May 25, 2017 • 61 mins
Schoolhouse Rock is possibly the best children's program of all time. Join Josh and Chuck as they tell the story of SR, featuring an interview with Pavement's Bob Nastanovich, contributor to the '90s Schoolhouse Rock tribute record.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com straight because knowledge is power. Hey, and welcome
(00:23):
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
we just heard the theme song. If you're between the
ages of well, were you into it? Yes? Okay, so
(00:45):
you're what forty one? I'm forty, so probably younger than
you even a bit. Let's say if you're between, I
was definitely towards the tail end of it. Let's say
thirty eight to fifty years old. Actually, yeah, that's not true.
So let's say it was up to yeah nine, Yeah,
(01:08):
so iwhere in that rain fifty ish? All right, that's
what you agree on a little more. 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
(01:29):
that you grew up in the seventies and eighties. Uh.
I think the heyday of Saturday Morning cartoons personally, uh,
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's been
(01:53):
a little while. When I went back to UM to
research this, I listened to or watched a bunch of them,
and they all just came flooding back. Yeah, and them.
The writer of this article actually interviewed, didn't he Bob Doro?
It's it sounded that way unless he's a big fat
liar in his author's note. Well, I just remember when
(02:15):
this article went around, Like the first thing we do
when there's an article at how SUF works is there's
a UM email that goes around everyone where people kind
of suggest kind of questions you can answer and stuff
like that. Um. I don't think we ever really talked
about that, did we don't think nine years in that's
a secret. Uh, 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
(02:37):
three years old, and you know, you can still get
in touch with a guy, I think, and apparently this
dude did. And sadly, I think all 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
(02:57):
more more select quotes from Mr Doro. You wanted like
I called Mr Doe. He answered, hello, said Mr Doro.
We should have interviewed him for this. I don't know
why we didn't. I don't either. Apparently it's easy to
get to uh and there's well, I'll get to that.
Never mind. Should we get in the way back machine? Yes,
(03:17):
let's go back to the seventies, the greatest decade history
of humanity. Probably, I'm not joking. I'm a fan of sixties. Seventies,
and eighties would be tough for me to decide. Sixties
were a little too hippie for me. I love the seventies,
(03:38):
so I mean, I had loved the seventies, and not
even as a Golden age. There was a lot wrong
in the seventies. Nixon was president during the seventies. Okay,
lots of stuff we're wrong in the seventies, but something
about that decade just hit all the boxes. I just
love it, and it reminds me my childhood, which is
(04:01):
great because you know, I had a good childhood. It
was fun. I a lot of We talked about that
in the Nostalgia episode on how nostalgi just the correct
path in life, even though John Hodgman doesn't think so.
So early seventies, there's a gentleman named David McCall and
um he was. He co owned an ad agency called
McCaffrey and McCall and as the story goes, he was
(04:24):
on vacation with his family and he knew his son
was having some trouble in math um 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,
(04:46):
Why can't you remember the other stuff? I don't think
he was that gruff, but it did hit him. He
was like, you know, my son, remember, he has no
problem memorizing things, but there's something about these multiplication tables.
So I wonder if there's something too. Uh sing song
and turning learning into not only just music, because that's
(05:06):
not a new thing. People have been doing that forever,
but popular sounding music, right, and like pairing them with
concepts to teach, right, to to make kids understand difficult concepts, right,
And it's it's so weird now, especially if in the
post school house rock world that that, yeah, of course
(05:31):
people do that, Like that's a technique that you used
to teach kids, but apparently no one else is doing this.
At the time that 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
(05:54):
in in doing the same thing but get you getting
you to buy something. He was, 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 use in advertising. Yeah,
Like they would see a jingle for a product that
(06:14):
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. Uh. So he went
to UM. One of these Uh I think he was
(06:35):
a creative director or 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. Uh. It
wasn't very good. Didn't you feel bad for this person?
(06:56):
I did, But you know what, it could have died
there right, never would have a Schoolhouse Rock. But this
person went down in history is the contributor to Schoolhouse Rock.
Who who didn't it didn't make it? Yeah, or the
person who almost killed 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
(07:17):
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 was
a 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
(07:39):
might as well read it from ninety three year old
Mr 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 McAuley said here's my idea.
I give it a try, but don't write down to
the kids. And when he said that, I gotta chill.
I have a high opinion of children. And that was
sort of the key right there. They weren't uh songs
(08:00):
like written in a remedial way because it was children.
It's a bitsy spider, give me a break. Oh that's
a classic. So um, 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
(08:21):
be a jazz composer. Things are starting to like happen.
There's basically the hand of the Almighty at work here.
That's right. Uh So Dora goes home. Um, 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
(08:43):
the very first Schoolhouse song written because the first thing
they wanted to tackle was math. Because of uh McCall's son. Yeah,
this this composition that he came back with, three is
a magic number. Um, it's a I when I hear it,
it's super cool. But I don't. I I'm really surprised
(09:05):
that everybody was like, this is, yes, figure something out
from this. Man. 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. Uh.
And not only that, but uh, like you said, got
(09:26):
a little trippy with the symbolism faith, hope and charity,
heart and mind and body. Uh, it was about and
I 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? Man, I
forgot about that. Remember, I think my brain melted a
bit there. One it's tough. Zero is tough. It is tough,
(09:50):
um and not at all magic, right, not really? Um?
So regardless, if you would have been working there, you
would have been like and everyone else enjoy I did,
You'd be like, I'm gonna go get a bagel. I'm
not gonna even work on this process cheese account. Um.
I did think of Madmen quite a bit when I
was researching this. It was sort of that same time
(10:13):
period or I guess towards No, Madman didn't make it
into the seventies. Yeah, I thought he did, because it
wasn't he supposed to be dB Cooper at the end,
and that was yeah, early, I guess that was seventy one.
I think it did crack into the seventies, not like
Boogie Nights did. That was all seventies. The No, that's right,
(10:35):
it cracked into the eighties with that cheese that that
song you recorded. Well, no, I was, well, yeah, that
for sure. But I was thinking about when it when
the the Party, the New Year's e Party Girl nineteen
with Bill Macy. Yeah, man, what a great movie. That
was wonderful. Yeah, movies almost like twenty years old. I
(10:57):
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 from the seventies. Well, when
I think of like Boogie Nights, I was 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 that it is
(11:18):
playing the same sport. The rookies are now like the
old coaches and managers in the sports now man bizarre. Uh.
So everyone's impressed at McCaffrey and McCall um. Then they
did a pretty smart thing. They went to um. McCall
was on the board of the Bank Street College of
Education uh in New York there, and he took it
(11:39):
to them. It was just a song at this point
he said, what do you think is a learning tool? Uh?
They used it, played it for the students and they
were like, this is awesome. They're responding again, little job.
He's just sitting there with his arms across the scowling.
I've never seen him so mad before. Uh. The students
(12:01):
liked it. The agency liked it, so they knew they
were onto something. They got their art director, Uh Tom
yo y o h e, oh you're going with Yo.
I'm going all out with yoh okay Tom YOHI and
UM said, put put some animation to this, draw out
(12:21):
some storyboards, because that was the beauty of Schoolhouse Rock
to me was Uh, it was a combination of everything.
It wasn't just the song, like the songs are great, um,
and we'll get more to the music here in a bit,
but it was the combination of the visuals with the
song and the fact that you were learning something in
such a unique way. It was just like the perfect
(12:42):
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 Yo
he started sitting there right like drawing some of this
stuff out. That's I mean. School was Rock is not
one or the other. It's the combination of those two things,
(13:03):
and they play off each other. So well, I agreed. Uh,
So they took UM. Now they have these storyboards. Uh.
They take this to a guy named Radford Stone. He
was their account supervisor of the vp UM for ABC,
and they said, there's this young upstart at ABC for
their children's programming named Michael Eisner that if he's ever
(13:25):
going to go anywhere, but right now he's running the
kid's shop over there. Um, 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 her
from Jessica, granddaughter of Mr Jones, and uh sat down
in a meeting, played the demo tape, showed him the
storyboard they helped. Turned to Chuck Jones, so what do
(13:48):
you think? And he said, buy it? By it that's
how Chuck Jones do that. He didn't and Michael Eisner
bought it and uh, before you knew it are own business.
We're gonna take a break, I think we should. Josh
is gonna go collect himself and we'll be right back
(14:38):
you all right, all right, we're back. So strange. Um, So,
Schoolhouse Rock started on ABC Saturday morning. Is that 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. When the creators of the program you're actually
(15:02):
watching weren't good enough to make twenty two full minutes,
you round it out with interstitial program Yeah, exactly. Uh,
this is January six and seven was the first weekend
in ninety three, so I was but two years old.
Well three, yeah you you were in the upper atmosphere
just playing my liar, coalescing, waiting to be born, flapping
(15:25):
my wings. Uh. And this was before like like you said,
this is the original thing was. It was just gonna
be an album called Multiplication Rock um, 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 threes, magic number four, legged Zoo, Elementary,
(15:47):
my Dear, and my Hero zero great song uh zero
again yeah, not magical, but it is a cool number.
