Cookie crisp? Cookiekriaky crisp was my favorite cereal. Yeah, Now,
I mean I loved tons of them. You know, fruity pebbles.
I've become a lover of cocoa pebbles since then, Fruit loops,
lucky charms, ate the crap out of those would eat
all of the nasty ones first so they could have
the marshmallows.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 2: So my number one draft pick is fruity pebbles. Okay,
let's dive into it. Are you going first and my
going first? Well?
Speaker 3: You went first last time. I suppose I should go
first this time.
Speaker 2: All right, So we're starting with number five. We'll go
to number two, two honorable mentions, then number one.
Speaker 3: Right, number five? Five? Okay.
Speaker 1: So another thing that we do with these is give
little clues. See if the other guy can guess it
before we give the answer. Right, right, right, Okay.
Speaker 3: So this, this song that I'm about to talk.
Speaker 1: About was written by a guy who would be in
a TV series that we might mention in our next episode.
Speaker 2: Oh okay. Interesting.
Speaker 1: He was married to a lady. They wrote several theme songs.
They had a child who grew up to become a
performer as well also the host of a singing show.
But his most famous song that I'm aware of is
a song called blurred Lines. You know the Sun?
Speaker 3: No, Robin Thick. Do you know the dad?
Speaker 2: Alan Thick?
Speaker 3: You got it?
Speaker 1: Alan Thick, mister growing Pain's TV dad. Before he did that,
hosted some music shows, some talk shows, but also composed
music with his wife, whose.
Speaker 3: Name was Gloria Loring.
Speaker 1: As they composed a theme to a couple of important
shows from the nineteen eighties, and this one is on
my number five list. Okay, yeah, so since you haven't
gotten the show from that first of all, I like
you teased me up for something modern music.
Speaker 2: I know, Jack squat about modern music.
Speaker 3: How do you not know blurred lines? Have you seen
that video?
Speaker 2: Ever heard of it?
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, let me just tell you. Go watch
that video. Okay, and make sure the kids aren't around.
Speaker 2: Okay, Okay, I can handle that asimon.
Speaker 1: Okay, So this show, okay, I'm done giving you clues. Okay, okay,
I'm done giving you clues that they're hard. I'm going
to give you a clue.
Speaker 3: That is easy. Okay, what you're talking about, Jason?
Speaker 2: Different strokes and dates, different drugs.
Speaker 5: Now, the world is just fun drum one time for you.
Speaker 3: Very good. The show is Different Strokes.
Speaker 1: The theme song is it Takes Different Strokes composed specifically
for the show.
Speaker 3: This show was created by.
Speaker 1: Jeff Harris and Bernie pulled the laughter cuckoff.
Speaker 2: What are you talking about here?
Speaker 1: And the show and the theme song was composed by
Alan Thick, his wife Gloria Loring, and Alberton. Now I
mentioned that Alan Thick was married to Gloria Loring. Alan
had three wives. Okay, the thing that I when you
were listening to me talking about Holy Cow. He got
divorced from Gloria Louring a little bit later on. Sure,
so nineteen eighty stopped making beautiful music together.
Speaker 3: You got it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So in nineteen eighty seven, yeah, full growing pains period,
righty right, he started dating Christy Swanson.
Speaker 2: Christy Swanson, Christy freaking Swans. Paris Peeler's day off. My
best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy
who knows this kid is going with the girl who
sow Ferris passed out at thirty one flavors last.
Speaker 1: Night, Buffy the Vampires Lay Yes, christ eleven. She was seventeen,
he was forty.
Speaker 2: Stop it, I know, right, scandalous.
Speaker 3: Scandalous, all right, So there you go. That's my number five. Okay,
what's she? What do you got for me?
Speaker 4: All right?
Speaker 2: My number five is from a television show that ran
from nineteen eighty one to nineteen eighty six, and again
I remember it ran on Wednesday nights because my family
was always at church, so me trying to get home
to watch this show was always a challenge, okay. The
theme song mentions lots of action and TV stars and
movie stars of the.
