Product Description

No Description Available
No Track Information Available
Media Type: CD
Artist: SCHOOLHOUSE ROCK! ROCKS
Title: SCHOOLHOUSE ROCK! ROCKS
Street Release Date: 04/09/1996
Domestic
Genre: ROCK/POP COLLECTIONS

Track Listing

1. Schoolhouse Rocky [Original Theme Music] - Bob Dorough and Friends
2. I'm Just a Bill - Deluxx Folk Implosion
3. Three Is A Magic Number - Blind Melon
4. Conjunction Junction - Better Than Ezra
5. Electricity, Electricity - Goodness
6. No More Kings - Pavement
7. Shot Heard 'Round the World - Ween
8. My Hero, Zero - The Lemonheads
9. Energy Blues - Biz Markie
10. Little Twelvetoes - Chavez
11. Verb: That's What's Happening - Moby
12. Interplanet Janet - Man or Astro-man?
13. Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, Get Your Adverbs Here - Buffalo Tom
14. Unpack Your Adjectives - Daniel Johnston
15. Tale of Mr. Morton - Skee-Lo

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23165 in Music
• Brand: SCHOOLHOUSE ROCK! ROCKS
• Released on: 1996-04-09
• Number of discs: 1
• Original language: English

Amazon.com
The beauty of Schoolhouse Rock in its original Saturday morning run (1973-85) was that kids watching couldn't tell whether the catchy three-minute cartoon jingles were meant to be commercials, shows, or something else entirely. That enabled overexposed TV youth to learn without realizing it between episodes of Scooby Doo and Fat Albert. Then the Brady Bunch generation became the alternative nation, and the innocence with which they took in these grammar, history, and math lessons was lost. Now comes the obligatory tribute album, Schoolhouse Rock Rocks--pleasant enough, but full of postmodern yuks and missed-the-point nostalgia that aim to celebrate but instead drain the joy from childhood memories.

Though it's somewhat interesting to hear Pavement turn "Mo More Kings" into lo-fi krautrock or Moby make "Verb: That's What's Happening" into industrial techno-pop, the performers who most successfully preserve Schoolhouse Rock's edutainment viability are those who are most cartoonish to begin with: Ween ("The Shot Heard 'round the World"), Biz Markie ("The Energy Blues"), and Daniel Johnston ("Unpack Your Adjectives"). The problem remains, nonetheless: Any revamping of these songs implies Schoolhouse Rock somehow needed to be made hipper. That none of these songs is better than its original proves how very unhip '70s kids have grown up to be. --Roni Sarig

Customer Reviews

Not the originals, but a fine tribute
Unlike those who have been shocked by the high reviews for this album, I'm shocked by the low reviews. They come almost exclusively from people expecting a collection of the original SHR songs. THIS IS A TRIBUTE ALBUM! If you don't understand what that means, you shouldn't buy this record.

Among the things you do get are:
-One of the last tracks put out by Blind Melon before the death of Shannon Hoon.
-A track by Moby about three years before he was shot into the stratosphere of fame.

-Arguably the best track that one-hit-wonder Skee-Lo ever laid.
-A very timely reworking of "No More Kings" done in classic Pavement style.
-A "hip" Biz Markie without his usual "hop".
-A chance to reflect on how the world as a whole and the world of music have changed since those simple days of the early seventies.

I question whether anyone who uses a music review to insult a whole generation deserves to be an editor at Amazon.

And lastly, I don't really think that Bob Dorough and company see this as a "mangling" of their classic songs. After, their permission was needed to make the album. The original SHR brought, along with education, messages of tolerance and open-mindedness. Bring the same when you listen to this. If anything, this record is a testament to how many different kinds of people in my generation were touched by these Saturday morning snippets.

Great music takes me both back to the 70s and into the 90s!
I was a HUGE SHR fan growing up and still love watching some of the old clips on my SHR America Rock VHS tape. But while I feel a little silly and juvenille watching the original shows, I feel cool and hip when I listen to my SHR Rocks! album! This CD takes some of the best SHR songs from the 70s and puts them in the hands of trendy 90s rock bands; the resulting songs are frequently very different from the originals yet still a lot of fun. I especially like "Mr. Morton," a song that I only vaguely recollect from my younger years that's turned into a cool, sort of rap-style melody here. Overall, this is a great modern compilation that's likely to be enjoyed by both those who grew up with SHR and those who like the bands featured.

Fun, fun, fun
This album is a fun way to escape the reality of modern music. I used several songs for skits at my graduation party almost two years ago and they were a huge hit. My friends and I still get a good laugh listening to it every now and then. How can anyone deeply analyze or criticize something like this? I didn't grow up on Schoolhouse Rock, but it seems to me that it's not something to be picked apart or taken too seriously. It was supposed to make education fun, and this cd is simply bringing it back. True, the songs don't sound exactly the same as they used to, but that's the whole idea. And my six year old sister still walks around the house sometimes singing "Conjunction Junction." This album will ad a nice flavor and interesting twist to anyone's music collection.