Such a funny little hero came along. They counted on
their fingers and so that when was that check three?
And um, I think that first one had quite was
(16:08):
so it was up to third. There were thirteen episodes
that if it went from zero to twelve. Yeah, I
think what they settled on was, um almost like seasons,
uh themed season, so that the first season was going
to be math related. Yeah. So um. Apparently Bob Darrow
had been off like coming up with songs, didn't realize
(16:29):
that they wanted a song for each number, and he
had started to combine several numbers in a different song,
so he didn't get the memo. He didn't and he
finally did and um he uh. 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, so so
(16:53):
not one of my favorites, but I mean they're all great.
It's just some standout a little more than others. So
what's your favorite of the multiple k rock Three is
a magic number? Okay? Yeah? And and that was something
else I noticed about this. There are um for each season.
There were at least one standout song per per season
(17:13):
that just about everybody knows. And I would guess three
is the 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 um Bob Doro
was up for Grammy in nine four for um, I
I think the whole album, right, yeah, but the those
(17:36):
jerks at Sesame Street one, if you're gonna lose, lose
the Sesame Street. Yeah, And Dora 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 Tate and Blossom Deery, Grady Tate saying
Naughty number nine and Blossom Deery saying figure eight. But
(17:59):
all the rest of them, the other eleven, Bob Durrow
sang and he wrote all of them. So 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, Um, the people involved stayed on for basically
(18:19):
the whole run. In the initial run from seventy 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 v H one special like the Dark Side
of the school House rockyears. You know. Uh, so they
move on to I don't know which one is my favorite,
(18:42):
Grammar Rock or History, Um, but they moved on to
Grammar Rock next yea seventy three to seventy four, And
we should say I don't think that these were, Um, Like,
I don't think there are breaks in the season. I
get the impression that from three till when they had
(19:02):
enough episodes, they were just running on like every Saturday
morning during cartoons. Yeah, I certainly don't remember like breaks,
like it just seems like every week they were there. Um.
So seventy three and seventy four you have Grammar Rock,
which um debuted. Some people will probably say the biggest
of all time Conjunction Junction. Yeah, that's so, and everybody
(19:23):
knows it's a great, great song, uh song, as he's
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. Um. He was MRF 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, very
(19:46):
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, 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, Um,
(20:06):
so Jack Sheldon came along, uh sank in junction junction
and did you go back and listen to that? Like
for this, listen to a lot of these, So that
is a sophisticated song. If you listen to like that,
we remember our poetry episode. If you listen to like
the meter and the um, the rhyming pattern, the rhyme scheme,
(20:27):
and the slant rhymes they use, like for something that's
made for kids, it is not just rhyme, rhyme, rhyme, rhyme, rhyme, ryme, rhyme, rhyme, rhyme.
You know, like it's a sophisticated song. Um. 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
um it's I guess it's that not not talking down
to kids. Yeah, And like the music was was good,
(20:50):
Like if you listen to um, I mean those are
a little sing songy, but like some of them were
like pop music at the time, like the Verb song
some one of the funkiest songs I've ever heard. Verb
That's What's happening, And especially that one, like I read
I read this great blog post by this African American
guy that was talking about how verb was like meant
(21:12):
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
the super funky music and this kid that looked like
him having this great adventure uh in the city, and
uh it just kind of it's pretty pretty neat thing,
(21:34):
I think. Yeah that was season two, was Grammar, right, Yes,
So apparently in that same season, lady named Lynn Aaron's
um was a She was a copy copy department secretary. Yeah,
this is where it reminded me of Madman, and she's
like basically took Peggy's journey from like secretary to superstar.
(21:55):
I've never seen mad Yeah it's good. I'm rewatching it
right now. Really, yeah, it's that good. Yeah. So, um,
Lynn was she was a secretary at the advertising agency.
And apparently she was playing her guitar on lunch break.
Another reason the seventies were great exactly, And um, who
(22:16):
was it that Founder Newell, the creative director guy. Yeah,
like in the movie, he's just walking down the hall
and here's this beautiful music and stops. It's like, what
in the world's going on in there? Right? And it
was Lynn Errands, And so they took her and put
her on I guess part time on the project um
and they, I guess eventually made her a full time songwriter,
(22:39):
which is pretty cool. That was her gig. Fifteen of
the songs, including some of the biggest ones. Now and
as a person plays her thing great song in Her Planet,
Janet interjections to good one a Victim of Gravity about
Isaac Newton in Her Planet Janet, sounds like Rocky Horror
if you go back and listen to it, kind of
does it bears a real resemblance to it? Or Rocky
(22:59):
Horror sounded like inter Planet Janet. I went and looked.
Rocket Horror was three years before In A Planet Janet
the movie or the play the movie? Okay, so the
play was even before that? Was it a play first? Uh?
Meat Loaf was even in the play, oh yeah, before
the movie, right, and not a play I guess, musical
which play with songs and dancing. Uh So. The next
(23:25):
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 bi centennial.
Yeah that was a big deal, which you don't remember,
but I remember being a little kid, being five years old,
and uh, it took over the country for you know,
that entire year. Yeah, I know there was like a
(23:47):
resurgence and 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 flag
holder that's a black metal eagle holding like some arrows
maybe or that is from still there, like a resurgence
(24:08):
and Betsy Ross and colonial like knick knacks and stuff.
I wasn't 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 or
five six years later. So, uh, History Rock or America
Rock um featured some of the best songs Mother Necessity
(24:30):
Shot heard around the world. Uh and No More Kings,
which is maybe my second all time favorite. Yeah, and
that's the one that um. There was an album that
came out in called Schoolhouse Rocks Rocks, Schoolhouse Rock Rocks,
where they got contemporary artists to cover these songs and
(24:52):
did you ever listen to that. I listened to the
Pavement win to day. So I emailed Bob Nistanovich today
from Pavement because, as I said in the previous episode,
I tricked him into being my email friend. Um, and
I said, hey, dude, I would love to hear if
you have any thoughts on them, more kings, how you
(25:14):
guys were approached, if there any stories, what it meant
to you, what it didn't mean, whatever, let me know. No, no, no,
He emailed back. Uh. And then I said, I'll call
you on my way to work, called him the way
to work. Crickets. Yeah, I got his voicemail, and then
as I was coming in the studio, he called him
left the voicemail saying he was in his minivan rocking
out and he didn't hear the phone ring, which is
(25:36):
very funny to me. But um, 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 gonna 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. If not, if it ends
(25:57):
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, like a real listener mail.
All right, it's not about it so anyway, uh So,
listen up for the end for Bob Nistanovitch story about
No More Kings, because if you listen to that CD,
(26:18):
it's like the lemon Heads and uh ween, it's the
super ninety c D Mob 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 has changed his words. He there's like laser guns
at the end, and it's just wonderfully pavement, like quintessentially pavement.
(26:42):
Like leave it to them to just kind of throw
it all out the window and do their own thing.
I liked a lot um three ring Government. I didn't
really know that one that was good, and apparently they
um So it basically talks about the different branches of
the government but puts in the context of a three
ring circuit us and it's um really, I mean, aside
(27:05):
from the fact that it compares to the government to
a three ring circus. It's not at all offensive. Apparently
they said on that one for years and didn't release
it until nine nine because they were worried about offending
the government, which is a strange thing to worry about
through today's lens. Yeah, but even still, I mean, this
is like post water Gate. It's not like everybody was like,
(27:27):
oh right, you know, we 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. But the most famous song, um
from that year by far was Sheldon's on just a Bill?
(27:48):
Is that your favorite? No? Okay? Um? That was composed
not by Mr Doro but by a man named Dave Frishburg.
And Um, I mean that one was just a mega hit,
straight to number one on the Billboard charts. It's it's like,
as far as Schoolhouse Rocks goes, that's the that's the
(28:11):
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 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 these kids us, we were learning how a
(28:33):
bill becomes a law right in the in the best
way possible, like better than any well, not any teacher.
They were great teachers back then, let's say, like any
dump teacher that's boring their kids. But it definitely struck
a chord with me, you know, 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
(28:56):
were plenty of orders. This is before video, because 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 gotta get me a copy of that I'm a
(29:17):
Bill thing and 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 the very least, so they could
play in the music. I see, maybe that's what they meant.
Probably okay, an eight track. Um. And then there was
Science Rock was the year after that. That was seventy
(29:37):
and seventy nine, which is pretty good. InterPlaNet Janet, Victor's
so weird? What InterPlaNet Janet? Yeah, it's a good one.
And then the telegraph Line song, which um, I think
that was written by this Arns too, I think, And
that one was really like, I mean it was you
(29:58):
literally learned about the erb A system and how the
body communicates uh to the brain by listening to that song.
