Hey, everybody, Happy Saturday. And as promised in our Saturday Morning Cartoons episode, which, by the way, I hope you woke up this morning and went downstairs and at least streamed some cartoons for nostalgia's sake. But as promised in that episode, here is our past school House Rock app that we recorded quite a number of years ago, and we thought it was apropos that we put it out the same week as the old Saturday Morning Cartoons up.
We really had a great time recording this episode. Schoolhouse Rock was a fundamental source of learning men entertainment for both of us growing up and for most of Gen X.
I would say, so, I hope you enjoy it all over again.
Here we go with how school House Rock Rocked featuring Bob Nistanovich Pavement.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Let's say, because knowledge is power.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, There's Jerry and this is Stuff.
You Should Know. Chip off the block of your favorite schoolhouse.
Yeah, that was h We just heard the theme song. If you're between the ages of well, were you into it? Yes, Okay, so you're what forty one, I'm forty, dude, forty so probably younger than you even a bit. Let's say if you're between.
I was definitely toward the tail end of it.
Okay, let's say thirty eight to fifty years old.
Actually, yeah, that's so true. So let's say it was up to.
Eighty five, so our Schoolhouse Rock.
Yeah, yeah, so I would swear in that, let's say thirty five to what fifty ish? All right, that's what you agree on a little more fifty five maybe.
So that fifteen year period you were lucky.
Yeah, Like if you just heard that theme song and like something inside your body happened emotionally in your brain, then that means that you grew up in the seventies and eighties. I think the heyday of Saturday Morning cartoons personally, as a fan of Schoolhouse Rock one of my favorite favorite favorite things in the world.
Yeah, it was pretty great.
I still love it. Yeah, Like I still listen to this stuff semi regularly.
Oh do you.
Yeah, it'd been a little while.
When I went back to research this, I listened to or watched a bunch of them.
Yeah, and they all just came flooding back.
Yeah, and the writer of this article actually interviewed, didn't he Bob Doro?
It sounded that way unless he's a big fat liar. In his author's note.
Well, I just remember when this article went around, Like the first thing we do when there's an article at house thefforks is there's a email that goes around everyone where people kind of suggest kind of questions you can answer and stuff like that.
Yeah.
I don't think we ever really talked about that, did we.
I don't think so.
Nine years in that's a secret and people say, hey, you should think about this, you should do this, And I said, somebody should try and interview Bob Doro. It's like he's ninety three years old and you know, you can still get in touch with the guy. I think, and apparently this dude did. And sadly I think we got was like one quote.
Yeah, well he was on his way to like a jazz gig in London when he caught him.
I bet you that was more in there than this. I was all disappointed. Oh you're saying I wanted like more more select pull quotes from mister Doro.
He wanted like I called mister Doro. He answered, Hello, said mister Doro.
We should have interviewed him for this.
I don't know why we didn't.
I don't either. Easy to get to uh and there's well, I'll get to that. Never mind, should we get in the way back machine?
Guess let's go back to the seventies, the greatest decade in his true of humanity.
Probably, I'm not joking.
I'm a fan of the sixties, seventies, and eighties. It'd be tough for me to decide.
The sixties were a little too hippie for me. Oh yeah, love the seventies, though, I mean I had loved the seventies, and not even as a Golden AIGs.
There was a lot wrong in the seventies.
Nixon was president during the seventies. Okay, Yeah, lots of stuff were wrong in the seventies, But something about that decade just hit.
All the boxes.
Yeah, I just love it. I do too, And it reminds me of my childhood, which is great, because you know, I had a good childhood. It was fun. I've a lot of We talked about that in the Nostalgia episode on how nostalgia is the correct path life. Even though John Hodgman doesn't think so.
Yeah.
So early seventies, there's a gentleman named David McCall and he was a He co owned an ad agency called McCaffrey and McCall. And as the story goes, he was on vacation with his family and he knew his son was having some trouble in math, remembering specifically multiplication tables.
Yeah, no matter how much he yelled at him every night, he couldn't get multiplication.
But they're in the car and this kid was singing, as the story goes, rolling Stones, rolling Stone song, and he was like, well, you know that, Why can't you remember the other stuff? I don't think he was that cruff, but it did hit him. He was like, you know, my son remembered. He's no problem memorizing things. But there's something about these multiplication tables. So I wonder if there's something to sing song and turning learning into not only
just music, because that's not a new thing. People have been doing that forever, but pop sounding music.
Right, and like pairing them with concepts to teach, right, Yeah, to make kids understand difficult concepts right. And it's it's so weird now, especially in the post school house rock World that that, Yeah, of course people do that, Like that's a technique that you use to teach kids, but apparently no one else is doing this at the time. Learning this was this was a pretty interesting idea, and it really it germinated in just the right guy's mind.
Because this guy McCall was, like you said, he was a partner in this advertising firm and they basically specialized in in doing the same thing but get you getting you to buy something. He was saying, maybe we could do the same thing that we do to sell people stuff, but to basically sell education to kids, to teach kids using the same techniques that we an advertising.
Yeah, Like they would see a jingle for a product that would get lodged in someone's head and they would say, you know, why can't we do that same thing, Like it would get lodged in a kid's head and they would have learned something instead of bought something.
Right, But you could also buy stuff. If you learn enough stuff, you can buy even more stuff.
So he went to one of the I think he was a creative director, a co creative director named George Newell ran it by him. He said, great idea, get someone on it and he threw a cigarette at him, got out of the office and commissioned a one of their writers. They had jingle writers on staff or at least working with them, and they said, go write something. It wasn't very good.
Didn't you feel bad for this person?
I did, But you know what, it could have died there, right, he never would have had Schoolhouse Rock.
But this person went down in history is the contributor to school House Rock.
Who didn't it didn't make it?
Yeah, say it? Or the person who almost old Schoolhouse Rock.
I guess so. But McCall was like, no, this idea is too good for this.
