Song of the day: #4 Average Joe Stalin – "Montel Gets Things Done"

 The first song ever written by Average Joe Stalin was essentially a list of directions to the house in Glasgow i used to live in. This is the second, a tribute to the talkshow host Montel Williams¹ and his eponymous show, often on ITV2 in the background in the traditional student manner. It's surfaced again on a compilation by the Little Rock record label, FUCKNO, to be released on April 30.

AJS has since popped up in a variety of guises. The track, written around 2004, is a brief, enjoyable blast through daytime TV and its irresistible cathode lure. There's more than a hint of Brainiac influence, all dessicated guitar riffs, stomping motorik beat and shimmering falsetto vocals (this is always a good thing, since Brainiac were ace). Probably the real win, though, is in the understated deadpan wit of the lyrics. i seem to remember that the band name is also TV-related, the pun being inspired by a really shitty reality show that was on around the same time.

All the daytime TV hosts namechecked herein have since disappeared from view: Montel was quickly cancelled in 2008 following an appearance on another show, Fox and Friends, during which he lambasted the American media for its pitiful coverage of the Iraq war and overriding focus on celebrity trivia like the death of Heath Ledger. He then did a radio show on the Air America network, which closed this January, and has apparently now gone down the George Foreman-pioneered painfully-flogging-kitchenware route. Richard and Judy left This Morning to do an eponymous chatshow on Channel 4 teatime, before moving to some godforsaken cable channel watched by precisely no-one, only to be dropped in 2009 because, predictably, no-one watched it. Christ knows what they're doing at the moment.

At times like these, it's good to know who your friends are
TV's a friend to me, and it'll be a friend to you (yeah)
You can watch more but your folks say you're a vegetable
Your eyes'll go square and you won't talk sense no more
Love is blind, but TV's much more sensible
Caring and smart and everything you want and more
When I die, TV'll give the eulogy
Keep it simple, maybe some Richard and Judy

Montel gets things done

Average Joe Stalin – "Montel Gets Things Done"

¹ Other incorrect guesses have included R&B singer Montell Jordan, sprinter Montell Douglas and wrestler Montel Vontavious Porter.

#9: The TV Theme Players — "Then and Now" (Big Eye, 2009)

Or: "things i have learned from listening to The TV Theme Players".

— My god but there are a lot of TV shows. This double CD has 110 tracks. And they're pretty much all American shows, the only UK representative being the really crap Skins.

— The Blind Boys of Alabama version of "Way Down in the Hole" is apparently the definitive Wire theme. Which is balls, of course, as everyone knows it's the Tom Waits original.

— Hardly any TV themes are in irregular time signatures. There's Mission:Impossible (5/4), of course, and stalwart Britcop drama The Bill (7/8). And that's literally about the lot. Wasted opportunity, this.

— No kind of treatment could make the theme from Nip/Tuck sound like a decent piece of music. That isn't on this album, i'm just sayin'.

— A lot of shows nowadays don't have proper themes so much as an inoffensive little ambient sound-squiggles (see: Lost, Heroes etc.) This, too, is a waste of potential.

— Ben Butler & Mouse Pad absolutely must cover the theme from Tequila & Bonetti. possibly also Jump Street. It's ok, i've told them already.

— The 80s were truly halcyon TV theme days.

— i've really gotta watch Twin Peaks soon.

— i do not find the theme from ER to convey the requisite sense of urgency, being far too relaxed for this purpose. In hospital terms, i think it would be a much more convincing soundtrack for somewhere like the Ear, Nose and Throat department.

— The TV Theme Players are likely a group of highly competent session musicians capable of convincingly switching between myriad styles and instruments with ease. However, the reason i say "likely" is because there's no clue anywhere on the internet who's responsible or why. Their last.fm page has no comments and no bio. In the absence of any sort of personality or obvious motive to the group whatsoever, what we're left with is the '00s equivalent of those weird Top of the Pops albums they had in the '60s where groups of session musos would perform ten Top 40 covers — mostly quite passable, sometimes incomprehensibly awful — to skirt licensing regulations.

