Category: Music

“That One Night” by The Hunted: So Wrong, So Right (on “The Office” Dinner Party)

That One Night The Office

One of my favorite episodes of the U.S. series The Office is the season four episode entitled “The Dinner Party.” In the show, Michael Scott (Steve Carrell) and Jan Levinson (Melora Hardin) invite some guests from the Dunder Mifflin office for dinner, and the tension in their relationship plays out to make the most awkward party since the Donners.

In the episode, Jim notes to the camera, “Michael and Jan seem to be playing their own separate game, and it’s called ‘let’s see how uncomfortable we can make our guests.’ And they’re both winning.” One of the most uncomfortable moments comes from a wonderful song, “That One Night,” by The Hunted.

The Hunted

The Hunted is the fictional band led by Hunter Raymond, the young man who had worked as Jan’s assistant. As Jan plays the CD on the stereo in “The Dinner Party” episode, the awkwardness ramps up when we realize that Hunter is apparently singing about losing his virginity to Jan (“You took me by the hand/ And made me a man.”).

Below is the cringe-worthy clip of when Jan first plays the song.

The song appears again at the end of the episode when Jim reveals to Pam that he stole the CD, a sweet gesture to make Pam laugh.  Jim’s act is also a sympathetic theft so that Michael no longer has to hear the song. Jim plays the CD in their car as the song then plays over an epilogue showing the dinner guests after the party.

Who Created “That One Night”?

Unfortunately, there is no real album by The Hunted, but the song works perfectly in the episode of The Office. When a comedy uses an original song for comic effect, it is a challenge for the song to sound believably real while being funny too. “That One Night” hits it out of the park on all counts.

Who are the geniuses behind “That One Night”? In the series, actor Nicholas D’Agosto (born April 17, 1980) portrayed Hunter Raymond. D’Agosto appeared in two episodes during the third season, his voice appeared in another episode, and his image graced the CD cover for “That One Night” in “The Dinner Party” episode.

The actual singer on “That One Night,” though, is Todd Fancey, a singer-songwriter who is the guitarist for The New Pornographers. Fancey also wrote the catchy music for “That One Night,” while writing and producing team Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg wrote the lyrics.

The Lyrics?

There are no “official” lyrics for the song posted on the web.  So, there seems to be a disagreement about the words Fancey sings.

Some say that part of the chorus says “so raw, so right,” while others claim he sings “so wrong, so right.” Another source claims the words are “so rock the ride all night all right.”

I have always thought the disputed words were “so wrong,” not “so raw.”  That interpretation makes the most sense, but I understand how one may also hear it as “so raw.”

While we never got a tour or a full album from The Hunted, we loved the band’s music for that one night. Oh yeah.

Update and Alternate Version of “That One Night”

In April 2017, Rolling Stone featured an interesting oral history about the episode. One of the revealing facts was that Fancey also put together a more polished longer version of “That One Night” with alternate lyrics. While it is interesting to hear, one can see why The Office went with the version they did. Below is the alternate version.



What is your favorite episode of The Office? If you also love “The Dinner Party,” check out these deleted scenes. Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Anniversary of “The Grapes of Wrath”

    Grapes Wrath 75 John Steinbeck‘s novel The Grapes of Wrath was published on April 14, 1939. The book, which recounts the struggles of the tenant farmers Joad family moving from Oklahoma to California, went on to win the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. It also helped Steinbeck win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962. Steinbeck’s book seeped into popular culture, aided by a great John Ford movie as well as songs.

    Less than a year after the novel’s publication, 20th Century Fox released John Ford’s vision of The Grapes of Wrath in January 1940. The film starred Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, and John Carradine, and it contained some differences from the book, and in particular the ending.

    While the book was written as an indictment of the greed that led to the Great Depression, the conservative Ford maintained some elements of that vision while also giving the story a somewhat more optimistic ending. The Grapes of Wrath thus became one of those instances where a novel and its movie version both attained greatness even with some significant differences.

    The film would go on to inspire others. In particular, the speech by Tom Joad (Fonda) would inspire both Woody Guthrie and Bruce Springsteen to write songs. Check out our post about the story behind Guthrie’s “Tom Joad,” a song written at the request of a record company during an all-night session after Pete Seeger helped Guthrie find a typewriter.

    Bruce Springsteen used his stark “The Ghost of Tom Joad” as the title track of his somber 1995 album. In 2014, though, he released a new version of the song on High Hopes that features the raging angry guitar of Tom Morello, highlighting the defiance in Tom Joad’s speech. While Springsteen’s original acoustic version captures the sadness of the novel, his rock version of the song might be more comparable to John Ford’s vision. Check out this performance featuring Springsteen, Morello, and the E Street Band from Allphones Area in Sydney, Australia from March 2013.

    What is your favorite version of “The Grapes of Wrath”? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Remembering Singer-Songwriter Jesse Winchester

    Jesse Winchester Singer-songwriter Jesse Winchester passed away on April 11, 2014 at his home in Charlottesville, Virginia. The 69-year-old artist had been suffering from esophageal cancer.

    Winchester, who had moved to Canada in 1967 in protest of the Vietnam War, had some chart success with his own recordings of his folk-country-blues sound. While he may not be remembered by a large number of the population, he is well-respected and admired by a number of talented artists. And many of them covered his songs. If you are not familiar with his work, check out these videos.

    Here is Winchester with a moving performance of his song “Sham-A-Ling-Dong-Ding” on season two (2009-2010) of Elvis Costello’s Spectacle show.  In the song, the singer is an old man looking back on being a teenager in love.

