Thursday, October 21, 2010
Fanfare for the common man, and his boat
Big ups to the English Premier League media wonks for yoinking Kasabian's 'Fire' as their theme for their world-feed matchday and highlights coverage for season 2010/11, a fair step up in sophistication and atmospherics from the fairly asinine guitar-pop anthem they've been running for the past couple of years, or the awful Champions League Lite hymn that preceded it. Now I'm not what the great Roy Slaven might refer to as a 'Kasabian freak-out type' but Fire is a damn catchy wee tune and fits the Prem very elegantly. As does the remixed bit used with the very cool club-crest morphing animation for the preview/review shows.
Which gets us to what more ambitious souls than I might term the point of today's dribble. Great sports TV themes... and how they're usually recycled, borrowed or thefted from somewhere else. Arguably the greatest of them all, the Channel 9 Wide World of Sports cricket theme (arguably because I'm arguing it here, now), actually first saw the light of day on Strayan TV as the theme to Bluey - the Lucky Grills fat sweaty copper show of the '70s, revoiced as Bargearse by the D-Gen during series 2 of the Late Show. Emerson, Lake and Palmer's hoary old standby Fanfare For The Common Man, here being performed in a suitably deserted Montreal Olympic stadium (for the record, Montreal have only very recently finished paying off the debt for those games - anyone really surprised NSW is still deep in financial shit?) is probably remembered by most Antipodeans primarily as being Channel 7's go-to anthem for all their sports coverage through much of the '90s, everything from AFL football to the Bathurst 1000. Although I'd argue that song found its finest and ultimate calling as the theme song to one of the greatest pieces of regional television ever made, Chris Conroy's World of Boats.
For those who didn't grow up within VHF range of the Gold Coast or Northern Rivers, Chris Conroy's World of Boats involved Chris Conroy, and a world of boats, which he borrowed from his mates' local marine dealerships and filmed flogging the Jesus out of up and down the channels, canals and broadwaters of the Goldie. Like a cross between Russell Coight and the first series of Top Gear Australia on SBS, except with even lower production values and unimaginable levels of unwatchability. '80s televisual gold, people.
Still, it could be worse. You could be watching Monday Night Football. Where Hank Williams Jr has been recycling the same cheese-in-a-can (with new, cheesier lyrics each week) since the late '80s, just without the same sense of ironic distance that makes you look back on the old cricket anthems with nostalgia. Still, Mr Williams has a point. Are you ready for some football??... Erm, yeah, sure. Just so long as the Poms handle the music. And the football.
The Doctor is OUT.
PS Chris Conroy lives!!! That's 23 years of self-produced televisual gold to you, buddy. Kudos.
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8 comments:
i remember that show!
Nice one, Doc! Chris Conroy and his World of Boats made it well south of the Northern Rivers to the thriving metropolis of Newcastle back in my day. By my recollection, it was the fanfare that heralded the end of the exciting world of Saturday morning cartoons, and the start of the boring shite.
It surely must have won some award for the most misleading theme to any TV show - that fanfare, full of excitement, anticipation, seemed to herald something Important, Special, Something BIG IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN.... (DUM dum, DUM dum, DUM dum, DUM)... ohhhh, it's just a TV show... about boats. siiiiiggh... switch off.
Ah, it warms the cockles of the heart to see I was the only one who (a) remembered the venerable Mr C. Conroy's Haines Hunter plugging efforts and (b) recognised it as the Beginning of the End for watchable TV of a Saturday morning. So it clearly made it as far south as NBN3 then Timmo. Looks like it might have been syndicated across the land, quite possibly.
Don't remember World of Boats, sadly.
Although I heard the Channel Nine cricket theme was from the musical Camelot, or something like that.
Also, I remember being thrilled at some point in the mid-90s when I heard Channel Seven using the main theme from Robin Hood-Prince of Thieves for the AFl grand final.
In 2001, during the Stanley Cup Finals between my New Jersey Devils and the Colorado Avalanche, the network that hosted them kept using The Callings "I'll Go Wherever You May Go." Not a bad song, except whenever it built up to the crescendo they would show video clips of the Av's captain hoisting the Stanley Cup in front of a crowd of 10's of thousands in front of Denver's city hall back in 1996, the previous time they won it. Well, Colorado ended up beating the Devils that year, so whenever I hear that song, I associate it with that loss, and I just want to punch something.
I recall NBC overplaying "Bittersweet Symphony" during the 1998 Winter Olympics from Nagano Japan quite a bit. That song, played over images of athletes training and sweating hard.
One of the sports themes I remember when I was growing up back inna '70s was for ABC's (our ABC, not Australia's) pro golf coverage:
Love's Theme, by Barry White's Love Unlimited Orchestra.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBlj9EZFWMs
Kind of pastoral and laid back. Perfect for golf.
Even now, when I hear this, I think of watching Nicholas, Palmer, Casper, Irwin, etc. hitting the links.
Oops-that should be Nicklaus!
Back in the 80's Channel Seven used to show Rugby League at 7.30 p.m. each Sunday with Rex Mossop as the host and commentator. The intro theme was "Shaft".
Dunno about the boat bloke on the Goldie. Surely Howard and Ruddock would have had him in a detention centre years ago.
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