Speaker 3: Day, okay.
Speaker 2: For instance, in the theme song it mentioned Sally Field
and Raquel Welch and Cheryl Tigues and Redford and Eastwood
and Burt Reynolds and jacque Line Smith and Cheryl Ladd
and Farah Fawcett.
Speaker 3: Is it Charlie's Angels?
Speaker 1: No, okay, because you've mentioned like every single Charlie's angel
but I don't remember them being in a theme song.
Speaker 2: It's referencing Charlie's age.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I got nothing, okay.
Speaker 2: This song was written by Glenn Larson, who also developed
the show, and the song is the Unknown Stuntman, sung
by Lee Majors.
Speaker 3: Love it the fall Guy, A fall guy.
Speaker 5: Well, I'm not find kiss a till, but I've been
seen with Up. I've never been with anything less than
man so fine.
Speaker 2: I've been on fire with Silent Field.
Speaker 1: Down past with the girl named Bo, but somehow they
just don't.
Speaker 3: End up as fantastic.
Speaker 1: You know what, whenever we've whenever I called you, we
came up with the idea for this episode literally like
a couple of days ago.
Speaker 3: Two hours ago, and I called you up and that
was literally one of the songs that was in my.
Speaker 1: Head as I was talking to you, And somehow it
didn't translate into me putting it down. Somehow I just
completely blanked it out. That is a fantastic one. I'm
glad you got cars.
Speaker 2: They had read books. Just okay, that's great. So during
the song he mentions all these people by name, and
in the intro it is punctuated by all these cool
action scenes.
Speaker 1: The only scene I remember involves a bikini and a
swinging saloon door.
Speaker 2: Is Heather Thomas the hottest woman from nineteen eighty one?
Speaker 1: She quite possibly could be. She was definitely up there
with those girls you just mentioned.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: So Glenn Larson, the creator of the show, also created Bowlestar, Galactica,
Buck Rogers, Quincy, Emmy BJ and The Bear Magnum p
I night Rider. This guy is an all star and
he wrote helped develop the song.
Speaker 3: Excellent Eighties Gold. Yes, eighties Gold.
Speaker 2: So he was in a pop group called the Four Preps.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, the four Preps. We've talked about this before.
What yes?
Speaker 1: No, So we talked about it in one of our
Patreon episodes, our recent Patreon episodes, because one of the
key members of the Four Preps was a guy.
Speaker 3: Named Edward Cobb.
Speaker 1: Who discovered a girl singer back in the sixties who
did the original version of this song. But we talked
about the later version where soft Self covered it.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, are you talking about tated Love?
Speaker 3: You got it? Lad Wow.
Speaker 1: If you are not part of our Patreon you need
to be just so that you can hear our Tainted
Love and all of our other one hit wonder episodes.
We talk about ed Cobb as the writer of Tainted Love.
But you've got more on the Four Preps.
Speaker 3: Tell okay, guy.
Speaker 2: So, Glenn Larson, the guy who created all these wonderful
television shows, has a musical background. He was a member
of the Four Preps at one time when he stepped out.
Now another guy stepped in. It wasn't a direct replacement,
but his name was Dave's revealed and he actually sings it,
and he went with Glenn Larson to pitch this to
ABC by playing the song.
Speaker 3: The unknown stunt Man fantastic.
Speaker 1: I can remember the episode of The Fall Guy where
they're doing the stunt and the director and like one
of the coordinators or whatever.
Speaker 3: It's like, this is gonna be a really hard one, and.
Speaker 1: Lee Majors had just been like, guys, this is I'm
really concerned about this stunt.
Speaker 3: You know this is And they're like, you know, we
know that you can do it.
Speaker 1: And then it shows the truck and it does the
big ramp up and then it falls short and the
truck explodes, and you're like, did they just kill Lee Majors?
