One of the pioneers of tv music and theme songs has died - Earle Hagen. Hagen is best known for the insipid (or “iconic”, if you’re so inclined) goober theme for The Andy Griffith Show. Everybody knows this one. It’s finger poppin’ time.

Yet, Hagen left a large body of work ranging far afield from that little whistler. Take I Spy for instance. Kind of interesting even now. Give it a listen, Do TV shows even have theme music today? God, I don’t know - but I can’t think of any. Not that I watch much straight tv anyway. The interesting music taking place on tv these days (at least that interests me) is the pop music that is integrated into the series. Think Sopranos, which did some great stuff. And I recently viewed a couple episodes of Californication which did the same thing and had some interesting riffs.

But the music that Hagen wrote? They just don’t write ‘em like that anymore. In some cases, that’s a good thing,