It’s all about that bass, ’bout that bass!

Remember the start of IRREVERSIBLE? You know, the bit with the fire extinguisher? The bit where the guy in the underground gay S&M club gets smashed in the face with said extinguisher (fuck you spoiler worriers, the film is 12 years old and this is in the first scene). You know, where his head gets repeatedly pummeled against the concrete floor without cutting away until his skull caves in and there are bits of bone and teeth and blood splattered everywhere and an oozing mess where there used to be a face? Remember that?

Well that fire extinguisher is the bass line in the awesome Ducktales theme tune.

SOUNDS

That bass pummels away at your ears from start to finish and all other embellishments are secondary. 4 rounds of octave jumping bass notes only gets better with a little trill at the end of the 4th bar. The drums are kept simple, on beat with the bass and with just enough reverb to remind us this is the era of the power ballad.

The singing starts with a raising arpeggio and it’s like a barbed hook has been launched forth form the TV speakers and a generation of children instantly bit. It’s still there, that barb, wedged in the roof of our collective mouth and every time it is agitated and it scrapes against our palate this sweet-ass melody sparks in our brain.

I will get to the lyrical content later but in the meantime we get the key board synth chords backing up the sung melody before dropping out to once again let the bass line punch its way through to the back of your head.

Keyboards come back and as that jumping octave bass raises in pitch the impossible happens. The bass bludgeoning only gets more fearsome as a second bass overdub comes in rounding out the sound of the initial treble-heavy funk bass and removing all hope of survival.

As we get in to the pre-chorus bridge in comes a little funk guitar to pluck out some accent notes. I’m sensing stratocaster vibes. Red. Quickly followed by the second best feature of this theme. Brass.

It comes in at first with just three simple notes, but as that third note holds and swells some unknown gland inside me starts firing, in a matter of seconds it takes all my concentration to keep still, my top lip starts to glisten at the pressure of it and then four things happen in quick succession. There is a fat drum fill, the brass fucking boots off with with a triumphant fanfare, the singer shouts “DUCKTALES!” and one of my hands shoots into the air ready to high-five any surface within reach: a friend’s or colleague’s hand preferably but a passing stranger’s face or just like a book shelf or something in lieu of that – whatever will make a satisfying slap. If I happen to be listening in the middle of an empty field a “Fuck yeah!!” and fist pump is a suitable alternative.

The “woo-ooo” really makes the chorus special but it’s the accumulation of that still-octaving-away bass, synths and the ultra triumphant brass melody make this possibly the catchiest of all the theme songs. You cannot help but smile, feel awesome and sing along to this one. It’s not trying to be badass at all, its just effortlessly solving all the problems in your life even if only for a few seconds.

Another raising arpeggio, this time in chimes, accompanied by rolling toms fill announces the arrival of the middle 6. A stuttering d-d-d-danger puts Boom Shake The Room’s faux stuttering to shame as things slow down to allow the keyboards to fill in the void left by the brass which has decided to take a breather for a few bars. The bass too here slows down and stops the octave pattern. Its almost as if it is building to something.

When the brass does come back we get a similar three note run with swell but something is different this time. These boys know they have to out do the already epic first chorus. But how are they going to top it? How about squeezing in 10 super quick notes into a single second in the run up to the chorus and then… something old Lionel Richtea himself would be proud of – Key change! Good lord does this feel mega.

And its no easy task getting this key change right. In my in-depth research for this article I checked a good number of DuckTales covers and every other fucker out there struggles with this second chorus to varying degrees but old Jeff Pescetto (singer of 1980’s cartoon classic “DuckTales”) absolutely nails it. Even the now ultra-high pitched woo-ooo.

The brass delivers again and again in this second chorus and and with the final chords giving way to drum fill for the ages we get a final shout of the title (a weaker effort with only 5 mentions of the full title as well as two duck‘s and four tale/tail‘s mentioned separately), and one final burst of bass and brass for the final note.

Sights and lyrics

One thing that Particularly stands out in this intro is the effort that went into matching the visuals with the lyrics, so in a break form the norm I will make an effort to do the same.

We kick of with 3 minors nude from the waste down followed by an elderly family member (also naked below the belt) who proceeds to throw money at them as payment for shaking their asses.

Ok, I’m not the first to point out the strange reality of the fact that Donald Duck and his extended family do not wear pants, but we can see from the subsequent images that this is a world in which it is established that pants do exist. And not only do pants exist, but pants for birds exist as evidenced by this arse-shot of Launchpad McQuack

and this fancy matador ensemble

Although if we look at the above picture it does seem that a young duck wearing pants is not a happy duck. So I guess they choose to be pants-free to avoid the apparent burning sensation this one is experiencing. Maybe thrush is a big problem for ducks.

Life is like a hurricane

Bit disappointing that they couldn’t find any footage of a strong wind in all the episodes of DuckTales. Instead we get weird money-bag tidal wave. As a kid I always thought this was alive for some reason and kind of scary.

Here in Duckberg

It’s Duckberg!

