Pros: educational and entertaining, wide variety of musical styles, nostalgic
Cons: a few songs are hard to listen to more than once, computer songs are awful
The Bottom Line: Witty intelligent songs that transport me back to childhood Saturday morning spent watching cartoons, these songs both teach and entertain, a difficult combination to achieve.
quasar's Full Review: Schoolhouse Rock! [Box] by Schoolhouse Rock
Came home from working last night
Meeting after meeting my day was a fright
I barely had arrived
I started to describe
The people, places, and every last thing
So I unpacked my adjectives
I unpacked "frustrating" first.
Reached in and found the word "worst."
Then I picked "frazzled" and
Next I picked "hassled" and
Then I was ready to tell them my tale.
Because I'd unpacked my adjectives.
Those lyrics, a parody of the Schoolhouse Rock (SHR) song Unpack Your Adjectives, perfectly sum up my day this past Tuesday. At the end of a really long really tiring day filled with meetings Unpack Your Adjectives came onto random play and I immediately smiled and relaxed. Pretty soon slightly altered lyrics were running through my head and most of the days ills were behind me.
First Contact
I remember watching cartoons every Saturday morning as a child. Shows like the Superfriends, the Smurfs, and Hanna-Barbera All Stars rotated in and out of my consiousness throughout the years. There was one constant - every week I would be watching ABC and a cool music commercial would play. Always a cartoon and usually with a catchy tune, Schoolhouse Rock taught me about adverbs and adjectives, Concord and Lexington, immigration, and energy without my even realizing it. All I cared about was that the songs usually made me laugh.
Years later I had mostly forgotten about SHR when I ran into a coworker with this boxset. I walked into her office one day when The Shot Heard 'Round the World was playing and I had a very clear image of a wobbling cartoon soldier. I borrowed the boxset and soon other wonderful memories rushed through me. I soon acquired my own copy of the boxset, and copies of the videos and of the CDRom games based on the videos. I could gorge myself on Schoolhouse Rock whenever the urge hit me.
The Boxset
The boxset contains four CDs which roughly translate to the four main areas encompassed by Schoolhouse Rock: multiplication, grammar, history/government, and science. There are quite a few bonus tracks including four Money Rock songs on the Grammar Rock CD, four computer songs on the Science Rock CD, and several covers of SHR songs.
In addition to the music is a wonderful set of liner notes bound like a school notebook. Containing information on the origins and history of SHR and information on many of the songwriters and others who helped make Schoolhouse Rock a success, the liner notes are well worth a read.
Disk 1: Multiplication Rock
1. Schoolhouse Rocky
2. Elementary, My Dear
3. Three Is A Magic Number
4. The Four-Legged Zoo
5. Ready Or Not, Here I Come
6. My Hero, Zero
7. I Got Six
8. Lucky Seven Sampson
9. Figure Eight
10. Naughty Number Nine
11. The Good Eleven
12. Little Twelvetoes
13. My Hero, Zero - Performed by The Lemonheads
Although I am a math and science geek, the Multiplication Rock songs are my least favorite SHR songs. More simplistic than the songs in other areas and definitely aimed at a younger audience, I always find myself wishing for songs on more advanced topics. I still enjoy some of these songs but they don't have the same replay value as many of the songs in the other topic areas.
Favorite Tracks: Elementary My Dear, Figure Eight
Elementary My Dear is a rollicking song using Noah's Ark to teach multiplication by two. In addition to multiplying every number from one to twenty by two, this song includes the trick of adding and subtracting numbers multiplied by two together to form the correct answer for less obvious numbers all the while remaining true to the Noah's Ark theme.
Now, if you want to multiply two times 174,
Or some big number like that,
Two times 174 equals two times 100 plus two times 70 plus two times 4
That's all.
So two times 174 equals 200 plus 140 plus 8 ... or 348.
It's elementary!