And that's the one that they wanted to play for
med students and they did amazing some of them. All right,
well let's take another break, and um jeez, we'll we'll
cover the the sad last season of Schoolhouse Rock after this,
(30:49):
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 going to be science,
are gonna be grammar or whatever, So go go forth
and figure this out. The songwriters would come up with
songs and they'd pitch them to the creative team. And
(31:12):
so there was this process of creativity and it started
with the creatives. That's the key here, 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 to make
(31:33):
sure everything was like, you know, it was right yeah,
and then ABC, oh, let me say it. And then
they'd say, oh, I guess it's fine, and then they'd
start the storyboard it once they had the lyrics set
in stone, right. That was the first four seasons. The
fifth season they said, died, Creativity Die, and they reversed
the process and they said, hey, songwriters, here are your
(31:55):
assignments now where we we think kids should know more
about computers. So we're gonna just screw this whole thing up. Okay, yeah,
this is the part I don't get it, says the
ABC program exact 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.
(32:17):
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 here unless the problem. Yeah, with season five, so
we should say season five two. If you notice we
jumped quite a bit from nineteen seventy nine and nine
eighty five. Schoolhouse Rock was running all those years on
(32:38):
Saturday mornings. They just weren't any new ones. They were
the same ones that they were rerunning. The Class five
Squire Rushtional 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 Mr Chips
what do you think of that? So it's what like,
uh computer with a bag of chips. It's like, no,
(33:00):
Mr Chips is a computer? Well, what's Scooter computer? It's
just a kid. And they said, well, what about the
Goodbye Mr Chips? That great book? And no one's ever
read that? What's a book? So, uh, it was a
little confusing disdain for him. It's a little weird. I know,
I feel bad if that's not really how it went down,
(33:21):
but it sounds kind of like that classic story, you know,
like an executive takes over the creative and it just
goes downhill. It's usually how it happens, UM, And I
do feel a little bit bad because you know, the
originals were still involved. They got Mr Doro back on board,
and uh, I think they did the best they could.
But I think one of the issues is UM, all
the other seasons, you know, math and science and history,
(33:44):
it's all civics. It's all baked in like that stuff.
It's classic and didn't change when you're writing songs about uh,
data processing and basic computer language a couple of years later, like, no,
it's not relevant anymore, 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 boy or
(34:05):
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 into something
really great. And so they pulled the plug on the
whole thing. In They said, Hey, this Mary lou Retten lady.
We like her. She's got gumption, she's got apple pie
(34:26):
coming out of her ears. Um, we love her, and
we want to put her on TV, so they put
her interstitials on ABC Fun Fit. I'll bet that was
the same time when Reagan made Arnold Schwarzenegger. Is like
fitnesses are that? Bet totally remember that the Presidential fitness Test, right? Yeah? Man?
(34:48):
I failed that so many times. Yeah, I think I
was always sick that day. It's like I gotta climb
a rope. Still to this day, I've never climbed a
rope in my life. I made it this far. You know,
I'm gonna be chased by a tiger on the way something.
I was gonna say, that's how you're gonna meet your
demise one day, just gonna be in like a burning
building and a rope's just gonna fall from the ceiling
like a cartoon. Good. Uh. In the late eighties, UM,
(35:15):
there 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, but ABC said, you know what people want
this um, and I guess it took him a little
while to get around to it, but nine they brought
it back, rerunning UM all those classic tunes and cartoons
(35:40):
and added some new stuff by Bob Doro in the Gang. Yeah,
they brought back the originals and this this season was
called UM 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 um and they had things like UM seven fifty
(36:03):
once a Week, which is about maintaining your budget, Tyrannosaurs
Debt which is about the national debt, UM and plenty
of others. Remember the Tale of Mr Morton. That was
another Lindon Errand'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 sell his money on
Scratch Office or something. I don't think so. Um. But
(36:27):
you know, again, the reason why this was that it
works so well, It's because these were men and women
who were used to selling products for a living and
it was just sort of a natural, uh, 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,
(36:47):
they they were selling this these ideas to children in
ways that were comprehensible the children, that were approachable by children. Um,
and they just kind of took the kids point of
views and packaged it for them. I think it's a
good way to put it. Yeah, So besides the Schoolhouse
Rock Rocks c D, which I still have. Actually, yeah,
(37:12):
that nineties thing created a bit of a resurgence of it.
The resurgence in popularity for sure. Boy that Blind Melon
Three's matchic number. It was great. Yeah hear that one?
Did you like them? 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 think I
only heard their first album, but they that was the too.
(37:35):
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 whole girl and everything. Yeah,
Soup was good, man, you just checked that out. Well,
it's very good, very sad what happened to him? Hey
O deed and they didn't find him for a while, right,
(37:57):
I don't remember that part, but maybe I think I
think no nobody missed him for a little while or
something like that, but a waste um in though there
was another resurgent. I guess I was before the CD
uh when they took it to the stage with Schoolhouse
Rock Live, which kind of started out as most great
(38:21):
theater like this in a 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 made it on to
Off Broadway. Yeah, it ran for four solid years and
(38:41):
then they had a touring version. Um. 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 still might 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
(39:02):
still doing shows. They're still touring. As far as I know,
I need to do my U Free to Be You
and Me live show. That's one of my dreams. I
talked about that before. There isn't that Rosy Greer one? Yeah,
but 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 um yeah, that was another like
(39:24):
that one hits me square in the face, still from childhood,
right in the bread best right in the breadbasket. Uh
ninety seven they had a twenty fifth anniversary UH package
of VHS tapes. So think about this, like it goes
up the air in n then all of a sudden
ninety ninety seven, there's like schoolhouse Rock everywhere. It will
(39:48):
never die, no, And I think like this was one
of the first instances because dude, admittedly Generation and X
is extremely nostalgic as far as generations, Yeah, very nostalgic.
I would propose that Schoolhouse Rock was the thing that
kicked it off as far as gen X nostalgia goes. Well,
(40:10):
it definitely was something that was so drilled into our consciousness.
It gets a touchstone, right, But I mean, the surgeonce
of it, I think is the is the first example
of just how nostalgic as a generation generation exists for sure,
that's that's mine. You got Sharknado. I'm predicting that that
(40:30):
will be rooted out by historians and years to come.
Dig that one out of the vault. Uh. Maybe at
the place of your death, like a plaque next to
that rope that you couldn't climb will be a memorial,
will be like rope Jeez, you already forgot. Uh. Kennedy
Center had a sing along for the fourtieth anniversary, two
(40:54):
thousand people in attendance. UM. Pretty amazing. I would have
done anything to have gone to that. UM. And then
it's been parodied and homaged over the years and everything
from The Simpsons to Saturday Night Live. Did you see
Conspiracy Rock? Conspiracy Theory Dude? That was a TV fun
house bit, right, yeah, by Robert Smigel. It's one of
(41:16):
the all time great man. He nails nails the conspiracy theory,
Nail's Schoolhouse Rock. But it's all about how these major
corporations like GE and Westinghouse own the media they owned
like ABC, NBC, all these um media outlets, and how
they can use it to shape opinion and squash UM opinions.
(41:38):
That disagree with them or their products, and um choose
what to report on. It is so good. Go watch
it right now. It's on YouTube. Um. But apparently there's
a bit of a conspiracy theory around it as well,
because it aired on the actual Saturday Live episode. But
then when they reran it and I think released that
episode on DVD, it wasn't there. They they edited it out,
(42:01):
and um, supposedly it was just because Lauren Michaels didn't
think it was funny. There's just no way that that's
all it was. It was so I'm thinking, no, it
was such a smack in the face too NBC and
like all the other ones that, yeah, well, and they
just had one a couple of years ago on that
(42:24):
it wasn't homage. I'm just a bill 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 all
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.
(42:46):
Actually ran across criticism of it. What yeah, boy, are
you gonna should just leave the room. Maybe I'm about
to get angry. You might want to, all right. So
they were teaching very broad concepts to kids in ways
that kids could understand, and when you're when you're coming,
(43:08):
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 that got
to get you some elbow Room where it's about there's
(43:28):
so many white settlers that we just got to spread westward. Okay,
I'll see where this is going. Not a single Native
American is shown in this westward westward spread. They actually
mentioned that it's God's will manifest destiny. 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,
(43:48):
elbow Room forget Schoolhouse Rock. Very few people are. But
there's criticism of Schoolhouse Rock and that it really kind
of fed American children. This the 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. Ye.
(44:11):
So well, we talked about that a lot too, about
how schools, especially in like the seventies and eighties, uh,
whitewashed a lot of stuff. 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
(44:31):
think that they that these creatives were like, we can't
say this to kids, you know. I think that there's
definitely been more of an awakening in recent years. But
I was right, yeah, and this is another name for
what they were talking about, Like forced removal was turned
into get you gotta gives some elbow roof. You know though,
I want to know, um chuck, because I'm not in
(44:52):
school and I don't have a child in school. I
don't have a child at all. I have a four
legged 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
(45:13):
history teachers out there that are like fifth six seventh 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, 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
(45:35):
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. Um. 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 would
let us know? As Tyler Murphy let us know. Well,
I know what he's doing. He's doing all the right things.
