Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - The Simpsons Sing The Blues With Alex Navarro

Episode Date: May 27, 2020

As we reach the end of our first season re-evaluation, we've got Giant Bomb's Alex Navarro to help us with the Simpsons' platinum album, The Simpsons Sings The Blues! At the height of Bartmania, Matt Groening, Jim Brooks, and David Geffen brought together a huge list of famous musicians to make an album about our favorite Springfieldians. Learn how the 1990 album happened, the famous folks who secretly worked on it, AND the stories behind the music video for Do The Bartman and Deep Deep Trouble, all in this week's podcast! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

bling blong everyone our new podcast miniseries talking mission hill is now exclusively on patreon put on your spicy pants every friday with a new podcast covering each episode of the cult series from simpsons legends bill oakley and josh weinstein five dollar subscribers at patreon.com slash talking simpsons can hear every episode plus all of our previous miniseries about Futurama, King of the Hill, and The Critic. So don't be a beardsley, sign up for Talking Mission Hill today! Alright! I heartily endorse this event or product. ahoy everybody and welcome to talking simpsons recorded in a factory full of fools i'm your host mothball stew enjoyer bob mackie and this is our chronological exploration of the simpsons who else

is here with me today blind Blind lemon lime, Henry Gilbert. And who do we have on the line? I am Alex Navarro, and I am in deep, deep trouble. We all are, because today's episode is all about the album The Simpsons Sing the Blues. Oh, we need to bleep that. Today's album came out on December 4th, 1990. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history.

Oh, boy, Bobby. Thanks in part to the Operation Desert Storm. Gas prices spike at $1.60 a gallon. How will we survive as a people? The Super Famicom has launched in japan with the super mario world pack-in and the music video for do the bart man premieres alongside the classic season 2 episode bart to the daredevil on a fox wow i remember being the hero of my school bus because i had an egm with coverage of Super Mario Bros. 4. Oh, wow. Which is what they were calling it.

So in the gulf of time between the Super Famicom and the Super NES release, people were covering those games in magazines. Man, I don't think I knew about Mario World until they started advertising it in America. I wasn't reading, because I was only reading

the Pravda of Nintendo Power. So I wasn't reading because I was only reading the, you know, the Pravda of Nintendo Power. So I wasn't I wasn't informed about. They didn't want you to know until when they wanted you to know. It was part of their marketing plan. I wouldn't buy Mario 3 if I knew there was Mario World coming. That's right. Yeah.

Yeah. Good old Desert Storm times. But but yeah, the I mean, Alex, you're you're a gaming American. Yes. Do you remember that time of waiting for the super nintendo to come here i remember having just wrapped anticipation for super mario 2 and 3 and then i don't know if i just got into like a weird memory hole or i just wasn't playing that paying that much attention to video games at that point but like i knew the super nintendo was coming

i knew there was going to be another mario but I don't know that I had actually thought that much about it until I realized, oh wait, the Super Nintendo's coming out here soon. And then I saw Super Mario World like not long before the console officially launched and I was like, oh my god I need this badly. You weren't

pulled into the siren song of Sonic the Hedgehog? No, I was never a Genesis kid. I owned one very briefly, but it was a used one, and I remember I sold it pretty quick after that. I had Sonic friends. We were cordial. Alex, welcome back.

You're from thegiantbomb.com? Yes, Alex Navarro. We are continuing to do giantbomb.com amid all of this from our various home offices. It has been a wild time. Thank you for having me back. I appreciate it. Yeah, I've been enjoying all your guys' streams.

They've been a lot of fun and comfort in this time. Great background for playing Animal Crossing as well, I found. Oh, yeah. We're all doing our Animal Crossing errands right now. So anything we can do to provide some background noise for that, we're happy to do so. And Alex, where were you when Do the Bartman premiered? Oh boy. Okay, so I would have, December 4th, 1990, I would have been in fourth grade.

