March Madness March of the Day: "Theme from Human Target" by Bear McCreary

"Bear McCreary's Christopher Chance theme is as important to that character as the Raiders March is to Indiana Jones, the Imperial March to Darth Vader, or Jerry Goldsmith's 'It's A Long Road' theme for the Rambo character," said a Human Target fan in an online petition where he called for Fox to bring back Jonathan E. Steinberg and the Walking Dead scorer as the showrunner/composer duo on Human Target during its second and unsurprisingly final season.

Although it bore little resemblance to the terrific and psychologically complex Vertigo master-of-disguise comic it was based on, the much more straightforward TV version of Human Target, particularly in its first and best season, was an enjoyable action drama in the vein of Burn Notice and Leverage. But it was far more globally minded than the confined-to-Miami Burn Notice (shot on location in Miami) and the confined-to-Boston Leverage (shot in Portland, Oregon, which poses as Boston and other cities, much like how Human Target's Vancouver homebase was disguised--a la the comic book version of Chance--as San Francisco and other locales). So in the music department, Steinberg, who once said his globetrotting and martial arts-heavy version of Human Target was built out of the DNA of the Star Wars, Star Trek and Indiana Jones films he grew up watching, encouraged McCreary to think big and epic.

"The real thrill of scoring Human Target comes from the unprecedented creative freedom I’ve been given to create the kind of sweeping, thematic and adventurous score largely absent from both the small and large screen in recent years. And while the heart of the score is old school, its [sic] not a throwback or a parody," wrote McCreary in his blog post about working on Human Target's pilot episode. "My goal was to create a continuation of classic orchestral scores, not a regurgitation of them."

McCreary's score music, from the 33-second main title march that trumpeted Chance's heroics to the themes he wrote for each love interest or villain, sounded superb. It was reminiscent of the dashing-sounding work of the late Shirley Walker, whom McCreary idolizes, and her staff of composers on Batman: The Animated Series, and it was accomplished on an amazingly large scale, despite a limited network TV budget (snowy Vancouver as not-exactly-snowy SF... again?!). Human Target's first season featured music performed by a 60-piece orchestra or larger, like in the series highlight "Christopher Chance," both the last episode before Steinberg and McCreary's exit and the last good episode (other than a Steinberg-penned second-season ep that reunited Mark Valley's eccentric and remorseful assassin-turned-bodyguard with Lennie James' unrepentant thug Baptiste, his ally-turned-nemesis-turned-ally).

One thing I enjoyed about the first-season Human Target opening title sequence, which evoked Human Target's comic book roots and was produced by the highly esteemed Imaginary Forces title design studio of Mad Men fame and directed by Karin Fong, was how it was animated and edited to the rhythms of McCreary's classy and cinematic-sounding march.

"This perfect timing between music and images was achieved because I actually wrote the music first, months in advance, and delivered it to the animators as a guideline," wrote McCreary at the beginning of his Human Target stint. "This combination of imagery and ballsy orchestral music make [sic] a bold statement, that this series is going to be something special. Chance is not your typical action hero and his music is not your typical electronica-inspired TV scoring. The title promises that you are about to watch a movie."



The ballsy orchestral sound lasted only one season. This was due to Human Target becoming a victim of showrunner musical chairs, one of many aspects of the TV industry I'll never fully understand. Tim Jones did decent work as the original score composer for one of Human Target producer McG's other action shows, the more comedic and soapy Chuck, but when Jones replaced McCreary on Human Target, his efforts paled in comparison to McCreary's. Jones' much less epic Chuck sound was wrong for Human Target, as was the whole Chuck-ification of Valley's show that was spearheaded by Steinberg's replacement, Chuck veteran Matt Miller, in Human Target's second season (why do the words "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" come to mind?).

In Human Target's second-season opening titles, Jones' theme briefly references McCreary's Chance theme at the beginning, but it morphs into this strange and unengaging beast that doesn't match the movements of the mostly unchanged opening title graphics. It's emblematic of Jones' less epic approach, which was the opposite of what McCreary said he wanted to achieve with his music for Chance.