Yeah, which is really, you know, a great thing and a lesson in persistence. So he went Newell was a jazz piano player, and he went to his buddy one Bob Doro, one of my heroes, who was and is a great bebop jazz pianist and composer, and said, you can write a jingle too. Why don't you try this out? And here's the one quote we might as well read it from a ninety three year old mister Doro. I don't know how I looked out. Apparently they tried other songwriters,
but most of them wrote down to kids. When I met McCauley said, here's my idea. I give it a try, but don't write down to the kids. And when he said that, I got a chill. I have a high opinion of children, And that was sort of the key right there. They weren't songs like written in a remedial way because it was children, right.
It'sy bitsy spider, give.
Me a break. Oh that's a classic. So but you're right.
But so this idea germinates in this right guy's head. He happens to end up indirectly getting in touch with this guy who has a high opinion of children, and he happens to be a jazz composer. Yeah, things are starting to like happen. There's basically the hand of the Almighty at work here.
That's right. So Dora goes home, he has a daughter, gets out of textbooks, and the first thing he comes up with to me one.
Of the best man, it is far out.
Three is a magic number was the very first schoolhouse song written because the first thing they wanted to tackle was math. Because of McCall's son.
Yeah, this this composition that he came back with, Three is a magic number. It's a I when I.
Hear it, it's super cool, but I don't.
I'm really surprised that everybody's like, this is, yes, figure something out from this.
I loved it.
It is, it's cool, but it just doesn't seem like the basis the keystone of Schoolhouse Rock to me.
I'm surprised.
Well, it's one of my favorites. That's great because it dealt with multiplication. And not only that, but like you said, got a little trippy with the symbolism faith, hope and charity, heart and mind and body. Right, it was about and I've wanted to do a podcast on three, the number three, because it's very special. It is very special. It is.
We did one on zero. Why not three?
Oh man, I forgot about that. Remember, I think my brain melted a bit there.
That's a good one. It's tough. Zero is tough.
It is tough and not at all magic, right, not really so regardless, if you would have been working there, you would have been like, eh, and everyone else enjoyed it. You'd be like, I'm gonna go get a bagel.
I'm gonna go work on this process cheese account.
I did think of Madmen quite a bit when I was researching this, it was sort of that same time period or I guess towards No, Madmen didn't make it into the seventies.
Yeah, I thought he did, because wasn't he supposed to be dB Cooper at the end, and that was the right seventies?
True?
Yeah, early, I guess it was seventy one.
I think it did crack into the seventies, not like Boogie Knights did.
That was all seventies into the eighties.
No, that's right, it cracked into the eighties. Yeah with that cheeze that that song you recorded. Well, no, I was, well, yeah, that for sure. But I was thinking about when when the Party The New Year's e Party nineteen eighty with Bill Macy. Oh yeah, man, what a great movie. That was wonderful. Yeah, the movie's almost like twenty years old.
I believe it. We're old, Chuck.
I know. But those those pop culture references are the ones that really hit home for me.
What the ones are in the seventies.
Well, when I think of like Boogie Nights, it's like, oh, yeah, that was just like a few years ago, right, And then someone says it's celebrating its twentieth anniversary and I'm like, what or like when I see an athlete's son or daughter. Yeah, it's weird to see them as playing the same sport.
The rookies are now like the old coaches and managers in the sports now. Man, it's bizarre.
So everyone's impressed at McCaffrey and McCall. Then they did a pretty smart thing. They went to McCall was on the board of the Bank Street College of Education in New York there and he took it to them and it was just a song at this point, and said, what do you think is a learning tool? They used it, played it for the students and they were like, this is awesome. Right they're responding again Little Josh.
He's just sitting there with his arms, crusty, scowling. Never seen him so mad before.
So the students liked it. The agency liked it, so they knew they were onto something. They got their art director Tom yo yo h e.
Oh you're going with yo, I'm going all out with YOHI.
Okay, Tom Yohee and said, put some animation to this, draw out some storyboards because that was the beauty of Schoolhouse Rock to me was it was a combination of everything. It wasn't just the song, Like, the songs are great, and we'll get more to the music here in a bit, but it was the combination of the visuals with the song, yeah, and the fact that you were learning something in such a unique way. It was just like the perfect storm of awesomeness.
Yeah. The songs on their own would have stood up on their own.
Oh yeah.
And initially, like they they planned to just release an album of cool songs like this, Yeah, but it was when YOHI started sitting there right like drawing some of.
This stuff out. Uh huh.
That's I mean. Schoolhouse Rock is not one or the other. It's the combination of those two things, and they play off each other.
So well, agreed. So they took Now they have these storyboards. They take this to a guy named radford Stone. He was their account supervisor, the VP for ABC, and they said, there's this young upstart at ABC for their children's programming
named Michael Eisner. Doubt if he's ever going to go anywhere, but right now he's running the kids shop over there, and let's bring in because this guy knows a lot about kids programming, Let's bring in Chuck Jones to the meeting, shout out to our friend Jessica, granddaughter of mister Jones, and sat down in a meeting, played the demo tape, showed him the storyboard they helped. Turned to Chuck Jones. So what do you think he said? Buy it bid?
That is how Chuck Jones taught.
How he didn't and Michael Eisner bought it and uh, before you knew it, they're in business. We're gonna take a break, I think we should. Josh is going to go collect himself and we'll be right back. All right, all right, we're back. So strange. So Schoolhouse Rocks started on ABC Saturday morning. Is what they call an interstitial.
Yeah, we had some of this, Yeah, it was.
It was. It's programming between the programming that's not commercial.
Right, When the creators of the program you're actually watching weren't good enough to make twenty two full minutes, you round it out with the interstitial program.
Yeah, exactly. This is January sixth and seventh, was the first weekend in nineteen seventy three, So I was but two years old?
Oh well negative three.
Yeah, you were in the upper atmosphere playing my lyre coalescing, waiting to be born, Flapping My Wings. And this was before like, like you said, this is the original thing was it was just going to be an album called Multiplication Rock until they realized that the visuals were important
they could put it on television. And the first four songs that first weekend were some of the greatest, aside from three is the Magic Number, the four Legged Zoo, Elementary, my Dear, and My Hero zero great song.
Zero again, Yeah, not magical, but it is a cool number.
Such a funny little hero. Yeah, so you came along. They counted on their fingers.
