Customer Reviews

Television's Greatest Hits, Vol. 1: From the 50s and 60s

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I have to admit, I've been hooked on the sound of TV themes ever since I set a tape recorder next to a TV set around 1980 when I was 9. When I heard about Television's Greatest Hits in the mid 80's, I had to go and buy the LP. I still have it today. And I had some of the same complaints that some of the other reviewers have now.... that some of the songs were re-recorded, such as Gilligan's Island,Beverly Hillbillies and Wild Wild West. However, other themes were presented as they were shown on TV.

Especially of interest, were the ENDING credit Themes tacked onto the intro themes in shows like The Flintstones, the Jetsons and the Addams Family. TV Tunes really has neglected the area of ending credit themes on all of their subsequent albums and CDs.

Since this album was produced before a lot of studio technology was commonplace to "clean up" old recordings, a lot of the original recordings on this release do sound pretty thin or fuzzy at times. TV Tunes releases done after this got increasingly better done as time went by.

So, keeping in mind that this was TV Tunes first collection, it's actually not bad, but it could have been a lot better had they used more original soundtrack recordings and attempted to clean up the sound on some of the oldest themes.

If you want the original recordings, don't purchase any volume of Television's Greatest Hits. I've had better luck recording the songs off of my TV with a cassette tape recorder and then dehissing them on my PC. These collections have sterile sounding fake stereo recordings of "The Beverly Hillbillies" and "The Munsters" that just don't sound right to me. If the original recordings don't matter to you, then you may like this CD.

I bought this collection with the naive notion that I would get 65 pieces of nostalgia. Instead, I got 40-plus re-recorded, hollow attempts to bring the originals' spirit alive. The rest were real, but most were the cartoon themes, and some of them ("Flintstones", "Bugs Bunny", "Yogi Bear") sound like they were recorded off a "nostalgic" fifties TV set with a "nostalgic" mono tape recorder. I know for a fact that better recordings of these exist, so why didn't they use them? Only a few of the live action themes were the original versions in decent fidelity ("The Munsters", "The Addams Family", "Mister Ed", Green Acres", "Superman", "The Mod Squad"), with "The Dick Van Dyke Show" sounding as bad as the aforementioned three. I've been swindled!! I heard here that later releases did a better job, but I see no reason why I should plunk down another 17 bucks to get any of them.

Only a handful of the themes on this CD are taken from the original recordings used on the programs. The remainder are arrangements, some on synthesizer. It's like the CDs you find of oldies recorded by the original artists, but are only "new stereo recordings" and not the original recordings you were expecting. I bought this CD specifically for the Captain Kangaroo theme, only to hear it being played on a synthesizer! And at a much faster tempo! Surely a recording of the original song actually used on the show exists somewhere! I have really enjoyed other CDs from TeeVee Tunes and was expecting more. I was very disappointed.

Whether you like any of the Television's Greatest Hits albums really depends on whether you like TV themes or not and what shows you used to like to watch or still watch. I've always liked TV themes and a few of my favorites are on this one. I mainly bought this album because I wanted the Star Trek theme, but it also has some of my other favorites such as The Flintstones and Dennis The Menace.

Listening to these themes gives me a sense of nostalgia when I hear the themes of the shows I used to watch all the time when I was growing up. That's the best thing about the Television's Greatest Hits series if you ask me, but they're also good for other things. The night I bought this album, me and my brother played it in the car while we rode around town, trying to guess which show they were from and laughing at the idea of listening to a few of them like Woody the Woodpecker and The Flintstones in the car. There was a few that I had heard the theme, but didn't know the show. A lot of the themes such as The Lone Ranger's sounded good even though I've never watched the show.

As for the quality of the album, the only drawbacks I found were that some of the themes are not the original, but re-recorded themes that sound like the originals. In fact, I went to Yahoo.com and looked up this album and it said that roughly 33% of the themes on this album are re-recorded versions that sound like the original. Also, since some of these themes are the original and these are some old shows, some of the themes sound bland and distant. Other than that, this is a good album, especially if you want to take a trip back in nostalgia. If you like television themes or like reminiscing every now and then, I would definitely recommend getting this album. This version of Television's Greatest Hits is the only one that suffers from any form of sound quality in any sense. Remote Control and the 70's-80's one are perfect.