Jones' theme is so out-of-place in the opening titles that "Human Touch" by Rick Springfield--who starred as Chance in an earlier and much more short-lived TV incarnation of Human Target--would have been a better replacement.

"Rock Box" Track of the Day: The Jimi Hendrix Experience, "Crosstown Traffic"

Song: "Crosstown Traffic" by The Jimi Hendrix Experience
Released: 1968
Why's it part of the "Rock Box" playlist?: It's featured in the broadcast version of Keen Eddie's "Keeping Up Appearances" episode. Paramount Home Entertainment didn't bother to clear "Crosstown Traffic" for the DVD version, which I refuse to watch.

Which moment in "Keeping Up Appearances" does it appear?: The sequence where Detective Eddie Arlette (Mark Valley) goes for a ride in a Bentley that once was owned by Jimi Hendrix.



Keen Eddie is a lost comedic gem from creator J.H. Wyman, who's currently a writer/producer for Fringe, which returns in a new and not-exactly-great time slot tonight and briefly had Valley as a regular before he starred in Human Target, where he's basically playing Eddie Arlette again, but with mad fighting skills. Wyman's London-based cop show was too foreign, anarchic and offbeat for mainstream America (it wasn't dour and moralistic enough for them--the original CSI, the #1 prime-time hit that year, was more up their conservative-leaning, bodybag-filled alley). But Keen Eddie won over TV critics (National Review, of all publications, actually liked it) and whoever were the three or four viewers who caught it on Fox. I was one of them, and I instantly dug "Crosstown Traffic," the tune where Hendrix MacGyvered a kazoo out of a comb and a piece of cellophane, when I first heard it on Keen Eddie.

All the other "Rock Box" Tracks of the Day from this week:
Matt & Kim, "Good Ol' Fashion Nightmare"
Tom Jones, "Sex Bomb (Peppermint Disco Mix)"
The Motherhood, "Soul Town"
Edo G feat. Masta Ace, "Wishing"

This is literally my "Rock Box"

I like to use shoeboxes to store the complete runs of three of my favorite comic book series--Y: The Last Man, Gotham Central and the Vertigo version of Human Target (Y ran for 60 issues, Gotham Central lasted for 40 and Human Target had 21, so the complete run of each title can easily fit in a shoebox). I also sometimes use shoeboxes as portable filing cabinets for CDs that have to be utilized for AFOS. One of these boxes contains the CDs that carry all the non-score music tracks (a.k.a. existing songs) I have to presently re-edit and re-upload to my Live365.com music library without the old AFOS "F Zone" sweepers they used to open with--all in time for the "F Zone" programming block's name change to "Rock Box" on January 3.

The time slots for "Rock Box" on AFOS are 4-6am, 9-11am and 3-5pm on Mondays and 5-7am, 9-11am and 3-5pm on Fridays.

"Always funky fresh, could never be stale"--Run, "Rock Box"

A Fistful of Soundtracks' "Assorted Fistful" sets its sights on Bear McCreary's Human Target soundtrack

Former Battlestar Galactica composer Bear McCreary's beautifully crafted score cues for Human Target were a highlight of the first season of the Mark Valley series, an enjoyable Burn Notice-like throwback to '80s action shows despite co-star Jackie Earle Haley's weekly overuse of the word "dude" and the fact that Human Target bears little resemblance to the angsty, not-so-lighthearted Vertigo comic book that inspired it.

Most first-season Human Target episodes featured music performed by a 60-piece orchestra (McCreary upped it to 94 for the "Christopher Chance" season finale that guest-starred Armand Assante, Amy Acker and Lee Majors as a predecessor to Valley's title hero, an assassin-turned-bodyguard). This made McCreary's orchestra the largest group of musicians assembled for a TV series in years, a huge leap from the 30-piece orchestra McCreary often conducted on Galactica, the 29-to-34-piece orchestra Shirley Walker and her team of composers led during another made-for-TV DC Comics adaptation, Batman: The Animated Series, and the 37-piece one Michael Giacchino assembled for Lost.