So that when was that Chuck nineteen seventy three, Yes, and I think that first one had quite so it was up to there were thirteen episodes then if it went from zero to twelve.
Yeah, And I think what they settled on was almost like seasons right themed season, so that the first season was going to be math related.
Yeah.
So apparently Bob Doro had been off like coming up with songs. Didn't realize that they wanted a song for each number, and he had started to combine several numbers in.
A different song, so hitting get the mimo he didn't and he.
Finally did, and he he was trying to figure out how to like break the songs apart, and he came up with one called the four Legged Zoo.
Have you heard that one?
Yeah? It's fine. Yeah, so so not one of my favorites, but I mean they were all great. It's just some stand out a little more than others.
Yeah, So what's your favorite of the multiplication rock?
Oh? Well, three is the magic number?
Okay?
Yeah?
And that was something else I noticed about this. There were for each season, there were at least one standout song per season that just about everybody knows.
Yeah, and I would guess.
Three is of magic numbers. Probably that one.
Yeah, or maybe my hero zero. That was a big one.
Yeah, that was a hit, so much so that Bob Dura was up for Grammy in nineteen seventy four.
Yeah, for I think the whole album.
Right, Yeah, but the jerks at Sesame Street one.
If you're gonna lose, lose to Sesame Street.
Yeah. And Doro is like writing and singing these initial first few songs.
I think he's saying, yeah, all of them except two. And he hired two other jazz musicians, Grady Tit and Blossom Deary great name. Grady Tate sang Naughty number nine and Blossom Deary sang figure eight, but all the rest of them, the other eleven, Bob Dura sang and he wrote all of them. So yeah, yeah, they really struck gold with that guy.
Yeah, I mean he was he was that initial genius behind this whole thing.
Yeah, and this is another cool thing about Schoolhouse Rock that I noticed the people involved stayed on for basically the whole run. In the initial run from seventy three to eighty five.
Yeah, it seemed like a project that everyone enjoyed working on, and that was highly collaborative, and it just seemed like a good experience. I don't think there's like the VH one special, like the Dark Side of the school House Rock years. You know, so they move on to I don't know which one is my favorite, Grammar Rock or History, but they moved on to Grammar Rock next, Yes, And that was yeah, seventy three to seventy four.
And we should say I don't think that these were like I don't think there were breaks in the season. I get the impression that from nineteen seventy three till nineteen eighty five, when they had enough episodes, yeah, they were just running them like every Saturday morning during cartoons.
Yeah, I certainly don't remember like breaks, like it just seems like every week they were there. Right, So seventy three and seventy four you have Grammar Rock, which debuted. Some people will probably say the biggest of all time Conjunction Junction.
That's so what everybody knows.
It's a great, great song, a song as he sang many others, including my all time favorite, which I'll get to later.
Okay, but I know what it is.
I bet you don't. He was Merv Griffin's trumpet player, Jack Sheldon, who just had this voice that's.
Just like it's the conjunction Junction.
Yeah, it's unbelievable. Yeah, very unique guy. And he kind of looked like Will Ferrell to me, like he should play him if they did a movie about they should do a movie about the whole thing. If she asked me about Schoolhouse Rock.
Yeah, I think there's no controversy or conflict. It's just two hours of everybody getting along doing great stuff.
He wants to see that, right, So Jack Sheldon came at uh sang Conjunction Junction.
And did you go back and listen to that?
Like for this Oh yeah, I listened to a lot of these.
So that is a sophisticated song. Yeah, if you listen to like that we remember our poetry episode. Yeah, if you listen to like the meter and the rhyming pattern, the rhyme scheme and the slant rhymes they use, like for something that's made for kids, it is not just.
Rhyme, rhyme, rhyme, rhyme, rhyme, rme me, rhyme, rhyme.
You know, like it's a sophisticated song and it's pretty pretty cool.
Yeah. I think that's I mean, I think that's why it worked. That was a secret is.
I guess it's that not not talking down to kids.
Yeah, And like the music was was good, right, Like if you listen to I mean, those are a little sing songy, but like some of them were like pop music at the time, Like the Verb song. That's one
of the funkiest songs I've ever heard. Verb, That's What's Happening. Yeah, and especially that one, Like I read this great blog pot by this African American guy that was talking about how Verb was like meant so much to him because at the time, you know, they didn't have a lot of like cartoons and stuff that but addressed the black community at all. And so all of a sudden, you
get this cartoon. It's got this super funky music and this kid that looked like him, right, having this great adventure in the city, and it just kind of it's a pretty pretty neat thing, I think.
Yeah, that was season two. It was Grammar, right, Yes, So apparently in that same season, a lady named Lynn Aaron's was a She was a copy copy department secretary.
Yeah, this is where it reminded me of Madmen, like basically took Peggy's journey from like secretary to superstar.
I've never seen mad Ben.
Yeah it's good. I'm rewatching it right now.
Oh really, yeah, it's that good.
Yeah.
So Lynn was she was a secretary at the advertise agency and apparently she was playing her guitar on lunch break.
Another reason the seventies.
Were great exactly.
And who was it that founder Newell, the creative director guy.
Yeah, like in the movie, he's just walking down the hall and hears this beautiful music and stops. It's like, what in the world's going on in there?
Right?
And it was Lynn Aerond's And so they took her and put her on I guess, part time on the project, and they I guess eventually made her a full time songwriter, which is pretty cool.
Yeah, that was her gig. Fifteen of the songs, right, including some of the biggest ones. A noun as a person plays her thing, great song, InterPlaNet Janet interjections to a good one, a victim of gravity about Isaac Newton.
InterPlaNet Janet sounds like Rocky Horror if you go back and listen to it, Yeah, it kind of does. It bears a real resemblance to it.
Or Rocky Horror sounded like InterPlaNet Janet.
Well, I went and looked. Rocky Horror was three years before in A Planet Janet the movie or the play the movie?
Okay, so the play was he before that?
Was it a play first?
Oh yeah, Meatloaf was even in the play. Oh yeah before the movie right, and not a play I guess, musical?
Sure, he played with songs and dancing.
