On my last trip to New York, some friends took me to a favorite new-wave Chi­nese place of theirs. When I asked where to find the bath­room, they said to go down­stairs. The stair­case deposit­ed me into one of the most sur­re­al bath­room approach­es I’ve ever expe­ri­enced: a long, nar­row, ful­ly mir­rored hall­way with a haunt­ing­ly famil­iar com­po­si­tion piped in from speak­ers installed along its length. Not until I resur­faced and asked what the deal was could I iden­ti­fy the music: the “Love Theme” from David Lynch’s ear­ly-1990s tele­vi­sion series Twin Peaks.

Many TV themes have lodged them­selves into our col­lec­tive mem­o­ry, most­ly through sheer rep­e­ti­tion, but few have retained as much evoca­tive pow­er as the one Lynch’s com­pos­er, Ange­lo Badala­men­ti, record­ed for his short-lived post­mod­ern detec­tive show.

It had that pow­er from the moment Badala­men­ti put his fin­gers to the key­board, a sto­ry told in the clip above. “What do you see, David?” he remem­bers ask­ing the direc­tor as he sits down before the very same Fend­er Rhodes on which he com­posed Twin Peaks’ major themes all those years ago. “Just talk to me.”

“We’re in a dark woods,” Badala­men­ti recalls Lynch first say­ing. “There’s a soft wind blow­ing through sycamore trees. There’s a moon out, some ani­mal sounds in the back­ground. You can hear the hoot of an owl. Just get me into that beau­ti­ful dark­ness.” Badala­men­ti plays as he played then, which drew an imme­di­ate response from Lynch: “Ange­lo, that’s great. I love that. That’s a good mood. But can you play it slow­er?” With the feed­back loop between the scene in Lynch’s mind and the mood of Badala­men­ti’s music engaged, Lynch added a detail: “From behind a tree, in the back of the woods, is this very lone­ly girl. Her name is Lau­ra Palmer.”

Badala­men­ti light­ens his impro­vi­sa­tion in a way that makes it some­how eerier. “That’s it!” The com­pos­er and the direc­tor play off one anoth­er’s ideas, almost like two long-col­lab­o­rat­ing musi­cians in a jam ses­sion. “She’s walk­ing toward the cam­era, she’s com­ing clos­er… just keep build­ing it! Just keep build­ing it!” Even­tu­al­ly, they’ve cre­at­ed an entire ris­ing and falling dra­mat­ic arc in this sin­gle piece of music (arguably more dra­mat­ic than the one cre­at­ed by the series itself, which Lynch left after two sea­sons). “David got up, gave me a big hug, and said, ‘Ange­lo, that’s Twin Peaks’ ” — and to this day, a part of the cul­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Music of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Played by the Dan­ish Nation­al Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra

Play the Twin Peaks Video Game: Retro Fun for David Lynch Fans

David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Title Sequence, Recre­at­ed in an Adorable Paper Ani­ma­tion

David Lynch Draws a Map of Twin Peaks (to Help Pitch the Show to ABC)

Hear the Music of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Played by the Exper­i­men­tal Band, Xiu Xiu: A Free Stream of Their New Album

Ele­men­tary School Stu­dents Per­form in a Play Inspired by David Lynch’s Twin Peaks

David Lynch Directs a Mini-Sea­son of Twin Peaks in the Form of Japan­ese Cof­fee Com­mer­cials

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

With Twin Peaks com­ing back to our TV screens next year, fans want to know who’s com­ing back from the orig­i­nal cast and crew. The same could be said for com­pos­er Ange­lo Badala­men­ti, whose theme music for the series still evokes shots of sawmills, high water­falls, rustling pines, and a deep, dark sense of mys­tery com­bined with the pangs of doomed romance.

In this selec­tion from an August 19, 2016 con­cert from the Dan­ish Nation­al Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra, under the baton of Antho­ny Wee­den, Badalamenti’s score is giv­en a chance to stand alone as a com­po­si­tion with­out the visu­als. Bathed in red light, the orches­tra looks appro­pri­ate­ly Lynchi­an, and all that’s miss­ing is a large red cur­tain and zigzag floor­ing. The arrange­ment hews close to Badalamenti’s, though his small com­bo from the orig­i­nal sound­track gets expand­ed to a full orches­tra, with ket­tle­drums, glock­en­spiel, harp, and con­cert bells. How­ev­er, when “Lau­ra Palmer’s Theme” segues into the title theme, the two-note twang is still played on elec­tric gui­tar. (You can’t mess with that!)

In this con­text, Badalamenti’s nods to Bernard Hermann’s Ver­ti­go score are even more appar­ent, espe­cial­ly in the del­i­cate, swelling love melody that is always in dan­ger of sad col­lapse. The con­cert also fea­tured selec­tions from oth­er great tele­vi­sion sound­tracks, includ­ing Game of Thrones, Home­land, Break­ing Bad, Six Feet Under, and more. The whole con­cert can be watched here.

“We had a fab­u­lous time per­form­ing it —a very spe­cial part of the evening,” Antho­ny Wee­den is quot­ed as say­ing on the go-to Wel­come to Twin Peaks site. And he added, “I can’t wait for the new series!”

