Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 384: Pokemon 2.B.A. Master

Episode Date: June 21, 2021

If you enjoyed our look at the Pokemon Christmas Bash album (and who didn't?) back in late 2019, then get ready for a thorough examination of where the English-language Pokemon albums began. 1999's 2.B.A. Master was clearly made as a cheap cash-in to capitalize on a fad that could end at any minute, but even so, many Millennials have fond memories of this curiosity and its many, many songs about friendship. This week on Retronauts, join Bob Mackey and Henry Gilbert as they explore all 13 songs of this musical monstrosity. Retronauts is a completely fan-funded operation. To support the show, and get exclusive episodes every month, please visit the official Retronauts Patreon at patreon.com/retronauts.

Retronauts is part of the Greenlit Podcast Network. For more information, please go to greenlitpodcast.com. This week on Retronauts, this album is number one with a gold bat. Hey, everybody, we're back with another episode of Retronauts. I'm your host for this one, Bob Mackey. And today's topic is Pokemon to be a master, the fantastic 1999 original music Pokemon album that is a favorite of younger millennials, but not me. And before I go on, who is here with me today? Hey, it's Henry Gilbert.

And I am also an enhanced CD that comes with the full poker wrap included. What's that resolution on that bad boy? Do I need quick time? Should I update quick time? Definitely update. You know, I'm a real player only video actually. Oh, damn it. I just uninstalled real player. Well, Henry, you were here with me almost two years ago.

We went over the classic Pokemon Christmas Bash album from 2001. That was episode 268. It's on the Patreon if you want to hear it. But that's one of my favorite episodes I've ever done for Retronauts. That was so, so much fun. Like, just all of these, to hear American music writers with probably a terrible deadline have to put together a Christmas album about characters they barely know in a world that's not fully constructed for them with voice actors who some can sing and some

can't. It's just amazing. It was amazing. If I could do a Weezer analogy, I'll lose most of the audience here. But let's say, let's say Pokemon Christmas Bash is Pinkerton. This is Rattitude. Oh, no. No, no. This is worse than Rattitude. This is the Weezer cover album. Oh, okay. You put that even below Harley in Rattitude. the cover album. Listening to this made me miss Pokemon Christmas Passion. I will say,

while doing lots of research on this yesterday, I tweeted about this. This is months ago by the time you're hearing this, but I tweeted about this. Just like, oh, look,

this is what I'm covering. I got so many replies. People are way the hell into this album. Just based on when it launched, it hit at the perfect time for Pokey Mania. Oh, yeah, yeah.

I did not hear this album at the time. I have definitely heard about it from friends and loved ones. my husband is a pokey maniac who was in the age group for this and i think in the past he has told me stuff about to be a master but i had forgotten about it but i told him like i want to be surprised on this podcast don't tell me anything about it about to be a master well to be a master is the first english language Pokemon soundtrack out there but it's not the most popular so i looked this up the soundtrack for the first movie Pokemon the first movie went double

platinum this one is only gold thumbs down to you buddy only gold man well Call me back later. Who cares about gold? That movie did hit at the exact right time. Even more on the right moment as to be a master, I would guess, then, yeah. And this sent me down a rabbit hole into the world of English language Pokemon albums. And there's a few more with original songs, including totally Pokemon, which we will cover in the future. And it has more character songs than this.

This has basically one character song using the original voices of the characters on the show, which is really disappointing for me. Yeah, you know what? I was hoping for more of those, but I'm sure these have great bad songs on it. So you have no awareness or experience with this album at all, do you? You know, I can't, if you play some for me, and I'd be like, oh, I remember a coworker said,

oh, you should hear this song. It's a classic bad song. But, you know, it was many moons and many podcasts ago. I've shoved a whole lot more information in my brain since then. I think I've mentioned this on previous. Pokemon podcast, but I got this album for my first Goyle friends in 1999. And she was a Pokemon fan as well.

And I think I borrowed it from her and I didn't like it because this is not the kind of music I'm into or was into back then, still not into it. And I think I only like the Team Rocket song because it's the voices on the song and we'll get to that very soon. Well, you know, it's all right of for younger people than we were when this came out and the original Pokemonia was. It's a rite of passage for you as a nerdy fan of things that you have to at least once buy an album that's like, it's the cash-in album for the popular fad. We did it also for Simpsonsing the Blues.

For us, this was Simpsons Sing the Blues. And I think for a lot of people excited on Twitter about this episode, we were their age when Simpsons Sing the Blues came out. Like eight or nine or ten. You know, actually for me it was two albums. It was Simpsonsing the Blues, but also the Ninja Turtle's company. and out of our shells thing. I listened to that Pizza Hut tape over and over and over again.

For me, it was Simpsons Sing the Blues and also Beavis and Butthead experience. Not enough Beavis and Butthead content on that album. Yeah, you know, my mom, I don't think would buy that for me, or I was scared to ask for it. I heard some from my friends, and I of course saw the Beavs and Butthead

with Cher one, the I Got You, Babe. That was fun, but I didn't hear, I don't know any other songs from it. That's basically the only Beavis and Buthead I think there's Come to Butthead, which was a Butthead original song, sort of like a Barry White kind of jam. Oh, yes, yeah, yeah. That makes sense. I want to talk about the history of this album, but we must rehash the Pokemon Marketing Blitz in America in the fall of 1998.

So we all know or probably know that Pokemon released in Japan in 1996, the games, and the anime came out in 97. So by the time it hits America, there is all this merchandise waiting to be localized. There are dolls waiting to be shipped over to America. So Nintendo hits on all fronts, but they neglected one thing, and that is a soundtrack. Yeah. That's the one thing not ready to hit America when all this stuff comes over in 1999. Because even if there are existing Pokemon soundtracks in Japan, what are you going to do? Translate all the songs.

Japan is into different styles of music. Their pop and rock is different than ours. You can't necessarily just bring that over as it is. Yeah, this is also a different time. It feels strange to say now, you know, in 2021, where especially Kate, pop, but lots of Asian pop music, is more mainstream in America now than it ever has been. I was seeing, too, like, J-pop, you know, K-pop is the biggest thing right now with those youngsters. But I have seen that J-pop is starting to make a trend upwards here with the new generation two.

Apparently the thing that was holding them back is a lot of, like, D-listings on YouTube of like, here's this J-pop song and the, you know, know contract owners like hey don't put that on YouTube that's piracy but more and more that is coming to Spotify actually Megumi Hiashibara she has her music on Spotify now that's awesome that but but yeah you're right back in 1998 you're not going to take I mean they didn't use the Japanese opening for Pokemon they made up their own one so but that in Japan that is baked in by 98 that is just one part of the machinery is like well and of course like with neon genus Evangelion. A record company was one of their biggest sponsors

because they wanted a bunch of albums. That's why there's like 17 Evangelian albums. You get soundtracks for the music used in the series. You also get image albums in which characters sing non-canonical songs. Even some drama ones occasionally. Yeah, yeah. But they put those voice actors

to work. Oh, yeah. But unfortunately that, you know, back in 98, there was an import business for that, mostly of buying the Son May cheaper version. they were bought over, but in America, not really the kind, not the kind of business, a sleazy record executive cares about. That's nothing to them.

So I don't have solid numbers, but I want to say, anecdotally, kids' music was a gigantic booming market in the 90s. There was always a market for children's records, children's CDs and albums that always existed. But I think a really telling piece of evidence is that Disney got in on it in a huge way because Radio Disney launched in 1996. And it probably shut down by the time you're reading this.

because it's shutting down very soon, but the presence of Disney should tell you that, oh, boy, there's a lot of money in this. And guess what? Napster comes out in 2001. The music industry is about to change forever. Yeah, this is the last time you can make money that way in the music industry. Yeah. And I mean, this is Old Man Corner. And everyone listening probably lived through this, but Napster and other file sharing services, they changed the way you thought about music. Because when we were growing up when we were teens, an album could cost upwards of $20. And if you were lucky, maybe to or three songs on those albums would be good. Very few albums were like an experience. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's why you'd sell greatest hit albums so much and you wouldn't, or you would also revere the movie High Fidelity. I should watch that new version of

I Fidelity, but the movie High Fidelity is a great way of capturing like these are the music snobs or the experts because they own all of the albums so they can actually listen to everyone. Like if you unless you get very invested in record collecting, you can't hear every song by even the beat

probably you can't and so the first time I think our generation all had this moment of the first time a friend told you hear every beetle song here's every lead zeppelin song they're just right there and you can hear all of them you don't have to use a filthy listening station at sam goody you can just hear them instantly oh i miss now i miss those i'd set up if i was a millionaire i'd set up a sam goody listening station right in here get all kinds of diseases from those disgusting your phones but yes that's the state of the music industry it's all about to fall apart, but CDs are very expensive. It's the only way to listen to music. File sharing does not really exist. MP3s might be existing in some format, but people are not swapping them

back and forth online quite yet. Oh, and the kids' boppification is probably begun to. Kids bop is booming. Those things are on TV. I think now that's what I call music is burgeoning as well. Those compilations. Those are definitely for the kids too. Yeah. I mean, the younger people can like it too. But yeah, the older people can. But it is the kid-friendly one, yeah. So if you don't recall Pokemon to be a master, you might recall its presence in a segment in season two of Pokemon called Pikachu's Jukebox, in which at the end of an episode, the poker rap went away and they would play edited versions of these songs as music videos at the end of the episode, starting in the fall of 1999. So this was kind of reverse engineered promotion for an album that already came out. Wow. Okay.

I didn't. Yes, that faintly reminds me of it. though I think to, when the poker rep started to go away, that was when I knew that it had changed. Or like, oh, this is a different, the show's changed now. It's, and I'm, I was starting to pull away from Pokemon. If you're a Pokemon super expert, when I, I started to watch less as he got into his first championship run. And once he left for the gold and silver world, like, episode 270 or whatever,

That's when I was like This is a good cutting off point I am in college now As soon as the original theme song went away You knew it was time to move on Sunrise Sunset And of course the whole thing is on Spotify And it's also on YouTube

And it's very easy to find and listen to So you're going to hear lots of clips But it's so easy to access If you want to hear the whole thing For whatever reason So background information on this album There's not a ton of history behind it Because in my research I learned

And this will not surprise you Henry That this album was completed fully in under a month Oh well I would have That even almost seems too long. I was like 14 days. It was just a blip in the lives of everyone involved. And when you listen to the songs, you'll understand why this is a rush job. I feel like this hit in the summer of 99, you know, fall of 98 was the huge first

Pokemon rush. They didn't know it would last. So I think as soon as you can get a CD out, get it out, this might not last through the summer. The kids will move on to something else. 99, fall 99, might even be bigger than 98 for Pokemon. It absolutely was. Like, and then that Christmas was even bigger like that.

