Cult TV and Film Themes

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Most popular culture fans would agree that 'cult TV and film themes' are good things. But this compilation of 23 such items -- most of them instrumental, and most from adventure/suspense/spy serials -- would be a most idiosyncratic way to collect them. The biggest concern, perhaps, is that not all of them are by any means the actual original themes (and nor are the brief liner notes much help in figuring out which might be original and which might not). The optimal way to execute a project such as this would be to present the original and/or most famous versions, and make clear in the annotation what's what. Instead, it's a hodgepodge of (with just a couple exceptions) 1960s and 1970s versions of themes, most of them licensed from the Sanctuary catalog, and most of them recorded by British easy listening-jazz orchestras. So you get 'Hawaii Five-O,' for instance, by Victor Silvester & His Ballroom Orchestra, 'The Pink Panther' by the Alan Tew Orchestra, and 'M*A*S*H*' by the Tony Hatch & His Orchestra. Plus, bizarrely, you hear the 'Batman' theme as an extract from a live Kinks medley from their 1967 album Live at Kelvin Hall, while 'Fireball XL5' is done by the early-'60s British instrumental rock group the Flee-Rekkers. Too, a number of these themes are going to be far more familiar to British listeners than North American ones (though that's not true of the most famous theme here, 'The Avengers,' thankfully presented in its most renowned version from the original series, as cut by the Laurie Johnson Orchestra). All that said, there's still a good bit of fun to be had through what's here, even if some of the lesser interpretations tend toward the stiffly anonymous. Ron Grainer (known for the Dr. Who theme, which is not here) contributes the snazzy spy tune 'A Man in a Suitcase'; the Barry Gray Orchestra offers goofy surf-ish music with incredibly cheesy organ on 'Joe 90,' as well as a mating of loopy cartoonish sound effects with typically spy-jazz tuneage on 'Captain Scarlet'; and Edwin Astley, father-in-law of Pete Townshend, composed the suave go-go suspense of 'Department S,' presented here by the Cyril Stapleton Orchestra. In the vocal department, there's Gary Miller's enjoyably hokey 'Stingray' (backed by the ever-reliable Barry Gray Orchestra), the same singer also handling the melodramatic Stingray end theme, 'Aqua Marina.'