"At the first production meeting we had, even before the pilot, I said we must have an orchestra," said Human Target's first-season showrunner Jonathan E. Steinberg in the press release for this month's Human Target soundtrack release. "This show is about an action hero, it's built out of the DNA of the movies I grew up on, Star Wars and Raiders and Star Trek. Those movies don't work without that orchestra."

Human Target, which debuted on Fox as a mid-season replacement last January, will return to the Fox lineup in mid-November (the season premiere was originally scheduled to air earlier this month--that's why the soundtrack release was slated for October--but the network postponed the premiere). However, Steinberg and McCreary didn't return for the second season. Matthew Miller, a writer/producer from Chuck, replaced Steinberg as showrunner, brought along Chuck composer Tim Jones and plans to insert into Human Target more Chuck-style "needle drops" (slang for existing songs), to the delight of a Human Target fan who said in HitFix.com's comments section that "I absolutely hate needle drops. I also love Bear McCreary's music. Human Target in its first season was a great callback to the silly shows of my childhood--The Fall Guy, The A-Team, etc. I don't like Chuck, and I don't like any of these proposed changes. I won't be tuning in for Season 2."

On his blog, McCreary explained his exit by saying "the series is now under new creative leadership, and as a result I have not been asked to return... We are likely to hear a very different musical approach to Human Target season 2, but I hope and trust the series will remain a fun adventure."


McCreary's departure is a disappointing development for fans of the show's Emmy-nominated first-season music like myself, but luckily, McCreary, who's currently busy juggling AMC's The Walking Dead and the Syfy shows Caprica and Eureka, has assembled a whopper of a Human Target soundtrack release. WaterTower Music's digital release of the Human Target soundtrack consists of 160 minutes of McCreary's music from the show, while La-La Land's physical version of the soundtrack on October 19 will contain even more music and encompass three discs.


I've added my favorite tracks from the Human Target album to daily "Assorted Fistful" rotation on the Fistful of Soundtracks channel. During one of these standout tracks, "The New Christopher Chance" from last season's cliffhanger, you can hear what Steinberg had in mind when he said his version of Human Target was built out of the DNA of Star Wars and Raiders. "The New Christopher Chance" contains "Katherine's Theme," a romantic motif McCreary wrote for Acker's character. The sweeping theme brings to mind both Han and Leia's Empire Strikes Back love theme and "Marion's Theme" from Raiders.

Tune into A Fistful of Soundtracks to get your Human Target music fix while you wait another few weeks for Jackie Earle Haley to come back and abuse the word "dude."

Shows I Miss: Keen Eddie

Tonight, prime-time takes another stab at adapting the DC comic Human Target when Fox premieres a much-hyped, Bear McCreary-scored series loosely based on Peter Milligan's Vertigo version, one of my favorite comics during its too-brief run. In a previous TV version of Human Target that was produced by Flash TV series showrunners Danny Bilson and Paul DeMeo, Rick Springfield starred as bodyguard Christopher Chance, who disguised himself as his victimized clients to throw off the bad guys and flew around in a pimpin' stealth bomber/bachelor pad that's the only thing I remember about the show. This time, Jericho co-creator Jon Steinberg is the showrunner, the master-of-disguise gimmick has been ditched, the stealth bomber has been left to rot in a hangar somewhere and Chance is played by Mark Valley, who will always be Keen Eddie to me.

Human Target reunites Valley with Con Air director Simon West, who also worked on the much-missed, Guy Ritchie-esque Keen Eddie, which first aired on Fox in the summer of 2003. Early reviews have said Human Target is less like the gritty Vertigo comic--which put Chance through one hell of a psychological wringer by having him suffer from an identity crisis--and more along the lines of lighter fare like The A-Team, MacGyver and Keen Eddie.