I believe that was the Christmas of Yellow, a Pokemon Yellow. You're right, yeah. And then 2000 was Golden Silver. Yeah, but you never can know with that stuff. If you're trying to get very, very rich off of children's things, you do need to know like, oh, the kids are fickle. Like it was X-Men last the year before and then it became the Power Rangers. You never know.

Yulgio's about to come over. Who knows? It's a full flock to that. For sure, yeah. I can also see, you know, studio times expensive. So that's why they, you know, we got to record these in like two takes right now. So the madman behind this album is a guy named John Loeffler. He's a music industry executive, born in 1951.

And in the mid-80s, he founded the company Rave Music, which produced theme songs and jiggles for commercials and TV shows. And guess what, guys, it's really hard to Google rave music and find out what they did. It's like Googling the name of a Pixar movie. Up! Yeah, you're right. Inside out. This guy's got bad SEO, but I guess he didn't know that then. In 1988, he was probably saying, who cares if they find me on Alta Vista?

It was hard to find out exactly what he did in terms of writing for TV and commercials. I did see that he wrote the theme for Kate and Allie. So that's one of the themes he's credited for. He seems like Haim Saban Shuki Levy type. Yeah. Except he, Haim Saban, that's what he was in the 80s. And then he evolved Pokemon style into a much more powerful beast after that. Loughler Chew, let's say that.

I'll come with a better joke later. So most of the interviews I found with him were about the Pokemon theme, which is the most popular thing he ever co-wrote in his life. It's the thing with the most legs. No one's walked around singing the Kate Nally theme. I'm sure it's a karaoke. No one's doing it. I don't even know what it is.

But, uh, no, yes. I thought of that show as the mom show about many moms and my mom liked it. As a little kid, I didn't watch much. Where could you, is that, is that one of those things streaming anywhere? I kind of doubt it. I think for me, it was waiting through that to get to E reruns of David Letterman from the 80s. Or talk soup, whatever it was going on in the 90s on E. So, yeah, it's the very first song in this album.

We'll talk a lot about it later. But before we talk about the songs, I will say this album is less fun than Pokemon Christmas Bash because it barely features the character singing any songs. And few of the songs really are about Pokemon. they're just very broad things about friendship and hard work and I feel like that was intentionally done not because they need to get the album out quick but because they knew parents are going to have to hear this a lot

so we want parents to think that Pokemon is not about selling you things it's about teamwork and working hard and friendship and togetherness these values that are not necessarily a part of collecting a lot of toys you know I think you're on to something there we've you know seeing similar things like this you can see that the record producers especially they come from this angle of like oh what are people saying are the problems with this

well that we better address that head on and say no no no it's not about that it's this and as of this recording i just listened to the podcast the ride a patreon episode about the mortal combat live tour and this put this idea on my head that i was already thinking about in that during the mortal combat live tour some of the actors appeared on morning television to tell everybody like mortal combat is not about violence, it's about hard work and martial arts and, you know, you know, working together with your friends.

That's not what Mortal Kombat is about at all. It's about Jen Xers ripping off Enter the Dragon with lots of violence. Yeah, and Bloodsport. And Bloodsport. They rip off lots of movies, but the important thing is theft of story. But yeah, it's, well, what it is, yeah, it rips off a bunch of R-rated movies and then people get their heads torn off. Like that, that was what was being sold. And it's, uh, I, I honestly.

I get the Mortal Kombat was that big and I understand why somebody would rent it but that is such a can of worms when it's an original that's like doing the Freddie Krueger live show for children like Freddy Krueger on ice or something. It's about the power of dreams.

Exactly. Yeah, yeah. We also with the Ninja Turtles one coming out of our shells. I've heard many people talk about it on podcasts and one of the big points in it is just like, no no, no, we do music now. Like there's kids in the audience who all have their like their katanas and their size and out come the turtles and they're like no guys we we care about

music now we're going to win with music no choreograph fights no that as we all know shredder hates music right i think it's the worst yeah uh yeah i actually heard this story of uh michaelian black who played one of the turtles for promotional purposes but not on stage during that he said that uh when he would like be at a signing with kids there multiple kids would come up and be like I'm going to show you my fighting moves and, like, you kick at him. And he'd have to say, like, whoa, kids, I just want to party, no fighting. That sounds like the kid who tried to shoot Superman, the guy who played Superman. Exactly.

Yeah, yeah. But I think they knew, boy, this album is going to be played in a lot of minivans. We're going to be your raging parents. Parents won't want to buy our things if they think the show was just about selling kid stuff, which it is. Let's be fair. All of our cartoons are like that, too. I mean, Pokemon is about collecting these creatures and how do you collect them other than, well, first buying the game and collect even there and then you can have the monsters in real life who most of whom are in

cuttable cuttly sizes that could easily be made life size a one-to-one ratio Pikachu or jigglypuff or whoever toy and there's so many variants of them all so many and this made me think of the south park episode about christian rock which is very funny not all south parks are funny i like that one where i think cartman points out that when you write a christian rock song you replace the word baby with jesus and it's that easy yep i feel like a lot of these songs were sitting around or John Loughler is like we have a Pokemon album that comes out in two months send in all the songs you've written we can hastily rewrite these to be about Pokemon or friendship or whatever yeah maybe they were existing Christian rock songs or motivational songs a lot of these

songs feel like they were just on the shelf and they just dropped the Pikachu noise in or they drop something about badges in and it was they're ready to go I think you're totally right like every every songwriter has you know no no songwriter records and publishes every song they write. They probably have tons of them. And if I'm thinking like a music producer has a ton of songs I've never recorded that weren't good enough, this type of album is a perfect place to put it. Kids are buying it because Pokemon characters are on the cover. Whatever the song is, as long as it is three minutes of a song and it counts as a song, it doesn't matter if it's kind of crappy. It's very much like songloaf, a bunch of calories in a song and it's flavorless.

And yeah, the writing on this album is very weird. And the songs are, way too long for pop songs. They're between three to four minutes and a lot of them have really long outroes like they're built for a DJ to speak over even though these aren't being played on the radio. Yeah, well, are they thinking of them as like roller rink songs maybe? I don't know what's going on but

most of these songs consist of just the catchy refrain as much as possible and then they struggle to write two shaky verses about Pokemon and to be fair a lot of these refrains are very catchy. A lot of these courses are very catchy but they really are sweatily trying to be about Pokemon and in many cases

they just aren't and we'll see how they try to make them about Pokemon coming up in this podcast and uh this music did get used in at least one video game so instrumental versions of these songs are used in the 2000 and 64 game Pokemon puzzle league which is the second version of Panel de Pond to come over to America yeah because there's Tetris attack uh and then and a couple versions of that and then Pokemon puzzle league and then when it got repackaged uh the next time it was just puzzle league in the U.S. I wish I would say just called it Paneled upon

like now to introduce it as Paneled upon in America seems a little harder for them but if it had just been you know in 1995 or like or six hey it's paneled upon what is it well it's this especially because they can't call it Tetris attack because they don't Nintendo doesn't want to license the word

Tetris to put out a game they own they can never bring that version out again unless they buy the rights of Tetris or the name unless they just hack the title screen, I don't know. Well, I mean, they definitely, like, they license Tetris for Tetris 99 and Tetris D.S. Like, so, and, uh, I don't, this is mostly public knowledge, but the guy who runs Tetris is the former Nintendo USA president, Arakawa, like he took it over. So it's not like he, uh, but I also think that means he knows how much he can charge

Nintendo. And that's why we don't see a million Nintendo Tetris games. That DS1 is so good, though. Oh, God, so good. And I played every now and then. If there's a new fun thing, weekend game in Tetris 99, I break that thing up and it's still a good time.

But I want us to think about what music was like in 1999 because we were teens back then. And here's what happened in my estimation. So traditional, quote, unquote, alternative music has been supplanted by new metal and angry white boy rock. The other very popular music is Britney Spears-style acts and boy bands. So you have two very extreme extremes at either end being the most popular things and they're battling it out on TRL every day yeah TRL was the bloodsport

arena I mean I want to know where you were in this Henry because I had fallen out of popular music I was not into any of the music my peers were like I was extremely unpopular because I was like I don't like I don't like anything that's popular now I used to what happened am I changing I'm only 17 so I was going back to things like the pixies and the cars and new wave and things like that and like appealing to nobody and none of my friends would listen to anything I wanted to listen to, but I was just trying to find something I like that sounded like the bands I got into in the mid-90s

and I was not into any of this stuff. So 99, 2000, and some 98, I was dipping my toe into the realm of some of the TRL stuff. Like I would listen to Blink 1-82 but more of their earlier stuff. I was a big Eminem fan. That was the most of anybody who charted on TRL.

I did enjoy the Marshall Mathers EP or, Yeah, that was the name of the big one. And so that was how I got out my angered stuff. But I did know that, like, I had a cool friend, older friends, like a couple years old than me who would say, oh, Slipknot's just ripping off this, or this is the realer, like, instead of Slipknot, we listened to System of a Down before it was cool, like stuff like that. Or also, this is when I was at the height of my Weezer phase. So if I, yes.

If so, I would go to websites that would just say, like, well, who's like Weezer? Because eventually I'm out of Weezer album. So I listen to, you know, Super Drag or the Eels, they're Weezer-ish or whatever. Or then a million things that are like, oh, this is called Weezer, but it's actually like an Osamotly song or something. I was doing that, too. That's what set me back in time. I think I was the only 17-year-old in 1999 listening to Cheap Trick. Yes, yeah.