(45:56):
Oh yeah, he's up on the desk opening minds. Uh
so you're ready for my favorite? Uh rufus Xavier Sasaparilla.
What was that one about? Oh yeah, I have a
hard time expressing how much joy this song brings me. Still, Yeah,
(46:17):
I listened 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. Uh
like how it's it's very fast. How he like every Uh.
I looked up to see if people did it live
and stuff, and everyone always slows it down because nobody
(46:39):
can 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 Sasaparilla, and you know, they
go to the zoo and there's an art vark and
and armadillo and all these big words. He's like, I
could say that, or could say he did this and
(47:00):
we did that, and she said this. Uh 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 an actually want about copyright infringement.
It was started out as a bill. Yeah, so we
probably can't play enough of it to do with justice.
(47:21):
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. I'll pile on
a bus. They Yeah, this girl in Rufus Xavier Sasparilla.
They yeah, exactly, it's a place now. Uh you got
anything else? No, but there there probably will be a
(47:43):
tag on this one with Mr Nastanovich or or with
me just recounting his tail of No More Kings. So, uh,
if you want to know more about Schoolhouse ROCKO read
this article on how Stuff works dot com. And since
I said that, it may be time for listener and
mail with Bob nistan Bits, all right, So uh now,
(48:04):
as promised or as hope fully promised, we have via
telephone in the studio Mr Bob Nastanovich, who um is
actually a member of two of my favorite bands of
all time, both Pavement and Silver Jews, And um, it's
a real treat to have you here, Bob. We did
a show on Schoolhouse Rock and talked kind of at
(48:27):
length about pavements efforts toward that. Uh. I guess late nineties,
uh c D 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 um, the
singer of Silver Juice, David Berman, decided he did not
(48:48):
want to make the record. And he went home and
we'd already booked a week of studio time Silver Juice
had and UM. Then subsequently we were Stephen and my
health and Steve West were unceremoniously fired from Silver Juice. UM.
That's beside the point. We were kind of like at
(49:08):
all the studio time that David was supposed to pay
for it, so to bail him out, Pavement sort of
took that and made a record so Stephen, Stephen thankfully
had three songs and we made a specific trimmy p
But I guess most significantly in in regards to this project,
(49:33):
Jackie Ferry and dear friend of ours, was supervising the
Schoolhouse Rock not Blation and Um. She gave us our
choice of songs, and it was fairly obvious to us
that no More King's you know um had a lot
of appeal. It's always our favorite one kids Boston Tea
(49:54):
party being UM kind of we were able to use
the vocal style links of Steve West to our advantage,
I believe, for the first time in band history, and
it all turned up to be. We were very pleased
with it, were very pleased with all of it. But
(50:16):
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 um all the deep voice rambling in
the background, mostly him. He's got an incredible voice, speaking voice.
(50:40):
He's one of the people that you can hear from
a hundred and fifty feet away and with a win,
we've got a beautiful deep voice. So um we he's
doing all like the ranting and raving. Um, it was
all pretty jubilant. We had a good times. Only time
the three of us ever recorded together as Pavement, and
(51:05):
but um, I feel like we made a good choice
and we just loved that song. And it was one
take over, yeah, one take on the instrumental and just
um some vocal dubbing. Probably took eight minutes wow. And
it was just the three of you, oh yeah, yeah,
(51:26):
just the three of us real, the only ones there
because we thought it was gonna be Silver Jooes and
that that was in Silver Jooes. So Camberg and I
Bold we're 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
(51:48):
that thing. But um, now the school House Rock was
the kind of thing pop mind like, well, we have
anything to do, and seems like I got this one song.
He's like, well, you have to do this thing for Jackie.
We have to do someings jack We probably sort of
planning on doing it anyways. But Jackie at the time
was a BJ at MTV. Then she later became our
(52:09):
um so she was she was the nanny for Courtney
and Kurt, for Francis Bean Cobain, and then she was
a tour manager for Pavement. In fact, she has she's
been battling cancer for over a decade. Um but um.
One interesting artifact that she owns is the actual Cardigan
(52:36):
Cardigan's um button up cardigan sweater that Kurt Cobain wore
it in the famous MTV Unplugged performance. So yeah, she's
quite a character, but it was it was her project,
and you know, she was a good friend, and um,
(53:01):
we want to do the best we could for her.
I didn't really care about anything else. We didn't even
realize We didn't know whether there was a good tiny
thing like a limit edation of like whatever. But yeah,
funnily enough, my wife that was the first Payment song
she ever heard because her sister, Yeah, her sister bought
the school Loss rock thing when her sister was like fourteen,
(53:23):
and but what my wife went would have been about ten,
and she heard that is the first time she ever
heard Payment. That's pretty funny. It We were talking a
little bit about, um, just your take and kind of
just the different takes of all the artists on that
compilation and a lot of more pretty straightforward, and um,
(53:45):
I think I really like the Pavement one the most
because it was it was kind of the perfect mix
of very straightforward at times and then just totally pavement
pavementized at times. Yeah. Very Um, we don't I mean
we'd be straightforward. I don't think we're kind of good
enough to do things straightforward. Like like I think it's
(54:07):
like you think of like a band like Nickel Creek
covering our songs been on a stranger they can and
they kind of American at it or whatever. But like
in order to do like straight things, you've gotta be
you gotta be good or else you're gonna come of
humiliate yourself, like for example, like are am doing like
Pylon is crazy? They could do that pretty straight because
(54:30):
they have that sound 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,
preferring a classic, it sort of works. But now we're
(54:51):
none of us are none of us are good enough
to do that. We had we had to devise our
own take on it. You know. Well, I thought it
totally worked. Was the Schoolhouse Rock? Um? 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
(55:12):
do it? Yeah, it was a great idea. At the time,
we thought it was a great idea. And at that
point in our lives, Um, I'm guessing it was like
somewhere in there we've forgotten you know, you like that
point where you know that we hadn't seen or heard
(55:33):
any of that. The only one that I can really
remember off the top of my head at the time
was the conjunction Junction. You know, yeah, of course, what's
your function? But like you know, those are the some
of the first songs when we were little kids, like
under ten years old that got stuck in our head.
So yeah, I just thought it was I mean, if anything,
the only negative I thought it might be a little
(55:55):
bit childish and corny. Um. But you know, then as
it came together, um, it just seemed like a very
worthwhile project 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
(56:16):
of a one of the more significant things that Payment
ever did, sort of outside the realm of Pavement. Um,
I'll still being Pavement, Like you know, I don't 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 because I lived in Louisville and I was always
at the race track, and and you know, people would say, hey,
(56:37):
you know what, you're gonna be making a new album
like two months. I wouldn't know anything about it or
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 we're gonna knew him, you know, so
(56:58):
you can see where I was on the pavement A
payment totem pole. Well man, I always call you pavor
payment secret weapon. Uh yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that
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 uh with
(57:19):
your your unique take on backing vocals. Yeah, no, I um,
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,
(57:40):
mostly from this industry, the horse racing industry, like heard
I was was in a band or even a successful band,
They can't even they just didn't make any sense to them.
And then they'll also, um, you know, and 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 um, and then the
(58:05):
funny thing is it's always asked me that, you know,
if it's musico types 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, like
playing music really seriously and like jam and like or
(58:29):
just really like have this incredibly dry approach to like
like gear heads, like 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, um,
(58:50):
really awkward, Like it's always awkward, Like people asked me
to do something, and then I'll be like, oh, man,
like uh, you know, like I gotta figure out a
way to get out of this, you know, because like
a my skills like they're not gonna really not gonna
believe them in a band. Went 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
(59:11):
way this guy was in a band like this is
a fake you know, so very strange, very strange. Well
you just gotta say no, man, I'm the secret weapon,
and the secret weapon doesn't Yeah, like this like the
spice and like some sort of bowl of burgoo or something.
I don't even know. It was just like the whole
experience was pretty magical. Um, it still doesn't really make
(59:37):
that much sense to me, you know, I just I
really enjoyed it, for sure. But in regards to that
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
(59:58):
on that lost Rock thing, that thing was a humbling
or 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
(01:00:20):
history within the context of the band. You know, it's
not like something that we've been working on or something
have been sitting there or something that have been played
live or you know. I mean I think that we
had to you know, pavement ize 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,
(01:00:41):
you know, like we were talking about with a straight thing,
you know, you can't. You gotta have significance. Um. Yeah,
not that, like you know, Steven and Steve West aren't talented.
I'm not gonna like those guys are great, but like,
in fact, the fact that they're able to like throw, improvise, um,
something like that's pretty cool. So I remember being really
(01:01:02):
really happy that Steve West, who had never really been used,
um in payment outside of just playing drums, um, that
he was but he sort of fit fantastically on that recording.
So I sort of loved that about no Marketings. I
love hearing him in there. All right, Well, thanks Bob.
