crockett's theme

hey there

an overview, or if you like perusal, of this morning's newspapers and related sites of the net of inter suggests that many people celebrated the coming of this, the new year, in a state of some inebriation. some specific focus on London, look you see, revealed that quite a few gents appeared to be arrested with their strides somewhat lower down their legs than would be normal, with a very sorry looking appearance about their face. i will take it, then, as being the case that Spiros and the boys from his Turkish Bath fraternity got a little out of hand as midnight struck and celebrations commenced.

me? for the most part i ironed. well, changed some bedding too, and indeed successfully commanded the washing machine to do its thing, but my abiding memory of one year closing and another opening was ironing. and, as i ironed, i watched some smart Miami Vice on a portable DVD player thing.

i would suspect that, over the last 12 or so years of doing this blog (perhaps longer), there's more than one rant and rave posted about how awesome the TV series of Miami Vice was and indeed is, as well as similar negative comments about the horrid film version. does that mean i will exercise control in writing praise here? highly unlikely, dear reader.

this particular DVD, a part "best of" but mostly the pilot plus, as i recall, the first two episodes of series 2 shoved together, cost me all of 12p at a shop. yes, i have all the box sets and indeed i even have this collection, albeit with a different cover, but why wouldn't you spring 12p on this rather than go through boxes to find your existing copies?

how much does that translate to for my enthusiastic readers around the world? according to the exchange rates in place right now, if you are in the US of A, that's 18c. if you're in South Africa, that would be R2.74. Australians would be paying 24c of their money for it, presumably with coins that feature emus, kangaroos and other similar beasts of the outback. New Zealanders would have to stump up 26c, with coins featuring whatever it is they put on them. the Japanese would be compelled to shell out 21.33 of their Yen, whilst anyone within the Euro Empire would pay 16c of their Euro cents.

the makers of something like Dallas may well disagree, but many see Miami Vice as the defining TV series of the 80s. for the first two series, at the least. the plots and performances were way ahead of anyone else, and the striking visuals surpassed the quality of most of the cinematography on display at the movies.

enhancing that was, of course, the soundtrack. Jan Hammer was called on to basically provide a cinema quality soundtrack every week, and my word did he deliver.

beyond the iconic theme, my favourite was Crockett's Theme, hence the title of this post. i was thrilled to find the video for it online, and even further thrilled to see that it was of a file size that allowed for it to be posted here.

do i have any sort of special permission to put that here? no, so apologies if it upsets anyone and that. credit, i presume, to the person who threw it out on the net, but mostly nice one Jan Hammer. to add further, or some, legitimacy to me adding the video here, i am happy to point out that you can head to the official Jan Hammer site and buy his awesome music directly off of him. for slightly more than 12p, granted, but it is surely worth every penny, cent, euro or yen spent.

one of my fondest memories is of a 90 minute tape i made of the remix, or if you like extended version, of Crockett's Theme. i made it off of Norman B'stard's copy, although i can't remember if he had the standard 12" vinyl or one of them fancy new CD singles off of it. i may well recreate a variant of that on a blank CD for travels around in the car, dear reader.

a look inside the 12p DVD of Miami Vice that entertained me as i ironed for the last time in 2015? certainly, but it is a sideways look, for blogger and apple appear once again to be at odds about allowing for the correct rotation of pictures.

how will i be spending this, the first day of 2016? keeping warm, mostly. it's cold. also, i expect a lot of it will be focused on fighting off a nasty infection that the rest of my family would seem to have; one that features a sore throat and some throat gland swelling business. but yeah, i might squeeze a bit more cheeky ironing into my day too, we will see how it goes.

for those of you hoping to see, on the basis of my opening paragraph, some images of Spiros with his strides somewhere short of the standard positioning, i am sorry for your disappointment. i have no such pictures, although i have no doubt at all that he will send me such images at some point.



be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!