You know what? That was when I started to get into a lot of classic 80 stuff. stuff too or covers of 80 stuff like that would be done by say save ferris or uh the what was the no effects me first in the gimmie gimmies that's the one so none of that stuff was popular though uh no no that so i would say m&m was the most poppy thing i was into i didn't i mean i would watch t rl and so i knew like oh brittney spears is popular with this now christina a galera is popular with this now in sync just did this and i'd you know watch the vmAs and all the mtv mandated content that would tell me what's real.

But when I would watch, I would much prefer musically to if I'd watch say Daria. And whatever was the credits music, I'd then search like, oh, what's this band Cake? They're the credits music for Daria. That's how I got into cake.

Yes. So we still were, we were tricked into thinking we weren't being marketed to, but we just went into like a different gutter of marketing towards. I'm looking at the year-end charts for 1999. I could tell you what the top five albums are going from five to one. Ricky Martin's self-titled album number five NSYNC self-titled album number four

Come on over, Schneider Twain's album number three Number two is not on this chart, I don't know why But number one is Millennium by Backstreet Boys Oh, well then So that is the face of music in 1999 And I believe Britney Spears album was 98 Yeah, I think so Because that would, she is an 82 baby like us, I believe

So she would have been 16 then Yeah, I believe it was 98 And then 2000 was when her next album came out, yeah because that has, I do remember the music video where the astronaut boyfriend gave her the jewel from the, the cordillamere from Titanic. She's like, but I thought the old lady dropped it.

Like, I picked it up. I love music videos with sketches in them. There needs to be more of those sketches. Yeah, make those singers act. So let's go over the songs on this album. There are 13, I believe. We'll go over everyone in excruciating detail. Oh, boy.

But the first one will get the most detail because it is the Pokemon theme, obviously a banger, and it's forever stuck in the minds of anyone who at this point is under 40. You can summon all the lyrics. You can sing it in the shower. When it's karaoke time, you're up. You know what you're doing. But that is also the test of a true Pokemoniac when you do it at karaoke. If you see the person get ready for the second set of verses.

Or if they go like, wait, there's more. That's how you know if somebody is a really. mega fan or not. I'm not saying I'm not calling somebody a fake fan if they don't know all that. I don't know all of the second verse lines, but I do know there's a second half of the song. And the second verse comes from this album. So here's how it came into being.

So For Kids Entertainment, who originally localized all the Pokemon stuff, they got in touch with Rave music because they had worked with them before on other projects. And they needed a 60-second theme for the Pokemon series. And they purposely went for rave music because Rave is writing commercial jingles and sitcom themes.

They want something that will stick in the minds of kids have kids humming it and singing it, just a real earworm. It's a mission accomplished right there. Oh, yeah, yeah. On our one cartoon podcast, we talked about Digimon, you know, the year later with this, like that sticks with you too, but. Digimant. Yeah, but that's more of like a drill into your head thing instead of like the hopefulness.

It's like, yeah, Pokemon. The song is waterboarding you. The Digimon song. He's like, no more, please. I'll buy the Digimon, please stop. So this song is written by Loeffler and his headwriter, Jason Seeger. And once they wrote the song, they wanted a singer who was young but not childish in terms of how he sang the song. So this is where Jason Page enters the picture.

Jason Page is the singer of this song, both the TV version and the longer version on the album. And according to him, this is where the controversy starts. He was paid what he calls a tidy three-figure sum to sing the original song. I don't know what he was paid to sing the album version. Probably not a lot because we'll get to it. but everybody who sang on this album they signed a buyout contract which means you don't get royalties

you get paid for your performance in the moment and you know America's all about choices right they chose to sign the contract but you know what they weren't provided an alternate contract they say this is the contract we're providing you you sign this or we don't hire you there's no way around it so he had no choice

and the implicit thing is like if you don't do it whoopty do we'll get another scab to do it there's a million Hollywood is filled with 8 million people who can sing it and it doesn't really matter I mean if I had been 10 when I heard that album I would have definitely noticed

if it was a different singer and had been pissed if they did that so I I'm kind of glad it's the same singer but I am certain like you don't make that album to make everybody rich you make it to make like a very small amount of people rich yeah the songwriters and Nintendo

so page comes back for this album to do the full version of the song and also to sing another song called Veridian City obviously Pokemon is huge at this time and its theme was also being used in many products so this theme was in you know games and toys and everything there was something sampling it no matter where you went

this was making the writers a ton of money in fact I think Loughler said yeah the song put all my kids through college and then he sold his rights to the song in 2010 so he made even more money after that that's great man I you know I can see why you do the buyout because if you don't they might just stop playing your song as much or they'd be like where we don't want

you to get rich but if you just do the buyout you get a big lump sum and also you're you know entering your 60s your 70s who knows how much longer you're going to live just get the big check you know I don't blame him yeah so Paige eventually took his case to court page as the singer of the song

and after a court battle it amounted to a settlement of less than $100,000 for what was then a $10 billion franchise worldwide for singing the most famous song, at least to American and English-speaking ears. And also all the time, and I mean, if he even got a, you know, $200,000 for it, how much of that goes to his lawyers. Yeah. And taxes and all that stuff. And the taxes. He's doing the finger thing. So all of this

comes from the Billboard article, can't regret them all. So here's a quote from Jason who says, quote, I wish it would have amounted in financial compensation to what it is really worth. If you think the theme song contributed one one thousandth of percentage to the overall from the time it was recorded, which I think is kind of fair, it would probably be worth $100 million worth of revenue. Of course, it wasn't deemed so, and the revenue was much, much, much less than that, but it taught me in the future to make sure that I don't work for people

that don't have my best interests at heart. And I think you would agree with me, Henry, in that time and time again this comes up, and my answer to this is just pay people. It's so easy to do and you feel better. And you still get rich. Like that, if, if the Loughler guy or whoever had paid him, you know, royalties that just amounted to that guy getting like a million dollars, I know a greedy person would think, well, but that's a million dollars I'm not getting. But you'd still get way more money than he did because you still have the contract.

Like, I mean, but this is why we're not rich. Yeah. That's the, we mean you were both radicalized by the Batman cartoon. If you're so smart, why aren't you rich? Exactly. And from working in the games industry. Oh, also that. I mean, yeah.

But, but yeah, that's so sad. Like, just pay the guy. Why can't everybody be rich together? Why must you? I mean, I know why, because capitalism incentivizes somebody to be exploiting people as much as they can. I mean, you don't want to set the precedent that these workers deserve money. You know, just like, if you pay this one guy, then they're all going to want money. Then they're all going to ask for it.

And that would be bad. But yeah, he got kind of screwed, but he's doing well. He still gets a lot of work and he was getting lots of work before that. I mean, that's good, but it's sad that, like, to this day, he probably has to do all this work he wouldn't normally do or make con. Well, I guess he can't in the last year or made con appearances. But all these people who have to do, I just feel bad in general when you would go to a comic convention or any of those, any of anime convention.

And you just see these, you know, table after table, all these great people and who, you know, love meeting the fans. But a part of me does feel bad of like, you wouldn't be here if you got compensated correctly for the great thing you did, you know. I'm thinking of all the horror conventions especially where you were, if you're killed once in a horror movie, that's your, so you're set for life in terms of a small scale lifestyle where you just go to horror cons for the rest of your life and shake pictures. If it's Polaroid, you can shake it, but they don't do that anymore. Yeah, I guess those, man, is that going to come back? When conventions come again, will you at least be able to stand near Billy D. Williams or whoever? Well, they make you... It's a troll two guy, okay.

I mean, he is a dentist, but... He would, I hope, be a mask wearer at the very least. So that is the most history behind any song. Now we're just going to have fun because there's not a lot of extra written content in this song. And it's more than three times the length of the TV version. So essentially all the extra written content amounts to is one verse, and let's hear that verse right now. And then it's just that for the rest of the song. Pokemon, got to catch them all.

And then, yeah, there's like two minutes of that as the song goes out. But yeah, it's, yeah, there's a bridge. There's a guitar solo. Oh, what a guitar solo. Yeah, it kind of rocks, but actually, no, I actually have the bridge right here, and I think it's pretty good. Gotta catch him all. Gotta catch him more.

It's very 80s. Yeah. Oh, the pack of heat there. Love it. That's about it. A lot of these songs do sound like they're from 99, but there's a lot of very 80-s sounding songs, including a very Michael Jacksonie song will cover soon.

But, you know, hey, these probably, these songs have been based on your believable theory. Some of these songs probably sat around since like 1987. But yeah, that's all the extra content. And we can't finish the song without playing the big finish, of course. I think we would leave everybody in the lurch if we didn't play the end of the Pokemon theme. Oh, boy, I still get goosebumps during you teach me and I'll teach you because isn't that what life's all about? Yeah, yeah.

It's at least a lesson. It's about how, you know, your pets, friends will teach. I mean, it does. If they were told friendship is the key to Pokemon by the, you know, the coming from Japan over here. Like, if there's one thing it's about, it's friendship, that captures it. Yes. I think also maybe parents are worried about the foreignness of this. Like, what do you want?

Pokemon? What's that mean? Is that a swear word? I still can't believe they stuck with that word and didn't call it because like it's pocket monsters in Japan as well. So I have just called pocket monsters. I guess, you know, that is a little too general and that kind of existed here already. Monsters in my pocket. Yeah.

It's like, I thought we bought you those. Maybe that also Nintendo was thinking like we already had this problem with Dragon Quest. Like we're going with the funny like the thing we shorten it all to. Yeah. But, yeah, that intro, it does. It gets you pumped. Like, and just hearing, when that guy said one, one thousandth, I also agree. It's like, I bet it's more like one one hundredth, probably even more than that.

Just hearing, got to catch him all. He's a great singer. I was so impressed by this. I haven't actually sat down and listened to the song in a long time. And also, it's not just, you know, kids hearing this song on TV one time. if for our other podcast What a cartoon. I've watched enough

Warned Kids WB commercials Just hearing that Gotta catch them all Pokemon's next Like that just got kids to watch And to watch the show Before and after it It works as a commercial jingle

And as a TV theme So they hire the right people to write it Yeah And up next we have the second song On the album To Be a Master Which is the title of the album And what bothers me is that

The Two and the A both have periods after them and the B does of course but they don't stand for anything they're not abbreviations really it bothers me it bothers me is this their version of too legit to quit uh maybe proper so this is the title song of course and it sounds very Michael Jacksony but then it gets into some kind of Fred Durst territory I'll let you judge Henry so here's the opening riff on to be a master So, yeah, that's the opening riff. And again, like, very 80s sounding, maybe early 90s.

