TMP: Theme Songs

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Long before Tracey Ullman told Calista Flockhart that everyone has a theme song, I had contemplated mine. I was 13, on a cross-country trip with my mother, and she had just bought me a wonderfully up-to-the-minute dress (to my Baltimore eyes) at Blum’s in San Francisco. I felt like the star of my own sitcom and, no, I won’t tell you the song that played in my head as I walked down the streets of San Francisco. It’s way too embarrassing.

Over the years, I’ve tried on other theme songs, mostly by Stephen Sondheim. There was the title song from ANYONE CAN WHISTLE. (Lyrics here: http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/anyonecanwhistle/anyonecanwhistle.htm) It was a pretty literal one, as I can’t whistle. Then again, I can’t read Greek, either. Then there was “Everybody Says Don’t,” from the same musical. (http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/anyonecanwhistle/everybodysaysdont.htm) And, finally, “Finishing the Hat,” from SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE. (http://libretto.musicals.ru/text.php?textid=332&language=1 Scroll way down.) And when I write, there’s often a song or two that seems vital to the book-in-progress. “Barrytown,” for example, for EVERY SECRET THING.

But over the weekend, I was introduced to a new potential theme song: “I Quit” or “I Quit VSOP.” (http://www.louisianamusicfactory.com/showoneprod.asp?TypeID=72&ProductID=4614) I can’t find the lyrics online, which is probably for the best, although I’ll put the opening line on the comments page. Don’t click through unless you’re over 17 or have your mom’s permission. Except for Dave White, who still should check with someone older and more mature. I don’t want to be responsible for an ugly incident in a New Jersey school.

Granted, I don’t actually have a job anymore, but if I did, I’d probably be humming this song in my head all day long. Meanwhile, this is a good link about the album itself: http://www.offbeat.com/artman/publish/article_1248.shtml

So what’s your theme song? C’mon, hum a few bars. You sang it for her and you can sing it for me, to paraphrase a famous line.

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43 thoughts on “TMP: Theme Songs”

  1. Current theme song is Iggy Pop’s SECOND cover of “Louie, Louie,” off American Caesar. Especially the line, “fine little girl’s a-waiting for me/but I’m as bent as Dostoevsky.”

    Perennial runner-up is the Flying Lizards’ version of “Money.” Especially this week.

  3. I typically don’t have a theme song, I usually have a sound track, and it’s most often Miles Davis. Or Aerosmith. But the single song that most recently has been playing on my mental endless loop is Eminem’s “Lose Yourself”. It’s nice and cranky and sets me up well for the daily battle.

  4. Like Rae, I don’t actually have a theme-I’m more inclined to soft jazz (Kieko Matsui mostly), but when I just know every word I write absolutely sucks-I think of that great song from Gypsy – “Everythings Coming Up Roses”. I rather manically hum it. Not that it does any good, but it’s at least some attempt at positive thinking. :)

  6. Bob Dylan, “Up to Me.” “The only decent thing I did when I worked as a postal clerk/Was to haul your picture down off the wall near the cage where I used to work/Was I a fool or not to protect your real identity?/You looked a little burnt out, my friend/I thought it might be up to me.”

  8. From back in the day: For calm reflection, the theme from Hill Street Blues. For retro parties, “Kick Out the Jams Motherfuckers” by the MC5. And AC/DCs ‘Highway To Hell’ when I was driving the ambulance to anything dangerous: ” No stop signs, speed limit/ Nobody’s gonna slow me down/… I’m on the hiighwaayy to hell.”
    –john–

  9. “CLOCKS” by Coldplay. The killer piano part in the beginning gives me chills. There’s a line at the end that says “HOME, HOME…where I wanted to go”. Having just moved from the east coast (where my family is) to the west coast where I am starting my own part of my family, it’s been something to ponder…where are you home?

  12. But if there _were_ a sitcom — say, “Vickie!” — and a song _had_ to play for the first ninety seconds, ending with a triumphant tam o’shanter toss in the middle of a busy intersection . . .

