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The Mr. Show Music
When people find out that I write music
for Mr. Show, their reaction is usually “cool!
I love the theme song.” That’s when
I must set the record straight and give credit where
credit is due. The theme song was written by Mark
Rivers (of the infamous pop band The Cave Dogs).
You see, when Mr. Show first started, HBO had picked
them up for four test episodes. Mark wrote the theme,
while the rest of the music (including
the “three Knott-holes” musical) was
written by Willie Etra of LA’s Groundlings
improv comedy group. When the show got picked up
for
six more episodes I was hired as the new music director/composer
and from that point on I wrote the music for songs
like “Ewwww Girl Ewwww” and “Don’t
Beatle Me Up” (Yeah Yeah Yeah) and provided
the
underscore for pieces like “The Last Indian”
and “Philouza”. As
Season 4 began, Mark Rivers moved from Boston to
LA and wrote
some additional songs: “Gettin’ The
Shaft Again”, the “Monk Academy”
theme song, and most of the music that is heard
in the “Taint” piece.
Of course, lyrics were almost always written by
Bob, David, and the
other writers.
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The Alternate Versions of the Mr. Show Theme
Mark Rivers had given Bob and Dave three
different ideas for the Mr. Show theme. When
he first arrived in LA, Mark re-recorded one
of these pieces in my studio for purposes of his
demo reel. Unfortunately, the original recording
and the third idea, which had lyrics, are on some
cassette somewhere in an abandoned office or
box or who knows where. One of the three ideas
was theme as we now know it, but just to be
sure Bob asked Mark to try one more thing,
radically different, based on mexican circus
music. Mark called it “The Drunken Caballero.”
-Eban Schletter
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