You woke up this morning Got yourself a BEST TV THEME TUNES POLL NOMINATIONS AND DISCUSSION gun (End date - 12/11/12

haven't had time to post or brainstorm but i am excited about this

Medical Center. Seriously underrated Lalo Schifrin joint.

Hong Kong Phooey

Teen Titans
Outlaw Star
Azumanga Daioh
Paranoia Agent
Daria

Oz
Homicide: Life on the Street
Millennium

I love Homicide as a TV show, but I kind of feel that it has one of the weaker theme songs out there.

Here's some more I dig:

Swedish children’s TV show “Alfons Aberg”, or what a TV theme song written by Henry Cow would sound like

All those old TV songs with singing in them:
Fireball XL-5 (once heard a great straight version of this by a local free jazz combo)
Branded (as not sung by Jeff Bridges)
Bourbon Street Beat
77 Sunset Strip
I Married Joan
Hawaiian Eye
The Rebel (come on, JOHNNY CASH)
The version of the Bonanza theme song sung by Lorne Greene ("We chased Lady Luck till we finally struck BONANZA...")

Funk and more funk:
Barney Miller
Benson
Supertrain (any version of the theme)
The Bill Cosby Show (Not the Cosby Show- I mean the one with “Hikky Burr” as the theme tune)

Daktari
The ‘60s Iron Man cartoon
Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law
Sealab 2021
Gumby (one of the only actual “rock” TV theme songs ever?)
Except for maybe Hardcastle and McCormick- sublimely perfect ‘80s rock cheese
Lost in Space- but only the John Williams version
I’ve always had a soft spot for “WKRP in Cincinnati”.
The Spiderman theme song, particularly the French version for the Quebecois market

And of course all the obvious classics (half the output of Mike Post, etc.) as well.

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― Mr. Zone A (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, November 2, 2012 9:02 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Pee-Wee's Playhouse

(why did it take 274 posts for someone to nom Pee-Wee's Playhouse wtf is wrong w/ u ppl)

Have Gun Will Travel (The Ballad of Paladin)

animaniacs

http://nothingsgonnastopmenow.com/

All That
Living Single ("keep ya head up WHAT? keep ya head up THAT'S RIGHT!")
Moesha

In Living Color

Pee-Wee's Playhouse

― MarkoP, Friday, November 2, 2012 1:58 PM Bookmark

oh i ctrl+f'd and didn't see it. hmm.

Bill Nye The Science Guy

late 80's-early 90's disney toonage...Darkwing Duck theme Vs. The ducktales theme

^^^ some food for thought maybe

Beauty and The Beast
Gummi Bears
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Sharky and George
Zorro
Mannix

Cheers
Mission Impossible
Hawaii 5-0
SWAT
Rockford Files
Happy Days
Hill Street Blues
Sanford & Son
Andy Griffith
Greatest American Hero
Jeffersons
All In The Family
Monkees
Partridge Family
Sesame Street
Magnum PI
Barnaby Jones
Fresh Prince of Bel Air

Denver the Last Dinosaur

Camberwick Green
Harry's Game
Rockliffe's babies
The Tomorrow People
Bagpuss (main theme)
Cheggers Plays Pop
Box of Delights

I don't envy a hoy hoy sifting through all these duplicates to put together a single alphabetical list.

Just seconding or thirding something suggested above: the Road Runner theme should be a separate entity.

ACTION NEWS THEME

thank you for remembering Gummi Bears xxxp, also

Adventure Time

Chicago motherfuckers had that shit down: http://youtu.be/qsSEX-Em0mE

xp

Scrubs
Firefly

xp that was the channel 10 theme in Philly

stand as an REM song is pretty mediocre but as theme song to GET A LIFE, it takes on an unreproducible grandeur.

Sealab 2021 theme makes me so happy.

Is South Park a good theme song? I always imagined if I heard it as a young child that it would scare me.

Can this thread be used to discuss theme songs that we hate?

This thread can be used any way you want.

Was gonna start compiling the master list after the football later maybe.

Is it worth your time? There's been such a huge instant response that I'd be tempted to throw up the voting thread already, allow long ballots, and simply link to this thread for reference.

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Jim'll Fix It

Just throwing it into the mix

New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
Venture Bros
Clone High
Bobby's World
Dexter's Lab
Tazmania
Melrose Place
Lois and Clark
Tales From the Crypt
Malcolm in the Middle
In The Heat of The Night
Different Strokes
Flight of the Conchords

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dy553E_oa0

Given that there shitloads of American shows that none of us over here have ever seen or heard and vice versa, there's something a bit bogus about this particular poll

Samurai Jack (despite having been written by Will.i.am)

Given that there shitloads of American shows that none of us over here have ever seen or heard and vice versa, there's something a bit bogus about this particular poll

― Named locally as Tom D (Tom D.), Saturday, November 3, 2012 1:17 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not sure I'd say there's anything "bogus" about it, that sort of cultural difference arises pretty much all the time. It's why we have lobbying and a breakdown analysis of ballots at the end, so the lesser-known (i.e. not American) stuff gets a chance. Also, if we Brits sort a Radiophonic bloc out we can jerrymander the results to at least a certain degree.

yeah "bogus" wtf

Sometimes a lot of the fun of these for an American is getting your first glimpse of Brit-popular stuff - like the Spectrum games in the video games poll a few years back. Seems like with TV themes the geographic effects are overlaid onto already huge generational gaps, especially with the kids's shows - I am overwhelmingly more likely to vote for shows from the 80s and early 90s than any other period, because that's when I was a kid and watched the most TV. It'll all come out fine.

60s/70s/80s was the tv theme song golden era, but I don't know if that an objective statement or just because I was watching tv as a kid in the late 70s and into the 80s. But if you put CHiPs up against Burn Notice or something, CHiPs wins.

back then TV themes seem to exist as its own world divorced from popular music or any genre. now most shows are either some pre-existing song from a major label artist edited down or some half-assed instrumental doodle.

or a single chord (cf. "Lost")

I like the half-assed instrumental doodle that opens Breaking Bad, but I don't think it stands up on its own as a piece of music enough to nominate.

tbf, if you put CHiPs up against most anything, CHiPs wins.

Yeah, I think the demographic age-range of ilx is likely to twist the results a bit more than the geographical one. Or at least in terms of US vs UK (and maybe Australia too? We definitely got/get a fair few Oz programmes over here). I suppose one thing that irks a little is that I still think of ilx as a British board but there are actually way more Americans, so it seems somewhat unfair that Brit programmes will come off worse. But, y'know, we'd all find it a bit odd if Tuomas came on and complained about a lack of Finnish programmes, so not sure why us little islanders should complain either...