The Tick – Doug Katsaros, the man behind the theme and music – Interview

Michael: It’s interesting … you say there’s such contrast there between the dark themes and the jazz elements. And there are a lot of jazz elements. I wonder if you had any thoughts of Ella Fitzgerald or, for example, Mel Tormé, Cab Calloway going into the theme? There is a lot of scatting going on in the song.

Doug: You know what? I tried to get as much singing in the episodes as possible. All of the episodes were post-scored so the actors would sing. One of my favorite little moments was when The Tick (Townsend Coleman) was singing: “No one understands you … oh, the little things you do …” and he just made that up by himself while he was recording it and then I scored it to make it sound like we had written the song before he had done the voice over. There was a whole episode of music where everybody was singing everything to make it sound like we had worked on it for weeks before. But actually it was quite the opposite.

As far as thinking of Mel Tormé or Cab Calloway … once we had started with this big band idea, I was taking it in a direction … how can I put it? As I said: A big band gone bad … kind of what this particular group of musicians might have fun playing. And it was always based on the situations. I wasn’t just always writing music and sending it in, I was scoring to the picture. Sometimes there were synthesizers and no band. There was one episode I remember about ants, so I had some crazy synthesizer doing some repetitive percussion thing that, to me, sounded like ant jaws opening and closing real fast in the music. (Note: Doug comically made a warbly ant-jaws-opening-and-closing sound here … if you can at all imagine that. You don’t have to imagine it courtesy of the video below, an excerpt from season 2’s “Ants In Pants!” episode of The Tick.)

Doug: Not every time did I get it exactly right. I’ll be honest. There was one time an episode opened in Reno and I thought the cuts are fast and I’m going to do a rock and roll thing. When I brought it in, Ben and his co-writer were shaking their heads going, “We were thinking more Sinatra.” Absolutely opposite of what I did. They gave me free reign and most of the time it was right on but every now and then it was like “Oops!” It still made for a good show but we didn’t always have creative meetings. They would send me the film and I had four days to write and record the score and send it back.

Michael: So I was incorrect then. It wasn’t that there was scatting in the theme, but your interpretation of how some of those sounds were in your head when you were scoring it.

Doug: Right. It was not meant to be scatted. When I sang it to the Fox guys they went, “Forget the bass trombones. Do it like that.”

Plus, I actually enjoyed writing songs for the underscores. A lot of people didn’t realize there were loads of songs going on.  Like … they would turn on a radio in the background and I would write a song. Remember when Chairface Chippendale wrote “Cha” on the moon, taking a bite out of it with the giant planet eater? Well … they turned on the radio and there was a calypso song I wrote: “I took a bit of the moon for you …” There’s lots and lots of songs that are in the underscores just in the background that people don’t even realize are there. (Note: A funny example of one of Doug’s underscores is his “Shaft” parody at the 4:30 mark in the above video.)

Michael: Thinking about it, there is a ton of music in each episode.

Doug: I did all of the music. I would say in each 22 minute episode, I would write about 13 minutes of music for each episode … 13 to 15 minutes of music. So yeah … there was a lot of music.

Michael: Now invariably, somebody — fans or others — will want some of that background music. Is any of it available?

Doug: I put together a collection of the theme and edits of underscores from every episode, all 39 of them. And I have it. But I never followed through with printing it up or sending it out. I was hoping there would be a movie. … (*chuckles*)

Michael: Getting into some of these interviews, you just don’t know what you’re going to find out. It’s always fun talking with various people behind the scenes and finding out the little quirks and kinks of film and television shows as you dig a little deeper.

What about the live series? Were you ever asked to do any scoring or music for that version of the show?

Doug: No! Nobody said anything to me! I was very upset about that. But I also did not like the live series very much. So I wasn’t that unhappy. I only watched a little of it and it was different characters and they changed the names of what I thought were iconic characters. It also was much more like Seinfeld, it wasn’t a lot of building leaping and stuff like that that they could get away with in the cartoon. It was a fine enough idea and I was very happy for Ben that it was happening, but I don’t think it was as wild and outside of the box as the cartoon series was … and indeed it did not last very long as a series. I’m sorry for Ben for that.

But I also thought that Fox put The Tick on at the wrong time. I think if they had put it on in the evening like The Flintstones or The Jetsons or The Simpsons it could play to a better audience than 7:00 o’clock in the morning children. It was definitely geared toward the college aged kids … and it was not playing for them.

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I recommend you visit Doug’s website and marvel at the array of work he’s done, who with and who for. And in the event you’re in need of an original composition, this is the guy who can do it for you. (There’s also a killer page showcasing The Tick theme that’s head and shoulders beyond the sound quality of the video I posted above. Access it here.)

Clacked by Michael Noble
on Feb 08, 2012 @ 11:00 EST5EDT