As I keep saying, this stuff isn't mine and may very well be pulled for breach of copyright. You can, of course, go looking on YouTube, or its variants, for other copies. I'm sure you know how.
Slightly earlier than ususual but I have a busy weekend coming up - we are now up to the letter T and a fine, mixed selection I have for you, even if I do say so myself.
I'll start off with some stuff you really do need to see and be part of. Now, I can't dance to save myself, I am a typical dad dancer. However, I do admire others who can.
We head over to the Alps for this next set of three. To the Tirol to keep with the T theme. There now follow three Schuhplattler dances - The Millers' Dance is first up. I come from a family of farmers/millers back in the day (mid 1700's) so this is an apt choice although I can't imagine them dancing like this at the foot of the Sidlaw Hills.
Next up is The Miners' Dance - this one has no connection to my genealogy that I can see unless my Fife forebears were coal miners rather than fisher folk or weavers,
and lastly, The Wood Cutters' Dance - this is my favourite one. Again, no lumberjacks/wood cutters in my family tree (Did you see what I did there?)
Staying in the Tirol region is some more instrumental music. I've liked this stuff from my youth. I've always liked waltzes and similar music. It also fits in well with some early stop motion puppetry from TV - Trumpton, Camberwick Green and Chigley. You might remember the music box at the start when Windy Miller or his neighbours made an appearance.
Another coincidence here - some of my ancestors worked a farm centred on Windy Mill near Tealing in Angus!
The music I refer to is the dance called the Ländler, music written in the same time signature as the waltz (3/4). They do sometimes have Schuhplattler elements, even some yodelling but I'm happy enough listening to them played in the zither or by orchestra. You may have heard them on the BBC's New Year's Day concerts from Vienna in the past. Anyway, here's my pick of the bunch, "Die Romantiker" by Josef Lanner, a contemporary of Josef Strauß the elder:
I may have mentioned elsewhere in this blog that I quite like soundtracks. Well, this flows over into TV theme tunes. I find it eye-opening that back in the 60s when you had a 30 minute TV show, they could knock off 5 minutes for commercials, a couple of minutes for theme intro/outro and still fit a story with a beginning, middle and end in. No need to watch an entire season to find out what was going on, no multiple story arcs. Just good solid screenplay/writing. Anyway, off the soapbox and back to the music-box.
Themes: I'll give you four. Four from potentially hundreds.
My first choice is a piece written by Mike Post from that ground-breaking police TV series Hill Street Blues
Again, if you've read any of this blog you'll be aware that I don't confine myself to one genre of pretty much anything. You won't be surprised, then, to find some foreign TV Themes.
Over to the German speaking world and a TV Cop/Detective show that goes by the title of Die Rosenheim Cops and I'll bet you've never seen/heard the following before - a whistling orchestra! And I only found out today that there are words to this theme as well.
Staying in that neck of the woods if a few hundred miles up the Autobahn I now give you a theme from a program I saw whilst channel jumping in the mid 90s. It involves car crashes aplenty. Sadly, possibly due to Covid-19 lockdowns, the program has been reduced a few a year rather than entire series. It goes by the full title, Alarm für Cobra 11 – Die Autobahnpolizei. A real bug bear of mine is that this fine series is available in more than 40 countries world-wide except here in the UK. From Afghanistan to Vietnam but no UK. Grrr. I would put money on it being because, in the UK we don't like subtitles or dubbing.
Next up is a seies going by the title, "Countdown – Die Jagd beginnt". No links to this as the usual YouTube stuff seems to have other tunes tagged to it. The theme music is a track called "Man Up" by a band called The Blue Van.
We are now at the end, of the T's at least and I'll finish off with an oldie. The usual B&W stuff. From the days when my time was mostly spent playing with not a care in the world. Yet another instrumental and a space theme. The song is Telstar by the Tornados. Yup, I've plumped for this than the other versions out there.
As usual, feel free to add your thoughts, whether you agree with me or not. It would be helpful to know what you think and if you want this to take any particular direction.
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