The Wayback Machine: Saturday mornings greatest hits

Most of us could never forget saturday morning cartoons, waking up, grabbing cereal,or maybe you were at a sleep over waking up in front of the TV. if you did forget what the fuck is a matter with you, stop reading this put your pj's on and go put on some Scooby Doo.Anyways I could never forget them to be honest. Now my generation had a few great ones but they tied in with after school cartoons mostly such as all Nicktoons and WB cartoons. The truly great ones I wasn't around for.

The original runs of Scooby Doo, Josie and the Pussycats (yes a gay imitation) were before my time, but most of them played repeats and I would watch religiously. Actually come to think of it I still watch my cartoons every week, I'll never grow up. I digress though one of the best things about some of these shows was the theme songs. Even growing up my music taste was on the rock side and I'll never forget the day my brother Greg brought home "Saturday Mornings Greatest Hits" a compilation of cartoon theme songs.

The compilation stretches 19 tracks and covers most my favorite old school shows. It kicks off with Liz Phair and material issue covering "The Banana song (TRA LA LA LA)" it's easily the poppiest I think she has ever done and it made it on to my running mix last year permanently. The next is "Sugar Sugar" by Mary Lou Lord and Semisonic, it perfectly captures the fun 60's groove of Archie. Next up is the king of Cartoon theme songs I'm talking of course about "Scooby Doo Where are you?" performed by Matthew Sweet, i must of played this a bunch as a kid and then again when I rediscovered it when I was 16. I swear I will never grow up.

After Scooby we of course have his gay imitation "Josie and the pussycats" performed by Juliana Hattfield and Tanya Donnelly (who? oh who cares its fucking good). After that the album dips out til the infamous Ramone's cover of "Spiderman". I honestly swear was there anything Joey Ramone couldn't do. Towards the end the album it gets a lil obscure for me but there is one amazing crown jewel, and that is Sublime's cover of "Hong Kong Phooey". Now I do not care for Sublime at all but this is a fucking winner and i can't even believe I'm saying that but yea love it! I feel that kids today are gipped when it comes to the opening theme song, its neat to see them immortalized as full songs, it makes them feel more competent even as low-art. While it just seems that todays cartoons are to sell crap and be cash cows!

Anyways while researching this I found the music videos made for this compilation featuring Drew Barrymore drunks 90's ass, Enjoy!

The Wayback Machine: Holidays edition

So I meant when I said I need to start blogging more these days. So here is a holiday edition of the Wayback Machine.

This week we travel back to 1965 for what could be the greatest christmas special ever made. I'm talking of course about the wonderful slice of americana that is "A Charlie Brown Christmas". Now I just need to get this out of the way, I love Peanuts, I repeat Love and had somewhat of Linus complex as a child(I had security blanket). This is the one thing that I must watch every year without fail. Now that i've established that I can continue.

Now there are many things that make this a great special. Numero Uno is the music. "A Charlie Brown Christmas" was scored by Vince Guaraldi and remains at the top of my holiday music. The music beautifully underscores the quietness of Peanuts and accuentates the dryness of the characters. In a way the music becomes it's own character. One of my favorite tracks "Christmas time is here" has made reoccuring appearances in popular culture most notably in "The Royal Tenenbaums". Aside from that how the hell can you not like Schroder and his piano. You have to figure he was kind of the stud in Peanuts or at least Lucy always was after him, so he at least attracted one psycho bitch.

I digress though "A Charlie Brown Christmas" is special because of the one of the main principals that Peanuts ran on and that was heart. Peanuts was somewhat personal for cartoonist Charles Schultz, the characters were based off of childhood friends, so in that way he cared, the characters meant something to him. Charlie Brown in this story is down in the dumps over the commercilization of christmas and he feels that he and everyone else has lost touch. in an attempt to get back in touch he becomes director of the school play, it doesn't go well...there's some rude kids, a terminally ill tree and snoopy is being a diva as usual. Anyways at the end Charlie puts it all aside and finds the spirit of christmas along with the other children. (I cut out all the parts about the christianity stuff, hmm wonder why)



It's funny to think though that "A Charlie Brown Christmas" did suffer alot of problems one of the things is that the special was used by its sponsor Coca-Cola to hock soda to families. Too bad no one has seen a print with this since the first three years that it ran. Anyways I leave you with the opening of "A Charlie Brown"

The Wayback Machine

So I've been wanting to start blogging again and one of the things I've decided to do is weekly segment one that I can at least stick to so here it is my new weekly segment THE WAYBACK MACHINE!!

Basically a quick blog about something that is from the past, henceforth the Mr. Peabody and Sherman reference.

So my for the first entry we are gonna travel back to the 30's and 40's to the euphoirc sound of "The Ink Spots". The Ink Spots were an all black vocal group and were one of the most popular vocal groups of all time. The group was known for it's simple song structure, beautiful lyrics and excellent specifically the tenor. In there time and they had several number one hits and there music has been covered and used in popular culture frequently. Quite frankly though I discovered them and one of favorite tracks while I was playing Bioshock and then another song was selected as the opening to Fallout 3. The group even inspired one of video pieces for my independent study. So for your viewing pleasure I have my two favorite tracks "If I didn't Care" which is the most popular, followed by "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire". I would of had 3 but it's hard to find them on youtube.