I’m drawn to music trivia like moths to a flame. My puny brain cannot retain any useful information, but it does know that Jim Peterik of Survivor (the “Eye of the Tiger” folks) also wrote and sang “Vehicle” by The Ides of March.

However, one juicy nugget of music trivia had escaped me until this week: The theme music for the American version of “The Office” was composed by one James Ferguson. I know him better as Jay Ferguson. Yes, the dude who was a one-hit wonder with “Thunder Island” back in 1978.

Joe Walsh played guitar on the tune, btw. He was a Kent State classmate of the members of Devo. And Jay Ferguson was in the band Spirit. But I digress.

How did I miss that? I mean, who doesn’t love “Thunder Island”? And that album cover is pure 70s yacht rock gold:

The hair, the unbuttoned shirt… the mandals!

A quick search of the google machine reveals that James (a.k.a. Jay) Ferguson has carved out a nice little niche doing music for Hollywood:

His resumé is rather impressive since he has worked on music for episodes of shows such as NCIS: Los Angeles, Women’s Murder Club, Tales From The Crypt, Going To Extremes, Melrose Place, and Eerie, Indiana. Ferguson has also composed music for popular films as well. Throughout his career, he has worked on music for The Terminator, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, and This Is 40.

From this article about The Office theme song
The “Thunder Island”/”The Office” connection should be enough to satisfy my music trivia fix. But Jon Wurster (drummer for Superchunk… and the Mountain Goats… and Bob Mould) sent me even further down the rabbit hole with this little post on Instagram:

Sooooo, not only does Jay Ferguson have a hit single in the 70s and a hit TV theme song from the 2000s… but the Rolling Stones sorta/kinda ripped him off.

I’ll have to make room in my puny brain for this… guess I’ll have to forget my wedding anniversary to clear some space.