We are not in the bubblegum pop boy band kind of stuff yet on this album. We'll get there. Yeah, you know, Michael Jackson's a good way to put it because so many of his biggest hits in the 80s were, you know, an R&B rock kind of style, like just, you know, a heavy guitar, but then it gets into the beat that's more R&B flavor. I mean, that's how we got onto MTV who did not want to play Black Mew. music. Yes, yeah, very true. He's like, well, if I can kid, you know, Eddie Van Halen to play something on this. The solo and beat it or something? Yeah, I thought so. That'll sneak my way in. I mean, that's pretty great solo. Like, yeah. And here is the very Jacksonie singing in this To Be a Master song.

Oh. Oh. Yeah. It takes a certain kind of skill And I will stop until 150 pecklemona Mine I must define the art of capture Oh yeah yeah To be a master Pokemon master

I will be writing A brand new chapser I'll go I mean that could be a B-side off of dangerous Oh yeah yeah I have to say imperfect rhyme there Master to Chapter There's some funky rhymes

in a lot of verses that don't rhyme on this album I guess if the music backs it up enough you're a dumb kid you're like whatever but yeah you're so right the come on come on like it I mean that takes me back to do the Bart Man which also I mean that officially

is a Michael Jackson song but same realm they're working in there and I think we went over it on Pokemon Christmas Bash but I feel like they just had a list or a spreadsheet of words like badges Pikachu journey at Adventure, friendship.

150. Yeah. Just get them all in there because these people, I mean, I don't expect them to and they shouldn't have to, but they didn't play the game. They don't know what this is. Yeah. You know, in the pokey rap, they also have like 150 or more to see. So they also knew 150 is the number you say. And though that always, I will say, as a viewer of Pokemon, that was a disconnect I felt because this song is, you know, the opening has got to catch them all.

This thing, too, is like, to be a master. I got to get all these ones. And then I'd watch the show, Ash collects maybe a dozen. It's more about cataloging them in his computer, right? I guess the decks does get everybody, but that's not how it works in the game. Like, you need to capture each one to truly put them in your polka. And make it live in a computer jail. Yeah, yeah.

Hey, I've been told they're very happy in Bill's PC. Exactly. They're not living in cages. But when there's that line of like, I got to catch them all, you watch the show, Ash, nobody cares about catching them all. Like, the villains of most of the movies are like, I have to own every Pokemon. Like the plot of the second Pokemon movie is about how the villain of the movie wants to have every legendary, which makes him evil. If you play any Pokemon game, you want every legendary because that means you have the most powerful guys. I think really there's instructions for children at home.

You know, collect all the Pokemon. However you interpret that is up to you. Do you want to collect them in the game? Sure. Do you want to collect every toy out there? That's also a good way to go, buddy. Yes. If your mom will take you to Toys R Us and do it, we support that.

Yeah. So at one point in the song in the second verse, we go from Michael Jackson to what I feel like is kind of a Fred Durst impression. You can be the judge of this one, Henry. It's all about the evolution of a Pokemon. The training, attaining, and be a ball of the phenomenon. Be a Pokemon's the icon. Team Rockin will be longer

But first you gotta know about the different types Grass fire, ground flame Electric water rock flying ice Normal butt goes fighting and dragon Don't forget about psychic I mean it's the G rated version For 100% You know I at first I was like

It just sounds like a white guy rapping Kind of thing But there was something when he said Phanamanan Yeah That's a there's an unspoken chia in there Like that That is the specific

specifically Fred Durst's way of doing things, which, hey, it's memorable and unique. You don't have to like it, but he ruined Red Hats before another man did. Jacksonville's own Fred Durst. And yes, I know. Again, if you, I had the special thing of not only being a teen in the Fred Durst era of Limp Biscuit, but also being from Jacksonville. And so if you would go to, you know, local hard rock shows, every person around there was like

well I knew Fred Durst before that he's a dick or I knew Fred Durst before that he says you're gonna make me famous or see that corner Fred Durst threw up right there I think they're gonna build a dome over Jacksonville like in the Simpsons movie very soon so yes a lot of something that happens in these songs where I think the songwriters or producers are getting kind of antsy where it's like it's not enough

about Pokemon what do we do what happens a lot in these songs that there's a spoken word section and this one has a spoken word section somewhat impressive now you've reached the plateau but not yet a hero are you ready to meet and defeat

the elite can I expect survival against your rival and remember gotta catch them all show me what you've got is this like Shang-sung or something that they think they're writing the Mortal Kombat album?

You're right, yeah. I was trying to think, like, in the first game, I guess that's Giovanni, the guy who runs Team Rocket, though that character does not introduce himself, and he didn't sound to me like the dub actor for Giovanni. I would bet he isn't, but... I think there's a different Giovanni voice on this album, too. Oh, okay.

Yeah. Good to know. But yeah, you're right. You're right. You're right, Shang's song, or just the big boss taunting you kind of energy, which is so weird to have in a song of like, are you even good enough? Huh?

The Elite 4? That's who you face. I don't want my music taunting me. I'm trying to have a good time over here. Yeah. I guess, though they think the kids will be like, this is their evil dad telling them they can't play Pokemon. I'll show you.

Yeah, I'll show you. I'm going to buy all the Pokemon. So that was To Be a Master, the title song from the album. And let's move on to Veridian City, also sung by Jason Page. And of course, Veridian City and the original games is the final City, it's where you fight Giovanni before going

to the Elite 4, a very important destination, and let's hear the intro to Veridian City. It's very high tempo. Sounds like it's from the goofy movie or Sonic R. Oh man, yeah, that has real Sonic energy. to it. If you've never heard the Sonic Arts soundtrack

it's got a very unique sound to it. That sounds just like this. It's all like very hopeful techno songs. Yeah, just that was just very upbeat techno there. I'm just on the way to really. Yeah, it's just a statement like, well, we're going to a place. That's

where we're going to. I guess it's almost like a yellow brick road, but for the year 1999. And what gets me about this song is that I don't think all verses need to rhyme in music, right? But I feel like at least do that if you're writing a kid's album. That's like the least you should be doing.

And what gets me about this song is that the verses, they don't rhyme. So I'll play you an example and it just infuriates me because it just seems like anybody could do this. I left my home and now I see a new horizon. But one day I'll come back to Palet Town. Oh, I'm on the road to become. The grade is a trainer And I won't quit Until I'm number one

So absolutely no part of that rhymes Yeah, wait a minute At least rhyme one of the words It's all I'm saying I mean it's one thing to You know I'm on my way I'm on my way

If you're writing a very advanced album For adults Or just like oh do you need everything to rhyme Are you a baby But this is now for babies Let them hear their rhymes Yeah Rhyme Town with something.

Yeah, like, and I'm not going to be a clown. Like, yeah. That won't be beaten down. I don't know. We can do this. It's how hard is it to write a song, honestly. But, yeah, you know, the spirit of that definitely was, what if Ash starred in a Broadway musical, like, I'm going to go back to Palatown someday, but not now.

This is the song before the intermission, I think. Yes, yeah. It's like, I arrived at Veridian City. It's, it is the like bright lights, big city. song yeah and that is verdian city not much more to talk about there but they go out on that we're on the road to viridian city for about a minute oh come and you can you can hear the DJ talking about concert tickets and call to win or whatever it just you can you can just hear him in your head but man i bring back the rap like that that needs a rap breakdown then it sounds there's no many

breakdowns no song can just be an idea of a song like two two verses two chorus or three chorus That's all you need. So we're moving on to a Pokemon slow jam with What Kind of Pokemon Are You? And the question is both about moral character and Pokemon type. Okay. The hook, when you said that title, the hook's coming back to the- What kind of Pokemon are you? Let's hear it.

Yes. What kind of Pokemon are you? How do you do the things you do? Share with me your secrets deep inside. What kind of Pokemon are you? All you learn through And do you have a heart That's true

What kind of Pokemon are you? It's getting heavier now I'm going to say You know If it's a special night With you and your lady Your fella You know put this on

And see where it takes you See where it goes Yeah This should be on that special mix You know the one So after this This rap guy comes in And he basically

Just wraps about A various examples Of strengths and weaknesses So this is like explicit one of the few songs explicitly about well here's how Pokemon works and here are like tips and stuff like this is strong against that that is weak against this and it's all it all checks out it all checks out you know the weirdest thing

of that opening line was to me deep inside well yeah but also the questioning of loyalty like how loyal are you which I any first starter Pokemon trainer knows it's like well then you're not at the right badge level to make them be loyal they take your your animal slaves do what you tell them if you've got high enough badge count. I think it's about being loyal to Nintendo. Oh, yes,

yeah. And the Pokemon Company in general. Creatures Inc. all of them. Be very loyal. This has inspired the song. I like it that it talks about Pokemon. It's explicitly about Pokemon, not about broad themes like friendship and togetherness and blah, blah, blah, blah, hard work. And there are some naughty lyrics

on this that I appreciate. They probably had all the kids giggling in the back of the minivan. Let's hear it. Don't you bug me with a cat of peat for flying times the winds easy. Good luck with muck. it's poison gas make one wrong moving it'll kick your grass there you go isn't that great oh man I don't love

that uh they almost said a Shrek level swear every every kid like the almost saying a swear kind of comedy that was some of the top comedy if you're a nine year old I think has that gone away once we now live in the world of like well everything

just swears all the time I think the appeal has gone I remember my one friend's mom had a minivan and she was a soccer mom which was popular at the time And the bumper sticker said, soccer, it's a kick in the grass. Ah, man, all the grass to ass puns. That's, uh, we, we live through the golden age of it there. That's true.

Now swears are just too available for children. Yeah. And so like a lot of the songs in this album, the refrain eats up most of the song because it's the hook they like the most. And it's also hard to write about Pokemon types because only, there are only so many strengths and weaknesses. Once you get through them all, there's nothing more to say. Yeah, yeah. At least, uh, you know, that list of this thing beats that thing and blank is blank. At least it rhymes.

