'Schoolhouse Rock' Moves On to College Los Angeles Times
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A fifth follow-up series, titled "Scooter Computer and Mr. Chips," featuring the titular characters (the only music videos in the series to feature any recurring characters), premiered in the early 1980s and comprised just four segments about home computer technology, then just emerging onto the scene. As the references and depictions became quickly outdated, due to the rapid advance of technology, these segments stopped airing after 1985 and were not released on home video until the 30th anniversary DVD in 2002. On August 26, 2002 Buena Vista Home Video released a 2-disc DVD featuring 51 of the 52 episodes (the only one missing being the presumed-lost Computer Rock segment) as well as many special features. An abbreviated VHS, featuring the "top 25" episodes plus "I'm Gonna Send Your Vote to College," was released at the same time. On September 23, 2008, the "Schoolhouse Rock-Election Collection" was released, including 14 songs about the history and the government and a "new to DVD" song.[6] On March 31, 2009, Buena Vista Home Video released "Schoolhouse Rock Earth" on DVD, which includes 10 newly written and animated songs.
Grammar Rock
To Yohe, the stories and most other aspects of the animated shorts are timeless too. “Except the bell-bottoms” some of the characters wore, he said, laughing. Hence last year’s release by Rhino Records of a four-CD boxed set of all 50 original “Schoolhouse Rock” songs, a new book, “Schoolhouse Rock--The Official Guide” by Yohe and co-creator George Newall published last April, the series of videos and four CD-ROMs based on the show. The creators decided that each number should get its own song, but Dorough learned this after he'd already combined 4, 6 and 8 into one song.
PART ONE: Lincoln High School's Schoolhouse Rock Live! Cast Q&A – Ellwood City, PA news - EllwoodCity.org
PART ONE: Lincoln High School's Schoolhouse Rock Live! Cast Q&A – Ellwood City, PA news.
Posted: Wed, 10 Apr 2024 07:00:00 GMT [source]
DVD releases
To coincide with the upcoming United States Bicentennial, a third season, America Rock, airing in 1975 and 1976, had music videos covering the structure of the United States government (such as "I'm Just a Bill") along with important moments in American history (examples include "The Preamble" and "Mother Necessity"). George Newall and Tom Yohe were the executive producers and creative directors of every episode, along with Bob Dorough as musical director. This first season was followed in short order by a second season, run from 1973 to 1975, entitled Grammar Rock, which included nouns, verbs, adjectives, and other parts of speech (such as conjunctions, explained in "Conjunction Junction"). For this second season, the show added the services of Jack Sheldon, a member of The Merv Griffin Show house band, as well as Lynn Ahrens; both of them contributed to the series through the rest of its run. Blossom Dearie returned for a second episode, and Essra Mohawk joined the cast as a recurring singer.
Computer Rock, Season 5 (1982–
He was trying to figure out how to separate them out when he took a hiking trip with his daughter, Aralee, and her friend, Lisa. It was there that he got the idea for "The Four-Legged Zoo," which follows a class trip to the zoo. Dorough's voice is accompanied by a chorus of kids, including Aralee and Lisa, on the song's final recording.
The History and Music of 'Schoolhouse Rock!'
"Apparently [McCall] tried other songwriters but most of them wrote down to kids. When I met McCall, he said, 'Here's my idea. Give it a try. But don't write down to the kids.' When he said that, I got a chill. I have a high opinion of children." A magician shows how magic the multiplication of 3 really is, including a family of three and a football team whose uniforms are numbered in threes. In 1995, ABC teamed with Paramount Home Video and re-released four segments of Schoolhouse Rock!
Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment created "Schoolhouse Rock Earth" in advance of Earth Day in 2009. The 12-song DVD brought Dorough, Ahrens and Newall back together — plus new talent including singer/songwriter Jack Johnson — for songs focused on climate change, recycling, rainforests and carbon footprints. Get our big stories about Hollywood, film, television, music, arts, culture and more right in your inbox as soon as they publish.
Schoolhouse Rock!
"'Flocabulary' started in 2005 on the simple premise that it's easy to memorize rap songs but difficult to remember the definition of a vocabulary word like 'obsequious'," co-founder Alex Rappaport said in 2017 of the company. In keeping with the bicentennial excitement of the mid-1970s, the show's creators themed the third season America Rock. The second season of "Schoolhouse Rock!," themed Grammar Rock, aired between 1973 and 1974. It includes one of the most popular and widely recognized "Schoolhouse Rock" songs of all time, "Conjunction Junction," which was written by Dorough and performed by Merv Griffin's former trumpet player, Jack Sheldon. Newall came up with the visual concept of the rail cars hooking together.
These are the California cities where $150,000 still buys you a home. Could you live here?
In 2002, the team once again reunited to produce a new song, "I'm Gonna Send Your Vote to College" for the release of the 30th Anniversary DVD. The last of the original series were four segments about the then-novel personal computer technology. The shorts featured two characters by the name of Scooter Computer and Mister Chips, and so these were the only episodes in the series to feature any recurring characters. The Walt Disney Company acquired Schoolhouse Rock in 1996 along with its acquisition of ABC owner Capital Cities/ABC Inc.; Schoolhouse Rock was one of only two non-Disney children's shows (The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show being the other) to continue airing (albeit in reruns) after the transition to One Saturday Morning.
Science Rock
An abbreviated VHS, featuring 25 episodes (ranked on the tape in order of popularity) and "I'm Gonna Send Your Vote to College," was released at the same time. In 1997–1998, for the show's 25th anniversary, Walt Disney Home Video, which became a sister company to ABC after their purchase in 1996, released five segments on VHS, along with "Money Rock" being released in 1998. The other four releases in the 25th anniversary collection each ended with a Schoolhouse Rock! In 1994, ABC/King Features sold exclusive licensing rights for apparel to Coastal Concepts, Inc. of Vista California, the first company to produce Schoolhouse Rock! Tom Yohe worked with contemporary artist Skya Nelson to create over 50 new designs and update the Schoolhouse Rock! Image for a new market, which sold $1.1 million in its first year and exploded selling over $12 million the next year.
Also, the album version of "The Four-Legged Zoo" has a slightly shorter ending compared to the television version. Released with the album was a single (Capitol 3693) with the two Grady Tate–sung tracks ("Naughty Number Nine" b/w "I Got Six"). This album was re-released[12] on red/blue-colored vinyl on Record Store Day 2019. A fourth series, titled "Science Rock," followed in 1978 and 1979, and included a broad range of science-related topics. The first video of this season, "A Victim of Gravity," parodied elements of the hit film Grease and featured a rare guest appearance from a pop band, with recently reunited doo-wop group The Tokens providing the vocals. In addition to episodes describing the human body's anatomical systems (the nervous, circulatory, skeletal and digestive systems each received a music video), episodes describing physical sciences such as astronomy, meteorology and electricity were also included, as was "The Energy Blues," an environmentalism-themed video.
No shows were produced featuring the numbers 1 or 10 explicitly. In 2018, the Library of Congress inducted all songs from Schoolhouse Rock into the National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". And just like the catchy commercial jingles that are stuck in your brain forever, entertainment and education melded into memorization.
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