So the next one to come along was America Rock or History Rock, which kind of vised for the best to me with Grammar.
Rock, and that one tied into the by centennial.
Yeah that was a big deal, which you don't remember, but I remember being a little kid, being five years old, and it took over the country for you know, that entire year.
Yeah, I know, there was like a resurgence in colonial emblems and stuff like that. You know that if you ever walked past like a very very old person's house today, you might see like a flagholder that's a black metal eagle, yeah, holding like some arrows maybe or something like that. That is from nineteen seventy six. Still there like a resurgence in Betsy Ross and colonial like nick knacks and stuff.
Yeah.
I was I was just born, but it was there was a it created like a high water mark that I was able to see even you know, four five six years later.
So History Rock or America Rock featured some of the best songs Mother Necessity, Shot Herd Around the World and No More Kings, which is maybe my second all time favorite. Yeah, yeah, and that's the one that There was an album that came out in like ninety five ninety six called Schoolhouse Rocks Rocks. I think Schoolhouse Rock Rocks where they got contemporary artists to cover these songs. And did you ever listen to that?
I listened to the Pavement one of the day.
Man so I emailed Bob Nistanovich today from Pavement because, as I said in the previous episode, I tricked him into being my email friend, and I said, Hey, dude, I would love to hear if you have any thoughts on them, more kings, how you guys were approached, if there are any stories, what it meant to you, what it didn't mean, whatever, let me know. Crickets No, no, no, He emailed back, and then I said, I'll call you
on my way to work. Called him the way to work. Crickets, Yeah, got his voicemail, and then as I was coming in the studio, he called and left the voicemail saying he was in his minivan rocking out and he didn't hear the phone ring. Oh that's funny, which is very funny to me. But I told him I'd like to hear what he has to say, because he said he has a tale to tell about that experience.
Man, we're going to have to record it after.
This, well, yeah, or if it could be like a listener mail, Yeah, like if I can get him on tape, then we'll tag it at the end. Okay, if not, if it ends up being an email version or something, I'll just maybe recount it in my own dumb words.
Or you could ask him if we could read the email and make a listener mail.
Oh for real, Yeah, like a real listener mail. It's not about idea. So anyway, so listen up for the end for Bob Nistanovitch's story about No More Kings, because if you listen to that CD, it's like the Lemonheads and Ween this.
Is super ninety CD.
Yeah, Moby and they're all most of them are pretty straight ahead, and so you get to the Pavement song and it's just all pavement, Like Malcolm's changed his words. He there's like laser guns at the end, and it's just wonderfully pavement, like quintessentially pavement. Yeah, like leave it to them to just kind of throw it all out the window and do their own thing.
Yeah.
I liked it a lot. Three Ring Government. I didn't really know that one.
That was good and apparently they so it basically talks about the different branches of the government. Yeah, but puts in the context of a three ring circus, and it's really I mean, aside from the fact that it compares the government to a three ring circus, it's not at all offensive.
Right.
Apparently they sat on that one for years and didn't release it until like nineteen seventy nine because they were worried about offending the government, which is a strange thing to worry.
About, yeah, through today's lens.
Yeah, but even still, I mean, this is like post Watergate. It's not like everybody was like, oh right, right, you know, we couldn't possibly call the government a three ring circus.
Yeah, that's true. That is weird. It seems like that would have been a good time to do it. Yeah, you know, but the most famous song from that year by far was Sheldon's on Just a Bill?
Is that your favorite?
No?
Okay?
That was composed not by mister Doro but by a man named Dave Frishburg. And I mean that one was just a mega hit, straight to number one on the Billboard charts.
It's like, as far as Schoolhouse Rocks goes, that's the that's the that's the cultural icon that signifies the whole thing. I think close close second would be conjunction junction. Maybe they're tired, I don't know, but I just feel like I'm just a Bill is the most readily recognizable one.
Yeah, And it's just amazing when you look back, though, like the learning that was going on and the teaching that was happening. Yeah, these kids, us, we were learning how a bill becomes a law right in the in the best way possible, like better than any well, not any teacher. There were great teachers back then, I want to say, like any dumb teacher that's boring their kids. But it definitely struck a chord with me. Sure, you know, yeah, And that's how I remember a lot of this stuff.
And apparently two adults were also noticing Schoolhouse Rock at the time. Supposedly there were plenty of orders. This was before video cassettes. Yeah, before they were widely available, I guess in the home. I'm trying to think of how they would have played them if they didn't have video cassettes. But anyway, apparently lobbyists and legislators would get in touch with ABC and be like, you got to get me a copy of that I'm a bill thing.
Give me a Beta Max because I want.
To show it to my staff to train them on this kind of stuff.
Well, I think they asked for cassettes, at least, at the very least so they could play in the music.
I see. Maybe that's what they meant, probably okay.
An eight track. Yeah, And then there was Science Rock was the year after that. That was seventy eight and seventy nine, which is pretty good. InterPlaNet Janet victiogravity one, yeah, is so weird? What InterPlaNet Janet? Yeah, Yeah, it's a
good one. And then the telegraph Line song, which I think that was written by Urns too, I think, oh yeah, And that one was really like, I mean it was you literally learned about the nervous system and how the body communicates to the brain by listening to that song. That's one that they've wanted to play for medicine students. Yeah, and they did amazing some of them. All right, well let's take another break, and jeez, we'll cover the sad last season of Schoolhouse Rock after.
This, so chuck.
Schoolhouse Rock for the first four seasons was the epitome of creativity. Even their process was creative, Like the songwriters would I guess they would say, this season, our theme is, you know, it's gonna be science or gonna be grammar or whatever, so go forth and figure this out. The songwriters would come up with songs and they'd pitch them to the creative team. And so there was this process of creativity and it started with the creatives. That's the
key here. Yeah, that's what made it just so legitimate and so wonderfully creative this whole time.
It started with the creatives, right.
Yeah, and they would pretty cool. They would get them vetted by that Bank Street School of Education, so they would get make sure everything was like, you know, it was right yeah, and.