It's Pokemon rap adjacent. It almost has the beat of the like, and you do this thing and do that too. It's a classic Rapmaster Barney style lyric. Okay, there's one more thing I clip from this. Just another bridge in this song. Keep on trading so you're stronger and faster. Just can stop till your power of master.

My word is this. I've got to catch them all. Get him in my Pokemon What kind of Pokemon are you? Oh, man. So fresh. Oh, that was so many scratches. A young man's going to ruin his record.

That was, I did just have to just giggle. Like, I have to put you all in my ball. I have to continue. But I guess it does touch upon those broad themes. The album tries to be about, like, you know, you got to work hard. Oh, yeah. You got to strive. Got to work hard.

It's don't. I guess to that kind of thing, train every day. That goes against the other fears of like kids are playing these video games all day just lay in there. They're not getting any activity in it. It's hand-eye coordination, right? Yeah, yeah. And critical thinking skills. That's what we all told our parents. Just so we can play 12 hours a day of a video game.

And I loved it. Me too. Coming up next is my best friends, one of the most generic songs on this album. Barely about Pokemon. To me, in my head when I heard this song, it feels like the end of an 80s comedy in which the community center has been saved. The villain has been pushed into the pool and they're all dancing and there's like a freeze frame and the credits start coming up. So you can tell me if that is what the image in your head is. Wow, yes.

Starring Bronson Pinchot. Ali Sheedy. Steve Gutenberg My goodness It's love You will always be my best friend Yeah And again

It's just like Friendship is good And things are nice It's nice to be friends And it's great Yeah No that I absolutely

Not only could I see The like The jump in the air Freeze frame But also then The exact like Speed of going in And we fade out of that

picture and now into another picture and also it's the sound of to me it is cleaning a movie theater because I worked in a movie theater at the tail end of this era and so I heard all of these songs

cleaning the theater like to me I hear this type of music I smell old popcorn and the very unforgettable smell of popcorn mixed with soda which is mainly what you smell yes this music I mean

it has a real sense of yeah the credits are rolling. You can hear the coats rustling. Some people are sticking around. Some people are looking at their phones. Some people standing in their chairs and like, do what did you like? I thought that was good. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to wait until, you know, the traffic

dies down a bit. And I don't have a lot to say about my best friends, but the lyrics are very generic. Let's hear some of them. Literally nothing to do with Pokemon here. Good friends are those who stick together. When they're sun and in

the heavy weather. Yeah, and I'm surprised after smile That's how it will be Just you and me For the end So yeah And I'm surprised This is probably the most generic song

On this album And they don't drop in like Ash and Misty talking to each other Over the refrain or anything It's just like Friendship and sticking together And you know together and weather Is like a Z-class rhyme

Like Hero and Zero Which Weezer is guilty of It's true, yeah as is vanilla ice. No, that, well, also that heavy, I know it's an analogy, but Bob, you're my best friend, but if it's raining really hard, we can just meet another day, you know? I don't, I don't expect you to go through the heavy weather all the time. When it is raining, I take a new brew over here.

Yeah. Because I don't want to get all wet. Yeah, it's nice. Well, you want to have wet socks while recording a podcast. You can tell the energy of like, oh, that guy sounded off today, must have wet socks. This is a wet sock podcast. And that was my best friend. And not even a proper Pokemon name said in that.

No, I scoured these lyrics. There's not one mention of badges or any kind of city they're going to or anything like that. That is the, like, yeah, that feels like it got rejected by three other people. Like, no, no, that can't be the end to say by the bell or whatever. It does feel like it was sitting around or someone had this in their back pocket. I couldn't sell this song, but Pokemon's buy-in and I need $1,000 to pay my mortgage. That was like the second of ten demos submitted for the Kate Nally theme, yeah. So coming up next is

Everything Changes And it's a weird song That it sweatily tries to be about Pokemon With a thing that we'll see later in the song But this song is either about puberty Or your grandma dying You can interpret it either way But it's like you're a kid

And things are starting to change And it's scary but you got to work hard You got to get through it Because you know That's just the way the world is Things change And let's hear an example of that Through these lyrics

And everything changes, changes, things are changing constantly, everything changes all the time, changes, changing with your mind, changing all the time, playing with your mind, Modify to rearrange Everything has got to change There you have it And yes Kind of about Pokemon And that They wink you with that evolutionary thing

But I feel like This song existed And they just said Oh yeah Pokemon change We could Yeah I buy that

Yeah well look in the catalog Do we have a thing about changing Okay yeah there it is Yeah No I It's very like Whitney Houston energy kind of early Whitney

Houston energy. I have Whitney Houston and it also feels like a Tina Turner beside. Yeah, yeah. 80s Tina Turner for sure. Yeah. But though I will say at least if you're talking about diversity of feel to an album, this is like the first really

feminine energy of it. This is, you know, a motherly or maternal an aunt figure or whatever, aunt figure talking to you saying like hey, buddy, everything's going to change. but it's okay and I guess for kids you're thinking about that every day is a new experience for you and a lot of people on Twitter when I was talking about this album they said oh yeah this I related to

this song even though it's very stupid but I was a kid and I know like oh yeah I made me think about this concept oh yeah no I have I have silly songs like that it's you know you never when you hear it in an important time of your life you don't think about artistically this song is empty yeah yeah it's hard for me to go back to listen to a lot of the 90s music I like because I just oh this is so whiny yeah I was so whiny. I was whiny. Some people were right to believe me. Not all of them, but maybe. Yeah, yeah, that the everything changes thing, it does remind me to, if you're a Pokemon fan, I would definitely suggest look up the Pokemon episode of the new cartoon show,

Craig of the Creek, because it uses Pokemon as a metaphor for characters aging and growing up. like it as a core metaphor for a thing you're selling to children it's pretty smart to do yeah as both for marketing and storytelling purposes so let's hear some more generic lyrics you take a chance

you throw the dice you risk it all it's just a heart oh oh oh hold on time to what you know you can't Take your got to let you go

Take your time Wow Another begins And takes it to a better place Only in the broadest terms of this Pokemon related We're like yeah I guess Ash steps He walks places right every step he takes.

Yeah, I mean, these generalities are so broad that pretty much any protagonist in a children's action show this would fit for. Yeah, it's also, yeah, you're right. A real thing that makes it last longer is every lyric is said twice. Like, they

say it and then pause so another person can just say it. They're really just eaten up time here on this album. That's not even an hour long. So here's something they do a few times when I think there's anxiety where it's like, God, there's not even any Pokemon lyrics. This is not even about Pokemon.

What do we do? They drop in a sketch, and here's the little sketch. And it's not funny. It's changing. Your Metapod is evolving. Oh, wow. My Metapod evolved to a Butterfree. They got you.

That's it. That's it. I think it's the way the album is saying, see, see. This is about Pokemon. It counts. Remember that episode? I mean, the story of the Butterfree was absolutely. used as a metaphor for that for kids like it also but that was touching and beautiful and it's used

here in such a crass way uh you know hey at least they they had the somebody said well if you're going to talk about an episode where kids would remember a thing changing i guess the metapod to butterfree story let's go with that one but boy it was like 10 seconds of just character voices so you remember oh right this is the Pokemon album got it got it uh it to me it felt like an oasis in the middle of this Pokemon desert. Like, oh, finally,

here's the characters. I'm so thirsty for Pokemon content. I heard Pikachu

say his name. So up next we have the time has come in parentheses

Pikachu's Goodbye. What? And so this song is actually in the TV series.

It's from the episode Pikachu's Goodbye, which aired in the first season.

So four kids needed to replace a Japanese song that played over a

bunch of clips of Ash and Pikachu doing stuff when Ash lets Pikachu

go in the Pikachu forest. Right. Okay. Now I remember it. Yeah, yeah. And that, I mean, probably in the original intention on the Japanese release of it, they were thinking, we need a new single. All right, just have a sad scene. We'll make that. Here, we wrote a sad song about saying goodbye or whatever. And I'm actually impressed. They didn't just use an instrumental track. They wrote a new song for this. And this is a different recording because in the TV show, it's a male singer. And in the album, it's a female singer. And in the flashback, the song wasn't like, album song length. It was maybe like 30 or 40 seconds. Okay. We'll hear both of them in this podcast, but here is the clip of Pikachu's goodbye from the album.

We've gone so far and done so much. And I feel like we've always been together right by my side through thick and thin. You're the part of my life. I'll always remember The time has come It's for the best I know it Who could have guessed that you and I Somehow something

It'd have to say good bye Bonnie Tyler, everyone, isn't she great? No, I was laughing because I love any 80s. he signs like has the electronic drums that go do, do, do, do. Yes, yeah. And then the song takes off from there. I was miming the thing you saw in every music video that, I mean, or

if you didn't watch those music videos growing up, then you're at the young enough age to watch when SpongeBob's band does that exact thing and they cut to Patrick going, boom, bab boom, babo. It's funny, but I also love it. Yeah, no, that there is something about an 80s

power ballad, particularly a bunny Tyler type woman singing at Like, I do just love it. I think part of it is that I grew up with a pro wrestling show in, when I was nine, every Saturday night, the pro wrestling collection of shows that would air in Atlanta would start with, I need a hero. Oh, and I just love that song just so much. I associate that more with Short Circuit 2. Oh, yes, yeah. And then younger people than us associate it with Shrek 2.

So it's no coincidence, but I think this sounds like an existing song, and you can let me know if I'm right about this, Henry. I'll play it right here. Yes. We're swaying back and forth. I bet they try to buy the rights of that just to cover it on this album. It's like, I got someone else to write a sound alike. Yeah. It's how much?

yeah no it that's what friends are for would be perfect to appear on this but and i mean based on how many records this sold they could have afforded it yeah but i guess you know that gets you closer to the real world of uh songwriting and probably like a legal expert just like hey we're not giving away this we know what songs are worth instead of just cheaply playing a bunch of session singers you know under the table yeah until that drum beat came in i absolutely was thinking of that's what friends are for it does change after that but that's immediately what i thought of when the song started. But let's hear the clip of this from the TV show version with the male singer.

You're missing all this. You're missing all these great Pikachu clips on my end, and Henry. Oh, I'm missing out. And that had real Loggins and Messina energy to me. I feel like the female singer is a better singer than this guy. Not to underestimate Yacht Rock as a positive thing, too. But, yeah, I usually prefer a ballad by a strong female voice as opposed to a guy like that. Yeah.

