Badmovies.org Forum

I was looking to listen to some old tv theme songs and found this site which will show the whole intro to the show

RetroJunk (http://www.retrojunk.com/)

They also have a great collection of commercials and a few movie trailers..seperated by the past 3 decades.

I guess i should be mildly embarassed that when the Diff'rent Strokes tv theme came on i could remember every single word...even the hum at the end.

But i'm not.

I just borrowed a 'Cult TV and movies' theme cd from the library with songs like the Thunderbirds theme, Avengers, Hawaii 5O, Ironside and such.  It's pretty funky some of the theme songs, though most of them are instrumental so I guess I'm not singing along but just tapping softly along with it all!

Whilst some new TV shows have some good theme songs, the majority are pretty bad.  Whilst 'back in the day' even if the themes were bad, looking back on them now is pretty fun, especially if they are terrible theme songs.

Dean - here's something funny I just thought about. My brother made his own collection of music for his wedding reception. Towards the end of the evening I started hearing theme songs from tv shows like the Jeffersons and Hawaii 5-O. I guess he thought it was funny. Some guy from the netherlands or something was there and thought it was some weird american tradition to play that music...lol

Yeah the 70's pushed out quite a few catchy non-vocal theme songs. It's a dead art if you ask me, most of the theme songs today are crap. You can barely hum stuff like th Simpsons. Ask someone to hum the theme to their favorite current show, like ER and see what reaction you get. Back in the old days i loved it when a tv show came on so i could hear the theme song or sing along with it.

Somewhere in th late 80's i noticed thi was a dying art, shows like Family Ties seemed to be the last ones that actually had a theme with words.  You could name most any show from the 70's or 80's or even the 60's and 50's and i could take a few seconds and sing it. Name a bunch of tv shows on currently and i probably couldn't remember one of them.

I was just thinking of abot making a topic about Retro Junk.

It's-

one-

of -

the-

greatest-

web-

sites-

EVER!!!!!

It brings back so many memories, and all the articals are spot on in the retro/nostagic department.

I wonder which person from here made that site.
Go to this page (http://www.retrojunk.com/details_articles/225/).

Scroll all the way down to just above the user comments and right below the Vanilla Ice lyrics.
There's a reference to badmovies.org.



Post Edited (09-09-05 06:41)

Ya, Andrew!

Did you guys ever conciter....that the lyrics to FIREBALL XL-5, were the words of a love song?
Even as a kid watching it, i thought "Weird!"
Who okeyd that?

Funny, I was just thinking about TV themes. Been singing Rowan to sleep quite a lot, and just singing whatever fits the bill (folk songs, mellow 70s stuff). Anyway, I've been finding myself singing a nice, gentle tune, definitely a lullaby, with lyrics about dreams and reality, discovering yourself, discovering new worlds, the future, etc. Ideal for a baby. Just listen to the last verse:

Far beyond the world I've known,
far beyond this time,
What kind of world am I going to find?
Will it be real or just all in my mind?
What am I, who am I, what will I be?
Where am I going,
and what will I see?

My wife heard me singing this, and said "That's lovely, what is it?"

"The theme from Buck Rogers."

Absolute silence. I don't think she expected that, but she couldn't deny that it worked. Of course, a couple of hours of sleep is a far cry from 500 years :)

Mind you, it was Steve Miller's 'Fly Like an Eagle' that got the little one to sleep last night.

A couple of times, I've heard Lori singing 'One Tin Soldier' to Rowan, so people in glass houses and all that. When it comes to has-been actors of the 70s, I'll take Gil Gerard over Tom Laughlin any day. I don't think my wife has seen Billy Jack, however. I wonder if it would spoil the song for her.