And they're all thinking the exact same thing. And then
Lee comes walking up and he's got a little remote
control because he's turned in because he knew that stunt
was too dangerous.
Speaker 3: I thought that was a fantastic open.
Speaker 2: Lee Majors, star of the fictional movie The Night the
Reindeer Died.
Speaker 3: Go back and.
Speaker 1: Check out our Scrooge versus Christmas Vacation episode. Okay, that
takes us to number four, Yes, four, this one.
Speaker 3: I got a little story for you on this one.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: You know this song, you know it, but you may
not know the story behind some of it, right, Okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 3: The guy who is kind.
Speaker 1: Of an inspiration for this show, who is credited as
one of its creators, was a guy who used to
drive around a nineteen fifty eight Chrysler three hundred D
because it could go one hundred and forty miles an hour,
and he named the car.
Speaker 3: He named it Traveler because Traveler was the name of
Robert E. Lee's favorite horse. Have you Got It?
Speaker 2: Is this the Duke's of hazard.
Speaker 3: Song You've got a Baby? Yes, just a good old Bonde.
Speaker 1: So Jerry Rushing was the name of the guy born
into a bootlegging family, bootlegged when he was a kid,
drove that Chrysler, had to ditch it at some point
it became scrap. But at some point a guy named
Guy Waldron is.
Speaker 3: A TV producer.
Speaker 1: He's talking to this Jerry Rushing about bootlegging culture, and
that's how you come up with the movie that you
talked about in our original TV theme episode moon Runners,
moon Runners right Now. The problem was is that Guy
Waldron didn't give Jerry Rushing any credit, and so Jerry
Rushing sued him.
Speaker 3: He claims interesting, and he won. They settled the case.
Speaker 1: He got some undisclosed amount and he obviously gets credit
as a creator of the show. But he had an
uncle Woolley that he said, Uncle Jesse was obviously based
on he said, his escapades. Clearly he was the inspiration
for Bo Duke and then obviously the General Lee had
to be taken from his car called the Traveler.
Speaker 2: We might have to do a top five eighties vehicles
show one of these days.
Speaker 3: Oh, that would be fantastic.
Speaker 1: Now, we mentioned on our other episode when you talked
about this song, the song is good Old Boys.
Speaker 3: Waylon Jennings, Ayln Jennings.
Speaker 1: Now, if you don't know that name, that may you
may not be a country person.
Speaker 3: That's okay. He is like a Mount Rushmore on.
Speaker 2: Old Countryman Royalty.
Speaker 1: And if you happen to see the movie Lobamba or
know the history there with Buddy Holly, he was the
guy who when they were trying to decide who was
going to take the bus and who was going to
take take the plane and they flipped a.
Speaker 3: Coin, he lost the coin.
Speaker 1: Toss and he had to take the bus, and he
said to them. Last thing he said to them is
I hope that plane crashes. He battled depression and alcoholism
for decades after that because of what happened.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, I had no idea about that. That's
a great story there.
Speaker 1: You go Waylon Jennings. By the way, Dukes of Hazzard
hit number one.
Speaker 3: On the Hot Country Billboard Top.
Speaker 2: Nineteen eighty I actually had it in my seventies. You
got it in the eighties. I got no problem with
that one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the show went from nineteen seventy nine to nineteen
eighty five. Technically it hits all three of our episodes,
but for me, it was definitely that sweet spot was.
Speaker 3: The early eighties.
Speaker 2: Cool, awesome.
Speaker 1: I can remember every Friday night watching this show and
the incredible Hulk.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, your plans are made right every Friday night.
You remember when they kicked out Bow and Luke Duke
and brought in Vansenkoy.
Speaker 3: Vanson Koy. Come on. I mean, I don't think anybody's
gonna know the difference. Nobody to tell, all.
Speaker 2: Right, right, quick, raft up your head. Catherine Bach versus
Heather Thomas, Go Heather Thomas.
Speaker 3: But it's close.
