Bake The Hall In The Candle of Her Brain

Yesterday, my son and I were out driving around listening to "The Muppets Present: The Frog Prince." It captured my little two year old's ear and he eagerly awaited every new track. Just to be sure that I wasn't imagining him paying attention to the story, I asked him about it later on in the day and he recounted the whole plot and even a few items that I had forgotten. It brought a smile to my face to know that he was enjoying what was coming over the sound system. It also furthered my happiness in knowing that we have the old fashioned audio stories to listen to rather than having a DVD player in the car. Here is that same audio that we listened to yesterday (that he is still talking about today). It's a combination of the original soundtrack album and the soundtrack from the actual television special from 1971. Here is "The Muppets Present: The Frog Prince". Enjoy!

Jim Henson's Muppets Present: The Frog Prince

Roosevelt Franklin Is His Name

When Sesame Street first started back in 1970, it featured a lot of characters that have since disappeared from the show. One of those original characters was a hipster by the name of "Roosevelt Franklin". Roosevelt Franklin (the name was obviously a play on Franklin Roosevelt) attended Roosevelt Franklin Elementary School, where he taught concepts like family, pride, respect, geography and not drinking poison. Roosevelt was a cool kid who loved to scat, rhyme and sing the blues. Matt Robinson, who played Gordon during the first three seasons, created the character and performed Roosevelt's voice. Despite significant popularity, he was dropped from the cast following letters of complaint. The complaints ranged from that he was too black to that he was not black enough to his rowdy elementary school not setting a good example for children. However, before the public naysayers had their way, Roosevelt Franklin did gain a following and even issued an album entitled, "The Year of Roosevelt Franklin". It holds its place in history as the first Sesame Street album to focus on one character. The songs deal with many different subjects, from learning letters and numbers, to traffic safety, sharing, and getting along with other people. The album was so successful that it was reissued three years later as "My Name Is Roosevelt Franklin." The reissue is the record that I own. The album is a work of pure genius and one wonders if maybe it isn't time to bring back that rhyming and scatting school teacher as he would definitely fit into today's world. You be the judge when you listen to "My Name is Roosevelt Franklin". Enjoy!

My Name is Roosevelt Franklin

When Children's Heros Go Disco Part 3

Well, after the release of "Sesame Street Fever" and "Sesame Street Disco", we fast forward about 24 years and the world gets to see a remix album made from these records! What's that, you say? A remix album from Sesame Street? Yes, it's true. It happened like this: back when the album was a hit, the record's executive producer, Arthur Shimkin commissioned Larry Levan to do remixes of "C is for Cookie", but they remained unreleased until 2003, when a strange twist of fate occurred. Ninja Tune records was looking to license the track ‘Pinball Number Count’ for the first ‘Now, Listen’ mix CD (these were mix CDs that were released in the 90s). The Pinball song had never been released commercially and was the holy grail for Sesame Street fans and DJs alike. However, the song was not allowed to appear on the album due to worries within the Henson corporation about content on some of the rap tracks on the CD. They thought that it was an unsuitable setting for their material. Instead, Ninja Tune took it upon themselves to make a separate mix containing all Sesame Street songs. It was during a scouring of the Sesame Street archives at their NY offices that they found the unreleased mixes of "C is for Cookie" done all those years ago. As a result, a 12" single was put together with the Pinball song and several different remixes of the Cookie song as well. Here is that find for you now! Here is "Sold Steel presents Sesame Street". Enjoy!

Solid Steel presents Sesame Street

When Children's Heros Go Disco Part 2

Following up on last week's post we have another disco record featuring children's television stars. This time around, it's the sequel to "Sesame Street Fever" entitled, simply, "Sesame Street Disco". Since "Sesame Street Fever" was such a hit, the powers that be decided to release this follow up album the next year. Sesame Disco! is a 1979 Sesame Street album, a follow-up to the previous year's Sesame Street Fever. The big difference here is that most of the songs on the album were written especially for this release, whereas the first disco album was more classic Sesame Street songs put to a disco beat. As with the first album. "Sesame Street Disco" was also nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Recording for Children, but it lost to the soundtrack album of The Muppet Movie. Here is that second disco album brought to you by the letters D-A-R-T-M-A-N. Enjoy!

