Monday, January 22, 2001

This is my song

In interview after interview during the final weeks of his presidency, Bill Clinton said that one of the things he'd most miss about being the leader of the free world was that, as a private citizen, a band would no longer play when he entered a room.

I'll admit that I've always been fascinated by the ceremony of affairs of state and, like him or not, it's pretty stirring when the President of the United States arrives at a dinner or the Kennedy Center and the band plays "Hail to the Chief". Of course, I also tear up a little bit when Bob Hope hits the stage and the refrain of "Thanks for the Memory" swells from the orchestra.

I guess what's really cool is that these people -- the president and Bob Hope, I mean -- have a theme song, a particular leitmotif associated with them. You hear the music, and you know who's coming. Lesser celebrities and notables have them, too. Consider poor Florence Henderson or Bob Denver. Until the day they die, whenever they appear on Letterman or Leno, the house band is gonna launch into the theme music from The Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island.

Now the likelihood that I'll ever become president and hear "Hail to the Chief" whenever I attend dinner is...well, it's increasingly unlikely. But Bill Clinton got me thinking, "What if I could choose a theme song?" What if I could select a piece of music that would be played, for the next four or eight years, whenever I attended a public gathering, event or state funeral? With the whole catalog of popular, classical, martial and other music at my disposal, what would I choose?

I've pretty much settled on "Dead Man's Party" by Oingo Boingo.

First of all, it begins with that brief bit of guitar that says, "A really rockin' dude is headed this way!" Secondly, even after 15 years, it remains my favorite song by Danny Elfman (and that's including the theme from The Simpsons,/i>, so that's saying something) and I don't think I'd tire of hearing it repeatedly. Thirdly -- and perhaps most importantly -- it was featured in the rollicking 1986 Rodney Dangerfield film Back to School, so it has a positive association with two of the most crucial contributors to my personality, namely humor and higher education.

January 22, 2001 at 2:34 PM | Permalink
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