I doubt the new show will be as offbeat or raunchy as Keen Eddie, which premiered (and then died) a few months before Janet Jackson's Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime wardrobe malfunction caused the major networks to overreact and kill some of the fun out of prime-time by overpolicing their raunchier shows. There are certain storylines and bits of dialogue during Keen Eddie that teleplay writers probably can't get away with in today's post-Janetgate prime-time landscape--they're more likely to be able to get away with them on FX. Cable was where Keen Eddie belonged.

In fact, cable was where most of Keen Eddie's cult following first discovered the series. After Fox's top exec at the time--who was as impatient with Keen Eddie as the shit-for-brains NBC execs have been with The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien--defied the wishes of other Fox execs who loved Keen Eddie and abruptly cancelled it, Bravo picked it up and debuted its unaired episodes.

The series, which last popped up on Sleuth a couple of years ago, is a lost comedic gem from creator J.H. Wyman, who currently co-produces Fringe, where Valley was briefly a regular before he moved on to Human Target. The Desert Storm vet-turned-actor was terrific as NYPD detective Eddie Arlette, who travels to London to track down an elusive drug dealer and winds up joining Scotland Yard. Eddie doesn't quite find his drug dealer (Crockett and Tubbs had far better luck with their nemesis Calderon on Miami Vice), but the fish-out-of-water falls in love with the city and takes a liking to both the British crooks he locks up (they're more like the not-so-dangerous oddball criminals from Barney Miller than the mustachio-twirling villains from Miami Vice) and his hot but snooty and argumentative flatmate Fiona Bickerton (a then-unknown Sienna Miller). The series was a love letter to London, where it was filmed on location on what was clearly a ginormous budget. Wyman's creation was too foreign, anarchic and weird for mainstream America (it wasn't dour and moralistic enough for them--the original CSI, the #1 prime-time hit that year, was more up their conservative-leaning, bodybag-filled alley). But it won the hearts of some TV critics (Marvin Kitman called it "a show that could have started something new, like how Miami Vice took police shows out of L.A.") and whoever were the three or four viewers who watched it on Fox. I was one of them.

Eddie is a roguish, down-on-his-luck crime show hero in the mold of Jim Rockford and Black Tie Affair's Dave Brodsky. If Rockford's Achilles heel was having knuckles made of Kleenex, Eddie's Achilles heel is thinking with his boner too much--one reason why this show wouldn't fly on prime-time today. Eddie's crush on his gorgeous informant, the mysterious gangster's moll who tricks him and the NYPD into busting down the wrong door, is the whole reason for his banishment to London. The series' most enjoyable running joke involves Carol (Rachael Buckley, who's even hotter than Miller but seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth), a Scotland Yard secretary Eddie nicknames "Miss Moneypenny," and the never-answered mystery over whether her flirtatious exchanges with Eddie about her tastes for crotchless panties or being on all fours are real or the figment of Eddie's oversexed imagination. But Eddie's a prude in comparison to his floppy-haired partner Monty Pippin (Julian Rhind-Tutt), whose off-duty sexcapades make Jimmy McNulty from The Wire look like a monk (even though because this isn't HBO, we never see Monty in the middle of one of his swingers club orgies).

Another highlight of Keen Eddie is its awesome, pitch-perfect soundtrack. The pilot episode underscored a drug bust sequence with the Archies' "Sugar Sugar"--an early indication that Keen Eddie was no ordinary cop show. For the carelessly compiled DVD release, which should be avoided at all costs, Paramount Home Entertainment removed many of the songs that helped make Keen Eddie such a memorable show, due to clearance fees Paramount refused to pony up for ("Keeping Up Appearances," an episode in which Eddie inherits Jimi Hendrix's Bentley, is utter shit without "Crosstown Traffic"). But the studio didn't lay a finger on the songs in the reruns, so whenever Keen Eddie turns up on cable, fire up the DVR.

Because of the arrival of Valley's first star vehicle since Keen Eddie, I'll soon be adding to the Fistful of Soundtracks channel's "F Zone" playlist some of the tunes that were cut out of the Keen Eddie DVDs: Madness' "One Step Beyond," New Order's "Crystal" and of course, "Crosstown Traffic."