This post began innocuously enough a few months ago, when I was visiting my friends Jessi and Eric in Portland. Jessi had gotten into watching Match Game reruns every morning, and she showed me a couple. My first instinct was to say, “What the hell is this?” The orange sets, the public drunkenness, big crabbypuss Charles Nelson Reilly, Brett Sommers as Auntie Mame on bad meds, that second-rate louche lothario Richard Dawson, the insistence during the ’70s to add a ‘7X to the title of any goddamned thing (”Match Gaaaaaaame ‘76!”), contestants like the one Jessi dubbed “Cokehead Guy,” who had a big bushy early Rob Reiner ‘do in very light brown + big ’stache + frosted glasses and a manner that suggested he would have licked his gums forever if there weren’t cameras and a studio audience. But most of all, it was the theme music: ridiculously bumptious wah-wah guitar and horns so peppy they could induce a hallucination. I now go around humming that goddamned theme all the time. And it now leads us to a mini-tribute to TV themes with prominent wah-wah guitars, right after the jump.
We couldn’t find any Three’s Company opening credits on YouTube, but you’ll more than make do with this parody utilizing Hitchcock’s Read Window:
Charlie’s Angels, of course:
The muthaphuckin’ Love Boat:
(Sadly, Fantasy Island, befitting its balmy set and setting, did not utilize wah-wah, though I did once crack my girlfriend up really hard by trying to explain the show to her, including but not limited to a dramatic reading of the show’s Wikipedia entry.)
And finally, The Electric Company. The theme itself isn’t really wah-y, but near the below clip’s end, you can hear some serious pedal action in the interstitial music:
I love, love, love the Match Game. My TiVo is set up so that I have two episodes available for viewing at all times. I basically pay $5 a month to watch that show because GSN is the only network I watch on that particular “digital tier” and The Match Game is the only show that I watch on that network. Worth every penny.
Brent and Charles are my favorite regulars, with Richard Dawson and Fanny Flagg close behind. It was sad, but fitting, when Brett and Charles died within a few months of each other last year. Fanny wrote a little piece in Entertainment Weekly’s year-end issue. I bet they were so much fun to drink/hang out with.
boy, you never hear those funky-ass first few bars of the “three’s company” theme anymore, do you? it usually just picks up right when the vocals come in.
there’s no wah-wah, but my personal favorite theme of the era can be found here -
@westartedthis: On that tip:
@Ned Raggett: TV theme song intros - the new drum breaks.
not tv, but i think this demonstrates the Platonic ideal of wah wah usage in 1970s entertainment: [streetbonersandtvcarnage.com]
@Ned Raggett: That’s Quincy Jones right now.
What about SWAT, which was a #1 for Rhythm Heritage, right? And Policewoman is the jam!
The ultimate wah-wah TV theme:
Wait, no, this one is the one from when I was actually alive. The Children’s Television Workshop bumper and the mini guitar solo at the end are sounds that have defined my life.
How can we not forget the early Alice theme from 1976? It changed over the years.
I must also mention that I now watch the reruns all the time too–I’m definitively hooked. Fred Travalena has to be the most annoying game-show regular I’ve ever encountered.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Richard Dawson is nothing if not a top notch lothario.
@PengIn: seriously. i was so in love with him when i was four.
@G3K: I have tears of nostalgia running down my face, now. Thank you.
Now I’m gonna have that song in my head all day…
“Contact! It’s the season, it’s the moment, that everything happens!”
I am a proud owner of a Vox Wah-Wah pedal…and I use it as a tone control but when I’m felling especially wonderful…the foot goes back and forth and the magical tones of “Waahhhhh” come out…
Pure guilty heaven….
Is it any wonder that it signifies my wanting to go have a night out when that happens?
this whole post reminds me how glad i am that i grew up in the seventies and eighties - one of my earliest memories is from watching Match Game ‘73 (oh yes), and the 3-2-1-Contact theme *always* makes tears stream down my face, and i don’t know if they’re from nostalgia or just pure vital joy. yes i’m serious.
I remember watching Match Game when it was on… right before the Muppets… talk about a mind-fuck. Is it any wonder we X-ers grew up so screwy?