Ah, memories! I remember buying this on vinyl when it first came out in 1985. There are a few tracks on the 2 LP version that were left off of the CD version because of time constraints. The LP version was hosted by Don Pardo. The first track on side one was "Peter Gynt-Morning Suite", where Don Pardo signs on and begins the broadcast day. Side one ends with Don Pardo announcing a "Test of the Emergency Broadcast System" and then playing "Duck and Cover", a Civil Defense Department public service announcement telling kids how to survive a nuclear bomb attack. Side two ends with Don Pardo announcing "We are experiencing technical difficulties, please stand by". Side three ends with the "News Medley", which features Don Pardo introducing a "medley" of TV news reporters saying a line or two. Side four ends with Don Pardo announcing the end of the broadcast day and then playing "Our National Anthem". Everything else on the album version (65 TV themes from the '50s and '60s) is the same as on the CD version. How much you enjoy this CD depends on how much nostalgia you feel for old TV shows. Personally, I love this stuff. It must be pointed out that some of these themes have been rerecorded for this album. It's hard to say how many are rerecordings, but to my ears, over half of them seem to be rerecordings. But I honestly don't mind that. They went to such lengths to make the songs sound as much like the originals as possible, that most people probably won't be able to tell the difference. This is a great trip back to the Golden Age of TV theme songs that is a blast for nostalgia buffs like me.

Most of these are re-renditions of the originals. Most people shopping for a CD like this would know right away upon hearing the samples that this CD is not what they're looking for.

Who has produced CDs with ALL ORIGINAL recordings? This CD deserves zero stars.

TELEVISION'S GREATEST HITS VOLUME 1 includes 65 theme songs from various television shows that first aired in the 1950s and 1960s. The cd is divided into four sections: Early Morning Cartoons, Afternoon Adventure, Mid-Morning Sitcoms, and Prime Time Drama. 65 themes might seem like a lot, but there are a lot of tunes that people are familiar with that aren't on this album. And there are a couple of tunes (Fireball XL-5, for instance) that some people probably have never heard about. I really enjoy this cd. We used to play one or two themes from it on the children's radio show I used to produce and I've used it on the webradio show I worked on occasionally. Some of the tracks from some of the older shows sound like they were taped off a record player--for me this isn't really a problem and appealed more to my sense of nostalgia. However, the one major flaw I did have about this album is that about 1/4th to 1/3rd of all the songs aren't the original songs at all, but re-recordings taped in such a way to sound like the originals: the biggest glaring example of this is #15, "The Beverly Hillbillies"--the songs all there, but it's not the original. Besides that, though, TELEVISION'S GREATEST HITS is a great cd to own for anyone who likes tv theme songs, especially from the classic days of tv.

Just as the other low rated reviews say, these are NOT the original recordings. I bought the first 3 volumes in a store thinking they would be original, but was disappointed when I listened. Attention TeeVee Toons: I won't buy any more of your products because you can't be trusted to clearly identify the music as reproductions. Remember the old line, "would you buy a used car from this man?" TeeVee Toons is the BUY HERE, PAY HERE, USED CAR SALESMAN of TV songs!!! Would you buy a song from this man? NO! Run as fast as you can if you want originals!

There are three big problems I have with this whole series of CD's.

The first is that a good number of the themes featured on them are lousy renditions of the orginals, or lousy recordings of the originals. For instance, the "Twilight Zone" theme (a reconstruction) sounds as if the studio orchestra didn't work off a score, but just sort of noodled something together that sounded a little like it. There is also a lot of synthesizer used, which obviously was not part of any recording in the 50's or 60's.

The second problem is that a number of the original themes had voiceovers or singers integrated into the music. Most of the "reconstructions" use people who don't even come close to sounding like the originals, and the overall effect is irritating. They could have been omitted and probably nobody would have objected.

The third, and possibly the biggest, problem I have with these CD's is that the "themes" are often little more than snippets of the originals. For instance, the "McHale's Navy" theme is less than 35 seconds long!

Invest your money elsewhere.