I, again, I love Loggins and Messina. I love, oh, man, Christopher Cross. I can listen to a Christopher Cross song right now. sailing takes me away this is uh i guess it's kind of yacht rocky that uh version of it little bit a little bit until the drum comes in and yeah so that was only the first half of to be a master we'll come back and tackle the second half after this break Hey, Lassie, what are you doing here? Timmy's in a well.

Sequelcast Two in Friends is a podcast looking at movies in a franchise, one film at a time, like Harry Potter, Hellraiser, and The Hobbit, And sometimes the host talk about video games and TV as well And now it's part of the Greenlit Podcast Network Oh, Lassie, we don't need to rescue Timmy He likes the well, well enough, I guess North Vader is Luke's father, Lassie, I told you to play off the spoilers.

And we're back, folks, with another episode of Nasty Labs. It's a show hosted by me, Kinsie Burke, and my dumb-ass friend, Mark. Nasty Labs. This twice-monthly show about game development, Japan life, being nice to people, and hey, maybe a few other things. Nasty Labs is a product of ChewaiLabs Brand Incorporated and now available for three easy payments of 4269, only on the Greenlit Podcast Network. So we're back to cover the rest of this album, having a lot of fun so far. And up next is Pokemon, in parentheses, dance mix,

because kids love Techno. Oh yeah. Kids love glow sticks. They love techno. They love going to raves. Well, they can't do that yet, but they will in the early 2000s when they grow up. They learn from older brother or sister about how cool this stuff is. They want to start getting in that kind of energy. Plus, I mean, hey, if the parents are worried, their kids are sitting around playing Pokemon too much. They'll get them off their butts moving around. It's a safe rave song.

And this really reminds me a lot of the Immortals Mortal Kombat album, which is basically my only experience with techno, which I will posit that album is actually very fun and good and I have driven around in lots of cars in college blasting that album and having lots of fun with friends it was so much fun we we would do it when I did a tabletop role playing game with a bunch of buddies in high school slash early college sometimes when we do an action sequence we'd play a song from that I go play have a different mix of music that plays behind you I mean it's a better album than this I'll say that in that it's all about the characters. Yeah.

The Immortals sat down and figured out Chinese Ninja Warrior with a heart so cold, that's sub-zero to a T. I love it, yeah. Oh, Chattie. Yeah, I love that song. Yeah, this, I guess that was our introduction to techno or one of them.

Like just, even if you didn't know that album, that album existed because everyone loved the Mortal Kombat movie song. Oh, yes. I think some website just had an interview with the guy who screamed Mortal Kombat in that song Oh, that's cool.

I should look that up. That's my vague instructions to you. I don't know what website it was. But here, so get out your glow sticks at home, take whatever substances you have on hand. So this is time for a Pokemon dance mix. So yeah, you're the better Pokemon

Yeah, that's the extent of the rise Pokemon's forever Because you're not supposed to sit down and listen to them You're supposed to be on drugs Yeah And dancing around and sweaty At the very least, be like full of caffeine. Yeah.

Yeah. Not think about words. You just like feel it in your body. Don't have it in your heart, not your brain. And so secret trivia of this song. So somebody named VGM Vinyl on Twitter, DM me. And they DM me a clip to a YouTube version of a promotional Pokemon VHS tape. That could be an episode in and of itself because I sent this to you, Henry, in that this VHS tape was meant to explain Pokemon to both parents and children's.

saying, we have a TV show. There's a card game coming out. This is what Pokemon are. Here's what it means. And it features Veronica Taylor, the voice of Ash, playing Ash's mom in live action. Oh, yes. Yeah, that's so great. It is such a just cover for it.

Like that, I mean, it feels like the videos they would have made in the early 90s. It almost feels for 1998, 99, it feels retro then. Yeah. Like that you need this kind of explainer for buyers. and sellers like it reminds me of the you know in the early 90s the videos you'd see of like here's how to build your world of

Nintendo display. Don't put it this way. I love seeing those on YouTube and this just shows how savvy Nintendo was because they were explaining every element of their marketing to their audience. Yes. This is what we're doing and you need to buy in on it because it's going to be huge. Here's every piece of the

monster you need to know it. But the most important part of the video in terms of what we're talking about now is that there is a Pokemon intro for the TV series on that VHS tape that uses this song. So possibly the Pokemon techno dance mix could have been the intro to Pokemon, temporarily at least. The Gotta Catch Em All song I don't believe is on that VHS tape. Man, I would, that sounds plausible to me. You know, it's definitely like the hyperbeat, but also the Pokemon, Pokemon, like it.

that's more of the Digimon, or also, you know, the true classic of that to me is Teenage View Ninja Turtles. Yeah. Teenage View, Teenage, Teenage, Teenage, Your Head, yeah. Yeah, and there's evidence of at least one Tiger Electronics toy using that song. So, yes, that could have been the opening. I'm glad it wasn't. It would have been a fine opening, but it's not a rock ballad that really pulls you in. That shows you the different levels of it.

of like this is a good enough opening and tells kids what Pokemon are that again and I just feel more like well that guy really deserved more money like when you hear the difference he sold the song he sold the show rather

and yeah that's Pokemon techno dance mix and up next we have finally nine songs in we get to hear from characters we love the song double trouble in parentheses team rocket and like in Pokemon

Christmas Bash there's a lot of talk singing but to the credit of these voice actors they did not know they would have to sing in these voices. And as far as I know, Eric Stewart, who plays Brock, he played Gowery on Slayers, he plays James. He is a good singer. He has a band that opened for people like Peter Frampton. Whoa. He knows how to sing, but when you have this voice, how do you sing?

It's like singing in Fred Flintstone's voice. They weren't designed to sing in or singing in Marge Simpson's voice. Yes, yeah. He can sing, but he didn't know he would be singing in the James voice. And of course, Maddie Blaustein as Meowf, the best singer. And I think that because they knew parents would be listening to this album a lot, they were like, well, these character voices are shrill and annoying. We don't want to bother parents with them. In 2001, they're, you know, their tone changed.

But they thought, you know, parents don't want to hear these voices. I will tell you that I am almost a 39-year-old childless man. And I want a Meowth album. Yes. I want every song to be Meowth singing it. I think the Meow song was our favorite song from that album we covered a few years ago, right? Yeah, yeah, it was. Nobody don't like Christmas.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I do. I love that voice. It's such a great, awful voice. It's, I think, you know, I also think of all the parents making jokes about, like, another Rafi album. I got to hear that song. So, yeah, I bet you they were coming out from the angle of we can't make it a thing parents don't want to hear. If it's this deep in the album, maybe they felt it was safe.

But this is a nice treat for the kitties. I think the Animaniacs albums were as far as parents would go. Like, I'll listen to these characters, but I'm not listening to James sing an entire song. I think it did. I think my mom actually got pretty sick of the Animaniacs album. Like, no more Yakos world, please. Yes, yeah. Let's hear a verse from Team Rocket in Double Trouble.

I'll be the king I'll be the queen I'll be the joker Of crime I love that verse I'm sorry Number one They're rhyming these verses

So thumbs up on this song But I love me out going I'll be the joker Of crime Oh that great The drop out there Of crime That's so good

Like it's It also this You could have just said I'll be the joker Like, that works, but... Meowf was the first person to say, I'm going to become the Joker. He's announcing his jokerification. You're right.

It's happening back in 1999. So, here is them doing their bit, and James gets a little David Bowie-ish at the end of this. To protect the world from devastation. To unite all peoples within our nation. To denounce the evils of truth and love. To extend our reach to the stars above. Jesse. James.

So that was a little bit of the speed of life Surrender now Won't prepare to fight So that was getting a little boiish at the end Surrender now Yeah You know he's he's stuck in this faux British accent Like in I'm sure he grew up loving Bowie

I'm but why not just You know like half screw it full Bowie Like because what else he was going to say Surrender now prepare like go up like no the it's great yeah he found a good place to bring that voice to I also I love the

the Jesse singer the way she goes like Rachel Lilis yes the way she goes like blast off at the speed of light like she she has some extra energy to it too I like that they at the very least hearing somebody have fun and not be going through the motions on this album

that is exciting that's why the Christmas Bash album is more fun because it's just these goofy character voices you know barely making it through these songs. Yeah, and it's the voice actors at least like, hey, I'm having fun here. You can imagine between takes are like, everybody good here, hey, I'm going to do,

let me do a little improv in the character voice, some R-rated improv. Was this catered? So, yes, like in many of these songs, there is a spoken word section to kill some time. We've seen rocked and we fight for what's wrong. For mehame and magicments and rent a Pokemon. I'm so good.

I'm always the man You're just the players In my master flash Oh See another Giovanni All right And very little meath content I think that line

Might be the only Miaoth content we hear earlier I just Maybe there's more coming up But I don't think so I think they're like This Miao voice is too much I know he's an important character

But just get him out of here He's Blastie got a little money there I guess Probably a pittance But that Yeah you're right That was Giovanni Coming in sounding very different

than the cartoon one. I guess sometimes he appears off-screen and it's just like a scrambled voice. But, yeah, they, also, maybe they had that, he's talking over a musical version of what he's saying. I wonder if they had that musical version. Like, let's just have them talk over it and just say it to. It's not enough, this background.

I think so. I think so. I don't understand why else he would be doing that. And there's more talking through the song, too, in this next clip. No one can't deny it We can cause a riot In Sunday's wrong That's real have you

Believe in Truth can be deceiving To want you to This is our golden rule This is our most ingenious plan ever If I do say so myself

Even we couldn't screw this one up Jesse What you two Stop yapping Here they come so yeah it does feel like they just played the song back for the actors and said you know have fun talk over it see what you can do with this do something about like oh yeah like a right it's like yeah i like i mean i like i just in general love the the sassy camp energy of classic james yeah it's it's so good and we go out with a lot of repetition of the refrain jessie and james are talking over it and then they do the blasting off again part even with a little bing they do that part too even in their villain song they have to lose uh that's that's I guess it wouldn't be a complete team rocket experience if they didn't go blasting off again.

