MUSICAL TOOB: SONGS TO LEAD A LIFE OF DANGER BY

In the 'Secret Agent' episode of "The Not So Jolly Roger", John Drake took a job at a pirate radio station over three miles out at sea in order to find out who killed another agent who was investigating the transmission of military secrets.

A lot of songs were played during the episode, most of them written specifically for the episode and performed by fictitious bands. (Not all of them, however.) Most of these songs were apparently composed by Rick Minas, who also got mentioned during the episode for performing one of those songs, "Don't Try To Change Me".

I tried to keep track of the playlist as best I could and here are the numbers which, for the most part, you can only hear on Toobworld radio:

Ted Astley - "The Scorpion"

The Copperfields - "John Hardy"

The Stormsville Shakers - "It's Alive"

The Zephyrs - "No Word From You"

The Intuitions - "Though I Know"

The New Generation - "The Key To My Heart"

The Skylarks - "Change Your Ways"

These are the artists who were named, but I didn't know what the names of their songs were: The Master Minstrels & The Surf Boys.

"Look Before You Leap" and "It's Love I Should Have Tried" were two songs that were played but I don't know who the artists were.

As I said, most of the groups were fictitious. Apparently there was a group called The Stormsville Shakers, and Rick Minas did get credit for one of his songs on air. Another performer named during the show was Patsy Ann Noble, once a teen singing sensation from Australia and still working today as an actress under the name Trisha Noble. (I know her best from 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show' as a woman who came on to Ted. But she also played Padme Amidala's mother in two of the later 'Star Wars' movies.)

In the climactic final scenes, one of the DJs at the station, Suzy Wade, put on Patsy Ann Noble's record "He Who Rides The Tiger" and announced that it was so quiet you could hear a drum solo. Mrs. Jansen, who was holding a gun on her, realized that Suzy must have sent out a coded message for help and that led to a nice little cat-fight between the two women... all to the music of Patsy Ann Noble.

There's an in-joke in that - Suzy Wade was played by Patsy Ann Noble! So while she was singing over the radio via record, she was also beating the crap out of her former boss.

As it turns out, I didn't need to worry about keeping exact records of the songs Drake played. (Don't tell my IDD pals!) There's a great website dedicated to 'Danger Man' and 'Secret Agent' in which the webmaster has all of the information about the songs, including the versions of them that he's been able to track down. (And "The Not So Jolly Roger" is his favorite episode, so he's given it a lot of scrutiny.)

BCnU!
Toby O'B