Post Edited (09-09-05 11:45)

Years ago I bought a CD that I still have called TELEVISIONS GREATEST HITS: 65 TV Themes from the 50's and 60's. It's all great stuff and everyone I've played it for loves it. Here are just a few of my favorites from the CD:

Petticoat Junction
Green Acres
The Beverly Hillbillies
Mr. Ed
The Munsters
The Adams Family
My Three Sons
Leave It To Beaver
Denise the Menace
Dobie Gillis
Dick Van Dyke
Gilligans Island
McHales Navy
I Dream of Jeanie
I Love Lucy
The Andy Griffith Show
Star Trek
Lost In Space
The Twilight Zone
Superman
The Rifleman
Bananza
Branded
F-Troop
Batman
Flipper
The Wild Wild West
Get Smart
Hawaii Five-O
The Modsquad
Howdy Doody
Felix the Cat
Magilla Gorilla
The Jetsons

And many more including Fireball XL-5

Here's a link

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000000GOI/102-3295290-4317726?v=glance&s=music&vi=samples#disc_1



Post Edited (09-09-05 22:13)

Hey check out this commercial with William Shatner!
Commodore (http://www.retrojunk.com/details_commercial/57/)

For under $300!

That thing would go for about 50 cents at a garage sale these days.



Post Edited (09-10-05 01:20)

Showing my age.  I had a VIC-20 when I was a teenager and then upgraded to a Commodore 64.   Ahh, the technology!

My first computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000 (North American release of the ZX81). I upgraded to a TRS-80 CoCo 2.

The first computer I ever owned was a TI-99/4A by Texas Instruments.

Somewhere around here I still have a clone of the Sinclair ZX81.

My first was the Timex Sinclair also. I then upgraded to the Vic-20 complete with casette drive! I actually still have this whole system boxed up and stored in a closet. I just can't bring myself to get rid of it. Also have my old Intellivision and over 50 game cartridges for it. Oh the memories.

You know, there may be a collector out there who would pay money for old systems like the ones mentioned.  I guess Retro is back in fashion: I saw these old LCD handheld games at a collectibles store the other day followed by an advertisement requesting more.  I guess it's like original Star Wars figures: they are worth a bit if you have the right ones and they are in good condition.  Not many other toys would have the same high resale value, especially this long after.  That's why I'm such a horder of things I guess.

Best TV Theme Song?

Barney Miller.

Though Hiawii Five-O comes in a close second.

Susan, have you noticed that a lot of contemporary shows don't even bother with the theme song anymore?  They have a few notes to 'signify' the commercial is over, and that's about it.  Right into the show, with credits just popping up.

My computer history:

1st: a plug-in cartridge for the Atari 2600; it had 64 BYTES of memory, but one could actually program some basic games with it.  The coolest program I wrote for it put a 'clock' on the tv.  That was hard to do in 64 bytes.  The language was a basic Assembly Language using a register stack.

2nd: a TRS-80 Model I; bought it from my high school physics teacher.  It had a Z-80 and 4 k of memory.  No disks, just the cassette tape.  I wrote some programs for my Dad to use for a small business he was operating part-time.

Got a Timex Sinclair 1000 for Christmas in there somewhere, along with the 16 k Ram Pack.  Movin On Up.

3rd: a TRS-80 Model III, technically purchased by my Dad for his business stuff.

4th: A TRS-80 Coco; Best. Home. Computer. Ever...for years at least.  The M6809 rocked and rolled.  When I was in college, I wrote my own assembly language printer driver for it so I could dump graphics of molecular orbitals to my Dad's dot matrix printer (some Panasonic model); really impressed my P.Chem. teacher.  Also used this one to 'test out' of having to take a "Basic Computer Literacy" course the university started requiring my junior or senior year; I had to write a bunch of code to satisfy the dude in the CS department, which took me about 6 hours.

My sister had an Atari in here somewhere, too.  I wrote some programs for her as well.

5th: IBM-PC; Dad hated giving up that CoCo (we kept it for years...but I wish I still had it), but he really needed some software that was easier to get for the PC.  Oh well.

