School House Rock Rocks
(Lava/Atlantic)
by Lex Marburger
It was with much trepidation that I agreed to review Schoolhouse Rock! Rocks, the new retro compilation, due to the simple fact that I’m an avid fan of Schoolhouse Rock, those wonderful little public service ditties from the ’70s. I didn’t really want to hear these alterna-rock bands slaughter the songs that made up my childhood. Hell, I used to watch Saturday morning Hanna-Barbera cartoons just so I could catch the multiples of five (“Look at that kid with seventeen fingers stickin’ up. How do ya do that, kid?”). So, I’m biased. I was all set to hate the album, but there are some good points but I’m not sure they balance out the bad ones.
Deluxx Folk Implosion starts the album off with the most popular, and probably lamest song (other than ‘Sevens or Fours”), “I’m Just a Bill,” and manages to turn it into something subtly ironic, with Lou Barlow’s snide voice showing contempt for politics in general. But that’s followed by Blind Melon‘s take on “Three is a Magic Number,” which is my favorite. Now, no offense towards the dead, but Shannon Hoon had an incredibly annoying voice, and shouldn’t have been let into the studio for this one. Credit does go to the basso voice who plays up the background shouts (“Now multiply backwards from 3 X 10!”). It’s really hard to destroy a well built song, so Better Than Ezra‘s “Conjunction Junction” is passable, but misses the gritty shuffle that gave it a hook in the first place. Goodness hits on the main problem for most of these covers in “Electricity, Electricity” namely, they gloss over the spoken parts in favor of the melody. But the spoken parts gave the songs their character, and a lot of these bands don’t have any of their own. Pavement desecrates “No More Kings.” It sounds like they just don’t care about the song. They missed the vocal rhythms, and are apathetic about the music in general.
This is made up for by the surprisingly faithful rendition of “The Shot Heard ‘Round the World” by Ween, even down to the light Southern twang in the voice. The Lemonheads do a forgettable version of “My Hero, Zero,” and Biz Markie shouldn’t even be on this album. He does “The Energy Blues” and it’s terribly difficult to listen to. Painful. Painful. But then we come to the saving grace on the album, “Little Twelvetoes” by Chavez, an ominous riff like “39 Lashes” and pontification on alien biology. Okay, I’ll say it. This one rocks. They obviously care about the music and understand how to do a cover song. Not to say that Moby doesn’t, but the original “Verb: That’s What’s Happening” has a dirty blues/R ‘n’ B grind to it that Moby misses, although his rockin’, in-your-face take on it is refreshing. Man or Astro-Man? are a surprising disappointment with “Interplanet Janet,” I guess because I’m so used to the ultra high soprano singing, and also because they didn’t try to convert the song into their traditional space surf sound. Birdbrain sounded like it was going to be just another amped-up version of “Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, Get Your Adverbs Here,” but in the middle they toss in not only samples of the original Squirrel’s voice, but they throw in a line by The Fall for no apparent reason. Daniel Johnson gives a depressingly poor version of “Unpack your Adjectives,” and the whole thing ends with Skee-Lo doing “The Tale of Mr. Morton,” Hip Hop style. Okay, so the album as a whole may not be something I’ll play all the time, but there’re a few here that will end up on a mix or two. Is it worth your money? Well, I guess so. But see if you can tape it off a friend first.