So I don't remember exactly where I was when the video premiered. I do remember getting the cassette tape of the simpsons sing the blues not too long after it came out i can't remember if i got it as a christmas gift uh or if i actually requested it because that was around the time i started watching the simpsons more regularly uh this is season two is that when that this early season two yeah super yeah so i don't i didn't watch that much of season one when it first premiered i watched a little but then my friends got all got very into the simpsons and so i decided to start watching it around that time as well i don't remember what prompted like i said

the getting the cassette tape of the simpsons sing the blues but i do i i can say and i will say we are among friends here we are among like-minded individuals. I listened to it an embarrassing number of times over the subsequent year. Oh, yeah, me too. Oh, yeah, many, many times I listened to it. I had to have it day one, like the marketing blitz that included the, you know, Giants presented as an event on Fox, world premiere of the Do the Bartman video. I was all in. I was like, I definitely would have asked for it

for christmas though i think my mom i might have even pressured her so much of just like we just have it right now i don't want it as a christmas gift i need to hear it now yeah i was a big simpsons fan back then obviously but for some reason uh my sister got this and i didn't i think probably for that christmas and i i think i might have assumed at eight years old like oh no music and tapes their stuff are for older people not for me like I don't buy those things like maybe when I was 11 or 12 that's when I started getting into you know buying tapes not CDs yet tapes but it was weird that my sister got this I remember her watching season one of the show with me but she made a point in her life to despise everything I was interested in so it was weird that we had this crossover very briefly and i just remember uh kind of borrowing in quotes this tape

listening to it over and over and over again uh but that's my experience with it and i'm sure we got it like that month it came out probably for christmas she got it up that year also alex it's great to have you here as a guest because you have a musical background as well not not just as a musician yourself but also you you know worked in the behind the scenes on like music uh licensing and stuff on on video games as well yeah i mean i wasn't specifically working on the licensing but i worked for a developer that did a whole lot of music licensing uh when at harmonix when they were making the the rock band games and yeah it's very nice of you to uh compare you know compare my musical acumen with the absolute murderer's row of talent

that is way too good to be working on a simpson sing the blues record uh that we were about to be talking about it's it's crazy yeah now that i know who these people are i'm like oh my god really how did they do this so in case our listeners are wondering why we're doing this podcast we are moving on to season 11 next week. So we're going to be moving on in our chronological rewatch, of course. But we just finished up season one and Simpsons Sing the Blues was done between seasons one and season two, released a little bit into season two. And to me, at least, this is the capstone of season one.

This is where all of the season one Simpsons go to die. This is like every season one reference. The characters are about 65 figured out and season two is really when they would understand the show that they were making but this is just like the culmination of season one and the videos are too yeah yeah the the videos uh for do the barb man in deep deep trouble they have a couple references that are deaf from early production season two but mostly they are a reflection of what was popular in season one and it's this full like reaction to season one and and plus we are approaching the 30th

anniversary of it the 30th anniversary is in december so it's it's kind of a anniversary thing too and we we never on talking simpsons directly covered simpsons sing the blues it's true also it's our podcast we make the rules we can talk about we want to now it's a dinosaurs podcast uh well you know it's uh funny you mentioned dinosaurs like because they did a shitty album like this too every giant fad show does a shitty album dinosaurs beavis and butthead king of the hill south park they all did albums some better than others and and before the simpsons like fonzie had an album yeah this is not new big bird had an album you it is part of the merchandising is to make some of those

damned long playing records that those kids love to buy all those teenagers i like the ones that are extended play well and so the behind the scenes story of how simpsons sing and the blues happened it was going to be inevitable they'd make an album it was just a question of who would make it like bart mania by may of 1990 it was fully on and all of the machinery of merchandising was getting ready for christmas they couldn't get a video game done until february of 91 the first like bart uh versus space mutants and simpsons arcade they couldn't get that ready in time for christmas but they could get an album ready in time i think the first video games were like spring of 91 february and march and they should

have waited longer yes although the arcade game's still good still good that was fine barbers of space mutants though holy shit no yes yeah it's a dark a dark game which i i will talk about a couple times in here too it has an interesting connection to this still the best of those nes games though shocking yeah uh but yes so they were gonna make an album everybody's talking about anyway But who would do it? Enter David Geffen. Oh, no. David Geffen, a very normal man who there's nothing you can say about him. He could prove in a court of law.

No weird proclivities. Yeah, nothing. And I would definitely tell listeners to not Google David Geffen, Brian Singer, or David Geffen Digital Entertainment Network. I would not Google those things because he's a normal guy with nothing, no problems. I hear his yacht is rather fun. Oh, what a great yacht he has. Yeah. Anyway. You know, they released Weezer's album, so let's give him that.