Speaker 1: And if you watch both of them in the Battle
of the Network Stars Olympics things, I could go either
way on any day.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, smoke show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, number four.
Speaker 1: By the way, I think they both played a part
in the dunking booth. Just saying God bless them.
Speaker 3: All right, you tell me you were number four, number four,
number four.
Speaker 2: All right, I think this is going to appear on
your list. Okay, so we might just glaze over it better.
So this was composed again by mister Mike Post who
did the music.
Speaker 3: Okay, now you say again Mike Posts.
Speaker 1: We mentioned him in our last episode and I said, guys,
if you're gonna have a drinking game on this episode,
Mike Post might be the name that you want to remember.
You take your shot every time Mike Post comes up.
When we talked about him on our previous previous episode,
I mentioned that he had become a part of the
Wrecking Crew. He goes on to do TV shows, worked
with Ray Charles on The Andy Williams Show, then hit
it big with The Rockford Files starring James Garner of Norman, Oklahoma,
where both Jason and I are from, and made it
to the top ten with that one.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's right.
Speaker 3: Okay, So we got Mike Post for your number four.
Speaker 2: Yes hit me. This one hit number two on the
Hot one hundred.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: Blocked by a song that we've talked about in a
previous episode.
Speaker 3: I think I know what it is. Okay, I think
I know what it is.
Speaker 2: The song that blocked it was Endless Love by Diana
Ross and Lionel Ritchie.
Speaker 1: I do know what it is, and hold on to
that nugget. We'll come back to it later.
Speaker 2: Set that one aside.
Speaker 1: Put that one aside, which is okay, because I'm coming
right back to Mike Post for my number three.
Speaker 2: Number three, Okay, back to you.
Speaker 3: Three. All right. So, Jason, my clue for you is
this one. I will tell you this all right.
Speaker 1: Yes, I didn't really get to watch this show very
much because it was a little too grown up for me.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: Kind of changed television, I gotta say this. The flawed
character's intense subject matter kind of changed the course of television.
But even though I didn't watch the episodes, I always
hung out to listen to the theme song because it
was so good. Okay, And the only clue that I
can give you is theme song starts playing as a
car comes out of a garage and you see the
headlights and then you see the sirens come.
Speaker 2: On Sillstreet blues.
Speaker 5: You got it.
Speaker 1: Yes, So this was written by Mike Post, who we've
talked about endlessly at this point.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, Mike Post worked heavily with Stephen Bosco, who is
the guy that changed television in the eighties, right, I mean,
responsible for so many phenomenal shows. And I don't know
that I'm going to get to mention it in some
other part, but just to throw onto the pile that
I've already started with Mike Post. He also did the
score for Law and Order, like all of them. He's
responsible for Boom Boom.
Speaker 3: Everybody knows that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, So Stephen Bosco has this show. Mike Post
watches the first episode and is blown away. He's like,
this is the most fantastic thing I've ever seen. This
is going to change television. The death at the end
is like a freaking ballet. It's just it's mind blowing
how good it is. And he's like, I have no
idea what to do. So Steven Bosco says, well, what
if you do something just completely against type? Like what
if you do something that's not at all like what
you would expect.
Speaker 4: It to be.
Speaker 3: It's like, I think I could do that.
Speaker 1: Hangs up, the phone, sits down, the piano plays something
in an e flat key, plays a few more things,
and in thirty minutes. He's calling Steven Bosco back and
he's like, I think I got it, and Bosco's like, hey, man,
I don't want something out of your junk drawer, right yeah,
And he's like, no, I just wrote this kind of
come play it for you. He goes over to Steven
Bosco plays it, and Steven Bosco.
Speaker 3: Usually gives him he's he taught. He loves to talk about.
Speaker 1: How these guys give him notes that are just the
right amount of information to do something with, right, And
so he's waiting for that and Steven Bosco says, that's it.
Speaker 3: Don't change it.
Speaker 1: And he's like, well, I'm thinking it needs some orchestration,
and Bosco is like, it doesn't.
