Inching towards academic deadlines at the end of this month, 40×40 has not been getting the attention I would like. However, setting aside such distractions, and reviewing recent posts, one can spot a minor trend in recent entries which is crying out for resolution – that is, songs that primarily emerged from TV watching habits in the early 2000s.
A footnote to an earlier post discussed the incredible run that was RTE 2’s (then Network 2) Monday night comedy lineup; today, a tip-of-the-hat is due to the UK’s Channel 4’s morning setup. The weekday early morning run of that time is legendary: on any given morning you could be watching Cheers, Frasier, Friends (heavily edited for the time slot), and if you missed the school bus, King of Queens or Everybody Loves Raymond. However, hang around until later morning and there might be ER, criminally-underrated procedural Without a Trace, and the sweetest of all early 2000s comedy-dramas: Ed.
Ed remains slightly mythical for having never made it to DVD due to musical rights issues – a trap into which many pre-streaming shows fell.1 A vehicle for future stars Tom Cavanagh and Julie Bowen, the small town aw-shucks-fest mixed schmaltz with belly-laughs, but the soundtrack was a highlight – no more so than the original track for the opening credits: Foo Fighters’ album track, Next Year.
Aged around 13, I knew Nirvana from my older cousin’s cassette tapes,2 but hadn’t yet discovered the Foos; watching Ed led to purchasing There is Nothing Left to Lose and my mind falling out of my ears.3 Yet, in contrast to most of the album, Next Year is a gentle lyric, wending its way through an ambling tune to create an audio landscape that perfectly fit the TV show it was used to introduce. This track and that album were a gateway into a whole world that part of my nostalgia-tinged brain still lives in. Maybe things will change sometime.
Maybe next year.
- Vulture have a good explainer here. A few years ago, some absolute hero ripped the whole lot from what looks like the broadcast tapes from a local affiliate TV station in the States; the internet overlords have never seen fit to action a takedown, and you can watch the entire run on YouTube with 90s-style VHS flicker. Typical of the era, the finale, four seasons in, is a mess, but the joy along the way is worth it. ↩︎
- Like something out of a coming-of-age film, my cousin Seline spent a summer in our house and commandeered my cassette player to blast Nevermind on a daily basis, and her (maybe ten year old?) cousin was absolutely on board. Her most played track was not, as I remember, Smells Like Teen Spirit, but definitely In Bloom. ↩︎
- Dave Grohl’s best album. It’s been self-pastiche ever since; often enjoyable, but still a bit of a parody at times. ↩︎