Then ABC would be like, let me say it, and then they'd say, oh, I guess it's fine, and then they'd start to storyboard it once they had the lyrics set in stone, right. That was the first four seasons. The fifth season they said die, creativity Die, and they reversed the process and they said, hey, songwriters, here are your assignments. Now we think kids should know more about computers, so we're going to just screw this whole thing up.
Okay, yeah, this is the part I don't get it, says the ABC program exec Squire Rushnell commissioned this because that was the idea that children were afraid of computers. I can't I don't remember anything, but they're being like excitement about computers. I don't remember any kids being like, I don't want to go near that.
Yeah.
I remember kids being like, oh that's cool, let me sit down.
And usually it was the parents that were afraid of computers.
Well, I think herein lies the problem. Yeah, with season five.
So we should say season five too.
If you notice we jumped quite a bit from nineteen seventy nine to nineteen eighty five, Schoolhouse Rock was running all those years on Saturday mornings.
Yeah, they just weren't any new ones. They were the same ones they were re running.
U Yeah, the class nineteen eighty five, Squire Rushnal says, give me, give me four episodes or six?
Is it four or six? On computers?
Yeah, and we're gonna call the season a scooter computer. And mister Chips, what do you think of that?
So it's what like a computer with a bag of chips. It's like, no, mister Chips is a computer? Well what scooter computer?
He's a kid.
And they said, well what about the goodbye? Mister Chips said, great book? And no one's ever read that.
What's a book?
So it was a little confusing.
We have disdain for him.
It's a little weird. I know, I feel bad if that's not really how it went down. But it sounds kind of like that classic story, you know, like an executive takes over the creative and it just goes downhill.
That's usually how it happens.
And I do feel a little bit bad because, you know, the originals were still involved. They got mister Doro back on board. Yeah, and I think they did the best they could. But I think one of the issues is all the other seasons, you know, math and science and history. It's all civics. It's all baked in like that stuff is classic and didn't change when you're writing songs about data processing and basic computer language a couple of years later, Like, no,
it's not relevant anymore, right, you know. So it's sort of that's why no one's ever heard of it.
Plus again they were like, so wait, Scooter computers, the oh you're the computer he's hanging out with, right, And why is the computer on roller skates?
Yeah, just stuff like that, you know.
It was. It was an undignified end to something really great. Agreed, and so they pulled the plug on the whole thing. In nineteen eighty five, they said, Hey, this Mary lou Retton lady.
We like her.
She's got gumption, she's got apple Pie coming out of her ears.
Gs.
We love her and we want to put her on TV, so they put her interstitials.
On Yeah, ABC, Funfit.
I'll bet that was the same time when Reagan made Arnold Schwarzenegger is like fitnesses are remember that?
Huh totally remember that the presidential fitness test, right?
Yeah? Man, I failed that so many times.
Yeah, I think I was always sick that day. It's like I gotta climb a rope.
Yeah, still to this day, I've never climbed a rope in my life. No, made it this far. Yeah, I'm going to be chased by a tiger on the way home.
I think I was going to say, that's how you're going to meet your one day. It's gonna be like a burning building in a rope. It's just going to fall from the ceiling like a cartoon. Right. In the late eighties, that was a student at Yukon Go Huskies that said I want to bring Schoolhouse Rock back. They started a petition.
I could not find this person's name for the life of me. I couldn't either, Sorry, person.
But ABC said, you know what, people want this, and I guess it took them a little while to get around to it. But nineteen ninety three they brought it back, rerunning all those classic tunes and cartoons and added some new stuff. Yeah, by Bob Doro in the Gang.
Yeah, they brought back the originals and this this season was called Money Rock, and they did a substantial number of new episodes, but again written and performed by all the original people. But a good starting or twenty years later. Yeah, and they had things like seven to fifty once a week, which is about maintaining your budget. Yeah, Tyrannosaurs Debt which is about the national debt, and plenty of others.
I remember the Tale of Mister Morton. That was another Lynen Erond's offering.
What was that one about.
I can't remember exactly. I didn't go back and rewatch it, but I remember.
He's like, they'll saw his money on scratch offs or something.
I don't think so, but you know, again, the reason why this was that it works so well is because these were men and women who were used to selling products for a living and it was just sort of a natural, a natural thing for them to do. As an ad agency, it seems weird at first when you're like an ad agency came up with Schoolhouse Rock. It kind of makes perfect sense when you think about it.
Yeah, yeah, I mean they they were selling these ideas to children in ways that were comprehensible to children, that were approachable by children, and they just kind of took the kid's point of views and packaged it for them, I think is a good way to put it.
Yeah. So besides the Schoolhouse Rock Rocks CD, which I still have, actually.
Yeah, that nineties thing created a bit of a resurgence of it. Yeah, the resurgence in popularity for sure.
Boy, that Blind Melon three is the Magic Number was great? Yeah? Yeah, Shannon hear that one. Did you like them?
Yeah?
I think Soup, their second album, is one of the great underrated records of the nineties.
I don't recall that one, man, it was good. I think I only heard their first album, but they that's good too. They I think they made like the pop charts right out of the gate and just kind of were unfairly labeled as a pop group even though they really weren't. They were because a lot more to them.
No rain song and the catchy video with the little girl and everything. Yeah, yeah, Soup was good, man. You just check that out. Oh well, it's very good, very sad. What happened to him?
Hey, odeed and they didn't find him for a while, right.
I don't remember that part, but maybe I think I.
Think they nobody missed him for a little while or something like that.
But a waste. In nineteen ninety three, though, there was another resurgence. I guess that was before the CD when they took it to the stage was Schoolhouse Rock Live, which kind of started out as most great theater like this in a sort of a basement black box theater in Chicago, and it just grew from there to eventually an off Broadway run.
Yeah, not just that. It started in the basement theater of a vegetarian restaurant in Chicago, just to add that extra little dose to it.
Yeah, why not?
But yeah, it made it onto Off Broadway.
Yeah. It ran for four solid years and then they had a touring version. I remember wanting to see it, but and I think I was living in New Jersey at the time. I should have gone and seen it. I think I had no money at the time.
