I'm looking for a bit of comfort here!

I posted this piece on November 24 last year. I re-post it now as a tribute to Don Cornelius, who died, apparently by his own hand, at the age of 75 today, February 1. Don Cornelius was the father of my favourite sub-genre of music, early 1970s soul. With this, I salute him. If you say Soul Train , Americans of a certain generation and fans of soul and funk anywhere will think of funky [...]

If you say Soul Train , Americans of a certain generation and fans of soul and funk anywhere will think of funky dancers with big 'fros and hot threads, Don Cornelius' flamboyantly fashionable suits and baritone voice, the animated train, hair care products ads, scrambleboards, awkward audience questions, cool catchphrases and great music. You could bet your last dollar, it was gonna be a stone gas, honey. Soul Train 's cultural impact was tremendous. The first nationally syndicated black music show, it was owned by a black man (presenter Cornelius), staffed mostly by black people, [...]
Download Unouomedude's covers of the themes from Daria, Pepper Ann, Malcolm in the Middle, and more!

There aren't many sitcoms about families on American TV anymore. It's not like it was in the 1980s. Leaving aside the bizarre living arrangements of the dreadful Full House (for which Bob Saget has made ample reparations lately), the nuclear family or variations thereof ruled the ratings. There were Family Ties (hippie parents vs Reaganite kids), Growing Pains (vaguely creepy dad vs a bunch of kids nobody can really remember), and Who's The Boss (Tony Danza vs humour), and a TV series starring Jason Bateman whose character's mother had died. Whatever it [...]

Few TV shows ever have so accurately observed the condition of the suburban teenager as The Wonder Years did. One may regard the series, which ran for six seasons (from January 1988 to May 1993), as an exercise in nostalgia. Coming into the middle of a revival that celebrated the 1960s and the beginning of the '70s, it benefited from fortuitous timing, but as a story of growing up as told by an adult man, the timeframe made perfect sense. Some may accuse the show of [...]

We've seen the TV shows, but how well do we remember their themes? Here are twenty intros to TV themes fromUS shows that were internationally syndicated. I know that all of them were shown on South African TV, and most, if not all, on German TV as well. The oldest goes back to the 1950s, but most of them come from the 1970s-'90s. Each is 5-7 seconds in length. The answers will be posted in the comments section by Thursday (so please don't post your answers). If the pesky number 19 bugs [...]
I couldn't find the name of this singer.
Lloyd Cole first made a name for himself in 1984 with the Commotions, the British band he founded in Scotland before relocating to New York City four years later. Since, he has released records both as a solo artist and with the Negatives. Now based in western Massachusetts, Cole recently formed the Small Ensemble. The [...]

"What, the show for kids?" my colleague, the one with an extravagant collection of adidas tracksuit jackets, replied when I asked if she watched Glee . It's a regular prejudice to confuse Glee with High School Musical , and therefore to presume that the interpretations of the songs covered on Glee must be intrinsically inferior to their originals. The former presumption can be ascribed to benign ignorance; the latter claim can be made only by people who hate music. Fact is, in many cases the Glee versions are equal to their originals, [...]

It is difficult to reconcile the notion that the quite wonderful sitcom The Big Bang Theory comes from the same people who inflict upon the viewing public the hilarity-bereft smugfest that is Two And A Half Men . Both are Chuck Lorre shows, as was the utterly appalling Dharma And Greg , the slightly more tolerable Grace Under Fire (the title of which unforgivably punned on the protagonist's name), and the mostly pretty smart Cybill , which featured the wonderful Christine Baranski, who in turn has a most welcome recurring guest spot on [...]

Nah, I ain't joining in the cartoon facebook thing going on, don't need to - I hate kids innit, I joke. It's all a bit of fun really and got me thinking about some of my favourite cartoons and how some of them have aged really well, not only as something to shut you up as a kid on a Saturday morning to give your parents an extra ten minutes sleep but as really clever and interesting television. Shuki Levy may not be a household name (despite having sold 14 [...]

If you are of an age and a class and a space with me, then we probably share similar memories of a Saturday morning - eating big bowls of breakfast cereal and watching cartoons, like Scooby-Doo (the original, not any of the later, lesser incarnations), Johnny Quest , and... Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids . You'll have some fun now... As Time Out Chicago suggests, for [...]
Free time has been scarce for me as of late and the amount of records I don't have time to check out continues to grow. But there was one album that nagged the hell out of me because I knew it would be good and didn't want to forget about it. It started with an [...]

Ahahaha The Smoggies Intro TV Theme

Entertainment Tonight theme song What actually goes on inside my head?.. Well, i like how this show always peaks my interest at whatever do-nothing time it's shown, only to find it with barely an interesting story on offer, packed with non-news stories on non-celebrities like octomum, a Jackson brother, or Anna Nicole Smith's whoever. Is it suffering a somewhat similar redundance to the internet as print media? Why is it still on air? For saps who lie on their couches at 2pm or whenever, [...]
This month's list consists of fourteen songs that clock at about two minutes or less...nuggets of ear-delicious goodness ranging from TV and theme park themes to monologues to mellow album closers. Enjoy! 57.5 BARS by Call Florence Pow I'd like to nominate this song as the theme song for this month's playlist theme. I found this song years ago. I don't remember how I found about these guys, but it's most self-explantory 1:41 of power pop you'll ever find. The lyrics are about as straight-forward as you can get [...]
The Ballad of G.I. Joe from Olivia Wilde So surfing around today, I stumbled across a previously uncharted blog on my scope, Imageyenation , which to my surprise is home-based about ten minutes from where I live. On it, I found the absolute funniest video I've seen in a LONG time (the one above, which you might have guessed). I watched it back to back three times in a row. Even if you never played with G.I. Joe dolls....errrr....I mean, action figures, [...]