Nei­ther can we, Mr. Wee­den.

via Wel­come to Twin Peaks

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Play the Twin Peaks Video Game: Retro Fun for David Lynch Fans

David Lynch Draws a Map of Twin Peaks (to Help Pitch the Show to ABC)

Hear the Music of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Played by the Exper­i­men­tal Band, Xiu Xiu: A Free Stream of Their New Album

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

“This is not a test!” the host shouts into his micro­phone. “This is an actu­al show!” If you lived in New York and had cable in the late 1970s, you may have wit­nessed it your­self — and you may well have need­ed the reminder, because this show nei­ther looked nor felt like any­thing that ever aired before. A fix­ture on pub­lic access Chan­nel D and Chan­nel J from 1972 to 1982, it threw down a rede­f­i­n­i­tion of tele­vi­su­al pos­si­bil­i­ties that has­n’t just sur­vived as a time cap­sule of the down­town Man­hat­tan scene at its cre­ative rolling boil, but retains its anar­chic charge to this day. Wel­come, whether you first tuned in back then or have only just tuned in on the inter­net now, to Glenn O’Brien’s TV Par­ty.

O’Brien, who co-cre­at­ed and presided over the show, did­n’t always shout, but when he did, he man­aged to retain his dead­pan self-pos­ses­sion. He even kept his cool when hang­ing out, live on the air, with the reg­u­lars of a guest list includ­ing “David Bowie, David Byrne, Robert Fripp, the B‑52s, Chris Bur­den, George Clin­ton, Iggy Pop, Steven Meisel, Mick Jones, James Chance, John Lurie, Klaus Nomi, Kraftwerk, the Scream­ers, Robert Map­plethor­pe, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Nile Rodgers, Kid Cre­ole, the Offs, Alex Chilton, the Brides of Funken­stein, Arthur Rus­sell, David McDer­mott, and Charles Rock­et, just to name a few.” At its height, TV Par­ty let its audi­ence hang out with such lumi­nar­ies almost every week as well — lit­er­al­ly, if they man­aged to find their way to the stu­dio.

Hav­ing attained sub­cul­tur­al fame as the first edi­tor of Andy Warhol’s Inter­view mag­a­zine, the Cleve­land-born O’Brien also engaged in such straight­for­ward­ly coun­ter­cul­tur­al efforts as writ­ing for, and lat­er edit­ing, the infa­mous jour­nal of the cannabis lifestyle High Times.

That bit of sta­tus drew an invi­ta­tion to appear on the ear­ly pub­lic-access vari­ety pro­gram The Coca Crys­tal Show. The expe­ri­ence imme­di­ate­ly inspired him to cre­ate one of his own, a strike against the threat to free speech he sensed when mass media meant just a few main­stream tele­vi­sion chan­nels. And so O’Brien, along with Blondie co-founder and gui­tarist Chris Stein, launched TV Par­ty, a drug-fueled re-inter­pre­ta­tion of Hugh Hefn­er’s Play­boy After Dark, “the TV show that’s a par­ty,” as he put it in a mem­o­rably askew phras­ing on its very first broad­cast, “but which could be a polit­i­cal par­ty.”

Here we have a few par­tic­u­lar­ly mem­o­rable TV Par­ty evenings, includ­ing a per­for­mance by the not-of-this-earth pro­to-glam-rock­er Klaus Nomi, an inter­view of painter Jean-Michel Basquiat (who became a reg­u­lar pres­ence on the show and a “lit­tle broth­er” fig­ure to the crew), and an episode with Blondie. Vice put up a TV Par­ty best-of a cou­ple years ago, which has let a new gen­er­a­tion expe­ri­ence what now seems strik­ing­ly like a pre­de­ces­sor of the shows cre­at­ed for the inter­net video plat­forms they fre­quent today. It also includes a 90-minute doc­u­men­tary about the his­to­ry of TV Par­ty, which pro­vides the nec­es­sary his­tor­i­cal and cul­tur­al con­text for those unfa­mil­iar with the New York O’Brien describes as “like a third-world coun­try.” Shot in the ghost­ly black-and-white one asso­ciates with 1970s video artists, its visu­al ele­ments either psy­che­del­i­cal­ly bleed­ing into or jagged­ly cut­ting between one anoth­er, “the show could get abstract quick­ly,” remem­bers O’Brien.

But in uphold­ing its mis­sion to erase the dis­tinc­tion between per­former and audi­ence, TV Par­ty belongs as much to the late 70s as it does to the 21st cen­tu­ry. It used to the fullest extent pos­si­ble the free­dom of pub­lic-access tele­vi­sion, very much the Youtube of its day. (Cer­tain­ly the callers-in could sound just as abu­sive as Youtube com­menters.) It even end­ed in the high­ly mod­ern fash­ion of not get­ting can­celed, but sim­ply fad­ing away, the stretch­es between episodes grow­ing longer and longer. “Maybe Chris and I will start it up again,” O’Brien spec­u­lates in the doc­u­men­tary, but he pre­sum­ably has his hands full with his lat­est talk show: Tea at the Beat­rice with Glenn O’Brien, cre­at­ed espe­cial­ly for the inter­net. The sen­si­bil­i­ty may have changed — nobody fires up a joint on cam­era any­more — but the excite­ment of explor­ing unchart­ed media ter­ri­to­ry remains.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Blondie Plays CBGB in the Mid-70s in Two Vin­tage Clips

Klaus Nomi: The Bril­liant Per­for­mance of a Dying Man

David Bowie and Klaus Nomi’s Hyp­not­ic Per­for­mance on SNL (1979)

The Odd Cou­ple: Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol, 1986

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.