Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 10, 1994 TAG: 9406170003
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: EXTRA1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: |By SCOTT WILLIAMS| |ASSOCIATED PRESS|
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Post came pretty close to it this season, with his music airing on 11 first-run shows. Just last week, he agreed to create the theme music for an entire cable network, NBC-owned America's Talking, which debuts July 4.
``I have the perfect job description,'' he said. ``I only work for my friends, I hire my friends, and I make friends with the people I hire.''
Of course, when your friends are TV producers like Steven Bochco or Stephen J. Cannell or Dick Wolf, you stay busy. And Post has kept busy since writing his first theme, for ``Toma'' in 1973.
``I don't go to work until Bochco, Cannell or Dick Wolf goes to work,'' he said. ``All the rest of the time, I just walk around humming, just sort of hearing tunes in my head. But I never write 'em down or catalog 'em.
``I just hum a lot and I play a lot, because I work a lot. So I always want there to be something there when I push the button.
``Somebody asked me the other day about writer's block and I said, `What's that?' He said, `You know what it is.' I said, `No, I don't, and I don't want to know what it is. Get that word away from me!' ''
The eminently hummable Post has become TV's master of tone. Nobody writes more TV scores; that's a fact. But it's arguable, too, that nobody writes better.
Consider, please, the ebullience of ``The Rockford Files'' theme, the tender ``Hill Street Blues'' theme, the joyous Top 10 hit ``Believe It Or Not'' from ``Greatest American Hero,'' the ominous ``Law & Order'' theme (that's his thumb popping the guitar strings) and the ``NYPD Blue'' theme that slides from white-hot drums to melancholy Irish pipes.
That's not to mention ``L.A. Law,'' ``Blossom,'' ``Doogie Howser, M.D.,'' ``Magnum, P.I.,'' ``Silk Stalkings,'' ``The Renegade'' and others too numerous to list.
``I write the first thing that happens. I never look back,'' said Post, who readily admits to being a Type A personality. ``I like that pace! Every day's game day. There's no rehearsal. When I drop a downbeat, it goes on television.''
TV's most prolific composer, it turns out, is also one of the mildest, most laid-back, genial, down-to-earth human beings on the planet. ``I'm in town, basically, to plug the album,'' he said.
That would be his CD, ``Inventions from the Blue Line'' (American Gramophone, $16.98), a collection of music from ``NYPD Blue'' and other pieces he's written about police officers.
A little prodding reveals that Post also created a foundation to provide for the college educations of slain officers, and has allocated a good part of his album's royalties to it. ``I guess I owe the cops something, aside from just writing music about them,'' he said.
Post doesn't like to talk about how his music has made him a very wealthy man in the process.
``None of us started doing this stuff for money, for God's sake,'' he said. ``Why would you do this for money? Money is a great by-product of it, but it's not the reason.''
What he does like to talk about is the process, in which Bochco tells him, ``We're doing this show in New York, here's the script. It's like `Hill Street Blues' in '93 but in New York City.''
``I read the script and it's great. Great!'' So a lunch meeting gets set with Bochco and director and co-executive producer Greg Hoblit. Post asks them what kind of music they want for this new show.
``Boch says, `Well ... drums.' And then he goes back to eating his whitefish. I said, `Drums? That's it?' '' And he's laughing.
``And I look to Hoblit.'' Post, palms upturned, re-enacts his puzzled shrug. ``Hoblit says, `Well, I have more to say: ... subway.'
``And they're laughing and chortling, and this and that, you know, 'cause, there's this 20-year history. And I started to think.
``And I went, `Hey, wait a minute! There's a way to do that! That's a pretty good idea, actually. Why, why ... that's a really good idea!' ''
Elsewhere in television ...
VETERANS OF THAT OTHER WAR: Sunday on TBS, National Geographic's ``Explorer'' focuses on eight Vietnam veterans who tell why they went, what they did there, and how it changed them, in ``Vietnam: The Women Who Served.'' Like their male counterparts, the women, who worked as doctors, nurses, secretaries, clerks and intelligence officers, tell how they carried their war home with them to a country that seemed hostile and foreign.
by CNB