You can cancel a TV show. You cannot cancel a lifestyle.
This explains why, even though the ABC network sent ”thirtysomething”
to the promised land last spring after a final moment of quality time between Michael and Hope, the trappings of the show linger all around us.
For starters, ”thirtysomething” clothing is coming soon to a department store boutique near you. The line will range from the stylishly baggy pants that looked so upscale on Michael to the little-girl jumpsuits in which Melissa had identity crises. It`s a line infused with rich browns and substantial lavenders.
When ”thirtysomething” clothes were previewed at the recent merchandise licensing show at the Javits Center in New York, a representative acknowledged that it might be a teensy-weensy little problem that the show had been canceled.
But the lifestyle goes on, she added brightly, and response from department stores has been ”very encouraging.”
That calls for a little music, don`t you think? It just so happens you can also dash down to your local music store and buy ”The Soundtrack From thirtysomething,” just released on Geffen Records, the label that also brings us Guns N` Roses.
W.G. (Snuffy) Walden, who co-wrote the ”thirtysomething” music with Stewart Levin, says the music has a life of its own because the show gave it a unique context.
”The show made you look at your own life,” he says. ”It was the kind of show you either loved or hated, and I think a lot of people who shied away from it were just afraid to look at their own lives.
”When the show started, I didn`t have kids. Now I do, and I look at the show and think, `This is my life.` ”
The soundtrack includes 18 cuts, with 15 Walden/Levin instrumentals plus Ray Charles` 1959 version of ”Come Rain or Come Shine,” which was played at Ellyn`s wedding; ”It Must Be Love,” by Rickie Lee Jones; and ”The Water Is Wide,” by Karla Bonoff.
The other titles capsulize pretty neatly what the show was about:
”Melissa and Men,” ”Gary`s Funeral,” ”Michael & Hope`s Baby,”
”Begging for Sex,” ”Life Class” and ”Michael`s Dilemma.”
More Top Picks Vive Pro 2 Headset
”We had a hard time deciding what to leave out,” Walden says. ”We didn`t use much from the first or second years, because that wasn`t as current in people`s minds.
”We had considered doing an album like this after the first year, but we didn`t, and it`s a very different record now, because the show changed. The first couple of years there was more humor, it was more playful. It got more serious as it went along.”
Walden thinks ”thirtysomething” left a number of marks on contemporary culture, including the title term itself, and he suggests the music, too, was groundbreaking.
”Before this, `scoring` was supposed to be invisible,” he says. ”We brought it more upfront-like they later did on `Twin Peaks.` We also used an acoustic sound. You weren`t supposed to do that, but I`d never done scoring before, so I didn`t know any better. Now you hear a lot of that.”
Walden was a pop writer/producer before he was talked into giving the
”thirtysomething” score a try. He liked the whole experience so much, he says, that now he may make scoring a career.
The people involved with ”thirtysomething” became a ”second family,”
he says, and he`d love to join them in a movie or perhaps a later revival of the series. ”But only if the creative elements are right. They ended the show when they did mostly because there was a fear the creativity would fall off.
”We didn`t want to run it up into `fortysomething` just for the money.”