I think it's still you still might be able to catch it. There's a group called the Theater Bomb Theater Bam Chicago Theater.
BAM Chicago, and they're still doing shows.
There's still touring.
As far as I know, I need to do my Free to Be You and Me live show. That's one of my dreams. I've talked about that before.
The isn't that Rosie Greer one?
Yeah?
Did he do the whole album or just that one song?
Just the one? It was conceived by Marlo Thomas.
That's pretty great.
But yeah, that was another like that one hits me square in the face, still from childhood, right in the bread basket, Right in the bread basket. In ninety seven, they had a twenty fifth anniversary package of VHS tapes.
Yeah, so think about this like it goes off the air in nineteen eighty five, nineteen eighty five, then all of a sudden three ninety four, ninety six, ninety seven, there's like Schoolhouse Rock everywhere.
It will never die, no, And I think like this.
Was one of the first instances because dude, admittedly, Generation CTS is extremely nostalgic as far as generations go, Yeah, very nostalgic. I would propose that Schoolhouse Rock was the thing that kicked it off. Oh yeah, as far as gen X nostalgia goes yep.
Well, it definitely was something that was so drilled into our consciousness. It gets a touchstone, right, But resurgence of it, I think, oh yeah, is the first example of just how nostalgic as a generation generation exis.
Yeah, for sure, that's that's mine. You got Sharknado.
I'm predicting that that will be rooted out by historians and years to come and.
Dig that one out of the vault, maybe at the place of your death, like a plaque next to that rope that you couldn't climb. It'll be a memorial. It'll be like rope geez, you already forgot right. In twenty thirteen, Kennedy Center had a sing along for their fortieth anniversary. Two thousand people in attendance. Pretty amazing. I would have done anything to have gone to that. And then it's been parodied and homaged over the year and everything from The Simpsons to Saturday Night Live.
Did you see Conspiracy Rock No Conspiracy Theory, Dude?
That was a TV funhouse bit right, yeah.
By Robert Smigel. It's one of the all time greats man. He nails nails the conspiracy theory or nails The Schoolhouse Rock. But it's all about how these major corporations like GE and Westinghouse own the media they own like ABC, NBC, all these media outlets, and how they can use it to shape opinion and squash opinions that disagree with them or their products, and choose what you report on.
It is so good. Go watch it right now. It's on YouTube.
But apparently there's a bit of a conspiracy theory around it as well, because it aired on the actual Saturday Night Live episode, but then when they re ran it and I think released that episode on DVD, it wasn't there. They edited it out, and supposedly it was just because Lauren Michaels didn't think it was funny.
There's just no way. Yeah, that that's all it was.
It was so I'm thinking, no.
It was such a smack in the face to NBC and like all the other ones.
Yeah, yeah, well, and they just had one a couple of years ago on that was an homage time just a build that was pretty great too.
Yeah, this was better. You gotta see it, man.
Yeah, I have a feeling I have and I just don't know it.
He nailed it.
I'll let you know I'll text you and say I have seen it, and you'll say, who's this? I don't have your number.
So I actually ran across a little bit as great as Schoolhouse Rock is, I actually ran across criticism of it.
What yeah, boy, are you gonna shout to leave the room? Maybe about to get angry?
You might want to, all right. So they were teaching.
Very broad concepts to kids, okay, in ways that kids could under stand, and when you're coming when you're coming at them with multiplication or grammar whatever. But apparently especially with the History Rocks or America Rock Season, depending on what you want to call it, that's where the criticism tends to come out.
So there's one called elbow Room. Did you remember that one?
Got got to get you some elbow room where.
It's about there's so many white settlers that we just got to spread westward.
Oh okay, I see where this is going.
Not a single Native American has shown in this westward spread. They actually mentioned that it's God's will manifest destiny.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So the whole thing kind of I don't want to say it came under fire because it's not like everybody's like, oh yeah, elbow room forget Schoolhouse Rock. Very few people are, but there's criticism of Schoolhouse Rock in that it really kind of fed American children the popular line on things, and it was just exactly the kind of stuff where when you grow up you're like, wow, I was really misled. This was first explained to me as a child.
Yeah. Yeah. So while we talk about that a lot too, about how schools, especially in like the seventies and eighties, whitewashed a lot of stuff. Yeah, so this was part of that. I can see that. I mean it was and I'm not justifying it, but it was definitely of the times for.
Sure, you know, which is why you know, I think that they that these creatives were like, we can't say this to kids, right, you know.
I think that there's definitely been more of an awakening in recent years.
But I wasn't in a trail of tear song, right. Yeah.
And this is another name for what they were talking about, like forced removal was turned into get you got to get you some elbow root. I want to know, Chuck, because I'm not in school, and I don't have a child in school.
I don't have a child at all. Well, I have a four leg good child.
But are they still misleading kids like they did when we were young? Do we just assume now that we know the deal that they don't do that any longer? Or are they still doing it? So any history teachers out there that are like fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth grade, because that's what I remember really being just overtly lied to. And then as we got a little past that, they started to be like, well maybe the Native Americans didn't really want to leave, right, and then it just got
a little more legitimate. So I want to know teachers out there let us know.
I bet the answer will get is that we've come a long way, and it probably depends on your district. Oh yeah, and maybe even your teacher.
Yeah, I can see that.
I bet there's not like a one sweeping answer for that one, but there's definitely been progress.
You know, I would guess. Yeah, who'd let us know is Tyler Murphy?
Yeah, Murphy would let us know. Well, I know what he's doing. He's doing all the right things.
Oh yeah, he's up on the desk. Yeah yeah, opening minds, great stuff.
So you ready for my favorite? Yes?
Please?
Rufus Xavier Sasparilla. What was that one about pronouns. Oh yeah, I have a hard time expressing how much joy this song brings me. Still, I listen to it a lot if I'm ever down. That's the song that's pretty great. It's amazing. It's the word play is unbelievable. And it's another Sheldon song, like how it's it's very fast? How he like every I looked up to see if people did it live and stuff, and everyone always slows it down because nobody can.
Oh is that fast?