Well, that's the thing. Like, David Geffen's record label in the 80s, he was one of the biggest music producers from late 60s, 70s, and going into the 80s, he started his own record label, and that logo was on so many CDs I bought. The Geffen records knew how to market to me, for sure. I believe the first non-Weird Al album I bought was Elastica's self-titled album, which is really good, but I also believe it's a Geffen record. Yeah, they did the comeback for aerosmith like those that was geffen they had guns and roses they they were the first people to get guns and roses september 1990 three months before this album comes out geffen signs nirvana

like that's that's how big they were and they'd get weezer after that like geffen records were the biggest thing in the 90s. So them getting Simpsons, I think shows that they were, they were being hipper than, you know, like some of the old men who would have done albums in the past for characters. Geffen Records actually tried to sign my band at one point. Whoa.

Yeah. The entire reason they wanted to sign us was because the A&R guy at Geffen at the time was pissed off at this other A&R guy at A&M records who was courting us at the time because the get I think the A&M guy stole MXPX from him so like we were going to be a revenge signing when A&M decided they didn't want to sign us and then we for various reasons screwed up that deal too so never happened yeah take advantage of petty grievances between executives that's how you get ahead in life totally you you

were the rebound from mxpx or almost i know it's uh it's a dark chapter of my life yeah i guess listeners should know like the the music industry is entirely different now, but Geffen Records was a kingmaker too. If it picked somebody, they became a big deal. Not that Nirvana for its sub-pop albums weren't known, but it was the Geffen machinery getting behind it that really helped publicize Nirvana's Nevermind. That's for darn sure. And so early summer, Geffen records gets the rights to it david geffen is involved in it they're gonna do a simpsons album they go to james l brooks and

james l brooks is the one who comes up with the concept simpsons sings the blues this uh i read a 1990 associated press article about the making of this and And it was, Groening is the one who says, Sings the Blues was all Brooks. He just came into my office and said, Simpsons Sing the Blues. Let's do it. I mean, they had a song in Moaning Lisa, right? Yeah. So that's what it was about. He saw how successful the Moaning Lisa Blues episode was. And he's like, why doesn't every character have a blues song about them? We'll just do that. And we'll also expand on that one song for it. And so as Al Jean will point out in a later interview, he's like, that really constrained this album that they tried too much to stick to what Brooks wanted of characters singing

the blues instead of just embrace being a novelty album and have just stupid songs for each character that is much more based on the character but no james l brooks wanted blues songs and that also meant a lot of covers too and so geffen wants the album out by christmas not just for the big holiday sales though but also because starting in 1991 warner will lose the distribution rights to Geffen Records to MCA Universal. So Warner wants it out under the Warner deal. So they have a very hard deadline, less than six months of production, I think, to fully make this album and release it. Oh, boy.

So Geffen turns to a longtime friend of his and a big name record producer john boylan to oversee it he's credited as like co-songwriter or producer on i think every song on this except do the bart man uh and deep deep trouble this is just like an asterisk in boylan's career like just looking up his history as a producer and manager it's it's almost too big to really discuss but like he he was the first manager for linda ronstadt oh how'd he get her you know maybe that's why there's that mr plow joke in there maybe that guy always was bragging to them about knowing linda ronstadt but uh but he helped start a career and also hire her backing band that would then become the Eagles. Oh, wow.

Oh, my God. Yeah. So if you wonder why an Eagle is on this album, John Boylan, I think, is why. His key to the forming of the Eagles, he co-produced Boston's first album, and also the album with Charlie Daniels, Devil Went Down to Georgia, he produced on that, too. And also, he worked a ton in hollywood so he was a boylan was a good bridge from hollywood to the rest of uh the music industry he had been a music consultant on films like urban cowboy footloose born on the fourth of july and james

l brooks's terms of endearment so brooks already had a working relationship with boylan anyway and boylan had the kind of connections I think he called in a lot of favors he joked about like you can have it two of three things fast cheap or expensive and they went with fast and expensive so he said he had an amazing budget on this album it just had to be out on time uh it was the work on the album was concurrently done with season two's production so the voice actors would like they'd be in for recording their an episode of season two and then they'd also just like bang out a song and they just kind of go day to day with that and uh yeah half of it is covers just to fill it out like they cannot write five new songs but i think boylan was at least uh pretty