Speaker 3: The piano is all you need. Don't change it.
Speaker 1: Nice Now, when you hear it, you can hear a
little bit of stuff in the background, but the piano
is the key. It's the masthead for the entire piece.
Speaker 3: And it is.
Speaker 2: Beautiful, absolutely now. This song was released as a single
August nineteen eighty one. I agree with you. This is
not a show that I watched, but I love the
theme song. Yeah, and it's going to appear whenever we
do the late eighties on my list. I've reached number
ten on the Hot one hundred.
Speaker 1: Yes, just like rockord Files. And just like rockord Files,
it got him another Grammy. This was his third Grammy
Nice nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 2: Okay, awesome, So we're now onto my number three, I believe.
So all right, My number three is a song written
by this guy named Mike Post. Okay, go ahead, take
another shot, everybody, Mike Post. Okay. This one. He composed
it with a guy named Peter Carpenter. This song reached
number twenty five on the Hot one hundred and May
of nineteen eighty two. Okay, it's an instrumental yep. This
show ran from nineteen eighty to nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 1: And you can't hear this song without thinking about a
Ferrari and Hawaiian shirts. Yes, yes, so this one again.
We've timed this very well because this is my number two.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Okay, this is my number two, so we would have
been going straight into it anyway. As you mentioned, it's
composed by Mike Post and his one of his partners,
Pete Carpenter.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: By the way, just to throw this out there, he
had like a group of guys that he would work with,
you know that were it's like his company. Among them
are several famous guys. I'm just gonna mention one of
them because I'm gonna see if you can get this.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right.
Speaker 1: He had a guy who was on his staff of
composers whose name was Walter Murphy. Okay, okay, And we
talked about him briefly, very briefly on a previous episode
covering an album where he did a disco version of
a Beethoven song called a Fifth of Beethoven.
Speaker 2: Yes, this is Saturday Night Fever.
Speaker 3: You got it.
Speaker 1: So one of Mike posts staff members is also a
guy who's written a song on one of the best
selling albums of all time. It's very interesting, this guy,
Mike Post, that I've just discovered and was such a
mover and shaker.
Speaker 3: In the Wow.
Speaker 2: That's cool. One of the things I thought was interesting
is that Magnum p I the first ten episodes had
a different theme song. It changes the entire tone of
the show. Does that change everything about the show.
Speaker 1: I can't believe that that was the theme song for
ten full episodes. I have no memory of that, and
it's so different. It was so right that they said,
we've got it, ditch this and do something that kicks more.
But that original one was by a guy named Ian
Free Baron Smith.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you something, Ian freeburn Smith does not drive
a Ferrari, does not live in Hawaii, and does not
the heart throb of every American babe in the early
nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: Well, neither a Mike Post or Pep Carpenter. But they
tapped into that vibe a little better than he did.
Speaker 2: They sure didn't.
Speaker 1: All right, so we kind of jumped into my number
two with your number three there, Why don't you give
us you're a number two?
Speaker 5: Two?
Speaker 2: Okay, this is the one I'm interested to see. I
didn't know if it would make your list, but it's
such a catchy instrumental from the eighties.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: This show ran from nineteen seventy eight to nineteen ninety one,
so conceivably it could have been on all.
Speaker 3: Three of these lists exactly.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, Friday nights on CBS, Uh huh, this
was a main staple. But I'm telling you, in nineteen
eighty there was a question, a cliffhanger that plagued American culture.
Speaker 3: Who shot JR?
Speaker 2: Who shot JR? This is the theme song Dallas.
Speaker 3: So this one hovered on my list.
Speaker 1: It definitely did, and since we're to that point, I
will tell you it is one of my honorable mentions
for this episode. So hearing that music makes me think
it's time for me to go to bed.
Speaker 2: This is not appropriate for you, d Graves, right.
Speaker 1: So I would get done watching Dukes, Hazard and The
Incredible Hulk, and then this music would start playing and
it meant it was time for me to go back.
