Mike Post's bubble gum themes for the The A-Team, Magnum PI and Hill Street Blues epitomise the "so bad it's good" aesthete beloved of kitsch-junkies and nostalgia television.
Yet it would be lazy and unfair to dismiss him as a low-rent Liberace. Post is a deft composer hobbled by his chosen medium, one dedicated to cranking out glutinous hokum bereft of genuine emotional resonance. Go ahead and scoff, but those frantic little ditties were considered groundbreaking in their day. And he has refused to stand still. Today he writes complex, subtle scores for edgy dramas such as NYPD Blue.
Born in 1945, the Los Angeles composer was a teen prodigy. He jammed with Kenny Rogers and Sammy Davis Jr while still in high school and, aged 25, achieved a dubious brand of immortality when he played guitar on Sonny and Cher's I Got You Babe. In 1965, Post earned the first of five Grammy Awards (for best instrumental arrangement on Mason William's Classical Glass). Four years later, he became the youngest ever musical director of a television programme, helming the Andy Williams Show.
Post's career took a fateful turn in 1973 after he met upcoming young producer Steven J. Cannell. The duo's debut collaboration - a formulaic cop caper called Toba - flopped, but they hit pay dirt with their sophomore outing, The Rockford Files. Post's spry, strident jingle sealed his reputation and bagged him a second Grammy.
As the 1980s dawned, his maudlin Greatest American Hero theme brought him an unlikely trans-Atlantic chart hit. Drippy and na∩ve, the song chimed perfectly with the era's callow romanticism. Now hotly craved by action television producers, Post became the industry's most celebrated composer, scoring a succession of signature tunes that would lodge indefinitely in our collective subconscious. For Magnum PI, he combined caterwauling guitars and sleazy synthesizers riffs. On The A-Team, he fashioned a daft brass odyssey. With Simon and Simon and Hardcastle and McCormack, he melded cheesy keyboards and heroic faux-metal fretwork. Cheek by jowl with his terminally square prime-time toe-tappers, Post began to demonstrate a previously unhinted at depth and grace.
His poignant Hill Street Blues theme (arguably Post's most enduring piece) suggested at an spiritual intensity never fully realised.
Echoing Hill Street's understated integrity, his current work for NYPD Blue incorporates "found sounds" and doomy bass-heavy montages. It's hard to imagine these gloomy movements soundtracking the gung-ho dreck that made his name.
So no, Post ain't just another retro-icon, to be sneerily dusted down and reminisced over. And his music has dated a darn sight better than Tom Sellick's moustache.
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