Sesame Street Disco

When Children's Heros Go Disco Part 1

My son is heavily into Sesame Street. As is the norm, his favorite is Elmo but he does have a fondness for Bert and Ernie, Big Bird and Grover. It pleases me immensely that all of these Sesame Street records that I have collected over the years can actually have a purpose. I play them for him regularly and he even has his own little i-pod with a giant collection of the albums on it. Yesterday we took a listen to a rare gem, "Sesame Street Fever". It was, disco-y but it was still cool since it was the Muppets. I mean, when Henson was alive, the Muppets could do no wrong. (Since his death, they have gone wrong numerous times but that's another post). Anyway, it made me think that there was a rash of disco-related cash ins when the dance fever craze became a sensation. Over the next few days we'll take a look at how that sensation affected the children's market. Today, obviously, we are focusing on Sesame Street Fever. This album came out in 1978 and features disco interpretations of familiar Sesame Street hits. The album's title and cover is an obvious and quite frankly, a hilarious send up of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. And speaking of Saturday Night Fever, the Bee Gees' own Robin Gibb appears as a guest vocalist and can also be heard in conversation with Cookie Monster during the introduction to "C is for Cookie". Believe it or not but this album reached #75 on Billboard's album chart and was certified Gold by the RIAA. This album was even nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Recording for Children, but lost to another Henson production; the first cast album from The Muppet Show. As with all disco stuff, once the novelty wears off, you are pretty much done with it. Thankfully, this album is so short that the novelty wears off about the same time the record ends. Here for you now is Sesame Street Fever. Enjoy!

Sesame Street Fever

The 25 Posts of Christmas: Day 4

Continuing with my 25 posts of Christmas, I bring you some items from the Sears Wishbook. As I stated last year, when I was young, gearing up for Christmas meant breaking out the latest Sears Wishbook and writing out a 3+ page list of all of the goodies inside that I wanted for Christmas. I then gave it to my Mom who of course sent it to Santa who we all knew used the Sears Wishbook for all of his shopping! As I did last year, I thought that I would share some of those great items that made the list and eventually made it under the tree.

For this post I bring you the "controversial" Ernie puppet. This was a hand puppet that was given to me one Christmas when I was very young. Since I came from a big Italian family, we would exchange gifts between the family on Christmas Eve (after the 5 hour dinner spectacular!). On that fateful Christmas Eve, I received the Ernie puppet from my Aunt and Uncle. At first I thought it was great. Then my father picked it up and tried to entertain me by biting me on the nose with it. Of course, this terrified me and started me crying which then led to the puppet being locked away in a drawer, never to be played with again. Good times!

October Is Upon Us!

Today is October 1 and that means we have 30 days until Halloween!! To do the just service of counting down the days until the spooktakular event, I will post nothing but spooky, fun Halloween-esque like posts all month long. Of course there will be my Funtastic Halloween Mix for this year but that will come soon enough. Today I thought we would start out with some monsters! The Sesame Street Monsters to be exact! This album haunted me for years. Not because I was scared by it or anything (it is a Sesame Street record!) but because I couldn't have it. When I was a kid in grade school, every so often they would have a book fair in the library. They would have all sorts of cool things besides books. I remember they had magazines and records as well. Every year, the Sesame Street Monsters record would be there to buy and every year I would want it. However, I was under strict rules from my father that I could only buy books at the book fair and not records (even as a child I couldn't keep away from records!) As the years went by I forgot all about this album. And then I saw it in a thrift store one day and the memories came rushing back. Suprisingly, it was in excellent condition. So naturally I bought it and of course had to share it with you! Let's start the scary month of October off with "Sesame Street Monsters"! Enjoy!

Sesame Street Monsters