January 4, 1999

Show And Tell - A Stormy Remembrance Of TV Theme Tunes

As that emotive Sony advert shows, television leaves a powerful legacy....

6 / 10 As that emotive Sony advert shows, television leaves a powerful legacy. The Apollo moon landing, frozen for eternity. Generation-defining film of Kennedy's assassination. And Butt Trumpet's cover of The Beverly Hillbillies theme. Ah, it gets you right there.

There, in this case, being a Draylon sofa, a bag of Doritos and a six-pack of pig adrenalin. The sound of mashed couch potato, 'Show And Tell' obeys the slacker-friendly tenet that US punk bands playing TV themes fast and loud will pass for entertainment if The Dukes Of Hazzard isn't on cable that night. A fine principle, and if you aren't wearing a Dickies T-shirt and chewing Wonder Bread by the time Manic Hispanic hit Gilligan's Island, then you're probably adapting Northanger Abbey for the BBC.

So Felix Frump go straight from Cheers to paralytic vomiting, Todd Bridges, once star of Diff'rent Strokes, now covering its theme song, highlights the dignity plight of the child actor, while The Pink Lincolns' infantile Friends napalms Central Perk to Kingdom Come.

Best is Corn'Mo's accordion-fired Charles In Charge, which, sung with squealing urgency by a grown man, takes on sado-masochistic undertones fully unsuspected by a generation of school children.

You really don't want to see down the back of their sofas.