Speaker 2: That's great, man. This song was composed by a guy
named Gerald Ammel. He also did gun Smoke and Knots Landing.
He contributed music to Walker, Texas Ranger, so he's done
some stuff. So this song was actually a bigger hit
in France, which is funny because they decided that that
theme song was good, but it needed lyrics, so they
added French lyrics and it became a hit on the
French pop charts.
Speaker 3: We've got to hear that.
Speaker 4: But yah.
Speaker 2: H us.
Speaker 1: Apologies to all of our French listeners, but that is
freaking hilarious.
Speaker 2: That is terrible.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, oh wow, that's so good.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2: I got one more thing for you before we leave
the Dallas theme song. Okay. Now, as you may know,
I am a big Dallas Cowboys football fan. And in
the nineties they when they signed Dion Sanders, it was
a huge deal to Cowboy fans. And I remember Jerry
Jones and Dion even Kevin Smith was in a commercial
and they played the Dallas theme song and it was
sort of the introduction of Deon Sanders as a cowboy.
Speaker 3: I don't care what it takes, you get me Dion.
Speaker 4: For you ready, I was born, Ready run cowboy.
Speaker 5: Dang.
Speaker 3: If I had eleven men like that, I could rule
the world.
Speaker 5: Guys.
Speaker 2: It was a big deal. Yeah, as a Dallas fan. Okay,
that's all I got for you on Dallas theme Okay.
Speaker 1: So, as I mentioned, that is one of my honorable mentions.
This other one it was exclusively on HBO. It involves
some of the same type of creatures that your Number
one involved from the nineteen seventy five to nineteen seventy
nine episode you Got It.
Speaker 2: I Got It, I Got It, And I'm disappointed in
myself for not coming up with this. This has to
be the theme song from Fraggle Rock.
Speaker 1: So on the times that I was in front of
a TV that got HBO. I was watching Fragle Rock
and I loved this inro song.
Speaker 2: It was a great song man and actually introduced all
the characters. Yeah, kind of worked your way, you know
through the world of the Fraggles. Understood they lived underneath
the ground, and there's a dog that kind of chased them.
Speaker 3: And they had the dozers and dump pile and Uncle
traveling Matt.
Speaker 2: That's it, that's it. Great show, great show. Okay, So
is that your two honorable mentions?
Speaker 3: My two honorable mentions Dallas and brockle Rock.
Speaker 2: All right, so let me give you my two honorable
mentions in that case. So I've got a song by
this guy named Mike Post. Okay, this is a show
never heard of him. This is a show that would
literally fire automatic weapons every show and no one ever
got shot. So they made a movie about this in
the two thousands, starring Bradley Cooper and Liam Neeson.
Speaker 3: Okay, I've got it, what you got?
Speaker 1: What you got a baracas, it's mister t it's the
A team.
Speaker 3: By the way, That one will probably come up again
in a futureps.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, cool, great theme song right here by
the way. TV anchorman, Al Roker plays this before he
goes on the air to get himself siched, that's fantastic.
Speaker 1: That is the best tidbit we've had yet.
Speaker 3: Fantastic, Yeah, Roker.
Speaker 2: Well, it's so important for a weatherman to be stoked.
Speaker 3: That's great.
Speaker 2: Okay, So that's honorable mention number one.
Speaker 3: Yep, all right.
Speaker 2: Honorable mention number two is by a guy named Stu
Phillips and Glenn Larson. Now, Glenn Larson is the same
guy that developed the Fall Guy. Yes, and the theme
song with a Fall Guy.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: He actually stole pieces of this theme song from a
French classical piece of music.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: This show ran from nineteen eighty two to nineteen eighty six,
and it is a very very synthesizer futuristic sounding for
nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 3: Is this night Writer?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 5: It is.
Speaker 2: Okay, so Night Writers on your next episode.
