{"id":311,"date":"2003-05-06T07:03:44","date_gmt":"2003-05-06T12:03:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/?p=311"},"modified":"2003-05-06T07:03:44","modified_gmt":"2003-05-06T12:03:44","slug":"just_sit_right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/05\/06\/just_sit_right.html","title":{"rendered":"Just sit right back"},"content":{"rendered":"

The gent who composed the theme to Gilligans Island<\/i><\/a> has died. George Wyle (born Bernard Weissman, name changed by the producers) composed the tune for the 1964 CBS series (and, yes, that means we are coming up on the 40th Anniversary of Gilligan’s Island<\/i>).<\/p>\n

Wyle is quoted as once saying, “America doesn’t want great music themes. Just something it can remember.”<\/p>\n

This kind of gets Lileks’ dander up<\/a>, but I think it’s a pretty fair thing to say. Hum a few notes from a Charles Ives tune (I dare you), and you’ll have blank stares. Hum a few notes from Gilligan’s Island <\/i>and you’ll get smiles and laughter and a pick-up session (complete with arguments over which ending to use). Trust me — I’ve seen this.<\/p>\n

My prediction for the ages: the theme to “Gilligan’s Island” will go down through the years with the same stick-to-it-iveness that some of the more famous folk tunes of centuries past have carried. <\/p>\n

Does that make it great? I dunno.<\/p>\n

You could ask the same thing of the show. While it was often mindless, it also carried a lot of social commentary about attutides (toward sex, toward money, toward fame, toward international relations, toward human nature) held by 60s America. And there were some remarkably clever episodes — I keep flashing back to the musical version of Hamlet <\/i>they performed (if you never saw it, never mind why); it’s brilliant, it makes use of some great (there’s that word again) music, and it probably served a lot of folks better at remembering Shakespeare’s play than their high school English class ever did.<\/p>\n

So here’s to you, George Wylie. It may not have been “great,” but it sure was memorable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The gent who composed the theme to Gilligans Island has died. George Wyle (born Bernard Weissman, name changed by the producers) composed the tune for the 1964 CBS series (and,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":130974,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/07\/03\/composed-by-johnny-williams.html","url_meta":{"origin":311,"position":0},"title":"Composed by "Johnny Williams"","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 3-Jul-16 12:05pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Before he was doing a lot of Lucas and Spielberg movie themes, he was doing a lot of Irwin Allen TV themes, along with a lot of others. The man is associated with summer blockbusters, but he's done a lot besides that. [http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0002354\/] Originally shared by +Scott Randel: While I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":40818,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/01\/17\/the-professor-finally-gets-off-the-island.html","url_meta":{"origin":311,"position":1},"title":"The Professor finally gets off the Island","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 17-Jan-14 9:29am","format":false,"excerpt":"For probably obvious reasons, the Professor was always my favorite character on \"Gilligan's Island\" -- smart, polymath, absent-minded, distractable, constantly vying against stupidity (while often showing it himself), and making radios out of coconuts and palm fronds long before MacGuyver ever came along.Farewell, Mr. Johnson -- I enjoyed your stay.(h\/t\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":41949,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/11\/social-media-as-gilligans-island-characters.html","url_meta":{"origin":311,"position":2},"title":"Social media as Gilligan's Island characters","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 11-May-14 1:10am","format":false,"excerpt":"Actually ... pretty accurate. And I always did love the Professor ...(h\/t +Scott Randel, via\u00a0http:\/\/cheezburger.com\/8174923008)\ufeff View this post on Google+","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/gilligan%2Bsocial%2Bmedia.jpg.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8688,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/09\/06\/the_mate_was_a.html","url_meta":{"origin":311,"position":3},"title":"The mate was a mighty sailin’ man …","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 6-Sep-05 3:42pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Not many people go from being one popular stereotyped character to another, but Bob Denver did, doing the segue from Maynard G. Krebs on Dobie Gillis to the ever-bumbling naif...","rel":"","context":"In "TV"","block_context":{"text":"TV","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/media-tv"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6446,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/09\/01\/howelling_mad.html","url_meta":{"origin":311,"position":4},"title":"Howelling Mad","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 1-Sep-04 9:17am","format":false,"excerpt":"An entertaining (and, so far as I can tell, pretty reasonable) analysis of The Monetary Economics of Thurston Howell III, which answers the immortal question, \"Why the hell do any...","rel":"","context":"In "Media & Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Media & Culture","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media"},"img":{"alt_text":"howell.gif","src":"\/blog\/images\/howell.gif","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4813,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/12\/30\/radioactive_see.html","url_meta":{"origin":311,"position":5},"title":"Radioactive Seeds","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 30-Dec-03 10:25am","format":false,"excerpt":"(I started thinking about terrorism, then the Farmers Almanac, then flashed on an old Gilligan's Island episode. Sorry.) From all quarters, Left, Right, and Center, comes general ridicule for the...","rel":"","context":"In "Homeland Security"","block_context":{"text":"Homeland Security","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/homeland-security"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}