(01:01:22):
I appreciate your telling us these stories, and um, I'm
gonna think of about a hundred more reasons to have
you on in the future. Yeah, anytime, all right, man,
thanks a lot for more on this, and thousands of
other topics because it how stuff works. Dot com
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com straight because knowledge is power. Hey, and welcome
(00:23):
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
we just heard the theme song. If you're between the
ages of well, were you into it? Yes? Okay, so
(00:45):
you're what forty one? I'm forty, so probably younger than
you even a bit. Let's say if you're between, I
was definitely towards the tail end of it. Let's say
thirty eight to fifty years old. Actually, yeah, that's not true.
So let's say it was up to yeah nine, Yeah,
(01:08):
so iwhere in that rain fifty ish? All right, that's
what you agree on a little more. 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
(01:29):
that you grew up in the seventies and eighties. Uh.
I think the heyday of Saturday Morning cartoons personally, uh,
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's been
(01:53):
a little while. When I went back to UM to
research this, I listened to or watched a bunch of them,
and they all just came flooding back. Yeah, and them.
The writer of this article actually interviewed, didn't he Bob Doro?
It's it sounded that way unless he's a big fat
liar in his author's note. Well, I just remember when
(02:15):
this article went around, Like the first thing we do
when there's an article at how SUF works is there's
a UM email that goes around everyone where people kind
of suggest kind of questions you can answer and stuff
like that. Um. I don't think we ever really talked
about that, did we don't think nine years in that's
a secret. Uh, 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
(02:37):
three years old, and you know, you can still get
in touch with a guy, I think, and apparently this
dude did. And sadly, I think all 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
(02:57):
more more select quotes from Mr Doro. You wanted like
I called Mr Doe. He answered, hello, said Mr Doro.
We should have interviewed him for this. I don't know
why we didn't. I don't either. Apparently it's easy to
get to uh and there's well, I'll get to that.
Never mind. Should we get in the way back machine? Yes,
(03:17):
let's go back to the seventies, the greatest decade history
of humanity. Probably, I'm not joking. I'm a fan of sixties. Seventies,
and eighties would be tough for me to decide. Sixties
were a little too hippie for me. I love the seventies,
(03:38):
so I mean, I had loved the seventies, and not
even as a Golden age. There was a lot wrong
in the seventies. Nixon was president during the seventies. Okay,
lots of stuff we're wrong in the seventies, but something
about that decade just hit all the boxes. I just
love it, and it reminds me my childhood, which is
(04:01):
great because you know, I had a good childhood. It
was fun. I a lot of We talked about that
in the Nostalgia episode on how nostalgi just the correct
path in life, even though John Hodgman doesn't think so.
So early seventies, there's a gentleman named David McCall and
um he was. He co owned an ad agency called
McCaffrey and McCall and as the story goes, he was
(04:24):
on vacation with his family and he knew his son
was having some trouble in math um 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,
(04:46):
Why can't you remember the other stuff? I don't think
he was that gruff, but it did hit him. He
was like, you know, my son, remember, he has no
problem memorizing things, but there's something about these multiplication tables.
So I wonder if there's something too. Uh sing song
and turning learning into not only just music, because that's
(05:06):
not a new thing. People have been doing that forever,
but popular sounding music, right, and like pairing them with
concepts to teach, right, to to make kids understand difficult concepts, right,
And it's it's so weird now, especially if in the
post school house rock world that that, yeah, of course
(05:31):
people do that, Like that's a technique that you used
to teach kids, but apparently no one else is doing this.
At the time that 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
(05:54):
in in doing the same thing but get you getting
you to buy something. He was, 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 use in advertising. Yeah,
Like they would see a jingle for a product that
(06:14):
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. Uh. So he went
to UM. One of these Uh I think he was
(06:35):
a creative director or 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. Uh. It
wasn't very good. Didn't you feel bad for this person?
(06:56):
I did, But you know what, it could have died
there right, never would have a Schoolhouse Rock. But this
person went down in history is the contributor to Schoolhouse Rock.
Who who didn't it didn't make it? Yeah, or the
person who almost killed 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
(07:17):
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 was
a 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
(07:39):
might as well read it from ninety three year old
Mr 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 McAuley said here's my idea.
I give it a try, but don't write down to
the kids. And when he said that, I gotta chill.
I have a high opinion of children. And that was
sort of the key right there. They weren't uh songs
(08:00):
like written in a remedial way because it was children.
It's a bitsy spider, give me a break. Oh that's
a classic. So um, 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
(08:21):
be a jazz composer. Things are starting to like happen.
There's basically the hand of the Almighty at work here.
That's right. Uh So Dora goes home. Um, 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
(08:43):
the very first Schoolhouse song written because the first thing
they wanted to tackle was math. Because of uh McCall's son. Yeah,
this this composition that he came back with, three is
a magic number. Um, it's a I when I hear it,
it's super cool. But I don't. I I'm really surprised
(09:05):
that everybody was like, this is, yes, figure something out
from this. Man. 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. Uh.
And not only that, but uh, like you said, got
(09:26):
a little trippy with the symbolism faith, hope and charity,
heart and mind and body. Uh, it was about and
I 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? Man, I
forgot about that. Remember, I think my brain melted a
bit there. One it's tough. Zero is tough. It is tough,
(09:50):
um and not at all magic, right, not really? Um?
So regardless, if you would have been working there, you
would have been like and everyone else enjoy I did,
You'd be like, I'm gonna go get a bagel. I'm
not gonna even work on this process cheese account. Um.
I did think of Madmen quite a bit when I
was researching this. It was sort of that same time
(10:13):
period or I guess towards No, Madman didn't make it
into the seventies. Yeah, I thought he did, because it
wasn't he supposed to be dB Cooper at the end,
and that was yeah, early, I guess that was seventy one.
I think it did crack into the seventies, not like
Boogie Nights did. That was all seventies. The No, that's right,
(10:35):
it cracked into the eighties with that cheese that that
song you recorded. Well, no, I was, well, yeah, that
for sure. But I was thinking about when it when
the the Party, the New Year's e Party Girl nineteen
with Bill Macy. Yeah, man, what a great movie. That
was wonderful. Yeah, movies almost like twenty years old. I
(10:57):
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 from the seventies. Well, when
I think of like Boogie Nights, I was 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 that it is
(11:18):
playing the same sport. The rookies are now like the
old coaches and managers in the sports now man bizarre. Uh.
So everyone's impressed at McCaffrey and McCall um. Then they
did a pretty smart thing. They went to um. McCall
was on the board of the Bank Street College of
Education uh in New York there, and he took it
(11:39):
to them. It was just a song at this point
he said, what do you think is a learning tool? Uh?
They used it, played it for the students and they
were like, this is awesome. They're responding again, little job.
He's just sitting there with his arms across the scowling.
I've never seen him so mad before. Uh. The students
(12:01):
liked it. The agency liked it, so they knew they
were onto something. They got their art director, Uh Tom
yo y o h e, oh you're going with Yo.
I'm going all out with yoh okay Tom YOHI and
UM said, put put some animation to this, draw out
(12:21):
some storyboards, because that was the beauty of Schoolhouse Rock
to me was Uh, it was a combination of everything.
It wasn't just the song, like the songs are great, um,
and we'll get more to the music here in a bit,
but it was the combination of the visuals with the
song and the fact that you were learning something in
such a unique way. It was just like the perfect
(12:42):
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 Yo
he started sitting there right like drawing some of this
stuff out. That's I mean. School was Rock is not
one or the other. It's the combination of those two things,
(13:03):
and they play off each other. So well, I agreed. Uh,
So they took UM. Now they have these storyboards. Uh.
They take this to a guy named Radford Stone. He
was their account supervisor of the vp UM for ABC,
and they said, there's this young upstart at ABC for
their children's programming named Michael Eisner that if he's ever
(13:25):
going to go anywhere, but right now he's running the
kid's shop over there. Um, 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 her
from Jessica, granddaughter of Mr Jones, and uh sat down
in a meeting, played the demo tape, showed him the
storyboard they helped. Turned to Chuck Jones, so what do
(13:48):
you think? And he said, buy it? By it that's
how Chuck Jones do that. He didn't and Michael Eisner
bought it and uh, before you knew it are own business.
We're gonna take a break, I think we should. Josh
is gonna go collect himself and we'll be right back
(14:38):
you all right, all right, we're back. So strange. Um, So,
Schoolhouse Rock started on ABC Saturday morning. Is that 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. When the creators of the program you're actually
(15:02):
watching weren't good enough to make twenty two full minutes,
you round it out with interstitial program Yeah, exactly. Uh,
this is January six and seven was the first weekend
in ninety three, so I was but two years old.
Well three, yeah you you were in the upper atmosphere
just playing my liar, coalescing, waiting to be born, flapping
(15:25):
my wings. Uh. And this was before like like you said,
this is the original thing was. It was just gonna
be an album called Multiplication Rock um, 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 threes, magic number four, legged Zoo, Elementary,
(15:47):
my Dear, and my Hero zero great song uh zero
again yeah, not magical, but it is a cool number.
Such a funny little hero came along. They counted on
their fingers and so that when was that check three?