From there, it followed a basic course: 286, 486, etc.  And now it's a cluster of Athlon 64 X2's.  Oh how times have changed.

I will always remember that CoCo, the 6809 instruction set with it's cool MUL (multiply) instruction (that the Z-80's lacked...you had to manually do a looped addition) and SIX (count 'em, SIX) levels of indirect addressing.  That was a sweet little machine for it's day.

(Incidentally, the 6809 was the fore-bearer of the 68000 used in the first Apple McIntoshes and is basically the same chip that is STILL USED TODAY in TI graphing calculators like the TI-90; what other 1980-ish technology is still around and STILL PRODUCTIVE??).

Thanks for the walk down memory lane; I relish every chance I get to remember that CoCo.

MORE COOL 80'S COMMERCIALS (http://www.x-entertainment.com/downloads/)

I think this site has been posted on here before....I forget.



Post Edited (09-12-05 10:28)

The original hardware is somewhat collectible, depending on the rarity, but the old game software is turning into a heck of a bargain for people who just want to play the games, and the manufacturers are taking advantage. Aside from all of the emulators, and the people who are essentially giving away the old ROMs, it's gotten to the point where I recently got a CD of 80 classic Atari arcade and console games, with a nice front end, photos, company history, old manuals, ad flyers and all kinds of good stuff - in a box of cereal! That just blows me away. Remember when a good Atari cartridge would cost you upwards of 40 or 50 bucks, in 1982 dollars?

And I thought I was doing well after the game crash, when I was buying them for $2.99 at K-Mart.

Another thing I'm really interested in is the new Atari Flashback 2 console that is basically a replica of the 2600, with 40 built-in games, for around $30US. Anybody know when that's hitting stores?

andy, why by the new "flashback" when you can get the real thing for next to nothing?

I have a real 2600, and a pile of cartridges. But for the price tag, one little console with the games built in would be a nice neat little package to have in front of the TV. I'd probably end up hooking them both up anyway, since I've got games that aren't on the flashback, and it has quite a few games I don't have on cartridges.

Of course, I'll probably add an Atari emulator and a full set of ROMs to the arcade cabinet (now on the back burner), but 2600 games really should be played on a TV if you want the full nostalgia effect.

Yars Revenge baby!

ulthar wrote:

> Best TV Theme Song?
>
> Barney Miller.
>
> Though Hiawii Five-O comes in a close second.

I'd put the themes for "Greatest American Hero" and "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" in my top five.

Texdar wrote:

> Showing my age.  I had a VIC-20 when I was a teenager and then
> upgraded to a Commodore 64.   Ahh, the technology!

Me too. I was so jealous when my friend got an Amiga, with 640 K!!!  That sucker was screaming fast!

THIS SITE (http://www.midwaygames.com/page/ClassicGames.html) lets you play several old games from Midway.

Robotron 2084....Yes!



Post Edited (09-14-05 08:27)

ASHTHECAT wrote:

> THIS
> SITE (http://www.midwaygames.com/page/ClassicGames.html) lets you play several old games from Midway.
>
> Robotron 2084....Yes!
>

>
> Post Edited (09-14-05 08:27)


Robotron 2084... YES!!! [the capital letters imply I like it more than you]

But yes, Robotron was one of the first games we got on our family's first computer, the Apple Mac IIE [I think that's right: it's been a while] in all its green, black and white screened glory!  God I loved that thing!

That sites pretty 'rad' Ash, Spyhunter being my particular favourite out of the lot of them.

Damn they got Tapper!

I've wanted to play that for a while I mean they don't make pointless games like they use to.

speaking of retro i was talking to a friend about hypercolor shirts of the 80's and how they changed colors, that after washing they didn't work but i vividly remember the horror of having to put one on after you got good and sweaty after gym class. Found this amusing article

Hypercolor Shirts (http://www.weaintcool.com/Articles/hypercolor.html)

I had completely forgot about hyper-colour shirts.  Those things were crazy!!!  Ah memories...