Getting high with a little help from "Friends"
Illustrations by Zach Trenholm
There was a time not long ago (OK, long ago) when smart young know it-alls wouldn't be caught dead watching TV. The tube was, at best, unhip, and, at worst, evil. Rock stars (maybe the Stones, maybe Springsteen, maybe the Clash) were the only idols who mattered; everybody wanted to be in a band. But in 1995, it's suddenly cool to watch TV and even cooler to admit it. Everybody wants to get home in time for "ER."
Yeah, there are always a few in every crowd who'll try to tell you that they only dust off their sets for "Charlie Rose," or they only know so much about "Melrose Place" because their roommate watches it. Sure. NBC's "ER," the highest-rated drama last season and, so far, this season, regularly draws upwards of a 40 share in the Nielsen ratings, which means that 40% of the televisions in use from 10 to 11 p.m. on Thursdays are tuned to the adventures of America's most exhausted doctors. To put it another way, "ER" is the Michael Jackson "Thriller" album of prime-time; it's pretty hard not to know somebody who watches it.
And if you love the show, why not buy the music? NBC's "Friends," the most popular sitcom with viewers in the coveted 18-49 age bracket, has its very own soundtrack album (an "X-Files" soundtrack is also in the works). The "Friends" album includes the show's disturbingly perky theme song "I'll Be There for You" by the Rembrandts, as well as tracks from REM, Pretenders, Lou Reed, Toad the Wet Sprocket and others.
But it's the soundtrack's package photo of the show's six cast members (three guys, three girls) reclining in a group-grope, like Fleetwood Mac in bed for Annie Leibovitz's famous Rolling Stone cover shot, that really drives the point home: For aging, homebound boomers and raised-on-rerun twentysomethings alike, TV has become the rock of the '90s.
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