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Teenage Kicks: Cops v. Krauts

Posted at 9:45 AM on January 21, 2012 by Jacquie Fuller (2 Comments)
Filed under: Teenage Kicks

I promised I'd post this, and I'm a girl of my word. Today while playing Kraftwerk's "Trans-Europe Express" (1977) on the show, I was struck by the nagging feeling that I'd heard that riff before ... somewhere ... on television! Was it Knight Rider? No - that wasn't it. My second You Tube search yielded what I was looking for: CHiPs. You remember! The zany adventures of California highway patrolmen Ponch and Jon! Well, endure the zippy disco of the CHiPs theme, then pay a listen to "Trans-Europe Express" and tell me - TELL ME! - there's no resemblance. I did a little research on the show's composer, John Parker - who also composed themes for The Love Boat and Dallas - but, alas, could find no evidence of Parker's love for German electronic music. To further compound the mystery: both songs were released in 1977. Who's zooming who?



Comments (2)

Ok, maybe they are similar in spots, and Kraftwerk's 1977 Trans-Europe-Express was coincidentally mixed in LA. It's awfully hard for me to imagine either Schneider or Hütter settling in to watch CHiPs for a rousing SoCal evening, then nonchalantly stealing a few riffs from the Ach, Mein Gott! Eric Estrada eine Wunderschöne Dreamboat theme song while zipping up their final masters. I mean, seriously.

It seems far more likely to me that John Parker overheard some of their tracks in an engineering room while working in the same LA studio, and cooked up his own nefarious pilfering plot.

Posted by Greg Robinson | January 22, 2012 3:18 PM

Yeah, that was the direction I was leaning in, too.

Posted by Jacquie Fuller | January 23, 2012 10:24 AM

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