instrumental in being able to license those cover rights as well. The writing staff was approached to work on it and submitted ideas. Some were taken, some were not. And everybody but Julie Kavner was really took advantage of the singing capability. She did not want to sing on this. I don't think she understood how much singing she'd be doing on The Simpsons. I still, I mean, she only sung a bit of one song in season one like the simpsons was not a full-on musical yet musical show well i mean when she was assigned to like hey tracy allman cast member do a voice for 20 seconds in this dumb interstitial she didn't think she'd be basically trapped in that voice for the rest of her life in a hell of her own making and we talked

to a lot of people who were writing on season one i believe jay cogan said he pitched like a country western song yeah i guess that was back before they knew like for sure i guess country could be bluesy too like sad sad songs certainly i mean there's like a rap song on here there's like a 90s pop song that break the rules of blues like what is mr burns's song even well he does say he's singing the blues in the song it sounds like a peter gabriel song to me yeah you're right uh and uh yes the album would get a massive release boylan enjoyed working on this so much he'd actually stick in the novelty kids album world he'd work on two chipmunk albums after this the uh the country i believe it's called chipmunks in low places and and also a newer chipmunks album and 1994's kermit unpigged oh no yep yeah he worked

on that this is a dark chapter in a pretty storied career gotta be honest wasn't uh linda ronstadt on that album she was okay wow she had a long history with the muppets yeah in the early 90s you could get linda ronstadt again this is you could make any album back then if you had the backing like and sell quite a lot of them uh and sell a lot did this because uh with huge music videos and a giant marketing push behind it this sold giant it peaked at number three the album on american billboards i don't believe as far as i can tell this the singles were not singles in the u.s it was only the album in the u.s and the singles or at least the singles only charted overseas and and they went big. Do The Bartman, number one single in UK,

Ireland, New Zealand, Australia. Deep, Deep Trouble, I believe, was number one in at least Australia as well. Yeah, all the different mixes of Deep, Deep Trouble and Do The Bartman were new to me until today. I didn't even look them up until, I didn't even know they existed until now, actually. They suck.

They're bad. It's like, here's a different drum loop under this song have fun and uh as of february 1991 it had hit double platinum john boylan says that more than four million copies were sold worldwide and i think that includes the do the bart man and deep deep trouble single sales but definitely four million is very believable for this and it means that guys like matt grating sam simon james l brooks aljean mike reese jeff martin they're all platinum selling recording artists official and the entire cast they they could legitimately say i'm a platinum selling recording artist

the sentence will be right back. Tonight's the night right after The Simpsons catch the exclusive world premiere of the Do the Bartman music video. Bartman. Don't miss it, dude. Hey, everybody. Welcome to The Break, and I hope this musical podcast doesn't have you singing the blues because we had a great guest this week with Alex Navarro. Follow him on Twitter and be sure to check out all the fun stuff that he is doing at GiantBomb.com.

And if you're a fan of this week's episode and want to hear next week's a week ahead of time and ad free you really should consider supporting us at patreon.com slash talking simpsons five dollar and up subscribers get every episode of talking simpsons a week ahead of the free feed and the same goes for our sister podcast what a cartoon which if you haven't heard is our other weekly podcast we talk about a different animated series in a similar style to talking simpsons but that five bucks gets you way more than just that you'll get to hear a ton of exclusive interviews we've done with folks who've worked on the simpsons as far back as with the original shorts if you listen to our podcast with jay kogan we even ask him a

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slash talking simpsons please consider it today that's how it all generally came together but i guess let's let's go song by song then uh and start with the first song in the first music video do the bart man i guess why don't we first talk about who wrote it all right yeah i mean we mentioned it up front right yes michael jackson wrote this song well he wrote it as much as he wrote any song at the time he he the credited songwriter is brian lauren who was a longtime producer with michael jackson at the time he was working with him on dangerous like they were working on dangerous and he'd worked on many tracks with jackson this is right before dangerous right yeah dangerous would be 91

yeah as uh as we'd find out geffen's nirvana nevermind would murder michael jackson's dangerous everybody thought uh sorry black and white yeah that's not dangerous like black or white right yeah did that that video premiere after the simpsons it was the simpsons premiere yes i thought so yeah yes it was bart is featured in it as well oh yeah that's right uh just for a second and that's that's because Michael Jackson really liked the character of Bart Simpson. Let's not investigate this too much, this statement I've made, but it is a true fact. We podcasted about it over a year ago. So look that up.