I do love the OG Team Rocket. So moving on to our next song. Can you believe it, Henry? We have another song about friendship on this album. At least they're like separated by like two songs, I guess. And this is definitely in my estimation the most boy bandiest song on the album. It's weird that they held back this long to make something that sounds like contemporary music. These kids will be listening to in 1999.

But this is it. And you could definitely hear this on like a backstreet boys or in sync album. Yeah, right next to the fountains. Oh, now that one unlocked it for me. I was like, okay. You were singing along and I was like, Henry, did you do research on this? Or it's in your head already? It came back to me.

It was like, this must have been the, when I think of the song replacing the poker rap, I think of this song. Okay. This is like, oh, it's not the poker rap at the end of the episode. It's this song like that. It all, I can just see Pikachu and Ash hugging like the exact clip they played over it. You know what? Without those clips, there's nothing to do with poker.

Because lyrics, again, are like, friendship is good and friendship is nice, and it's good that we are friends. It's just, it's the blandest lyrics ever. Because there's zero Pokemon content in this song, what they do is just have another lame sketch dropped in. Oh, of course. Come on, you guys. I got to get another badge. You better figure out how to retain me for my broken spiked and catch them. Oh, no.

Not this again. Hey, that's it. Pikachu recorded in a different studio. Yeah, it's like, that's right, Pikachu. coming via satellite. Did they play that Japanese actress for this, using her voice on here? I wonder.

Yeah. I wonder that. I hope she made a lot of money off of Pokemon. She could also know this. She maybe didn't even know this existed in 1998. I mean, yeah, she's still doing it. I would think she at least, if she isn't paid a ton of money, she is like, ah, this is the game.

It's how it's played. Like I, I would assume she went through all of the usual, you know, the training and the perils of being an idol you know but but yeah that I like hearing too you gotta hear Brock come in

is like I'm your adult guardian of you boy and girl like not this again yeah I do like Brock's voice so moving on Henry this is a problematic song and I know you'll have a problem with it because Pokemon Christmas Bash

we talked about it two years ago please listen to that episode but we were against the idea of Misty being in love with Ash which is weirdly this thing they introduced on the albums, which, to my knowledge, is not an element in the show at all. There's not even a hint of that. Am I correct about this? You know, I definitely feel the energy between Ash and Misty.

If you know, anime-style storytelling, there is, you know, Akane-Ranma style of, like, this girl's a little too mad at him. Like, oh, it's the other side of, she doth protest too much. So there is, I think, undeniably, there is a little bit of, that energy but it's not like they even share you know a hug or whatever that's too long or just like hey don't take that the wrong way mister kind of moment the show the show isn't about that ultimately uh no i i really don't think so like there's i remember like one time on the show another female companion it is implied kissed ash like on the cheek goodbye but it's treated

as like scandalous like they don't even show it on screen they they definitely i the source material run away from you know uh pda's as well that is not what this song is about and uh so there's an opening sketch and to me the voice actor changing is as jarring as what happens in back to the future when marty mcfly sets up johnny be good and then when he starts singing it so let me know if you notice there's a change in the voice actor good night brock good night peek at you good night misty see in the morning good night ash sweet dreams Out here in the quiet of the night Beneath the stars

And moaned They both know we've got something on our mind You won't admit But it's true And so this is the song That someone on Twitter was telling me I listen to this song While Pining Over a Girl

And I know I did this when I was a kid Every embarrassing song It's about me They wrote this song about what I'm going through So I can see like if you're 12 or 11 And your feelings for the first time But this is don't put this on Misty The show is not about Misty saying

when will I confess my love to Ash? Yeah, yeah, it's, as far as the tune of like, this is your first crush song, like it, we heard a million of these in the 90s. Like I was, I was going to say, this reminded me of like, you know, Aaliyah or Christina Aguilera. Like Brandy. Brandy, I was thinking. Oh, Brady, totally. Yeah, yeah. Hearing this makes me think of going to middle school dances and maybe one out of every 10 of those, I would awkwardly slow dance with somebody.

And, boy, I'm glad there were no phone camera. In the mid-90s These poor kids today They have to have to have everything recorded I never want to see anything from when I was 13 Your entire life is now on YouTube So I will say despite me being against the content of this song I do like the refrain of this song

It's a decent pop hook I want to tell you what I'm feeling But I don't know how to stop I want to tell you but now I'm afraid that you might break my heart for why should anything so easy ever be so hard to do? I want to tell you what I'm feeling that to say that I love you. Again, this is an okay pop song, but not about Misty. And it does feel slightly cynical in that someone noticed,

know who likes Pokemon, some girls. Sure. So give them one song. What do girls do? They like boys. You know, I guess the boy band song coming right before this, it is, this is the female market kind of thing. But yeah, this definitely, well, also, that's why you bury it pretty far too.

So the kids, the nine-year-old who buys this is like, you, the mushy song, yuck. We're skipping this. We're going right to the pokey rap. Yeah. But, yeah, once she said, I love you, I was like, me, I really. really don't like that energy coming out of Misty like it's just too strong an emotion for her

I but yeah you're right as as a first crush kind of song out of the context it's fine but ultimately it fails the Beckdale test oh yes well well yeah it's all a song about how much she likes a guy like that's it and that what happens also the implication

of like oh it Misty goes to sleep she's thinking to herself I wish I could say I love you to Ash it's like you're you're both 11 yeah I don't Come on, guys. It's about Pokemon. I forget what this next clip is, but my caption is, this is a song about Misty and Ash.

Let's hear it. Why do you turn away? It must be you're afraid like me. No. No. No. Don't feel for you The way I do

Can you see So not really about Misty and Ash No, that's just too much yearning Also like way too sexy of a like Yeah Aren't these characters 11 years old That's like 10 or I believe Ash starts his 10 Yeah

You're supposed to Even though he has traveled the world For 20 years of cartoon episodes I think he's still supposed to be considered to be 10. Yeah. And this song ends with a weird sketch. I didn't capture because it's like 10 seconds long where it's like, oh yeah, it's about these characters. So the character voices come back and Ash wakes up and he's like, did you say something, Misty? And Missy's like, uh, nothing, Ash, good night. And it's like a sad good night. Like, good night, Ash. Yuck. Yeah. I'll never tell him I love him. Again, I mean, it would be more comedic and you'd have to also know more information about the show. But this is a point I made before in the Christmas one. You have. Brock, who's turned on for adult women, just have a song about that. Have Nurse Joy sing a song about how she thinks she has a crush on Brock, you know? That's just so I get, I get from an American standpoint, like, oh, yeah, we would have done

this song for like, you know, Kelly and Zach or whatever on a teen show. You know what, Henry, we're going to spoil a future episode, but there is a song by Brock about Nurse Joy and Officer Jenny called Two Perfect Girls. All right, finally. And I will play a clip of it now. A one woman man's what I want to be. Stay by her side so faithfully. I would if I could, but it's just no good.

Because there's two perfect girls for me. Ha, ha, ha, ha. All right. Ginny, oh, Jenny. Joy. Oh, joy. I'd like to play the whole thing. But that makes sense for Brock.

He's the horny guy. Oh, man, but that's not on this album. No, no, that's on Totally Pokemon, a 2001 album, I believe. By then they have their freaking characters figured out. Now they've, the people, clearly all that Brock stuff was not in the pamphlet of information handed out. But that's perfect. Oh, God, that's like a grease song. I love that.

Yeah, but I definitely prefer that to hearing, you know, Misty talk about how much he feels. Deeply for Ash. Yeah, don't put that on her. That was Misty song. Up next, we had one more after this, but we have Pokey rap. So what I didn't know about this is the guy who sings the song is known as D-Train, who wrote and performed several post-disco dance hits of the 80s and was a session singer in just about every big act you can think of of that time like Michael Jackson and Elton John. He has a long, long history in the music industry, but he's here singing the Pokemon rap. Oh, that's great.

He has probably been on like multi-platinum albums, but the poker rap is probably what he's most famous for then, yeah. And I can play a bit of what the song is called D-Train's theme. This is the song he wrote about himself, D-Train. My name I love every rap and rock and roll I can't put the book You back in your soul If you get on the road

I can make you dance All of all for love and roadmance I can make a street I can make your shout My music can tell you what I'm all about I love how every rap From this era Is an introduction like hello

This is my name This is what I'm about And here's I'm going to do this And then I'll leave And that's D-Train There's not enough songs Still these days About saying who you are

And why you're cool And how you should like them Like that You just say like That's my name man it's who I am and that is me and that is me yeah I mean yeah that

classic throwback energy I love it there you can feel what comes through the pokey rap as well yeah I mean so D-Train is not the guy saying the Pokemon names he's the guy who's going at least 150 he's the guy doing that and of course this was the feature in the

first season of the show where I believe at the end of every episode you'd hear one-fifth of the rap and then throughout the week you'd hear the entire rap if you stayed tuned. Yes, yeah. I think what there's one or two episodes that run short or they had to cut out a big scene. They're like, today it's the

full Pokemon wrap at the end of the week. But yeah, mostly it wasn't that. I'd also I'd be, if we're talking about the poker wrap, I'd be remiss to not say, if nobody's watched it out there, most people have if you're listening to this. The Brian Gilbert Polygon video of

the perfect Pokeyrap that includes every Pokemon in it. It's really great. He, he He not only deconstructs what makes a rap, the pokey wrap, but also the different rhyming styles of it. And there's many funny cheats in it for him to get every, at the time, every Pokemon that existed in there. Promoting a fellow Gilbert. I see what's happening here. It's a, I have a pro-Gilbert podcast.

I say, listen to Drew Mackey's podcast, guest episode ever. We're also not related. Anyhow, this is a sample of the poker wrap, which you know, but I just want to include it here to be thorough. So I'll search across the land Look far and wide Release from my hand The power that's inside So I will say that I will say that I will say that I don't want to

Dredge up the immortal battle of rap versus polka But I don't think they do a great job of rhyming the Pokemon names in this song. They are tied down to the original 150, of course, which is very hard to do. But I think Weird Al in his song, Pokemon, from the second Pokemon movie, he does a much better job of rhyming the Pokemon names, mostly because he can choose whichever ones he wants from the first two generations. But I have a clip of Pokemon.

