Where Everybody Knows Your Name "Cheers: Music From The TV Series" which also includes Portnoy's original demo version, as well as several earlier attempts by Portnoy and Angelo at composing the theme. By 1981, New York songwriter Gary Portnoy had already written songs for the likes of Air Supply ("I’ll Never Get Enough") and Dolly Parton ("Say Goodnight"). One night in the summer of that same year, his friend Judy Hart happened to be seated next to a Broadway producer at dinner. Upon finding out that Hart was working for a music publisher, he asked her if she could recommend someone to compose the score
Michael Portnoy for the New York choreographer Koosil-Ja Hwang, and as an actor. He also sang and performed his own operatic, electro-progressive-rock music as XAR, and with the band The Liquid Tapedeck. For Bob Dylan's performance of "Love Sick" at the 1998 Grammy Awards, Portnoy was hired by Dylan's production company to stand in the background with other dancers and groove to the music to "give Bob a good vibe". Instead, halfway through the performance, Portnoy ripped off his shirt, ran next to Dylan, and started dancing and contorting spastically with the two-word poem "Soy Bomb" written across his chest. When questioned