Speaker 1: Night Writer will be making an appearance in the next
episode probably.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, cool show. A guy who talks to
his car lives in the shadowy world of anonymous man
who doesn't exist. I still don't really understand the plot
other than David Hasselhoff and a talking.
Speaker 3: Car they both look so cool. It didn't matter. It
didn't matter, all right, So here we are. We are
to our number one.
Speaker 1: One. Since you have already listed my number one in
your spiel just a bit ago, we haven't. We didn't
name it, so I'll bring it back to you now.
This song went to number two involves a guy that
you might have heard of named Mike Post was kept
out of the number one spot by Endless Love by
Diana Ross and Lionel Ritchie.
Speaker 2: This song is called Believe It or Not on It
I never.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 1: This is the theme song for Greatest American Hero nineteen
eighty one to nineteen eighty three. I gotta tell you,
I loved watching the show when I was a kid,
but I was a little kid, and so in the
not too distant past, I thought, I'm gonna check.
Speaker 3: This thing out again. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The pilot episode for this show is two hours long,
like it's a big establishing show wow. And the beginning
of the show is intense, like it is an African
American running from this group of skinheads in these dune
buggies and he doesn't make it to the opening credits. Man,
I mean, it is in tense, and I was like, Wow,
I'm glad they got a little more of a sense
of humor along the way. But great intro, like, this
is definitely a redoable show. They could come back. This
was This is one of those things that I think
is begging for a reboot.
Speaker 2: So remind me. How does he get his powers?
Speaker 1: It comes from an alien ship, and what we learned
through the series is that, like the aliens, probably their
planet was destroyed and so their objective is to give
this suit which gives him basically superman like powers that
he goes on to discover throughout the series in order
to protect the planet from the destruction that their planet faced.
Speaker 3: All right, yeah that's right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Okay, And so the beauty is it comes with an
instruction manual. The plot point of the series is he
loses the instruction at the very beginning, so he has
no idea what he can do. He has no idea
how to land, which means that he can fly, but
he doesn't do so good on planning the landing.
Speaker 2: This show was super fun. I enjoyed it.
Speaker 3: Here's an interesting thing.
Speaker 1: We mentioned that this came out in nineteen eighty one,
right early nineteen eighty one. Yeah, you know what else
happened early nineteen eighty one. No, it involved the president
of the United States at the time.
Speaker 3: Has been shot exactly. Yeah, the main character in this show,
his name was Hinckley. No, so when that.
Speaker 1: Happened, they did a quick switch through changed his name
to Hainley for a while until kind of the bluster
about everything blew over with John Hinckley Junior and changed
it back to Hinckley later on.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's a great tidbit right there, thanks man.
Speaker 1: So, as we mentioned, written by Mike Post, he gets
the info on what the show is supposed to be about.
He's like a guy in a super suit that he
doesn't know how to work, and a like ultra right
wing CI agent as his kind of handler. What the heck?
How am I supposed to write a theme song about that?
And so he's a music guy. He gets the music
and he goes to his part, Stephen Geyer, and Stephen
Geyer is like, well, what if we make the lyrics
something that's like could also be like a love song?
And that's how believe it or not, I'm walking on air.
I never thought I could.
Speaker 3: Be so free.
Speaker 2: Well that's good.
Speaker 1: Sung by a guy named Joe Scarberry, who Mike Post
had produced and other things, hadn't had any real success,
but had a great voice and so memorable.
Speaker 3: For this song.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, this song was really the
inspiration for this episode because I was in my kitchen
my wife or my kids said something like Believe it
or Not, and I was like, oh, we should do
a show about TV themes, and I called you up.
Speaker 2: Nice, there we go, there you go?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Cool?
Speaker 2: Okay, So I guess that brings us to my number
one number one?
Speaker 3: All right, I'm excited.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm rather shocked that we haven't come across it
so far.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: I would bet money that it's on your next episode though,
could be.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 2: This was written by two people who basically were inexperienced
and unqualified to write a TV jingle. Okay, they tried
three times and were rejected. In twenty eleven, Rolling Stone
named this the greatest TV theme song of all time.
