HBO: Music Made for Television 💿

I have been looking for this album for years with no luck. This week I discovered someone had posted it online!

A few years ago, I wrote about the HBO original series, “Remember When.” While doing so, I mentioned my affection for the theme song of the show and how I wanted an original recording. A week or so later, someone emailed me to tell me that in 1985, HBO did release the song as part of their album, “HBO: Music Made for Television.” I was pretty excited, and I rushed to find the album, and sadly came up with nothing, except a single track pulled from a cassette.

For years, I have had an eBay search running, hoping that I would get a hit, but this record alluded me. That changed a few days ago when someone on the Retroist Facebook pointed me towards a YouTube video that had been posted over a year ago. I had been so focused on trying to find a physical copy of the album that I hadn’t bothered to follow up with any searches after my initial ones.

I was ecstatic and quickly gave the digitized album a listen.

As you can see, the album has eight tracks. So not only do I get a swell stereo version of the “Remember When” theme song, I get so much more. Including multiple versions of the HBO Main theme, which I have already listened to a dozen times, both with lyrics and without.

I was pretty happy with just being able to stream the album, but the uploader went a step further. They broke the album down by track and made it available to download in high quality WAV files. Which you can access in the description of the video.

The music for the album was composed by Ferdinand Jay Smith III. Smith, is an American composer and co-founder of Jay Advertising. He has composed music that has been featured in various television promotions, show intros, and incidental music, including the "HBO In Space" feature presentation intro and the ABC "Star Tunnel" movie of the week intro package.

Digitizing and sharing out-of-print music online can have several benefits. Firstly, it allows people to access and discover music that may not be available in their local record stores or on mainstream streaming platforms. Digitization also helps preserve the music for future generations by creating an archive that can be accessed and preserved indefinitely.

Additionally, it allows for easy sharing, commenting, and collaboration among musicians, music fans, and historians, fostering a sense of community around what could easily become forgotten music. Overall, digitizing these works can help ensure that important and culturally significant music is preserved, accessible, and celebrated for years to come.

While I still don’t own the physical vinyl copy of this album. Having it in digital format and available to stream on a service like YouTube is almost as good. In a world where some media can still be nearly impossible to find, a single person can make a big impact. So I want to thank uploader, SmallPerson Roo for making my world just a little brighter by sharing what they were lucky enough to find.