Figure Eight is a plaintive wail that maintains a theme of skating a figure eight while presenting relations between different multiples of eight and four.
Figure eight as double four,
Figure four as half of eight.
If you skate, you would be great
If you could make a figure eight.
That's a circle that turns 'round upon itself.
Worst Track: I Got Six
I Got Six is a fast yet drawn out song that doesn't really have a theme to illustrate multiplying by six. This song really irritates me and I almost never listen to it.
Disk 2: Grammar Rock
1. Schoolhouse Rocky
2. Unpack Your Adjectives
3. Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, Get Your Adverbs
4. Conjuntion Junction
5. Interjections
6. Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla
7. Verb: That's What's Happening
8. A Noun Is A Person, Place Or Thing
9. Busy Prepositions
10. The Tale Of Mr. Morton
11. Dollars And Sense
12. Tax Man Max
13. $7.50 Once A Week
14. Where The Money Goes
Grammar Rock songs each focus on a specific part of speech and explore its role in language. I genuinely love most of the songs of Grammar Rock and could happily listen to them over and over. This CD also includes four of the Money Rock songs. Ranging from blues to jazz to country to showtune-style songs, these songs represent many different musical styles and it can be slightly jarring to move back and forth between them.
Favorite Tracks: Unpack Your Adjectives, Rufus Xavier Sasparilla, The Tale of Mr. Morton
Unpack Your Adjectives tells the tale of a summer camping trip gone horribly wrong. In order to properly tell her tale, our heroine must first unpack her adjectives. A jazzy song, this is one the best SHR songs both musically and lyrically.
Rufus Xavier Sasparilla is a hilarious song filled with tongue twisters illustrating how pronouns save us the pain of using proper names all the time 'cause saying all those nouns over and over can really wear you down.
Unlike the other Grammar Rock songs illustrating the use and importance of a single part of speech, The Tale of Mr. Morton teaches sentence structure. It's a jazzy tale about how the lonely Mr. Morton found his true love Pearl.
Mr. Morton walked down the street.
Mr. Morton walked.
Mr. Morton talked to his cat.
Mr. Morton talked.
Hello cat, you look good.
Mr. Morton was lonely.
Mr. Morton was.
Mr. Morton is the subject of the sentence,
And what the predicate says, he does.
Worst Track: Verb! That's What's Happening
Very reminiscent of I Got Six, Verb: That's What's Happening shares the same tone and musical style. A song outlining different types of verbs, it gets rather repetitive and could probably have been much shorter while still teaching the same information about verbs.
Disk 3: America Rock
1. Schoolhouse Rocky
2. No More Kings
3. Fireworks
4. The Shot Heard 'Round The World
5. The Preamble
6. Elbow Room
7. The Great American Melting Pot
8. Mother Necessity
9. Sufferin' Till Suffrage
10. I'm Just A Bill
11. Three-Ring Government
12. Electricity, Electricity - Performed by Goodness
America Rock as a whole is the best CD of this collection. Almost every song is witty and very educational. Ranging from Joplinesque blues to sad introspective blues to sweet upbeat jazz with other styles tossed in as well, these styles blend together a bit better than those in Grammar Rock. These songs cover a wide range of topics from the founding of America, western expansion, the spirit of invention, suffragettes, and the legislative process.
Favorite Tracks: No More Kings, The Shot Heard 'Round the World, The Great American Melting Pot, Elbow Room
No More Kings is a fast jazzy song outlining why the American colonies decided they had to rebel against the British. Dealing with the concept of taxation without representation, this song cleverly leads from the initial landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth to the point of declaring revolution.
He even has the nerve
To tax our cup of tea.
To put it kindly, King,
We really don't agree.
The Shot Heard 'Round the World picks up where No More Kings lets off, the start of the American Revolution. Starting with Paul Revere's famous ride and outlining several battles of the war, the song ends with Cornwallis' surrender at Yorktown effectively summing up the entire Revolutionary War in a jazzy fun song. If I had to pick one song as the best SHR song, this would probably be my choice.