Speaker 1: I think I know what it is. Okay, I think
it is going to be in a future episode.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Does this TV show involve a guy name Norm?
Speaker 5: Making your way in the world today takes everything you've got.
Taking a break from all your worries.
Speaker 2: So listen. This song is called where Everybody Knows Your Name.
Speaker 1: Dude, I can't tell you how much I love this song,
but I will in our next episode.
Speaker 5: Sometimes the body knows your name. They always bach came.
Speaker 1: This song, as you mentioned, was written by guy who
really didn't have experience doing this.
Speaker 3: His name was Garry Portnoy. Right.
Speaker 1: I was sure when I would listen to this that
Woody Harrelson was singing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it kind of sounds like.
Speaker 1: It sounded so much like I would listen to it
sometimes and be like, Okay, that's not Woody, and then
other times it'd be like, oh, dude, that's Woody singing
the song. I could not verify, but there are a
ton of people out there who share my opinion.
Speaker 3: Like everybody's. Like, I was sure it was Woody Harrelson
singing this song, it's not.
Speaker 2: What the problem is is that the song predates Woody
Harrelson's association with cheers. So listen to this. So it's
written by Gary Portnoy and Judy hart Angelo. Okay, Judy
heart Angelo was sitting next to a Broadway producer at dinner,
knowing that she worked for a music producer he asked
her if she could recommend anyone to produce a score
for a musical that he was looking for. So she
knew and recommended Gary Portnoy. Well, he had never written
for theater before, right, and she had never ever written
a song.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Nothing.
Speaker 2: So they get together and they write the musical Preppies.
From that, there's a song called people Like Us and
they actually submitted that to be the theme song for cheers.
Ye liked it, but they're like, it's not quite right. Rejected, okay.
Then they came up with another song called My Kind
of People.
Speaker 3: Rejected yea.
Speaker 2: Then they came up with another song called Another Day,
rejected okay. So Gary Portnoy sat down at the piano
and he wanted to kind of get the feel of
the bar. So he sat down at the piano and
played sort of the sad bar love song medley, and
when he got some times you want to Go, then
it took off.
Speaker 5: Nice.
Speaker 1: That's awesome and such a great song. I mean, it
just makes you feel like you belong somewhere. Now, if
you listen to the full version of this song, you
get some.
Speaker 3: Weird lyrics, Yeah, the original.
Speaker 1: Opening lyrics, even when they came up with the song.
The original opening lyrics are not what we end up getting.
The original opening lyrics were singing the blues when.
Speaker 3: The Red Sox lose. It's a crisis in your life,
on the run because all your girlfriends want to be
your wife, and the laundry took it. It's in the wash.
I'm super glad they changed this letter.
Speaker 2: Laundry tickets are in the wash.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, I don't even understand what that means.
Speaker 2: Wow, I'm glad we got what we got.
Speaker 3: Yeah. One of the.
Speaker 2: Best TV shows of the eighties. Yes, and you got
the best theme song of the eighties. Yes, I mean
Cheers is really one of the all time greats. Yeah,
love it all right. So that wraps up our TV
shows nineteen eighty to nineteen eighty four episode come back
down the Road. We're going to have another episode on
these where we do nineteen eighty five to nineteen eighty nine.
Please send us in your picks. We'd love to hear
from you, guys. Your experience may be different than ours
or what you watched in your household, so we would
love to know what your top songs are.
Speaker 3: Thank you guys so much. Everything we do we do
it for you? Brian Adams right there. Thank you.
Speaker 1: We do really appreciate you guys tuning in every week.
Be sure if you haven't already to hit that subscribe button,
hit that follow button and check us out on Twitter
and Facebook. Hit us up by email, send us name,
but we would love to know your name.
Speaker 3: I I see what you did there. Thanks guys, we'll
see you next week