It's really love, dear, I knew it from the start

[austin_dern]

Well, it's not as though I was likely to disapprove of much in the debut of Conan O'Brien's new show. I was one of the nearly three viewers with him in 1993, you know?

I feel very uneasy about the new theme song. I understand their need to rename the band and that Max Weinberg dropped out following massively invasive open-heart surgery, but that doesn't mean I don't fear the change. At least the closing credit music is correct. I'm a little disappointed the opening credits seems to be basically text-graphic games with the names of who's appearing on the show, since his NBC shows pretty reliably had strong graphic design sensibilities and often animation. Although if he's putting a title on to every episode as the first credits seem to suggest that would be a cool silly little extra.

The set is really beautiful; my first impression is it might be his best of all. It's got the warm wood-panel friendliness of his earliest Late Night sets --- not to mention of Johnny Carson's peak-70s-attractive-sets (there were some attractive things in the 70s), with that strong Moon motif that's always run through Conan's sets. That it's a movable Moon is all the more wonderful and ridiculous.

He hadn't reached the first commercial break before announcing that ``Everyone who uses the Internet's a rabbit''. (This was following him making a bit of fun of people on the Internet, and remembering that people on the Internet are what's kept him going since January.) And he gets the first Troff advert on TV that I've noticed. There was a perfunctory Masturbating Bear appearance, which I hope satisfies the fans of that and lets us carry on to less exhausted comic premises. No appearance of his squirrel, though his squirrel's Twitter feed is carrying on.

Trivia: Congress appropriated $150,000 to the surveys of five potential transcontinental railway paths which it ordered in 1853; another $20,000 was later awarded for the explorations, which Secretary of War Jefferson Davis was to complete and report on within ten months. Source: Empire Express: Building The First Transcontinental Railroad, David Haward Bain.

Currently Reading: Forever Barbie: The Unauthorized Biography of A Real Doll, M G Lord. OK, some of the Barbie stuff is just plain weird, and I mean here the doll that grows breasts. I mean ... yeeesh.

Comments

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

I like the new theme music. (Note: if you have any pedantic musicians for readers, they might take exception to your calling a musical piece without a voice component a "song.")

[whiffert.livejournal.com]

Did not Mendelssohn write whole collections of 'Songs Without Words"?

I watched the show, liked it well enough. That Jack White really rocked it out! I had no idea that Conan also played guitar.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

Yes, there is a tradition of "songs without words," but that relies on the idea that, under normal circumstances, a song is vocal. If "song" just means "any piece of music" then calling something a "song without words" doesn't have same same impact..

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I am (almost) always glad to learn more precise distinctions that can be drawn through appropriate word choice. I was thinking in terms of 'theme songs', which does tend to be how the opening music for any show whether there are lyrics (used or unused) gets named; still, the distinction between music, songs, and theme songs is likely worth preserving.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

I was mostly kidding; music geeks will sometimes get quite insistent about not misusing "song," though. I know this because there was a thread about it on the Chronicle forums a while back.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Perhaps you were mostly kidding, but I like being able to draw the distinction too. I started getting fussy about the difference between use and utilize for similar reasons.

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

I didn't know about Max.. wow.
Have not seen the show since it re-started.. on cable, right?

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I was shocked by it too; he hadn't publicized it and apparently only told anyone when rumors started swirling that Max Weinberg was angling for a job with Jay Leno (which we wasn't).

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

I heard this review on NPR on the way to work today.

http://www.tvworthwatching.com/blog/2010/11/for-conan-third-times-not-the.shtml

I thought it was disproportionately negative, though I agree that his opening sketch on the Tonight Show was a lot better than this one.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that review comes off as weirdly negative. It reads like he had much more inflated expectations for the show than I had.

The Tonight Show inaugural sketch was more gleefully silly than those one, although I think this did as well as the Late Night inaugural 'You Better Be As Good As Letterman' sketch in doing a bit about the story behind the show and deflating that topic before the show proper got going.