    I actually got to watch from the sidelines as someone chose a theme song for a program. Granted, it wasn’t his life story, but he was very aware of how important it would become. And, by the way, he didn’t get his first choice.

    John R. — I love that song, and I think it’s perfect for you.

  13. Oh, and speaking of soundtracks. My holiday gift was an iPod. Ho-hum, I know. But it came loaded with almost 10,000 songs, arranged in the exacting genres and subgenres that — I’m going to go out on a limb here — only a guy would go to the trouble of creating. Okay, I know I’m going to get several women, writing in about their exact and precise genres, but I ask you this: Do you have 36 genres (three for jazz alone)? Do you have “Roots Rock”? “Troubadoru?” A whole category for Texas? To me, this is a guy thing. Usually.

    And to throw this out, I ask: How many women here remember the first album they bought? Men?

  14. Since I don’t assume I’m any authority on what I’m going to want to listen to, I leave it on SHUFFLE and keep the SKIP button accessible. So genre organization’s not really relevant.

  15. There was so much music in our house, it’s kind of hard to be sure, but the first album I bought for myself would more than likely have been the first Monkees record. Ack.

    I don’t know about genres and subgenres, but I have lots of very specific playlists on my iPod, and probably 5 are for different types of jazz ;-)

  16. I thought I posted my theme music but did I mess up? Anyway, I can’t figure out what it is NOW, probably i have several for the different acts/moods/shows that are my life but for many many years my theme song was “Wanderlust” by Connie Kaldor (http://www.conniekaldorusa.com/wanderlust.htm), a far too unknown singer-songwriter from Canada whom I just adore. I heard her sing this when I was living in Berkeley and thinking of leaving and it followed me across the country. A year or so back, when I saw her in Seattle for the first time in years, I told her about that, and she played the song as an encore. MAN, that was cool.
    The iPod carries I dunno about 1300 songs but I don’t do playlists. I almost always shuffle and if suddenly I think YES, I wanna hear HER, I switch to artist and listen. I just went and put “genre” BACK on my library to look (I have title, artist, album up, that’s IT) and the genres are so meaningless (scuze me, but “Allan Sherman” is not “books and spoken word” and the Austin Lounge Lizards being “alternative” means what? I mean who decides anyway? Oh and thanks for “unclassified” – which means “obscure, we never heard of her” i’m going to guess.
    I have no memory of the first X I bought – book, record, CD, tape, and don’t know how people DO that. I donate daily to firstbook, over at “the literacy site” and they had a “you always remember your first book” tag line which baffles me. You do? I’m just not GOOD at this stuff.

  19. My current theme song is La Vi Boheme from Rent. This section from the beginning paints a version of my life that is part true and part future truth hopefully:

    To days of inspiration
    Playing hookie, making something out of nothing
    The need to express
    To communicate,
    To going against the grain,
    Going insane
    Going mad

    To loving tension, no pension
    To more than one dimension,
    To starving for attention,
    Hating convention, hating pretension
    Not to mention of course,
    Hating dear old mom and dad

    To riding your bike,
    Midday past the three- piece suits
    To fruits to no absolutes
    To Absolute- to choice
    To the Village Voice
    To any passing fad
    To being an us-for once-, instead of a them.

    And the first album I bought was The Beach Boys “Get Around”

  20. Dude, seriously, Rent? So 1997.

    Meanwhile my theme song has always been the James Bond theme… with the occasional aside into “My Baby Takes the morning train” substituting the “he works from 9-5″ with “SHE works” because it’s seamless.

  21. My first album was either a Dinah Washington or a Chet Baker. Not sure which was first, but I know they were the first of a long line of LP’s – which sadly – I no longer have.

  22. Personal theme song: “Falling to Pieces” by Faith no More. Not sure what that means, but it’s the song that I hear most often in the “soundtrack” playing in my head.

    First album: Led Zeppelin II. My brother “borrowed” it while I was away in the Army and I never saw it again. But that’s ok, I’m still holding his Kiss Alive II album hostage.

