Search - Tee Vee Toons Presents :: All-Time Top 100 TV Themes

Docked a star for sound quality.

Kimba W. Lion | the East Coast | 08/25/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"As a fan of TV themes from way back, it's good to hear that in this compilation TVT Records finally went authentic instead of using the many "re-creations" they have issued in the past.



Now, someone needs to introduce those folks to a little bit of technology I like to call an "equalizer". The "classic" themes on this set sound mostly like someone stuck a microphone up to a TV speaker to record them. (Maybe TVT Records found the tape I made of TV themes back in the 60s?) A LOT could have been done to make the songs sound a whole lot better than they do here. And it wouldn't be inauthentic--that shrillness in so many of the old themes was installed to counteract the effect of land line distribution way back when, not because the producers wanted to pierce your ears from the inside.



A couple of inauthentic edits have been applied, too: The Mary Tyler Moore theme has the MTM logo "meow" spliced in, in place of the final note. Cute, but it doesn't work. The Addams Family theme (which suffers from too much noise reduction, btw) and The Jetsons theme have the beginning and ending themes spliced together.



With the older themes, a lot of times TVT has given us the ending theme only, which is going to sound wrong to a lot of people. You won't hear Rod Serling on the Twilight Zone theme. And I don't know what exactly went wrong with the Flinstones theme, but it ain't right.



Nitpicks? Maybe. But TVT Records wants to splash "All Original" on the cover, so I think it's fair to point out these things.



I won't argue over whether these are truly the 100 greatest TV themes. They definitely got some of the good ones. THE greatest TV theme, in my opinion, isn't here, but you can hear it at my web site (see my sig line, above)."

Another "gem" from TVT

Nik Ranieri | 10/13/2005

(2 out of 5 stars)

"WOW! 100 top themes...and all original! Unfortunately, "all original" by TVT standards, can sometimes mean recorded off the TV. I started out hopeful. I thought that maybe they'd actually contacted the studios and replaced a lot of their previously released material (lame covers or bad quality broadcast versions) with "original" source recordings. Aside from a couple of exceptions, the majority was pretty much what you'd expect from TVT. 100 all-time top TV themes, eh? By the looks of it, the top 100 was more a choice of availability than popularity (21 Jump Street?).

Hey TVT, how about spending some time and money and going after the authentic material. How long must we be subjected to yet another release of the "Charlie's Angels" theme with John Forsythe's narration. And what's up with the "Dynasty" theme? What happened to the main horn section? Instead of removing music tracks from a theme, how about removing all those irritating sound effects, like on "Starsky and Hutch", "The A-Team", "Fantasy Island", "MASH" etc. The Batman theme was cool and was original source material. It was nice of Film Score Monthly to do all the leg work since TVT was too lazy to do it for themselves(this version was included on the 1966 Batman movie Soundtrack released a few years ago).

Bottom line, if there are themes on this CD that you must have, then a bad version is better than no version at all. But for serious TV theme collectors, we'll just have to be satisfied with the rare TV soundtrack release from FSM or other such labels and collect the themes one CD at a time.

In response to the other reviewer,...Mr. Lowe, you don't know, Jack! Sound effects and narration on the themes may be fine when you're getting together with your drunken buddies to play "Name That Tune", but serious collectors of television music would prefer CLEAN versions of the themes."

Big Time Collectors Will Be Somewhat Disappointed

Dean Anderson | New York, New York | 04/06/2010

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Right away, this album has a problem, just because of its title. We can sit and argue about what constitutes a "Top 100 TV Theme," but clearly some of these do not belong: For example, "Merrie Melodies" and "Looney Tunes" weren't TV themes at all; they were music from theatrically released cartoons. Yes, you heard them on television on local kiddie shows, but they weren't designed for a television program, so technically they aren't really TV themes.



We have to get nit-picky here because all true collectors of this type of material are! And if you have previously purchased the series of "Television's Greatest Hits" discs from TVT, you already have the bulk of what's on this 2 CD set. Many of the tracks were lifted directly from those earlier discs, like "Mary Tyler Moore," which added the MTM cat meow to the end of the theme on that earlier disc and kept it here (also note that the MTM theme is still the "how will you make it on your own" version from season one of the series and not the "who can turn the world on with her smile" recording most people remember). Also from those previous discs, "The Jetsons," and "The Addams Family" which combines the Opening and Closing themes of their shows appear again here. And some of these tracks are actually only the closing themes to the programs, like "The Dick Van Dyke Show," "The Honeymooners," "My Three Sons," and "I Love Lucy" among several others. I understand why this happened: announcers talking over the music make it impossible to provide the actual main theme track, but there should be an asterisk next to these selections.



I hate to say it, but there are a couple of "reformulated" tracks on this disc as well, so you are not getting 100 tracks that are the originals as heard on the programs. The "Cagney & Lacey" theme and "Newlywed Game" and "Dating Game" aren't the original tracks that most collectors have been seeking for ages. And what did they do to the "Dynasty" theme?! Also the "Love, American Style" theme is incorrectly credited to The Cowsills here, when it was "The Charles Fox Singers" that performed the version on this album. Nit-picky, I know, I know!



But not to be too critical here: on the good side there are some great original themes that weren't included previously, most notably Dave Grusin's fantastic "St. Elsewhere" track which was incorrectly left off of the previous "Television's Greatest Hits" series.



In conclusion, if you are blessed to be a normal, average person not obsessed about such things as which season's theme you are listening to, and you don't already have the other TVT material, you will definitely get some pleasure from this 2 disc set.

"