Well, it's just very complex, And the whole idea of the song is is the complexity of all these nouns that you can replace with pronouns. I got a friend named Rufus Xavier Sasparilla, and you know, they go to the zoo and there's an ardvark in an armadillo and all these big words. He's like, I could say that, or could say he did this and we did that and she said this nice. Yeah, it's a word that takes the place of a noun like kangaroo.
Can we play it?
You know what? We wouldn't because of law. They should make a actually one about copyright infringement.
It was sorted out as a bill.
Yeah, so we probably can't play enough of it to do with justice. So I just say go and listen to that song in full, because it's delightful.
All right, I'll do that.
Man.
They go to the zoo, there's animals, they'll pile on a bus. They yeah, this girl and Rufus Xavier's Asperrilla.
They yeah, exactly.
It takes a place for it.
Now you got anything else?
No, but there probably will be a tag on this one with mister and Astanovich, or or with me just recounting his tale of No More Kings.
So if you want to know more about Schoolhouse Rock, go read this article on HowStuffWorks dot com. And since I said that, it may be time for listener mail with Bob Nistanovich.
All right, So now, as promised or as fully promised, we have via telephone in the studio mister Bob Nistanovich, who is actually a member of two of my favorite bands of all time, both Pavement and Silver Jews. And it's a real treat to have you here, Bob. We did a show on Schoolhouse Rock and talked kind of at length about pavements efforts towards that I guess late nineties CD and got in touch with you, and you said you had a couple of stories to tell.
It was a We were in Memphis, we were supposed to be making a Silver Jews record, and the singer of Silver Jews, David Berman, who decided he did not want to make the record and he went home, and we'd already booked a week of studio time Silver Jews had and then subsequently were Steven and myself and Steve West were unceremoniously fired from Silver Juice. That's beside the point.
We were kind of like at all the studio time that David was supposed to pay for, sort of bail him out, pavements, sort of took that and made a record. So Stephen Stephen thankfully had three songs and we made a specific trimy p But I guess most significantly in regards to this project, Jackie Ferriot, dear friend of ours, was supervising the Schoolhouse Rock oblation, and she gave us our choice of songs, and it was fairly obvious to us that No More Kings, you know, had a lot
of appeal. It's always our favorite one. We were kids Boston tea party theme kind of we were able to use the vocal stylings of Steve West to our advantage, I believe, for the first time in band history for that song, and it all turned out to be. We were very pleased with it. In fact, we're very pleased with all of it, and I think that it's an outstanding compilation and it's one of those things in Pavements time that I feel like we actually did a good job on.
Now, what what did Steve West do for that one?
He played drums and then all the deep voice rambling in the background. Ah, mostly him. He's got an incredible voice speaking voice. He's one of the people that you can hear from one hundred and fifty feet away with a win. We've got a beautiful deep voice. So he's doing all like the ranting and raving. It was all pretty jubilant. We had a good time. It was the only time the three of us ever recorded together ass Pavement, and I feel like we made a good choice and we just loved that song.
It was one take, oh really.
Overdub yeah, one take on the instrumental and just some vocal dubbing. Probably took eight minutes, wow, And it was just the three of you. Oh yeah, yeah, just the three of us were the only ones there because we thought it was gonna be Silver Chews and Silver Cheese, so Camber again Eye Bowled were at home and I don't even know if they were contacted. We made that specific trim EP that song Give It a Day during the same session, and a couple other songs are on
the B side of that thing. But now the School ass Rock was this kind of thing popping in mind, like, well, do we have anything to do and seems like I got this one song. It's like, well, we have to do this thing for Jackie. We have to do this thing for Jackie. We probably sort of planning on doing it anyways. But Jackie at the time was a VJ at MTV and she later became our So she was the nanny for Courtney and Kurt, for Francis Bean Cobain,
and then she was a tour manager for payment. In fact, she has she's been battling cancer for over a decade. But one interesting artifact that she owns is the actual cardigan Cardigan's button up cardigan sweater that Kurt Cobain wore in the famous MTV Unplugged performance.
Holy Cow.
So yeah, she's quite a character, but it was it was her project, and you know, she was a good friend and we want to do the best we could for her. I didn't really care about anything else. We didn't even really we didn't know whether there was a good tiny thing like a limited edition of like two
hundred or whatever. But yeah, funnily enough, my wife, that was the first Payment song she ever heard because her sister, Oh really, yeah, her sister bought the school Loss rock thing when her sister was like fourteen, and my wife went would have been about ten, and she heard that. It's the first time she ever heard Payment.
That's pretty funny.
So yeah, she likes it.
We were talking a little bit about just your take and kind of just the different takes of all the artists on that compilation, and a lot of them were pretty straightforward, and I think I really like the Pavement one the most because it was, uh, it was kind of the perfect mix of very straightforward at times and then just totally pavement pavementized at times.
Yeah, it's very we don't I mean we straightforward. I don't think we're kind of good enough to do things straightforward. Like I think it's like you think of like a band like Nickel Creek covering our song spitting on a stranger. They can and they kind of American at it or whatever. But sure like in order to do like straight things, you gotta be you gotta be good or else you're going to come of humiliate yourself. Like for example, like
r Em doing like Pylon's Crazy. They could do that pretty straight, right because they have that sound, so they just you know, but I think that, like I've heard a lot of cover songs where it's like a great song and like a somebody with a great voice, you know, usually like a female will we'll sing it pretty straight. And just the fact that it's a somebody with a gorgeous voice, you know, bring a class. It sort of works. But now we're none of us are none of us
are good enough to do that. We had to we had to devise our own take on it.
You know.
Well, I thought it totally worked. Was the Schoolhouse Rock? I mean, was that something that you guys were into or was there much decision? I mean, besides the fact that it was your friend asking was it something that you thought was kind of cool or did you feel like you should do it?
Yeah, I thought it was a great idea. At the time, we thought it was a great idea, and at that point in our lives, I'm guessing it was like ninety six, ninety seven somewhere in there. Yeah, yeah, we've forgotten, you know, you like that point where you know that we hadn't seen or heard any of that. The only one I could really remember off the top of my head at the time was that conjunction Junction you know, yeah, of course,
what's your function? But like you know, those are some of the first songs when we were a little kids, like under ten years old that got stuck in our head. Yeah, because so yeah, I just thought it was I mean, if anything, I the only negative. I thought it might be a little bit childish and corny. But you know, the as that came together, it just seemed like a very worthwhile to me. And you know, she was pretty earnest Jackie, and and I'm happy it all worked out.
