It all starts coming together in week four.
I’ve spent the past several weeks learning to play Where Everybody Knows Your Name, the theme song from the 1980s sitcom Cheers.
Up until today I was learning sections of the song one by one. I finished the last section yesterday, the closing reprise of the intro riff with the little broken chord at the end that closes the song in such a “wary, but hopeful” way.
Today I started working on gluing the pieces together. I have to slow it down a bunch and I can’t get through the transitions smoothly, that’ll take another few days, but I can get close enough that any listener who lived in the 80s or 90s will know exactly what I’m struggling to achieve here.
I have to say, this song is a great piece of pop culture. Learning it this way, without vocals (yet?), I’m struck by how sympathetic it is to the theme of the show. Cheers was a show about people hiding from their lives in a neighborhood bar. It was a funny show but there is a sad undertone inherent in the theme.
The music reflects that sad undertone. It doesn’t wallow in it, but it’s there.