  23. Can’t think of a theme song. Couldn’t think of 4 things for that meme either. But the first album I bought was Meet the Beatles. Before that I just bought singles, and my first was The Beach Boys “I Get Around”

  25. What about when you are doing some activity or thinking about something with most of your mind…but in the background there’s a song playing. When you actually pay attention to it – you find it’s the theme to your situation or thought at that moment. That always makes me smile because it’s usually so literal.

  26. My personal theme song seems to change week by week. Songs hit me like a virus: they linger for a while, completely consume me, then leave. Right now I’m stuck on a Shakira song. Yeah, I know. Ridiculous. (But how can you not love a lyric like “Lucky that my breasts are small and humble / so you don’t confuse them with mountains”?)

    As for first album I ever bought: Billy Joel’s 52nd STREET. We’re talking “Big Shot,” “My Life,” “Honesty,” “Stiletto”…. it blew my 10-year-old mind. Twenty-four years later, I think I’m still writing about that album.

  27. Perhaps it’s the guys I hang with (and, um, their age, which is usually close to mine, although I could be Duane’s Baltimore mama)* but most of the ones I know have vivid first-album stories. Store, how they scraped the money together, etc.

    But one of my favorite music-buying stories centers on a CD, and it happenened less than five years ago. My colleagues (and now Baltimore Noir contributors) Dan Fesperman and Rob Hiaasen were enormously excited when the last Steely Dan CD was released. I’m pretty crazy about Steely Dan, too, but I’ve never felt the need to be at a music store the very day any album (excuse the anachronism) went on sale. But Dan and Rob were adamant that we must go to the Inner Harbor, so they could purchase it on their lunch hour.

    *For a long time, Baltimore led the nation in pregnancies among girls under 14. I believe we’ve lost that status, but we’re still very competitive in STD’s.

  29. My first album buy was Black Sabbath’s ‘Never Say Die’. A good 12 years after its release (as I’d only have been a year old when it came out), but I got into Sabbath in a big way in my early teens.

    I can’t organise an iPod, though. Not to save my life. I’ve had to strip most of the music from my iTunes because I couldn’t ever find anything. Now I keep it listed elsewhere (thank you, MediaMonkey) and just copy across stuff I fancy listening to – 2-300 songs, tops.

  31. First album I bought was..um…Madonna’s self-titled debut, I think.

    And at the moment, though I wouldn’t call it a theme song, I can’t get Kathleen Edwards’ “Back to me” out of my head.

  33. Theme song of my life: Case of You by the goddess, Joni Mitchell – although as I type that, I think, I need a cheerier theme song. Maybe this is why I have man problems, because this is the orientation in which I enter relationships. Any suggestions for a new theme song?

    Theme song for walking down the street (changes constantly, usually reflected in music on my answering machine at home): Brimful of Asha by Cornershop

    Theme song for my talk show (for which my current life is the pilot): “Beautiful Girl” by INXS

  34. Just a note to tie in with your last blog entry, btw. (this is to the best of my recollection but it’s pretty accurate, I think). In the film “That Thing you Do” the good guy drummer, the one who deservedly succeeds AND gets Liv Tyler in the long run has a scene where, after the band is kicked out of the studio, he plays his theme song on the drums. As he does, his idol, a old time jazz musician hears him – he’s doing some studio work in the same building and asks “what’s the name of that thing you’re playing?”. It is, he is told, called “I Am Spartacus”. He sits in and plays for a while with the young drummer. Now that’s a good theme song.

  35. Off the top of my head, I will say COOL CHANGE by Little River Band.

    Although like Rae, I also identified with LOSE YOURSELF. There’s a stanza in particular that I liked, though I can’t find it because I’m at work and Eminem sites are blocked.

    First album I bought was TOMMY – The Who. Not the soundtrack to the movie. I have it on DVD now and can still air guitar, air drum, and sing every line.

  37. I love THAT THING YOU DO. It peters out a bit at the end and I’ve always found the beneficent bellman to be one of those creepy white people fantasies, but there’s so much else to love in THING.

    Then again, I will watch Steven Zahn in anything, even YOU’VE GOT MAIL. (Sorry Bryon and Christin, but we’re going to have to agree to disagree on that one, although it features some much-deserved product placement for Noel Streatfeild. Ditto, Betsy -Tacy. Someone knew their children’s books.) I’ll also watch Peter Sarsgaard in anything.