Considering the potential audience for this creeps me out a little. Who is it aimed at? Prankster radio stations with archive space to fill? People who think TV shows are just a waste of 40 minutes between the cool music bits? The sort of people that listen to anime soundtracks, or consider Jonathan Larson their favourite composer?

At times the atmosphere is uncomfortably close to being stuck in an office Christmas party in Purgatory. The instrumental themes tend to fare better than, for instance, the Tesco No Frills version of Happy Days, which is like being badgered by a hyperactive Butlin's redcoat while trying to eat a cooked breakfast in peace. The most wretched of the lot are the themes which are actual songs: Jane's Addiction's horrible Entourage theme was bad enough to start with, and an anonymous cover of a bastardised excerpt, as here, only adds a sheen of gloss-eyed vacancy to the usual cock-rock bluster. Gruesome. Likewise, South Park illustrates the folly of trying to sound like Primus,¹ and Massive Attack's "Teardrop" gains nothing by being oversimplified and renamed "House". And let us never speak of "Jackass" (a.k.a. a horrible bowdlerising of the Minutemen's "Corona", but with all the "Corona" removed). If anything, the themes-that-are-bona-fide-songs mainly serve to reinforce the earlier point that good TV theme composition is a rarefied art, to be increasingly valued over the lamer and more prevalent options of licensing some generically hip alt.rock or setting a synth to AutoBloop.

— Jack White of The White Stripes shows up to do backing vocals on the Friends theme.²

— By the 85th consecutive theme i have started to feel as if someone has injected my entire face with Lidocaine. Only another 25 to go...

— The L.A. Law theme sounds like Christopher Cross playing "The Little Drummer Boy".

Highlights: Six Feet Under (wonderful theme in general; includes inventive rendering of the discordant modern classical mid-section vamp); Quantum Leap (which i've always felt to be quite a mediocre theme); Justice League Unlimited (too much metal for one hand); Dragonball Z (session-muso metal is just too hilarious); The Cosby Show and any of its jazzy cod-new-Jack-swingin' 80s contemporaries, against all odds (just unashamedly joyous and daft); Twin Peaks (atmospheric); Prison Break (rare class for a modern theme); Quincy M.E. (parping, clownish); New York Undercover (sounds like an MJ Dangerous outtake); Magnum PI (even, say, the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain would have trouble fucking up a tune that good); Young Indiana Jones (a class rendition of Laurence Rosenthal's Boingo-esque theme); Boston Legal (just because i'm pretty sure the original did not feature someone imitating a guitar solo by going "wow waow waaooowww....").

Lowlights: The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (no version of this will ever escape lame-o student-disco ironyland); "Woke Up This Morning" from The Sopranos (it was a terrible song to start with, this is just a straight cover. How have Alabama 3 managed to wangle the role of "the Gomez it's ok to like" anyway?); One Tree Hill (shockingly bland college rock crap); Walker, Texas Ranger (widdle widdle widdle); Murder, She Wrote (generally pretty good, but reorchestrating out the flatulent quacking trombone sections is total desecration); Baywatch (always was fucking awful, with its sand-in-the-joints phallic sax breaks farting all over everything, but this version is egregiously bad. it actually sounds like MIDI programming); the aforementioned Heroes (good effort, though); Chappelle's Show (funny for the first thirty seconds, excruciating for the next five lots of thirty seconds); Flintstones (wailing lead/synth revisionism).

mp3: TV Theme Players – "Prison Break"
mp3: TV Theme Players – "Justice League Unlimited"
mp3: TV Theme Players – "Six Feet Under"
mp3: TV Theme Players – "Young Indiana Jones"
mp3: TV Theme Players – "Tequila & Bonetti"
mp3: TV Theme Players – "Twin Peaks"

¹ Even if you are Primus. No, especially if you are Primus.
² Not really.