Soundtrack Saturday

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 Rockford Files Theme

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...

Tommy Walsh's Eco House

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'. 

Soundtrack Saturday

Soundtrack Saturday is taking a diversion this week away from cinema and films and into the world of television. Between 1981 and 1987 Hill Street Blues ran for 146 episodes, depicting the lives of the people in and around a police station in an unnamed American city. It was a favourite of mine in the mid- to- late 80s and even now the opening titles and theme tune bring a rush of teenage memories...

It was fairly groundbreaking as a show- gritty, realistic, people with messy lives having to deal with messy situations, the good guys not always winning. Visually and with its production it was groundbreaking too, the rapid cuts between storylines and background chatter and noise giving it a documentary feel. The theme tune, Mike Post's piano led instrumental, is as legendary as the programme...

Theme From Hill Street Blues

It was released on 7". I have a copy, one of those records that has been with me for a very long time. The sleeve is so creased and battered it's barely a sleeve any more. If anyone's interested there are 180 copies on Discogs currently, the cheapest only 15 pence. Skyrocketing prices for second hand vinyl don't appear to have impacted on the Theme From Hill Street Blues. 

The guitar solo in the full version was by Larry Carlton, a session musician who played with Steely Dan and Joni Mitchell among others. Theme From Hill Street Blues gained a second life when Alfredo played it as part of his sets at Amnesia in Ibiza, often playing it as his last tune before clubbers went out into the morning sun. 

Let's be careful out there. 

José Padilla

 

José Padilla has died of cancer aged sixty four. He arrived in Ibiza in 1975 and graduated through the club scene as a DJ, playing Es Paradis and Amnesia before eventually playing sets at the Café del Mar, a bar in San Antonio that looks out over the Mediterranean and where each evening the sun dissolves into the sea. Jose would pioneer an entire new genre of music that would end up being called Chill Out. Padilla played an eclectic mix of music to accompany the sunset and afterwards and as the late 80s became the 90s his DJ sets became the thing of legend. He recorded an Essential Mix for the BBC in 1995, here, that gives an idea of his style. In 1994 he launched a series of compilation albums, out on double vinyl, that brought together the songs he played as the sun went down. Volume One and Two (or Uno and Dos to give them their proper names) are proper slices of mid 90s culture, records to play after a night out, comedown tunes to go with tea, cigarettes and chatter, the buzz of the club wearing off into something warm and glowing, songs for a Sunday morning- William Orbit, Penguin Café Orchestra, Sabres Of Paradise, Leftfield, Underworld, A Man Called Adam, Tabula Rasa...

Sunset At The Café del Mar

I've never been to the Café del Mar, never watched the ball of fire sink into the sea as José spun laidback, downtempo tunes with snaking melodies and blissed out vocals. But José's outlook has had a huge impact on my tastes and record collection, the whole idea of bringing different types of music together as long as they fit the mood, a mish- mash of old and new, dance music and oddities, ambient and Balearic, a world where A Man Called Adam's Estelle, The Art Of Noise, the theme from Hill Street Blues and Music For A Lost Harmonium all live alongside each other. I've spent hours attempting to emulate José's style in the early hours or when making tape compilations or even, now I think of it, with some of the series of Isolation Mixes I did in the spring and summer. 

Theme From Hill Street Blues

It's fair to say that what José pioneered on the shores of the Mediterranean spread worldwide in the 1990s and afterwards, ripples and waves landing on shores a long way from San Antonio. 

José Padilla, RIP.

Be Careful Out There

Back to work today after two weeks off. Not ideal. Two weeks is long enough to get out of the habit and really not want to get back into the routine.

I saw a day or two ago that Steven Bochco had died. He was the man behind loads of US TV series. The one that meant the most to me was Hill Street Blues which I got into around 1986 or 87, watching it on Channel 4 on a big box style TV, bought second hand, in my bedroom. Genuinely groundbreaking TV, with a big ensemble cast, a gritty realism to its story lines and a documentary feel in the way it was filmed, it weaved dozens of stories and narratives, nearly overloading the viewer. By the time I started watching it it was well into its run, having started in 1981, but I didn't get the feeling that it had mellowed or gone off the boil. I've never been a big fan of cop shows either but Hill Street made a massive impression.

Hill Street Blues also had a very good and very recognisable theme tune written by Mike Post, who was responsible for many TV theme tunes and had already written a classic with The Rockford Files. The opening piano chords are wonderful and then the dramatic descending part before the piano kicks in again (watch out for that guitar solo from Larry Carlton though in this full length version, it can be a bit too much for some tastes). I have this on 7" in a very battered sleeve. Now I need to watch Hill Street Blues again, starting right at the beginning I suppose.

Theme From Hill Street Blues