And um, I think that first one had quite was
(16:08):
so it was up to third. There were thirteen episodes
that if it went from zero to twelve. Yeah, I
think what they settled on was, um almost like seasons,
uh themed season, so that the first season was going
to be math related. Yeah. So um. Apparently Bob Darrow
had been off like coming up with songs, didn't realize
(16:29):
that they wanted a song for each number, and he
had started to combine several numbers in a different song,
so he didn't get the memo. He didn't and he
finally did and um he uh. 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, so so
(16:53):
not one of my favorites, but I mean they're all great.
It's just some standout a little more than others. So
what's your favorite of the multiple k rock Three is
a magic number? Okay? Yeah? And and that was something
else I noticed about this. There are um for each season.
There were at least one standout song per per season
(17:13):
that just about everybody knows. And I would guess three
is the 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 um Bob Doro
was up for Grammy in nine four for um, I
I think the whole album, right, yeah, but the those
(17:36):
jerks at Sesame Street one, if you're gonna lose, lose
the Sesame Street. Yeah, And Dora 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 Tate and Blossom Deery, Grady Tate saying
Naughty number nine and Blossom Deery saying figure eight. But
(17:59):
all the rest of them, the other eleven, Bob Durrow
sang and he wrote all of them. So 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, Um, the people involved stayed on for basically
(18:19):
the whole run. In the initial run from seventy 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 v H one special like the Dark Side
of the school House rockyears. You know. Uh, so they
move on to I don't know which one is my favorite,
(18:42):
Grammar Rock or History, Um, but they moved on to
Grammar Rock next yea seventy three to seventy four, And
we should say I don't think that these were, Um, Like,
I don't think there are breaks in the season. I
get the impression that from three till when they had
(19:02):
enough episodes, they were just running on like every Saturday
morning during cartoons. Yeah, I certainly don't remember like breaks,
like it just seems like every week they were there. Um.
So seventy three and seventy four you have Grammar Rock,
which um debuted. Some people will probably say the biggest
of all time Conjunction Junction. Yeah, that's so, and everybody
(19:23):
knows it's a great, great song, uh song, as he's
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. Um. He was MRF 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, very
(19:46):
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, 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, Um,
(20:06):
so Jack Sheldon came along, uh sank in junction junction
and did you go back and listen to that? Like
for this, listen to a lot of these, So that
is a sophisticated song. If you listen to like that,
we remember our poetry episode. If you listen to like
the meter and the um, the rhyming pattern, the rhyme scheme,
(20:27):
and the slant rhymes they use, like for something that's
made for kids, it is not just rhyme, rhyme, rhyme, rhyme, rhyme, ryme, rhyme, rhyme, rhyme.
You know, like it's a sophisticated song. Um. 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
um it's I guess it's that not not talking down
to kids. Yeah, And like the music was was good,
(20:50):
Like if you listen to um, I mean those are
a little sing songy, but like some of them were
like pop music at the time, like the Verb song
some one of the funkiest songs I've ever heard. Verb
That's What's happening, And especially that one, like I read
I read this great blog post by this African American
guy that was talking about how verb was like meant
(21:12):
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
the super funky music and this kid that looked like
him having this great adventure uh in the city, and
uh it just kind of it's pretty pretty neat thing,
(21:34):
I think. Yeah that was season two, was Grammar, right, Yes,
So apparently in that same season, lady named Lynn Aaron's
um was a She was a copy copy department secretary. Yeah,
this is where it reminded me of Madman, and she's
like basically took Peggy's journey from like secretary to superstar.
(21:55):
I've never seen mad Yeah it's good. I'm rewatching it
right now. Really, yeah, it's that good. Yeah. So, um,
Lynn was she was a secretary at the advertising agency.
And apparently she was playing her guitar on lunch break.
Another reason the seventies were great exactly, And um, who
(22:16):
was it that Founder Newell, the creative director guy. Yeah,
like in the movie, he's just walking down the hall
and here's this beautiful music and stops. It's like, what
in the world's going on in there? Right? And it
was Lynn Errands, And so they took her and put
her on I guess part time on the project um
and they, I guess eventually made her a full time songwriter,
(22:39):
which is pretty cool. That was her gig. Fifteen of
the songs, including some of the biggest ones. Now and
as a person plays her thing great song in Her Planet,
Janet interjections to good one a Victim of Gravity about
Isaac Newton in Her Planet Janet, sounds like Rocky Horror
if you go back and listen to it, kind of
does it bears a real resemblance to it? Or Rocky
(22:59):
Horror sounded like inter Planet Janet. I went and looked.
Rocket Horror was three years before In A Planet Janet
the movie or the play the movie? Okay, so the
play was even before that? Was it a play first? Uh?
Meat Loaf was even in the play, oh yeah, before
the movie, right, and not a play I guess, musical
which play with songs and dancing. Uh So. The next
(23:25):
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 bi centennial.
Yeah that was a big deal, which you don't remember,
but I remember being a little kid, being five years old,
and uh, it took over the country for you know,
that entire year. Yeah, I know there was like a
(23:47):
resurgence and 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 flag
holder that's a black metal eagle holding like some arrows
maybe or that is from still there, like a resurgence
(24:08):
and Betsy Ross and colonial like knick knacks and stuff.
I wasn't 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 or
five six years later. So, uh, History Rock or America
Rock um featured some of the best songs Mother Necessity
(24:30):
Shot heard around the world. Uh and No More Kings,
which is maybe my second all time favorite. Yeah, and
that's the one that um. There was an album that
came out in called Schoolhouse Rocks Rocks, Schoolhouse Rock Rocks,
where they got contemporary artists to cover these songs and
(24:52):
did you ever listen to that. I listened to the
Pavement win to day. So I emailed Bob Nistanovich today
from Pavement because, as I said in the previous episode,
I tricked him into being my email friend. Um, and
I said, hey, dude, I would love to hear if
you have any thoughts on them, more kings, how you
(25:14):
guys were approached, if there any stories, what it meant
to you, what it didn't mean, whatever, let me know. No, no, no,
He emailed back. Uh. And then I said, I'll call
you on my way to work, called him the way
to work. Crickets. Yeah, I got his voicemail, and then
as I was coming in the studio, he called him
left the voicemail saying he was in his minivan rocking
out and he didn't hear the phone ring, which is
(25:36):
very funny to me. But um, 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 gonna 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. If not, if it ends
(25:57):
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, like a real listener mail.
All right, it's not about it so anyway, uh So,
listen up for the end for Bob Nistanovitch story about
No More Kings, because if you listen to that CD,
(26:18):
it's like the lemon Heads and uh ween, it's the
super ninety c D Mob 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 has changed his words. He there's like laser guns
at the end, and it's just wonderfully pavement, like quintessentially pavement.
(26:42):
Like leave it to them to just kind of throw
it all out the window and do their own thing.
I liked a lot um three ring Government. I didn't
really know that one that was good, and apparently they
um So it basically talks about the different branches of
the government but puts in the context of a three
ring circuit us and it's um really, I mean, aside
(27:05):
from the fact that it compares to the government to
a three ring circus. It's not at all offensive. Apparently
they said on that one for years and didn't release
it until nine nine because they were worried about offending
the government, which is a strange thing to worry about
through today's lens. Yeah, but even still, I mean, this
is like post water Gate. It's not like everybody was like,
(27:27):
oh right, you know, we 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. But the most famous song, um
from that year by far was Sheldon's on just a Bill?
(27:48):
Is that your favorite? No? Okay? Um? That was composed
not by Mr Doro but by a man named Dave Frishburg.
And Um, I mean that one was just a mega hit,
straight to number one on the Billboard charts. It's it's like,
as far as Schoolhouse Rocks goes, that's the that's the
(28:11):
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 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 these kids us, we were learning how a
(28:33):
bill becomes a law right in the in the best
way possible, like better than any well, not any teacher.
They were great teachers back then, let's say, like any
dump teacher that's boring their kids. But it definitely struck
a chord with me, you know, 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
(28:56):
were plenty of orders. This is before video, because 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 gotta get me a copy of that I'm a
(29:17):
Bill thing and 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 the very least, so they could
play in the music. I see, maybe that's what they meant.
Probably okay, an eight track. Um. And then there was
Science Rock was the year after that. That was seventy
(29:37):
and seventy nine, which is pretty good. InterPlaNet Janet, Victor's
so weird? What InterPlaNet Janet? Yeah, it's a good one.
And then the telegraph Line song, which um, I think
that was written by this Arns too, I think, And
that one was really like, I mean it was you
(29:58):
literally learned about the erb A system and how the
body communicates uh to the brain by listening to that song.
