Gary Portnoy Gary Portnoy Gary Portnoy (born June 8, 1956) is an American musician and singer-songwriter. He is best known for co-writing and performing the main theme song of the NBC sitcom "Cheers", "Where Everybody Knows Your Name". In the early 1980s, Gary Portnoy and Judy Hart Angelo set out to write a theme for "Cheers". After their first two attempts were rejected, "Where Everybody Knows Your Name" was selected. Prior to that, Portnoy's songs had been recorded by various artists, including Dolly Parton's "Say Goodnight" (co-written by Susan Sheridan) and Air Supply's "I'll Never Get Enough of You" (co-written by Jeanne
Michael Portnoy of Lip", were antic and unpredictable, and characterized by dense language play, song and movement fragments and rapid transformations of character. In the mid 1990s, Portnoy regularly performed in venues such as Surf Reality and Luna Lounge's weekly show "Eating It", the epicenter of New York's alternative comedy scene. His wild and abstract theatrical performances, which occasionally interrupted and challenged other comedians on stage, prompted "Time Out New York" to describe him as "the bad boy of comedy", and the "New York Post" to dub him "the next Andy Kaufman". At the same time, Portnoy started working as a dancer