Now, at famous Bunker Hill,
Even though we lost, it was quite a thrill,
The rebel Colonel Prescott proved he was wise;
Outnumbered and low on ammunition
As the British stormed his position
He said, "Hold your fire till you see the whites of their eyes!"
I will always remember the sight of someone diving off a pot handle into a pot filled with swimmers of all races. That image comes from The Great American Melting Pot, a song about immigration and the diversity of America. Another jazzy song, it starts with the tale of Grandma immigrating from Russia and Grandpa from Italy and talks about how proud people from all over the world were to make America their new home.
Lovely Lady Liberty
With her book of recipes
And the finest one she's got
Is the great American melting pot
The great American melting pot.
What good ingredients,
Liberty and immigrants.
Elbow Room talks about the westward expansion of the 19th Century. A tune with country influences that always makes me want to dance, Elbow Room discusses the Louisiana Purchase and manifest destiny. I love the surprise ending to this song (and no, I am not going to give it away - you have to listen for yourself to find out).
Oh, elbow room, elbow room,
Got to, got to get us some elbow room.
It's the west or bust,
In God we trust.
There's a new land out there
Worst Track: Fireworks
Fireworks is an upbeat song with a somewhat bluesy tune about the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It doesn't work for me at all musically. There are a few clever lines in the song, so it's probably worth listening to once or twice but it doesn't hold up to repeated listening.
Disk 4: Science Rock
1. Schoolhouse Rocky
2. The Body Machine
3. Do The Circulation
4. Electricity, Electricity
5. The Energy Blues
6. Interplanet Janet
7. Telegraph Line
8. Them Not-So-Dry Bones
9. A Victim Of Gravity
10. Introduction
11. Software
12. Hardware
13. Number Cruncher
Science Rock has both science and computer songs on it. The Science Songs are excellent, concentrating mostly on biology/human physiology and physics topics. The computer songs are a product of the eighties and are very outdated. Like most SHR songs, the science songs tend to be blues and jazz oriented. The computer songs have definite techno influences.
Favorite Tracks: Interplanet Janet, Telegraph Line, A Victim of Gravity
Interplanet Janet takes you on a magical tour of the solar system courtesy of an intrepid interplanetary traveler Janet and her comet team.
She's been to the Sun, it's a lot of fun,
It's a hot-spot, It's a gas!
Hydrogen and helium in a big, bright, glowing mass. It's a star, it's a star! So Janet got an autograph!
Our nervous system acts very much like a telegraph system with our brain sending out signals to different parts of the body. Telegraph Line explores the nervous system using this analogy very effectively.
The central nervous system
Is the brain and the spine.
The brain controls the system
And the spine is the line.
Telegrams come in
To tell what's happening to you,
Then telegrams go out
To tell your body what to do.
The only Doo Wop song in the Schoolhouse Rock collection, A Victim of Gravity is sung by The Tokens, the same group that sung The Lion Sleeps Tonight in the early 1960's. It talks about how gravity makes things fall and keeps us rooted to the Earth.
Don't call me clumsy,
Don't call me a fool.
When things fall down on me,
I'm following the rule;
The rule that says that what goes up, comes down, like me,
I'm a victim of down, down, down, down gravity.
Worst Track: Any of the computer songs
Summing Up
I highly recommend Schoolhouse Rock to anyone who enjoys learning through entertainment or to anyone who likes witty intelligent songs. If you have children or are a teacher these songs are an excellent learning tool. If you don't they are still a lot of fun and a great way to wind down after a long hard day.
It's time to unpack some adjectives:
I dragged along without care.
Until I ran into a song
It was a funny song!
It was a silly song!
I sang off tune loudly along
And now I describe it with adjectives.
The Boxset Writeoff
This is my entry into the Boxset Writeoff sponsored by fredprj. The other writers participating are:
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