Among the great TV theme songs of history, The Jeffersons ('Movin on Up') stands head and shoulders above the rest, as does the show itself, for that matter. Some of my earliest, and most pleasant, memories involve watching this 70s hit from my mother's lap, laughing when she did without knowing why.
Ground-breaking in its day, The Jeffersons portrayed a successful African American family whose patriarch was a loud-mouthed 'black Archie Bunker'. Much like All in the Family, from which it spun off, The Jeffersons was a smart and funny examination of our prejudices, ever optimistic that finding humor in them might lead to healing. It was very of the times, admittedly a bit precious by today's standards (although that fact is perhaps a whole other blog post), but the theme song, sung by Ja'Net Dubois, who played Willona on Good Times (another juggernaut from the Norman Lear era of television) is pretty bad ass for any generation. Loud and bombastic, on the far side of sassy, exuding as much jubilation as any church choir in its throes, it was born in an age when theme songs not only established the premise of their show, but geared the viewer up for what was to come every week, kind of like the person who comes on stage and warms up the audience before the star steps out.
Not only do they not write 'em like this anymore, they don't write 'em at ALL anymore, sadly. Television theme songs have been deemed an unnecessary interruption of viable ad space, and with very few exceptions, they're either non-existent or trimmed way down, sometimes to a three-second banner (a la Frasier).
As to where I actually found a copy of this song: back in the infancy of Napster, when it was still technically legal, if not entirely ethical, I got my hands on every TV theme I could think of, the actual broadcast versions, and to this day, periodically take a trip down memory lane with all of them.
The Jeffersons theme remains the only one worth jammin' out to, certainly the only one worth bringing on a road trip.
"Fish don't fry in the kitchen/beans don't burn on the grill..."
#24) "Under Pressure" by Queen - This song is one of those rare gems whose whole is worth more than the sum of its parts, and that's no small feat, considering the parts include Freddie Mercury and David Bowie. Musically tight and emotionally dramatic without ever going over the top (even when Mercury's voice soars into the stratosphere), Under Pressure ranks in my Top 10 greatest songs of all time, sporting one of the greatest lines of all time, as well:
"Love dares you to care for the people on the edge of the night."
#25) "The Dope Show" by Marilyn Manson - Once at work a few years ago, this song played on the radio, and a co-worker who had a past as a stripper, said proudly, "This was one of the songs I used to dance to!"
On the surface it makes sense, but it's just a little too on the nose. If I could choose, I'd rather watch a woman dance to something a little more off-beat ... maybe The Jeffersons theme? (Just kidding...er, sort of...;-). And I wonder now, as I did then, if this girl knew exactly what The Dope Show is about, the indictment it serves our society.
Does she need to know? Not necessarily. There's an undeniable greasiness to this song that lends itself well to the manufacture of sexual tension. But if you're going to co-opt someone else's art as a medium in your art, even (or especially) for something as elemental as stripping, you ought to know what you're getting yourself into. The mediums should sync up a little.
Yes, sometimes I do wonder if I over-think things...
"They love you when you're on all the covers/when you're not, they love another..."
#26) "Against the Wind" by Bob Seger - This isn't Seger's greatest song, nor my favorite in his library, but for better or worse, I'm at the right age for it; I get this song in a way I couldn't have when I was 19 and far more moved by it than I am now. It's the ideal song with which to drive parallel to an unending horizon at a high rate of speed and really think about your life.
And somewhat to that point, interesting side note: since hearing it for the first time when I was very young, probably age 10 or 11, Against the Wind has always evoked a very specific image in my mind. This image was (re)created, virtually identically, in the movie Forrest Gump. It happens at the end of the running scene. Gump is making his way along the exact same shoe-string road, through the exact same featureless valley with the very same buttes in the background that, for whatever reason, I imagined as a kid whenever this song played.
And what do you know? Against the Wind is the song that's playing in the scene.
 |
| LIVE FROM MY HEAD - This scene, a YouTube still frame of the movie Forrest Gump at the end of Gump's '3 years, 2 months, 14 days and 16 hours' of running, depicts a tableau startlingly similar to that which I always imagined as a kid when I heard Bob Seger's Against the Wind, right down to the hue of the daylight. |
Coincidence? Of course; how could it not be? But the similarity was uncanny enough for me to actually gasp out loud when I saw the movie for the first time. I mean, seriously, I always pictured that very road, and from that vantage point.
To be honest, I like thinking the director had the same vision for the song as I did; that, without realizing it, he or she placed that song in that shot in the film for the same reason I would have. I prefer to think of the otherwise chance occurrence as evidence that Henry Longfellow was right: music is, in various ways, the 'universal language of mankind.'
Has it really been 20 years since Forrest Gump was released?
"I've got so much more to think about/deadlines and commitments/what to leave in, what to leave out..."