And that's the one that they wanted to play for
med students and they did amazing some of them. All right,
well let's take another break, and um jeez, we'll we'll
cover the the sad last season of Schoolhouse Rock after this,
(30:49):
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 going to be science,
are gonna be grammar or whatever, So go go forth
and figure this out. The songwriters would come up with
songs and they'd pitch them to the creative team. And
(31:12):
so there was this process of creativity and it started
with the creatives. That's the key here, 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 to make
(31:33):
sure everything was like, you know, it was right yeah,
and then ABC, oh, let me say it. And then
they'd say, oh, I guess it's fine, and then they'd
start the storyboard it once they had the lyrics set
in stone, right. That was the first four seasons. The
fifth season they said, died, Creativity Die, and they reversed
the process and they said, hey, songwriters, here are your
(31:55):
assignments now where we we think kids should know more
about computers. So we're gonna just screw this whole thing up. Okay, yeah,
this is the part I don't get it, says the
ABC program exact 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.
(32:17):
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 here unless the problem. Yeah, with season five, so
we should say season five two. If you notice we
jumped quite a bit from nineteen seventy nine and nine
eighty five. Schoolhouse Rock was running all those years on
(32:38):
Saturday mornings. They just weren't any new ones. They were
the same ones that they were rerunning. The Class five
Squire Rushtional 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 Mr Chips
what do you think of that? So it's what like,
uh computer with a bag of chips. It's like, no,
(33:00):
Mr Chips is a computer? Well, what's Scooter computer? It's
just a kid. And they said, well, what about the
Goodbye Mr Chips? That great book? And no one's ever
read that? What's a book? So, uh, it was a
little confusing disdain for him. It's a little weird. I know,
I feel bad if that's not really how it went down,
(33:21):
but it sounds kind of like that classic story, you know,
like an executive takes over the creative and it just
goes downhill. It's usually how it happens, UM, And I
do feel a little bit bad because you know, the
originals were still involved. They got Mr Doro back on board,
and uh, I think they did the best they could.
But I think one of the issues is UM, all
the other seasons, you know, math and science and history,
(33:44):
it's all civics. It's all baked in like that stuff.
It's classic and didn't change when you're writing songs about uh,
data processing and basic computer language a couple of years later, like, no,
it's not relevant anymore, 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 boy or
(34:05):
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 into something
really great. And so they pulled the plug on the
whole thing. In They said, Hey, this Mary lou Retten lady.
We like her. She's got gumption, she's got apple pie
(34:26):
coming out of her ears. Um, we love her, and
we want to put her on TV, so they put
her interstitials on ABC Fun Fit. I'll bet that was
the same time when Reagan made Arnold Schwarzenegger. Is like
fitnesses are that? Bet totally remember that the Presidential fitness Test, right? Yeah? Man?
(34:48):
I failed that so many times. Yeah, I think I
was always sick that day. It's like I gotta climb
a rope. Still to this day, I've never climbed a
rope in my life. I made it this far. You know,
I'm gonna be chased by a tiger on the way something.
I was gonna say, that's how you're gonna meet your
demise one day, just gonna be in like a burning
building and a rope's just gonna fall from the ceiling
like a cartoon. Good. Uh. In the late eighties, UM,
(35:15):
there 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, but ABC said, you know what people want
this um, and I guess it took him a little
while to get around to it, but nine they brought
it back, rerunning UM all those classic tunes and cartoons
(35:40):
and added some new stuff by Bob Doro in the Gang. Yeah,
they brought back the originals and this this season was
called UM 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 um and they had things like UM seven fifty
(36:03):
once a Week, which is about maintaining your budget, Tyrannosaurs
Debt which is about the national debt, UM and plenty
of others. Remember the Tale of Mr Morton. That was
another Lindon Errand'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 sell his money on
Scratch Office or something. I don't think so. Um. But
(36:27):
you know, again, the reason why this was that it
works so well, It's because these were men and women
who were used to selling products for a living and
it was just sort of a natural, uh, 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,
(36:47):
they they were selling this these ideas to children in
ways that were comprehensible the children, that were approachable by children. Um,
and they just kind of took the kids point of
views and packaged it for them. I think it's a
good way to put it. Yeah, So besides the Schoolhouse
Rock Rocks c D, which I still have. Actually, yeah,
(37:12):
that nineties thing created a bit of a resurgence of it.
The resurgence in popularity for sure. Boy that Blind Melon
Three's matchic number. It was great. Yeah hear that one?
Did you like them? 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 think I
only heard their first album, but they that was the too.
(37:35):
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 whole girl and everything. Yeah,
Soup was good, man, you just checked that out. Well,
it's very good, very sad what happened to him? Hey
O deed and they didn't find him for a while, right,
(37:57):
I don't remember that part, but maybe I think I
think no nobody missed him for a little while or
something like that, but a waste um in though there
was another resurgent. I guess I was before the CD
uh when they took it to the stage with Schoolhouse
Rock Live, which kind of started out as most great
(38:21):
theater like this in a 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 made it on to
Off Broadway. Yeah, it ran for four solid years and
(38:41):
then they had a touring version. Um. 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 still might 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
(39:02):
still doing shows. They're still touring. As far as I know,
I need to do my U Free to Be You
and Me live show. That's one of my dreams. I
talked about that before. There isn't that Rosy Greer one? Yeah,
but 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 um yeah, that was another like
(39:24):
that one hits me square in the face, still from childhood,
right in the bread best right in the breadbasket. Uh
ninety seven they had a twenty fifth anniversary UH package
of VHS tapes. So think about this, like it goes
up the air in n then all of a sudden
ninety ninety seven, there's like schoolhouse Rock everywhere. It will
(39:48):
never die, no, And I think like this was one
of the first instances because dude, admittedly Generation and X
is extremely nostalgic as far as generations, Yeah, very nostalgic.
I would propose that Schoolhouse Rock was the thing that
kicked it off as far as gen X nostalgia goes. Well,
(40:10):
it definitely was something that was so drilled into our consciousness.
It gets a touchstone, right, But I mean, the surgeonce
of it, I think is the is the first example
of just how nostalgic as a generation generation exists for sure,
that's that's mine. You got Sharknado. I'm predicting that that
(40:30):
will be rooted out by historians and years to come.
Dig that one out of the vault. Uh. Maybe at
the place of your death, like a plaque next to
that rope that you couldn't climb will be a memorial,
will be like rope Jeez, you already forgot. Uh. Kennedy
Center had a sing along for the fourtieth anniversary, two
(40:54):
thousand people in attendance. UM. Pretty amazing. I would have
done anything to have gone to that. UM. And then
it's been parodied and homaged over the years and everything
from The Simpsons to Saturday Night Live. Did you see
Conspiracy Rock? Conspiracy Theory Dude? That was a TV fun
house bit, right, yeah, by Robert Smigel. It's one of
(41:16):
the all time great man. He nails nails the conspiracy theory,
Nail's Schoolhouse Rock. But it's all about how these major
corporations like GE and Westinghouse own the media they owned
like ABC, NBC, all these um media outlets, and how
they can use it to shape opinion and squash UM opinions.
(41:38):
That disagree with them or their products, and um choose
what to report on. It is so good. Go watch
it right now. It's on YouTube. Um. But apparently there's
a bit of a conspiracy theory around it as well,
because it aired on the actual Saturday Live episode. But
then when they reran it and I think released that
episode on DVD, it wasn't there. They they edited it out,
(42:01):
and um, supposedly it was just because Lauren Michaels didn't
think it was funny. There's just no way that that's
all it was. It was so I'm thinking, no, it
was such a smack in the face too NBC and
like all the other ones that, yeah, well, and they
just had one a couple of years ago on that
(42:24):
it wasn't homage. I'm just a bill 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 all
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.
(42:46):
Actually ran across criticism of it. What yeah, boy, are
you gonna should just leave the room. Maybe I'm about
to get angry. You might want to, all right. So
they were teaching very broad concepts to kids in ways
that kids could understand, and when you're when you're coming,
(43:08):
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 that got
to get you some elbow Room where it's about there's
(43:28):
so many white settlers that we just got to spread westward. Okay,
I'll see where this is going. Not a single Native
American is shown in this westward westward spread. They actually
mentioned that it's God's will manifest destiny. 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,
(43:48):
elbow Room forget Schoolhouse Rock. Very few people are. But
there's criticism of Schoolhouse Rock and that it really kind
of fed American children. This the 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. Ye.
(44:11):
So well, we talked about that a lot too, about
how schools, especially in like the seventies and eighties, uh,
whitewashed a lot of stuff. 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
(44:31):
think that they that these creatives were like, we can't
say this to kids, you know. I think that there's
definitely been more of an awakening in recent years. But
I was right, yeah, and this is another name for
what they were talking about, Like forced removal was turned
into get you gotta gives some elbow roof. You know though,
I want to know, um chuck, because I'm not in
(44:52):
school and I don't have a child in school. I
don't have a child at all. I have a four
legged 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
(45:13):
history teachers out there that are like fifth six seventh 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, 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
(45:35):
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. Um. 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 would
let us know? As Tyler Murphy let us know. Well,
I know what he's doing. He's doing all the right things.
(45:56):
Oh yeah, he's up on the desk opening minds. Uh
so you're ready for my favorite? Uh rufus Xavier Sasaparilla.
