This is not a sequel to "11 songs by fictional musicians from movies and TV that are surprisingly not terrible"

After reading my post in which I listed standout tunes by fake bands like "Find It" by The Kelly Affair, a.k.a. The Carrie Nations, from Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (catch "Find It" during "Assorted Fistful" on A Fistful of Soundtracks), retroRechercher tweeted to me the title of another standout original Stu Phillips-penned song from the 1970 Russ Meyer flick. It's been a while since I saw Beyond the Valley of the Dolls on the Fox Movie Channel, so I forgot about "In the Long Run."

I'm relieved that the Fox cable channels that aren't Faux News--FX, Fox Movie Channel and Fuel, to name a few--have settled their beef with DirecTV, which I currently subscribe to (and have lately considered ditching for Xfinity). I would have hated being forced to watch the latest episodes of Justified, Louie and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia a year after everybody else would first see them on FX. Also, if I'm not mistaken, Fox Movie Channel is the only channel that airs Beyond the Valley of the Dolls in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio. The "In the Long Run" montage makes great use of the wide frame as it details Carrie Nations manager Harris Allsworth's wordless resentment of record producer Z-Man's control over the band. In pan-and-scan, the montage is the victim of a massacre that's as awful as the one during the movie's climax.



A live cover of "In the Long Run" by the Pittsburgh band The Garment District:

Yo, Gab a-gabbin': Rodrigo y Gabriela gab with DirecTV's Guitar Center Sessions about their busking days and Pirates of the Caribbean

DirecTV subscribers who are fans of either the Mexican instrumental rock duo Rodrigo y Gabriela or their music in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides will get a kick out of the Rod y Gab episode of DirecTV's Audience Network music talk show Guitar Center Sessions. I wasn't aware until I first watched the episode last week on the Audience Network (DirecTV channels 101, 239, 334 or 500) that it's been airing since July 9.

On this edition of Guitar Center Sessions, which is being re-aired constantly throughout the summer, Rod y Gab tell host Nic Harcourt what it was like to work with Hans Zimmer on their first film music project Pirates (they enjoyed the film scoring process even though it was really challenging), as well as how they shaped their instrumental rock sound while busking on the streets of Dublin (the one in Ireland, that is, not the Dublin I'm more familiar with).





The Guitar Center Sessions ep is helping promote the Mexican metalheads' live album Live in France, which dropped July 19 and is excellent. So is their Pirates music, which is my favorite element of the On Stranger Tides movie. The On Stranger Tides album track "The Pirate That Should Not Be," which features the acoustic metal duo's cover of the Captain Jack Sparrow theme, doesn't appear in the movie, but like the Guitar Center Sessions ep, the "Pirate That Should Not Be" video gives a good idea of what Rod y Gab are like on stage for those who aren't familiar with this amazing duo.

"Rock Box" Track of the Day: Tony Lucca, "Devil Town"

Song: "Devil Town" by Tony Lucca
Released: 2007
Why's it part of the "Rock Box" playlist?: This frequently covered, Daniel Johnston-penned tune is featured in several Friday Night Lights episodes, including the first-season FNL eps "Eyes Wide Open" and "State" and this week's ep "Texas Whatever." It was also used in FNL's season 3 promos on DirecTV's 101 Network.

Because the Super Bowl is this Sunday, and then three days later, FNL--the best scripted drama series about football ever made, even though season 2's forced "Landry kills a guy" storyline was a huge fumble--is airing its final ep, today's "Rock Box" post is focused on "Devil Town."

The song, one of many great finds by FNL music supervisor Liza Richardson, has been as much of an essential part of the TV incarnation as Explosions in the Sky's instrumentals were in the 2004 FNL film. Johnston's lyrics are a perfect match with the bleakness of FNL ("All my friends were vampires/Didn't know they were vampires/Turns out I was a vampire myself/In the devil town"). The show already used up its "Devil Town" card in the penultimate ep this week (the tune was a fitting farewell to the East Dillon Lions), so I doubt the track will resurface in the series finale, but I'm sure Richardson has picked some equally striking tune for the occasion as we hear "Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose!" chanted one last time.



All the other "Rock Box" Tracks of the Day from this week:
Cameo, "Candy"
Beastie Boys, "Shambala"
Vampire Weekend, "A-Punk"
The Blind Boys of Alabama, "Way Down in the Hole"

DirecTV's 101 Network reopens Eyes

I was surprised to find out DirecTV's 101 Network has started airing this week all 12 episodes of Eyes, one of my favorite TV shows that were cancelled too soon. I thought the 101 was going to premiere Eyes back in July, but apparently there was some sort of delay.

John McNamara TV shows just never get any respect, do they?

McNamara is a former Brisco County, Jr. and Lois & Clark writer whose most entertaining creations have been shows built around antiheroes with no qualms about being unethical. Years before audiences were willing to embrace The Sopranos, The Shield, House, Rescue Me, Dexter, Mad Men, Breaking Bad and Nurse Jackie, all dramas with not-so-virtuous lead characters, McNamara gave us a shady corporate climber who sleeps in a cardboard box (1996's Profit) and a private detective who enjoys mind-tricking the criminals who wronged his clients a little too much (1998's Vengeance Unlimited).