    So I’ve now seen SHATTERED GLASS at least 10 times. And I don’t even own it. (One of the secondary HBO channels has it on a lot. Along with LOVE ACTUALLY, which still depresses the heck out of me in parts. Colin Firth is a crime writer! Shouldn’t he be holding out for a professional peer, instead of a Portuguese housekeeper? Say, a well-preserved American contemporary? But the dash through Heathrow melts my heart every time.

  38. ok i realize this is about theme songs but I have to mention here – I too ADORE That Thing You Do, as well as Steve Zahn. That Thing You Do is one of my “most watchable” (to use your phrase Laura) movies ever. I could watch it 800 times in a row. I have the soundtrack. it’s fabulous.

    my first album ever purchased was Mariah Carey’s Musicbox, which is so quintessential to being a girl in my generation. I don’t know anyone who didn’t have it, that’s my age. Of course I only know a handful of people who still rock it to this day…myself being one of them!

    theme song – I have no idea. it changes daily. Right now my theme song would be “Ooh Ahh” by a group called G.R.I.T.S., who probably on one has heard of.

  39. There are bits of LOVE ACTUALLY that depress me, too. The Emma Thompson / Alan Rickman subplot, for one. The Colin Firth one isn’t so bad, because he and the Portuguese housekeeper ultimately get together, but I take your point ;-) And yeah, the dash through Heathrow is awesome – that kid is a great actor….

  40. Oh, like Laura, it’s probably some bit of Sondheim. Lately, it would be No More from Into the Woods, but that, I hope, is temporary (though I don’t expect my love of the song to disappear). The Miller’s Son is an obvious choice for a Miller, but I also love its boundless optimism. Maybe Not While I’m Around, or Another Hundred People.

    Aside from Sondheim, several songs from REM’s Automatic for the People would do just fine. Nightswimming, maybe.

    And I have no idea what my first record purchase was. Later than most, since I had nowhere private to listen to music as a kid.

  41. First album : Herman’s Hermits- first album(with Mrs. Brown and I’m into Something Good)

    No theme song(although if I think of one- I will make my computer play it all day when I am not in the office)

    You’ve Got Mail- well, the Meg Ryan character wasn’t exactly right on the “Shoe” books- they were not out of print in England- they were being reprinted and sold under original(?) titles at the time- like White Boots and The Painted Garden(I would buy them at the Children’s Book Centre on Kensington High Street-for my daughter). You would think someone who owned a small well stocked children’s book store would know that- not that I think Meg Ryan did own the bookstore or that Tom Hanks owned the Borders clone.

    Love Actually-I don’t know much about writers-but Colin Firth’s wife(girlfriend?) was sleeping with his brother so Colin was on the rebound- and both of the women were quite a bit younger than him(looks like he wasn’t interested in a professional colleague- just like Hugh Grant). However, I think he should have been planning to come to America to meet a Baltimore based mystery writer. The time frame is odd in that movie- is everything really taking place in 6 weeks- until the returns to Heathrow? I do own it because of Colin Firth and Alan Rickman and the totally gorgeous guy(sure, older women can be shallow, too) who is in the Laura Linney section.

    Steve Zahn- Happy, Texas- seen 4 times because I was a Jeremy Northam fan.

  42. First record I ever bought: Friends of Distinction “Grazing in the Grass.”

    My favorite part of That Thing You Do is when Liv Tyler is mailing something, and on her headphones she hears their single on the radio for the first time, and she runs shrieking down the street. The joy that erupts in the appliance store is positively contagious!

  43. Okay, first album was either a Donny Osmond or Donny and Marie album. There, I said it.

    No particular theme song, but my go-to album when incredibly stressed or upset is Springsteen’s “Darkness on the Edge of Town”–singing (if that’s what I do when driving alone in the car) along to that one really gets the stress out :) .

    I love “You’ve Got Mail” and the references to Betsy-Tacy and Noel Streatfield–very cool, whether 100% accurate or not.

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