    So after years and after tears,
    And after summers past,
    The old folks tried to warn us,
    How our love would never last;
    And all we’d get was soaking wet,
    From walking in the rain,
    And singing sham-a-shing-a-ling again.

    In the video below, that’s Neko Case, Sheryl Crow, and Ron Sexsmith on stage with Costello and Winchester. You can see near the end around the 3:12 mark where Case has tears in her eyes from Winchester’s touching song. Wow.

    Here is a young Winchester in 1977, singing with Bonnie Raitt and Emmylou Harris.

    Finally, here is one of my favorite covers of a Jesse Winchester song. In this video, Buddy Miller sings Winchester’s “A Showman’s Life,” which appeared on Miller’s 2002 album Midnight and Lonesome.

    Winchester’s “A Showman’s Life” has been covered in excellent versions by the likes of George Strait and Gary Allan. But check out Miller’s version.

    Thanks for the music Mr. Winchester. RIP.

    What is your favorite Jesse Winchester song? Leave your two cents in the comments    .

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    What Do “Hoosiers,” “The Purple People Eater” and “Star Wars” Have in Common?

    Sheb WooleySheb Wooley, who is famous for writing and recording his 1958 chart-topping song “Purple People Eater” and for much more, was born April 10 in 1921.  His website captures the range of Wooley’s talents by saying he has been a “cowhand, rodeo rider, country and western singer, Hollywood actor, writer, and comedian.”

    Over many decades Wooley appeared in classic films like High Noon (1952) and The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976). And he was on TV’s Rawhide.

    Wooley in Hoosiers

    I was most surprised to discover that I already knew the singer of “Purple People Eater” as an actor for his role in Hoosiers (1986), a movie I have seen many times. In Hoosiers, Wooley played Cletus, the school’s principal who hires Norman Dale, played by Gene Hackman.

    Later in Hoosiers, Cletus (Wooley) helps Dale as an assistant coach before Cletus’s health prevents him from continuing.  Then, Dale recruits Shooter (Dennis Hopper) to take Cletus’s place.

    There was not a good scene with Wooley available on YouTube, but you can catch a little bit of him sitting on the bench in a suit with Gene Hackman (around the 30-second mark).

    “Purple People Eater”

    Below is Sheb Wooley in June 1958 singing about the “Purple People Eater,” who ate people but came to earth because “I wanna get a job in a rock ‘n roll band.” The song got its inspiration when Wooley heard a joke from a neighborhood kid.

    The song “Purple People Eater” later inspired a 1988 movie of the same name. Of course, the film also had a role for Wooley.

    Like most depictions of the song’s subject, the movie showed the monster as being purple.  But the song’s lyrics reveal that purple is the color of the people that the monster likes to eat, not the color of the creature: “I said Mr. Purple People Eater, what’s your line / He said it’s eatin’ purple people and it sure is fine.” Check out Wooley singing his hit song.

    Wooley also wrote the Hee Haw theme (“Hee-hee, hee-haw-haw . . “).  And he often appeared on the country music-comedy show too.

    For his acting roles in Westerns, check out this post on some of his classic movie lines.  Below is a short bio film about Wooley and his diverse talents.

    Wooley and “The Wilhelm Scream”

    Finally, Wooley’s voice possibly may be heard in many more classic films, including Star Wars. This connection and “The Wilhelm Scream” takes some explaining. . . .

    Wooley’s connection to more than a hundred other films goes back to the early 1950s. Wooley played Private Wilhelm in the 1953 western The Charge at Feather River. In a scene where Wilhelm is shot, he lets out a scream that has been used as stock scream footage in numerous films.

    The scream has become known as “The Wilhelm Scream,” although Wikipedia notes that the scream had actually appeared in an earlier movie, Distant Drums (1951). Wooley played an uncredited role (Private Jessup) in Distant Drums, and he is listed as a voice extra for that film.

    Thus, Wooley “is considered by many to be the most likely voice actor” for the scream, according to various sources, including Wooley’s website. The scream is so well-known that sometimes filmmakers add it because they think it is funny and many times it is inserted as an inside joke.

    Thus, through this scream, Wooley has indirectly appeared in numerous movies.  The films cross a broad spectrum, including Them! (1954), Star Wars (1977), Return of the Jedi (1983), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Batman Returns (1992), Reservoir Dogs (1992), and Toy Story (1995).  This video collage collects a number of uses of the Wilhelm Scream, beginning with Wooley’s famous scream in The Charge at Feather River and Distant Drums.

    This video provides more of a history of the Wilhelm Scream, including the discovery of a recording that in 2023 finally confirmed that the source of the scream was without a doubt, Sheb Wooley.

    Wooley passed away on September 16, 2003, but his humor, his movies, and his other work lives on. And his scream will probably continue to appear in more new movies to the delight of filmmakers and audience members alike.

    Photo of Wooley via public domain.

    What is your favorite part of Wooley’s diverse career? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Johnny Cash Explains Why He Is Not Brave

    Johnny Cash interview

    PBS Digital Studios recently put together an animated version of a 1996 Johnny Cash interview for the Blank on Blank series. In the interview, Barney Hoskyns asks Cash questions like whether or not he could have been a preacher (“No.”). Cash also discusses his jaw pain and how he has to avoid painkillers, revealing all of it is something he just has to deal with: “I’m not brave at all.”

    Of course, he also talks about his music, explaining how some of his greatest songs are extensions of himself. He notes how he and an audience interact: “That’s what performance is about, is sharing and communicating.” Check out the interesting 6-minute video.

    The full audio of the interview is available for subscribers at RocksBackPages.com. Otherwise, if the video leaves you wanting more Cash, check out this recent post about his “new” album.

    What is your favorite part of the interview? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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