The DVD release of Miami Vice was held up for years over music rights. I suspect shows produced in the post DVD era are keeping this in mind when choosing music.
It is a shame, but not much to be done about it I suppose. To be perfectly honest though, I caught a couple of episodes of The Wonder Years recently, and was somewhat unimpressed. It’s not bad, but just one of those things where you love something as a kid, and have very fond memories of it, but then when you watch it again 20 years later, it doesn’t really hold up to the memory. Maybe I should just watch some more episodes though. A similar thing happened to me with Faerie Tale Theatre, which I absolutely loved as a child, and then was disappointed with as an adult, but then the more I watched, the more I re-liked it.
Anyways, yes, altered soundtracks are a shame, but I wouldn’t know that TWY music had been altered if I hadn’t been told. Except for the theme song. That surprises me. I don’t think I even knew that was a Beatles song until about 10 years after I started watching the show.
There was this show when I was a kid called Captain N, a show where all the Nintendo heroes teamed up, that I thought was the greatest thing ever.
I watched it once as an adult and thought it was completely stupid. Not just ‘for kids’ stupid, more like ‘Every other line is a pun about the game being featured this week.’
You should never rewatch your childhood favorites. Your memories are way better than the show.
I rewatched the complete Wonder Years series and some of the song changes were pretty bad, but mostly okay. The worst change was a altered version of a Doors song, it was astoundingly bad. The series really did run out of things to say and got be to very repetitious in the final two seasons.
You should never rewatch your childhood favorites. Your memories are way better than the show.
Agreed. They work best when restricted to brief Youtube clips. (Especially the ole’ timey racist cartoons/films that you can’t believe your parents let you watch unheeded…)
The worst case of this happening is with the great Northern Exposure theme song :
Universal Studios Home Entertainment has released all six seasons on DVD in Regions 1, 2 & 4. The Region 1 DVD releases have caused controversy among the show’s fans, due to their high prices and for the changes to the soundtrack introduced in order to lower their costs. The release of season 1 contained the original music, but retailed for $60 due to the cost of music licensing. Subsequent seasons replaced most of the music with generic elevator-style music, resulting in a lower-cost release. The first and second seasons were also re-released together in packaging that matches the third through sixth seasons.
(Wikipedia)
Another case of this: The State. What a great show, but when I heard that the DVD release of it didn’t have the original songs on some episodes’ broadcast, I felt bad.
The State is a prime example. Such a great show even without the soundtrack.
Though somewhat different (as they just removed the entire segments), Beavis and Butthead probably suffered the most. Evidently The Mike Judge Collection has some music videos, but I know that earlier VHS’s had none, and Netflix has none. Beavis and Butthead without music videos gets boring REALLY quick.
Though somewhat different (as they just removed the entire segments), Beavis and Butthead probably suffered the most. Evidently The Mike Judge Collection has some music videos, but I know that earlier VHS’s had none, and Netflix has none. Beavis and Butthead without music videos gets boring REALLY quick.
It is, but I think it’s more of a shame when a Television show is burdened and or delayed by pending music rights. This is why the remaining seasons of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air took so long to come out, why, I believe, many episodes of Beavis and Butthead are still unreleased (music video rights), why Malcolm in the Middle has only one first season out, and why it took Daria so damn long to release. It’s aggravating to say the least.
But not as aggravating when a company just decides to stop releasing the entire series of a show half way through (cough, cough King of the Hill). How the hell can the complete series of that dreaded primetime show Charlie’s Angels come out, along with MTV’s Good Vibes, both of which lasted for one season, but you can’t finish a thirteen season show?
Hate to double post, but wasn’t this also why Family Matters took so long to get two seasons out? Or am I thinking of another show?
AmericanWaterGummo
I was specifically thinking of The Wonder Years. The dvd release is a real bummer. There was also a television show I watched as a child called Tour Of Duty. This was also released on dvd yet lacked the funds to keep the shows theme song, “Paint It Black” by the Rolling Stones.