Race cars, Lasers, Aeroplanes

spot on again with car, laser gun and aeroplane shots. I do have to wonder what happened to these duck’s ability to fly since they now have to use planes. There are clearly birds in the intro that still can fly. They must look at the poor sucker ducks and laugh. However, no one can deny this guy is one dashing mother fucker at the stick of a biplane –

The Ben Affleck of Duckberg.

It’s a duck blur

Not overly impressed with the crowbarring in of the word Duck in this line. A duck blur? Duck should not be used as an adjective. However, if there is such a thing as a duck blur, they certainly got the visuals to go with it as Scrooge does actually blur as he is fried in some kind of force field.

Might solve a mystery or rewrite history

After the opening scenes I’m not sure how I feel about pantsless Uncle Scrooge leading pantsless nephews into a dark cellar, but hey forget all that though cos we got a wheel on a jousting lance! History re-written!

DuckTales Woo-ooo!

Fuck Yeah!

Seriously though, diving into solid gold coins is not good idea… Hell, I cant pretend I haven’t seen Family Guy – You got there first Seth, bravo:

Every Day they’re out there making Duck Tales

This shark is not happy to be kissed at all.

Gay shark?

DuckTales Woo-ooo! Tales of derring-do, bad and good luck tales.

hmm, derring-do…. derring-do…. There is something unusual about this. I’ll come back to it though.

Here we see the aforementioned flighted bird who has chosen to wear a hat but no other clothes. Maybe birds are just real exhibitionists. They got peacocks among their ranks after all.

Before the bridge we get to see a pie fight. The pies match the rhythm of the chimes but one odd point is that Scrooge seems to get pied from nowhere. 4 chimes, 4 pies, but only 3 throwers. Conspiracy!

D-D-D-Danger, Watch behind you

As Huey works to escape the d-d-d-danger he shows off some mad skills with the aerial splits here.

There’s a stranger out to find you

They show a mummy, but we all know the real danger here is from Scrooge himself.

Also notice here as they are chased by the mummy through the desert there is a sign saying “keep off sand”. What kind of totalitarian regime is going to ask you to keep off the only type of surface there is for hundreds of miles. Plus what kind of damage can you do to sand??

What to do? Just grab on to some…

First things is, what the fuck is the being running along next to Scrooge here?

Is it a dog? Kangaroo? Why do his ears have teats, whats with the fabulous moustache. Also note: pants.

Also “what to do” kind of an odd turn of phrase. Sounds like the mutterings of a confused octogenarian “oooh, i’ve sat on my spectacles what do to, what to do?” hmm.

DuckTales Woo-oo

I approve. Robots high-fiving a-la Pearl Jam Ten. These guys know what’s going on. I think these dudes just broke out of Go-Bots or something cos they heard some awesome tunes playing on another channel, and when they finally found the source, what else are you gonna do. Just high-five and make your nose glow.

Every day they’re out there making DuckTales

Everybody remembers the alien who steals a dollar from old Scrooge but who remembers this guy –

No I’m not talking about Gyro (seems chickens can wear pants. Ducks are just gross). I’m talking about little purple light bulb head dude in the corner. Look at that posture. That’s confidence right there. This guy has a story. He doesn’t give a fuck he hasn’t got eyes or ears, it’s clear he knows what’s going on. 28 years since his debut and still no spin-off for this little fella? Come on Disney, get your shit together.

Tales of derring-do, bad and good luck tales.

There’s that ‘derring-do’ again but more importantly, this is really weird looking tiger, right?

Why’d they make he face so long and his nose so big? He kind of looks like an antler-free moose in disguise. Disney can give good tiger – look at Shere Khan or Rajah. Poor effort on this one.

Not Pony tales or cotton tales

What? Ok officially (it seems) the word is “tales” but obviously the pun is on “tails”. Ponytails? Cotton tails? What source of lame is this. I can think of a bunch of better tails we could be talking about. What about dragon tails? There is a fucking dragon earlier in the intro. You could have used that instead of the pillar dash climb.

Why the wimpy pony and cute fluffy cotton tail? Oh my god – The weak-ass tails, “derring-do”, “what to do”… These lyrics were written by your Grandma. Grandmas don’t know what the most badass tails are, or that 7 year old kids don’t know what the fuck “derring-do” means. Why did Disney get your Grandma to write this? She’s never going to come up with a “Feel the magic, hear the roar”. Then again, this is DuckTales. It’s a whole lot more of a family affair than your standard action cartoons, maybe Granny was right to keep it nice.

Ducktales Woo-ooo!

End.

So while the DuckTales intro is a million miles away from being badass, it is perhaps the catchiest one minute of music ever composed. That driving bass and triumphant brass are all you need to put you in a great mood and every single kid of the 80’s is guaranteed to shout “Woo-ooo” if you shout DuckTales at them.

So why not give your Grandma a call and thank her for the hard work she put in to helping create a masterpiece of a cartoon intro.

Got a suggestion for the next Intro-spective? let me know in the comments below.

Check out the previous Intro-spectives here