Keeping the theme…

There are theme songs that are so widely recognized you can start humming them just about anywhere public and someone will know them. Star Wars is a great example, but not too far behind are the opening songs for certain famed television shows such as M.A.S.H. or Cheers. Harry Anderson just passed away recently and what was the first thing that popped into my head? It was not “R.I.P.” (though may he), but those first few slap bass notes of the Night Court theme.

It used to be that every show (for better or worse) had opening music, but these days it seems to have become less fashionable to have one, or if there is one it tends to be truncated after the first few episodes as if  everyone’s impatient to just get it out of the way. Agents of SHIELD remains a current favorite of mine but it’s a good example of a show that has a theme but exiles it to the end credits, while the beginning is a cold open that will eventually flash onto the title card before continuing. Supernatural was the same way. Screw this opening music-and-montage nonsense, let’s get down to business.

Yet on the other hand, prestige television revels in embracing opening sequences and more often than not on my Netflix binges I would find myself watching the beginning credits of, say, Daredevil over and over, whether or not a cold open was involved. Properly composed, such sequences can be a hypnotic gateway into the other world. Or as Cheers so aptly put it, “Wouldn’t you like to get away?”

But yeah, a TV show that chooses to theme has that multimedia luxury of drilling the theme into your head. Zombie Ranch (or technically, the show-within-a-show of Zombie Ranch) has a theme, a theme I actually got some talented individuals to record soon after the comic started, and yet to this day there are long-time readers unaware it even exists. We don’t exactly shove it in the face of new readers, either, it’s buried away in an Extras section which people may not even ever see if they use a reader or feed rather than visiting our site directly.

Also, other than brief bits we’ve never taken the time to show it in the comic; perhaps understandably so given the problems inherent in just trying to represent a musical experience with little note graphics.

But y’know, new arc. New opportunity. So what the heck, it’s about time to give it a try.