I kind of I think it's actually become like sort of a one of the more significant things that Pavement ever did, sort of outside the realm of Pavement.
Yeah, for sure, I'll.
Still being Pavement, Like you know, I don't even know. I'm the kind of person in regards to that band that would find out about things to last. So I lived in Louisville, and I was always at the racetrack, and and you know, people would say, hey, you know what, you're going to be making a new album like two months. I wouldn't have anything about her, Like you know, you're going on tour, You're starting in London, I would like
you know, I just wouldn't even know. And like so anything that rolled through the door there, like request to do stuff, I never knew about him, you know, unless you were gonna do them, you know. So right, you can see where I was on the Pavement, the Pavement Totem poll.
Well man, I always call you Pavement's secret weapon.
Uh yeah, yeah.
I think there was something about your addition to the band that really just sort of mixed everything up. Whether it was you know, the percussive elements, are just you coming in with your your unique take on backing vocals.
Yeah, no, I I think I presented the element really not entirely knowing what I was doing, and that was true. And the funny thing about it is like, even at this point in my life and people who are completely unaware of Pavement mostly from this industry, the horse racing industry. Like heard I was I was in a band, even a successful band that can't even they just doesn't make
any sense to them. And then they'll also, you know, they'll have to like look it up on Google or whatever to realize that, yeah, we were actually like a band that made records and stuff. And then and then the funny thing is he'll always ask me to you know, if it's musotypes or something. I'm like, one thing I'm
really sort of unaware of in the human race. I have no feel for people that like kind of collect musical gear and take music really really seriously and like playing music really seriously and like jam and like or just really like have this incredibly dry approach to like like gear heads who like are really really serious and like people ask me to jam and I don't. I mean my idea of I don't. I don't jam. I mean I can't imagine jamming, Like what does that even mean?
Like really awkward, Like it's always awkward, Like people ask me to do something and then I'll be like, oh, man, like uh, you know, like I got to figure out a way to get out of this, you know, because like a my skills, Like they're not going to really not gonna believe them in a band, Like once I show up with like whatever, I have two drums or whatever and start hitting and they're gonna be like, there's no way this guy was in a band, Like this
is a fake, you know, so very strange, very strange.
Well you just got to say, now, man, I'm the secret weapon, and the secret weapon.
Doesn't m yeah, like this like the spice and like some sort of bowl of brigo or something. I don't even know. It was just like the whole experience was pretty magical. It still doesn't really make that much sense to me, you know, Yeah, I just I really enjoyed it for sure. But in regards to that specific project, that's something that went like really smoothly, like it never got to the point. I mean it was literally like Stephen, I'm sure probably worked on it that morning or something.
But when when they press record on that School as Rock thing, that thing was a humdinger. It was in and out the door, Doug Easy. It's like that's good, you know, like, yeah, that's.
Probably a good approach for something like that because you don't want to overthink it. And then it becomes a thing and it's stressful perhaps, so I think that approach to just get in there and like knock it out was probably the way to go. It certainly worked out in this case.
Yeah, and it's a song that has no history within the context of the band. You know, it's not like something that we've been working on or something that have been sitting there, or something that have been played live or Yeah, you know, I mean I think that we had to you know, pavementize it and give it a bit of an original spin because that's the only way that we can really do it. I mean, like, you know, like we were talking about with a straight thing, you know,
you can't. You got to have significance. Yeah, not that like, you know, Steve and Steve West aren't talented. I'm not gonna like those guys are great, but like in fact, the fact they're able to like throw improvise right something like that's pretty cool. So but I remember being really really happy that Steve West, who never really been used in Pavement outside of just playing drums, that he was that he sort of fit fantastically on that, Yeah, that recording.
So I sort of love that about No Markings. I love hearing him in there.
Nice all right, Well, thanks, Bob. I appreciate your telling us these stories, and I'm going to think of about one hundred more reasons to have you on in the future.
Yeah, anytime.
I'm going to call this one sad yet happy email. Hey guys, my name is Sam. I want to send you an email thanking you for your show. The podcast is actually a rediscovery for me. My dad used to play it back in two thousand and nine and we would drive up to the mountain to go skiing. Very fond memories of laughing and nerding out with my dad and brothers after a great day on the slopes. Can't believe you guys are still going strong after eight plus years.
There is a little more to my rediscovery of your show, though, that I wanted to share. It's been four and a half years since one of my brothers, who was an amazing skier, died tragically to suicide. Since I was in college at the time, it didn't have enough time to properly grieve. Recently, I've been mulling through many painful memories that I ignored in those first three years. However, your
show unexpectedly brought back really happy ones. It is reminded me the fun adventure in learning our family enjoyed while listening to your show when we are skiing. I remember laughing hysterically with my family your jokes, rolling my eyes when my brothers and dad would try to comment on your show to sound smart because it was so creepy. One of your favorite episodes of ours was the one on cannibalism. Being a high schooler at the time, I also really liked the show on flirting, so I thought
I could put it into practice. Needless to say, it didn't really work. What This month, I went home for a week to visit my parents, and I went skiing with my mom and dad for the first time since my brother died. It was very painful, but also unimaginably special. When my family and I are on the mountain, I feel like I can encounter my brother as he was. He was healthy and full of life. I could picture him diving down a slope that was way too steep
with the most enormous grin on his eager face. All in all, it was a great day. So I just want to say thank you with the hard work and providing interesting topics to fill my time. Making me laugh, but also inadvertently helping me cherish a special time in my life. Man, guys, heavy that is from Sam and she sends hugs.
Sam, that is fantastic. Very thank you very much for letting us know. We appreciate that and our best to your whole family.
Absolutely.
If you want to get in touch with this like Sam did and just lay one honest, we appreciate it. Lay it honest, send us an email to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
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