But while Tony Soprano, Vic Mackey, Dr. House, Tommy Gavin, Dexter Morgan, the players at Sterling Cooper, Walt White and Nurse Jackie are amoral--somewhere in their bastardly selves lurks a conscience or whatever's left of it--Jim Profit was unabashedly immoral. Whether or not dark and detached central characters like Profit are the reason why McNamara's shows don't last more than one season, McNamara just can't catch a break, even when he crafts antiheroes who are still as shady as Profit and Vengeance Unlimited's Mr. Chapel but less insane and a little more likable, like he did with the gumshoes on Eyes.

McNamara's 2005 series centers on Judd Risk Management, an upscale private investigation firm made up of detectives who don't mind skirting the law to protect their clients. The P.I.'s include sexy master of disguise Nora Gage (Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon); buttoned-up, military-trained newbie Meg Bardo (A.J. Langer); Chris Didion (Rick Worthy, so underutilized as "the black Cylon" on Battlestar Galactica), a gay associate who returned to the firm after a leave of absence caused by a nervous breakdown; and Jeff McCann (Eric Mabius), who conspires with Trish Agermeyer (Natalie Zea), the firm's hot equivalent of Q from the 007 flicks, to hide their affair from another co-worker, Trish's dweeby husband Danny (Reg Rogers).

"Every character has a different back story, a different moral compass. I don't think in terms of 'he's bad' or 'she's good' or vice versa. The fun of this world is in exploring the duality of these characters," said McNamara to Zap2it.com interviewer John Crook in a 2005 article about Eyes. "This world that these characters are in has an effect on them, just as they have an effect on it. They are not machines moving through the investigation, chewing up facts and spitting them out. It takes a toll on their psyches."

Their leader--and perhaps corrupting influence--is smug smart-ass Harlan Judd, Tim Daly's most enjoyable role to date. After playing so many uncomplicated characters (the straitlaced older brother on Wings, the animated version of Superman, Dr. Richard Kimble on McNamara's 2000 remake of The Fugitive), Daly clearly relished embodying more complicated guys like drug-addicted screenwriter J.T. Dolan on The Sopranos and Harlan on Eyes.

"Harlan's way of keeping people off balance is something I totally identify with. My default setting is to make people not know whether I'm giving them shit or not. I think that I get that about him," said Daly to TV Guide interviewer Craig Tomashoff. "He sort of teases people, [and] I love teasing people. Most of the time, I'm not mean about it. I haven't been punched in a bar yet."

Daly may have been a lucky bastard inside bars and taverns, but he wasn't so lucky with the ax that was wielded by ABC, which cancelled his serialized show after five eps that weren't able to retain the audience that tuned in to Lost, its lead-in on the network schedule. Warner Bros. Television made the unaired Eyes eps available to stream on In2TV, their clunky precursor to Hulu, but I hated watching Eyes on In2TV, and the site didn't even contain the complete series, which still hasn't received an official DVD release. The 101's Tuesday night broadcasts of Eyes will mark the first time the complete series will be shown in America, which is why I'm firing up my DVR. Eyes ranks with The Rockford Files, Smoldering Lust/Black Tie Affair, Veronica Mars and Burn Notice as one of the best private eye shows ever made.

Ripley--believe it or not

I'm between episodes of A Fistful of Soundtracks right now. I recorded the most recent one, "I'll Kill You and Recommend to God That He Put His Foot in Your Ass," in mid-June. The next scheduled show, "Cover-Blinded," an episode that will consist of cover versions of film and TV themes from all over the world, will be recorded on, uh… I don't know when. I don't move on to recording the next ep until someone sends me a response or comment about the program or the station. I find it pointless to be doing a new show if no one responds because then it looks to me like no one's listening. So if you want me to record a new ep, you have to say something, even if it's just along the lines of "Hey, I'm listening."

The other night, I caught USA's new P.I. show Burn Notice, a diverting mashup of The Equalizer, MacGyver and Grosse Pointe Blank. (The hero, an ex-spy-turned-P.I., is played by Jeffrey Donovan, who should have been a star after his bravura and funny turn as the unhinged Creegan on USA's unfairly neglected remake of Touching Evil.) However, the coolest thing about the latest airing of Burn Notice actually wasn't part of the episode. It was a new DirecTV commercial I had never seen before, in which Sigourney Weaver reprises the awesome Aliens battle between Ripley-in-the-Constructicon-esque-exosuit and the Alien Queen. My jaw dropped right when Weaver addressed the camera. I couldn't believe DirecTV got Sigourney fuckin' Weaver to reprise her role as Ripley.

In past DirecTV ads in which a movie or TV character suddenly breaks the fourth wall to persuade cable subscribers to convert to DirecTV, we've seen:

• Christopher Lloyd as Doc Brown.
• Charlie Sheen as his Major League pitcher character "Wild Thing."
• Ben Stein reprising his "Bueller? Bueller?" scene.
• Bill Paxton as his Twister character.
• Pamela Anderson as C.J. from Baywatch.
• Verne Troyer as Mini-Me.
• William Shatner as Star Trek VI-era Kirk in an ad that was particularly painful to watch because the digital airbrushing of the Shat's face made him look creepier than a Wrath of Khan eel.
  

Unlike the disturbing Shatner ad, DirecTV didn't digitally Botox Weaver's face. They didn't need to. One of the few middle-aged actresses who has wisely stayed away from plastic surgery, Weaver has barely aged since the 1986 release of Aliens. She must have a portrait of herself hanging in the attic.