Soundtrack Saturday took a two week detour into TV cop show theme tunes with a pair of 80s classics- the Balearic beauty of Mike Post's Hill Street Blues theme and Jan Hammer's day- glo pastel shoot out for Miami Vice. This week's post goes a decade further back and finds Mike Post in the songwriting seat again with the theme to The Rockford Files...
The theme tune was released in 1975, co- written by Pete Carpenter and featuring that distinctive guitar solo from session guitarist Dan Ferguson on dobro guitar and electric guitar plus a solo on MiniMoog by Mike Post. As with Hill Street Blues and Miami Vice you're going to want to see the visuals of the title sequence as well as the audio, not to mention Jim Rockford (James Garner) and the famous answer machine message...
The Rockford Files ran from 1974 to 1980 (and then in a permanent loop of repeats on early evening TV in the UK). Rockford was a down at heel private detective, lived in a trailer near Malibu Beach, was always broke and often ended up getting a beating in fist fights. In one of those odd trans- Atlantic cultural exchanges, the theme tune to The Rockford Files became the music Tranmere Rovers run on the pitch to at home games at Prenton Park, Birkenhead. Tranmere are the team of Nigel Blackwell of Half Man Half Biscuit, the man who should the next poet laureate.
Picking a song from my extensive HMHB folders I found this one, Tommy Walsh's Eco House, which includes a reference in the opening line to another TV detective, this time Medieval sleuth Cadfael...
Nigel's taken '90 Bisodol/ He's had enough of Tommy Walsh's eco house... the only bloke from Harpurhey/ Who wasn't at the Free Trade Hall'.
'While you're capturing the zeitgeist/ They're widening the motorway'.
1 comment:
Love The Rockford Files? Love Lego? You'll love this!
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