What was that one about? Oh yeah, I have a
hard time expressing how much joy this song brings me. Still, Yeah,
(46:17):
I listened 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. Uh
like how it's it's very fast. How he like every Uh.
I looked up to see if people did it live
and stuff, and everyone always slows it down because nobody
(46:39):
can 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 Sasaparilla, and you know, they
go to the zoo and there's an art vark and
and armadillo and all these big words. He's like, I
could say that, or could say he did this and
(47:00):
we did that, and she said this. Uh 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 an actually want about copyright infringement.
It was started out as a bill. Yeah, so we
probably can't play enough of it to do with justice.
(47:21):
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. I'll pile on
a bus. They Yeah, this girl in Rufus Xavier Sasparilla.
They yeah, exactly, it's a place now. Uh you got
anything else? No, but there there probably will be a
(47:43):
tag on this one with Mr Nastanovich or or with
me just recounting his tail of No More Kings. So, uh,
if you want to know more about Schoolhouse ROCKO read
this article on how Stuff works dot com. And since
I said that, it may be time for listener and
mail with Bob nistan Bits, all right, So uh now,
(48:04):
as promised or as hope fully promised, we have via
telephone in the studio Mr Bob Nastanovich, who um is
actually a member of two of my favorite bands of
all time, both Pavement and Silver Jews, And um, it's
a real treat to have you here, Bob. We did
a show on Schoolhouse Rock and talked kind of at
(48:27):
length about pavements efforts toward that. Uh. I guess late nineties,
uh c D 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 um, the
singer of Silver Juice, David Berman, decided he did not
(48:48):
want to make the record. And he went home and
we'd already booked a week of studio time Silver Juice
had and UM. Then subsequently we were Stephen and my
health and Steve West were unceremoniously fired from Silver Juice. UM.
That's beside the point. We were kind of like at
(49:08):
all the studio time that David was supposed to pay
for it, so to bail him out, Pavement sort of
took that and made a record so Stephen, Stephen thankfully
had three songs and we made a specific trimmy p
But I guess most significantly in in regards to this project,
(49:33):
Jackie Ferry and dear friend of ours, was supervising the
Schoolhouse Rock not Blation and Um. She gave us our
choice of songs, and it was fairly obvious to us
that no More King's you know um had a lot
of appeal. It's always our favorite one kids Boston Tea
(49:54):
party being UM kind of we were able to use
the vocal style links of Steve West to our advantage,
I believe, for the first time in band history, and
it all turned up to be. We were very pleased
with it, were very pleased with all of it. But
(50:16):
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 um all the deep voice rambling in
the background, mostly him. He's got an incredible voice, speaking voice.
(50:40):
He's one of the people that you can hear from
a hundred and fifty feet away and with a win,
we've got a beautiful deep voice. So um we he's
doing all like the ranting and raving. Um, it was
all pretty jubilant. We had a good times. Only time
the three of us ever recorded together as Pavement, and
(51:05):
but um, I feel like we made a good choice
and we just loved that song. And it was one
take over, yeah, one take on the instrumental and just
um some vocal dubbing. Probably took eight minutes wow. And
it was just the three of you, oh yeah, yeah,
(51:26):
just the three of us real, the only ones there
because we thought it was gonna be Silver Jooes and
that that was in Silver Jooes. So Camberg and I
Bold we're 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
(51:48):
that thing. But um, now the school House Rock was
the kind of thing pop mind like, well, we have
anything to do, and seems like I got this one song.
He's like, well, you have to do this thing for Jackie.
We have to do someings jack We probably sort of
planning on doing it anyways. But Jackie at the time
was a BJ at MTV. Then she later became our
(52:09):
um so she was she was the nanny for Courtney
and Kurt, for Francis Bean Cobain, and then she was
a tour manager for Pavement. In fact, she has she's
been battling cancer for over a decade. Um but um.
One interesting artifact that she owns is the actual Cardigan
(52:36):
Cardigan's um button up cardigan sweater that Kurt Cobain wore
it in the famous MTV Unplugged performance. So yeah, she's
quite a character, but it was it was her project,
and you know, she was a good friend, and um,
(53:01):
we want to do the best we could for her.
I didn't really care about anything else. We didn't even
realize We didn't know whether there was a good tiny
thing like a limit edation of like whatever. But yeah,
funnily enough, my wife that was the first Payment song
she ever heard because her sister, Yeah, her sister bought
the school Loss rock thing when her sister was like fourteen,
(53:23):
and but what my wife went would have been about ten,
and she heard that is the first time she ever
heard Payment. That's pretty funny. It We were talking a
little bit about, um, just your take and kind of
just the different takes of all the artists on that
compilation and a lot of more pretty straightforward, and um,
(53:45):
I think I really like the Pavement one the most
because it was it was kind of the perfect mix
of very straightforward at times and then just totally pavement
pavementized at times. Yeah. Very Um, we don't I mean
we'd be straightforward. I don't think we're kind of good
enough to do things straightforward. Like like I think it's
(54:07):
like you think of like a band like Nickel Creek
covering our songs been on a stranger they can and
they kind of American at it or whatever. But like
in order to do like straight things, you've gotta be
you gotta be good or else you're gonna come of
humiliate yourself, like for example, like are am doing like
Pylon is crazy? They could do that pretty straight because
(54:30):
they have that sound 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,
preferring a classic, it sort of works. But now we're
(54:51):
none of us are none of us are good enough
to do that. We had we had to devise our
own take on it. You know. Well, I thought it
totally worked. Was the Schoolhouse Rock? Um? 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
(55:12):
do it? Yeah, it was a great idea. At the time,
we thought it was a great idea. And at that
point in our lives, Um, I'm guessing it was like
somewhere in there we've forgotten you know, you like that
point where you know that we hadn't seen or heard
(55:33):
any of that. The only one that I can really
remember off the top of my head at the time
was the conjunction Junction. You know, yeah, of course, what's
your function? But like you know, those are the some
of the first songs when we were little kids, like
under ten years old that got stuck in our head.
So yeah, I just thought it was I mean, if anything,
the only negative I thought it might be a little
(55:55):
bit childish and corny. Um. But you know, then as
it came together, um, it just seemed like a very
worthwhile project 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
(56:16):
of a one of the more significant things that Payment
ever did, sort of outside the realm of Pavement. Um,
I'll still being Pavement, Like you know, I don't 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 because I lived in Louisville and I was always
at the race track, and and you know, people would say, hey,
(56:37):
you know what, you're gonna be making a new album
like two months. I wouldn't know anything about it or
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 we're gonna knew him, you know, so
(56:58):
you can see where I was on the pavement A
payment totem pole. Well man, I always call you pavor
payment secret weapon. Uh yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that
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 uh with
(57:19):
your your unique take on backing vocals. Yeah, no, I um,
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,
(57:40):
mostly from this industry, the horse racing industry, like heard
I was was in a band or even a successful band,
They can't even they just didn't make any sense to them.
And then they'll also, um, you know, and 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 um, and then the
(58:05):
funny thing is it's always asked me that, you know,
if it's musico types 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, like
playing music really seriously and like jam and like or
(58:29):
just really like have this incredibly dry approach to like
like gear heads, like 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, um,
(58:50):
really awkward, Like it's always awkward, Like people asked me
to do something, and then I'll be like, oh, man,
like uh, you know, like I gotta figure out a
way to get out of this, you know, because like
a my skills like they're not gonna really not gonna
believe them in a band. Went 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
(59:11):
way this guy was in a band like this is
a fake you know, so very strange, very strange. Well
you just gotta say no, man, I'm the secret weapon,
and the secret weapon doesn't Yeah, like this like the
spice and like some sort of bowl of burgoo or something.
I don't even know. It was just like the whole
experience was pretty magical. Um, it still doesn't really make
(59:37):
that much sense to me, you know, I just I
really enjoyed it, for sure. But in regards to that
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
(59:58):
on that lost Rock thing, that thing was a humbling
or 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
(01:00:20):
history within the context of the band. You know, it's
not like something that we've been working on or something
have been sitting there or something that have been played
live or you know. I mean I think that we
had to you know, pavement ize 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,
(01:00:41):
you know, like we were talking about with a straight thing,
you know, you can't. You gotta have significance. Um. Yeah,
not that, like you know, Steven and Steve West aren't talented.
I'm not gonna like those guys are great, but like,
in fact, the fact that they're able to like throw, improvise, um,
something like that's pretty cool. So I remember being really
(01:01:02):
really happy that Steve West, who had never really been used,
um in payment outside of just playing drums, um, that
he was but he sort of fit fantastically on that recording.
So I sort of loved that about no Marketings. I
love hearing him in there. All right, Well, thanks Bob.
(01:01:22):
I appreciate your telling us these stories, and um, I'm
gonna think of about a hundred more reasons to have
you on in the future. Yeah, anytime, all right, man,
thanks a lot for more on this, and thousands of
other topics because it how stuff works. Dot com
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
Show Links
AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSSPopular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.