Customer Reviews

All-Time Top 100 TV Themes

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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).

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.

NOTE: This review is for the product titled: All-Time Top 100 TV Themes [SOUNDTRACK]

Like the title says, this dual-disc CD was not perfect, but is very good. This is based on two fronts:

Theme collection: I think its fair to say that no one person could ever compile a comprehensive list of the top 100 theme songs due to selection preferences/bias. Further, its important to note that this is the best THEME songs, not the best shows.

Technical Audio Quality: Some tracks are studio-quality, others seemingly recorded straight off of a VCR. All of the themes are at least acceptible.

I have no regrets purchasing this CD.

When I was in the 2nd grade my parents bought us an LP recording of theme songs from cartoon and TV shows for children. My other brother said, "What good is the music without the cartoon?" but I loved it. I used to play it over and over, especially if I was feeling sad. Somehow they let me relive the simple pleasure that I received when watching the shows. These were themes from the 50's and early 60's. Since then I have always been on the look out for CD's such as this one.

I choose them more on their selection of themes rather that the quality. Let's face it, a lot of shows that we watched back then did not have great audio quality. Sure, it would be nice to hear something made from a master recording but that't not the way I remember them.

When I listen to older TV theme songs they remind me of where I was at in my life at the time that I watched them, and as with all of us, there were good times and bad. I only watched about a third of the shows on this recording but that is enough for me. It has some more recent themes that I don't have on my other CD's, such as the haunting melody from Six Feet Under and Kelsey Grammer's rendition of Tossed Salad and Scrambled Eggs. It also contains some of my very favorites: Hill Street Blues; Northern Exposure; St. Elsewhere; and who can forget that old favorite, the theme from the Perry Mason show? I am sure that if someone watched television in the last two or three decades they will find at least a few that bring mack memories for them as well.

I would have liked the set better if it contained a sheet with the lyrics or at least some trivial facts about the songs (did you know that the original songs that the themes for the Andy Griffith Show, Leave it to Beaver and Star Trek are based on all had words?). Still, I am happy to have added this CD to my collection.

I have some agreements and some disagreements with some of the reviews I've read about this 2 CD set. OK, about John Forsythe's narration on the Charlie's Angel's theme, I don't know what show "you" were watching, but that narration was at the beginning of every episode of Charlie's Angel's I watched. As for the sound effects... Do you want the original themes or not? Those sounds were part of the original theme whether you like them there or not.
As for the sound quality... Does anyone remember what TV sounded like back in the 60's, 70's and early 80's? It was pretty bad. We had a floor model TV with one big speaker. Back then, No one thought about the sound quality of these recordings for future listening. Some of these themes, Like The Adam's Family, will always sound bad. I don't think that there's any way around the fact that some of these TV themes were just not recorded very well.
Maybe there are some old dusty reel to reel master tapes of the original themes buried in some vault some place, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
I've actually started making my own TV theme collections thanks to Tevo and my computer. You can rent many TV shows on DVD now. You can get fairly good copies of the original themes from these discs.
TV Land released a very nice CD with TV themes on it. It has some original themes that are kinda hard to fine.
Ober all, this isn't such a bad collection. But, if you're hoping for some digital miracle to make those old themes measure up to todays audio standards, forget it. It's not going to happen.
But I will agree that I am really tired of the rerecorded instrumental TV themes being passed off as original recordings. Believe me, we can tell the difference, and we hate them. As one reviewer said, if you can't get the original recording, don't put it on the CD.

This collection is fabulous! My husband and I have really enjoyed listening to it. It brings back so many memories. I gave it to him as a Christmas present and he loves it! I did my research first, because I wanted to make sure these are the originals as heard on TV, and these all are. The quality is not as good as the re-recorded versions, but to me that's okay as long as the recordings are original. It's so neat to hear the original recordings, like The Brady Bunch or Dragnet with all the real sounds in the background. If you watch TV even a little bit, this will bring back so many memories for you. Makes a wonderful gift!!

I love tv themes. Currently in my collection of music I have themes from popular shows from the 50's and up, plus many soundtracks. So far my favorite theme is the Prisoner from the 60's. I'm always looking for more themes because often it's hard to find very high quality recordings or recording done by the orginal artists.

So when I saw this album for sale on Amazon, I gave the samples a few plays and was sold. But after downloading the music I found that these recordings, while done by the original artists, are actually edited versions of the full theme.

For example, The Six Million Dollar Man theme should start where the tv intro starts, but on the album version the theme starts at "Steve Austin astronaut" which is missing over 30 seconds of music. Also the theme from Swat is much longer, not to mention Miami Vice, and so on. Most of these themes are cut down to 1 minute or less, which I think was done to fix so many themes on two discs.

My honest advice, save you money and cherry pick your favorite themes from another album. This is a good collection to get you started but I recommend to buy the full versions elsewhere.

I bought two tv themes CDs, and am enjoying them both. This one has more theme songs I don't recognize (shows I never watched), but it's still fun to listen to!!

This is a great soundtrack. It is enjoyable and fun to listen to. The Best Songs on this cd are all of them