I love this song because I have a soft spot for Polka. So if you've never heard Pokemon, listen to the whole thing. It's on YouTube. It's on Spotify. but here is Weird Al really rhyming his head off with these Pokemon names. See Weird Al, he gives it his all.

He gives it his all. He was given a list of Pokemon names and with his crazy brain he attached so many of them together and made a song out of it. Yeah, well also he probably wasn't like rushing himself. I'm going to really think about this and work with my songwriters. And yeah, though, you know, in the defense of the Pokeyrap songwriters, they did have to include everybody. It's true.

It's true. I'd like to see Weird Al do it for, well, for 2000, he'd have like 250. He'd have to sing a pal. I wonder if D-Train did backing vocals on any Weird Al stuff. Who knows? Man, you got to think he intersected with him at some point. Yeah. Have I driven around to Pokemon in my car?

Yes. Do I drive anymore, no. So I can't do it anymore. But it's a fun song to drive really fast, too. Do you walk the streets hearing Pokemon? I will when I walk home today. And do I know all the lyrics? Yes, it's a good song.

I love Pokemon. Yeah, it's fun. I love, well, you know, mentioning that weird out thing, that reminded me of one other album that I loved in a similar way that the kids like this. It was the soundtrack to the Transformers animated movie for maybe four. And that's better than this. Well, it's full of great 80s rock song Even though only one song is technically about Transformers

But just hearing Stan Bush think about You Got the Touch, boom But you're thinking you've dare to be stupid And Dare to Be Stupid was on that one Yeah, I don't, I forget if he wrote it I think he just, that was just taken from one of his albums Into the movie, he didn't write it for the movie I bet if you asked him to write a song about Transformers

He'd give you a good one He would and we are now on our last song of the album and the title is you can do it in parentheses if you really try. I hate song titles with parentheses, and this one has like three of them on this album. Man, so many parentheticals. Yeah, just have the confidence to just have it be the words. And like a lot of albums,

and I'm thinking of Weezer once again, Pinkerton had Butterfly. This song also goes out on a meaningful acoustic ballad, which, to the credit of these songwriters, they know how to write music, but they're used to writing commercial jingles. This song sounds like the beginning of a coffee commercial, like a

Fulter's commercial. So let me know if you agree with me, Henry. If you can just you can see the coffee being put into the filter, you can see them turning on the machine. You can see the coffee spewing out into the pot. That's what I see when I hear this. In the morning when you wake up

open your eyes to a new day. Look around at the gifts you've got. You've been so lucky along the way. Time to finish What you've begun

Have the faith You're the one Throw your hat high Up to the sun It's either that Or like arthritis medication You know old people being active and stuff Yeah

You're like going on hikes You're right If I don't see coffee I definitely the second is like Wake up In the morning when you wake up Yeah it's like Okay coffee ground's going in

the machine like or just somebody rubbing their eyes like I need coffee but you're right other energy of it like throw your hat in the air I can I see it old hands go like oh my hands hurt and then they take the pill and they're like I can throw my hat in the air again so that's the danger of writing too many commercial songs you end up writing very commercially sounding music well also it's like this type of music existed before commercials but they are now been so just poisoned by commercials that that it brings up a commercial vision in your head. Like that's how maybe we have too many ads in our lives, you know? Yeah, I think we were poisoned by commercials, obviously.

And now whenever I hear a Motown song, Burger King in the 90s, he's a lot of Motown in their commercials. I just think of the Burger King commercial. Yeah. If I don't think... Tell me something good. Oh, yeah. And I see like cheese being dropped into a burger.

Oh, yeah, yeah. If it wasn't, if I don't think that, I think of California raisins, you know, singing, well, I mean, great vine. And if I hear, that's just a great song that I wish I associated, you know, with Marvin Gay, but instead I think of claymation raisins. I was shocked when I found out that song is not about raisins or grapes. It's a metaphor for gossip. But when it appears, but yeah, that's for our baby braids, we're like, it's grapes singing about how they're grapes. For the adults watching it, like, isn't that clever?

That classic song from when I was younger before these dumb kids were born. And this song, what's it called again? Okay, you can do it if you really try. It's very bland. And to me, it sounds like it's vaguely Christian. It feels like something you'd hear in your youth group or, let's say you went through rehab and you graduated. This is a song they play when they give you your little diploma or something. It's let's hear the super preachy motivational ending of this song, or just a portion of it.

Ever since you were a young man, you kept your eye on the master of master to read. for the top and touch the sky It's your destiny to spread your wings and fly You can do it if you really try You can do it if you really try To spread your wings and learn to fly You can do it if you really, really try Keep moving forward to stay alive

Stay alive Trust your heart And you'll survive Now it does feel like We've got a cool church And if you come to our church We're not going to play those dusty old hymns We've got people with guitars

Oh man, yeah It definitely has the energy Of you know The cool pastor clearing your throat Like, you know He grabs his guitar And gets in position Listen I went to a lot of Catholic masses

Going to Catholic school This does sound like We got a cool person coming in They're going to play acoustic guitar For us kids He was just back for missionary work, and he's got a cool song, and he's wearing sneakers. You're like, whoa, this guy's wearing sneakers. Maybe Jesus is cool.

But this song, zero Pokemon content, not even a sketch, and it's the last song in the album. It's just a filler. It's pure filler, and it's preachy. And I mean, what is this Pokemon relationship? It's all about working hard. Is that like the broad stroke? I guess, you know, while hearing that clip with the word master plan, I don't like master plan.

Yes, yeah, but I guess that connects to being a master. I suppose it does that. Just the word master itself, right? Which, yeah, the more you say about like, I'm going to master something, the master thing, it's like a lot of baggage with that word in English. If they were localizing it today, I don't think it would be master. I think it would be like, a champ. Yes, yeah, I would be a Pokemon champ is my destiny. Though I guess master, like that.

It is to be a master. Yeah, I guess it leaves you with the kiss goodnight, I guess, is the term I've learned about like, and this is the way as you head home, good night. And this is the settle down kid. You've listened all the way through the song. You got super pumped. You're like, oh, boy, Pokemon. You get to hear the team rock in and all this fun stuff. Now it's like, and now relax.

Now we put it in the Lion King soundtrack, right? Yeah, yeah. We're driving to grandmas, having a great time. You're right. Yes, yeah. It's like the disc changer. if your family was rich enough like time to swap over

Kachunk Kuk. Kuna matata. When are these kids going to grow up? Anyhow, that was our episode about To Be a Master and I mean, I've said enough about this but obviously I was too old for this when it came out

and I do feel like it was a shameless cash in and I understand if you have nostalgia for it but I think other Pokemon albums are better even though they are also embarrassing this was just like we got to get it out who's got songs. Let's get this out as soon as we can. The fad might be over. It wasn't over. And they made better music after this. And of course,

the Japanese soundtracks are better because that was an industry that was already set up for this kind of marketing. Oh, yeah. It's just Tubman. You're getting the A team working on that. Here it's the C-listers of Hollywood. Not to be submerged the, you know, abilities, anybody's on this, but this was not that high level of a production. This is not Arista Records making their Pokemon album. The people who were hired in Japan to voice all the characters, it was understood they'd be singing at some point too. Yes, yeah. Which is why Megumi-Hashibara is playing Jesse

or Musashi, I think, that's the name. Yeah, Musashi, yes, yeah. That's, which is also, you know, a pun. Like, Jesse is a masculine name. Musashi is definitely, uh, yeah, but that reminds me, I got to read her book. That just came out in English. But yeah, you're right. Meanwhile,

the voice cast they got on this, they're very good voice actors in the non-union world of anime voice acting, but they were not cast. to sing stuff. But yes, I think for me, too, the joy is really hearing. I'd rather hear the anime voice actors do some goofing around and sing as well as they can and the voices they chose than just hear like a knockoff of a knockoff of a knockoff of

Backstreet Boys. I mean, we know all their names. We don't know the names of these singers except for maybe D-Train. Well, that's because he sang a helpful song to let you remember his name. I need to rap about me. Yeah, no, I'm looking forward. to the third of these will do where they definitely seem to have a better handle

on the characters and more room to play as they see the Pokemon is not an 18 month fan. Yeah, we can explore who Brock is in his entire song about him, but yes, thank you for listening to Retronauts folks. You can find us on Twitter at Retronauts, and by the way, this is a completely

fan-supported show. We thank you for support us. If you want to support the show, please go to patreon.com slash Retronauts. Sign up there for three bucks a month to get all these episodes one week ahead of time and add free and at a higher bet rate. But if you sign up for five bucks a month, you get two full-length exclusive episodes every month that are only on the Patreon. And we have been doing those since the beginning of 2020. So if you're not a patron at the $5 level,

you have missed quite a few full-length episodes that we work very, very hard on. And of course, at the $5 level, we also have a weekly podcast and column by Diamond Fight called This Week in Retro. Very good stuff. We like to make it worth your while for $5 a month. And of course, there are tears on top of that as well if you want to check them out there but again that is all happening at patreon.com slash retronauts henry how about you i know i'm involved in this we we have other podcasts together but i'll let you handle all of this boy do we the entire plug go for it well first off follow me on twitter at h n er a y g i've been henry gilbert and you know yes me and bob if you aren't aware of it we co-host two weekly podcasts one is talking simpsons where we cover

in chronological order the simpsons series. We are the Best Simpsons podcast. I'm just going to say it. And also our other sister podcast is What a Cartoon, which also is every week where we talk about an animated series, super in-depth going into the history of that show and then going through one of the episodes. I mean, if you like this one, you got to listen to our one about Pokemon, where we covered the Squirtle Squad episode. With Cat Bailey. She's on that. Yeah, which a Pokemon champion herself as well. And so, yes, those both are available wherever you find podcast, Talking Simpsons, and What a Cartoon.

And we do so many bonus things covering shows like The Critic, King of the Hill, Futurama, Mission Hill, so many other things on our Patreon. We are Patreon supported as well. And we also talk about movies for our top-level patrons. So please check out our Patreon and all the stuff we offer there at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. If you enjoyed me and Bob chopping it up here, I think you'll really love what we do there. So as for me, I have been your host on this one, Bob Mackey. Find me on Twitter as Bob Servo, but that's it for this episode of Retronauts. We'll see you again very, very soon.

Take care. Thank you.