It's a bummer. Yes, it's depressing. But Michael Jackson contacted Brooks and Groening and said, I love Bart. I want to write him a number one song. And so he framed it as him writing the song, but he was under Epic Records at the time. So Michael Jackson could not write a song or appear on a song that was going to be on a Geffen release. Legally, he couldn't do it.

So that's why Michael Jackson officially didn't write this song and brian lauren did and then michael jackson officially does not appear on this song even though you can totally hear his voice on saying do the bar man and this song is full of michael jackson references but technically it's a brian lauren song brian lauren even 2015 he sold the song rights to this song and was doing a bunch of interviews of just like, no, I wrote this. Michael Jackson didn't write this. It's my song. And he did say that Jackson insisted on a few things, including the line, if you can do the Bart, you're bad like Michael Jackson.

That was a Jackson insistence there. That's that Michael Jackson touch right there. Yeah. I mean, could you believe that guy was an egomaniac? Bart had to endorse him. I think Deep, Deep Trouble is the best song on the album. I think it's a legit, like, fun rap song. This is such a meandering and pointless song,

but I can see why they chose it to be the single, the first single. It's so radio-friendly. Like, DJs have 50 seconds to clear the runway for this song. There's so much built-in wind up to like put in your promos talk about concert tickets and contests what's coming up what programming block you're doing next like it is so radio perfect for that time when there were djs actual djs on the radio it's actually interesting to see in that ap article from 90 as well apparently rumors started

swirling in like late aug, early September that Bart was doing a duet with Michael Jackson. And Matt Groening kind of would wink at it. But then I think that my guess is either Jackson or Geffen or Epic was like, you will have a lawsuit if you say Michael Jackson's on this. So James L. Brooks released an official press release that said, Brian Lauren is the only writer of this song and Michael Jackson is not involved in it wasn't it also shockingly late that they said he was actually doing the voice on Stark Raving Dead maybe 2005 or something like that it was when the DVD came out I think was when they finally were like yeah yeah it's this is Michael Jackson

so 2003 I'm guessing and now they don't talk about it at all anymore that's back to science they don't they don't even show that rerun anymore nope uh so when they were working on it also aljean tells a funny story in the very good if you read from complex.com the oral history of it very helpful for this aljean tells the story that jeff martin also wrote a song called do the bart that he pitched for this which he said was way better than Do the Bartman because it actually instructs you how to do a song or how to do the dance. And Jeff Martin was constantly mocking Do the Bartman because he's like,

it doesn't even tell you how to do the dance. Move your body back and forth and side to side. Was that even me? In a rock-like motion. In a rock-like motion. I mean, in the video, that's kind of the dance the school kids are doing when the whole thing starts. They're just kind of walking sideways back and forth like a bunch.

And then I guess that's the formation of the Bartman? I guess you're right. I guess so. I guess the animators had to figure out what the Bartman was. But the song is so meandering. And I think this and Deep Deep Trouble have a lot in comments like well the first verse needs to be like well who is Bart Simpson he's gonna describe himself but at least that song tells a full story this one is like okay for one like you know verse

he describes himself another one he tells a story about getting in trouble and the third one's like yeah also Lisa's annoying anyway yeah what's another fact about Bart well he doesn't like Lisa let's uh That'll cover it And another thing I noticed on this album is like Well, it's sort of like Peter and the Wolf Where if there's a saxophone, Lisa's playing it Like, Lisa can kind of secretly be on every song If there's a saxophone part

So they're getting away with that At least that helps increase the blues factor Of every song on this So at this point in the history Had Bartman existed? It was on TV. Like the character Bartman had shown up at least once, right?

He was on toys and t-shirts, but Bartman never appeared in the show until Three Men and a Comic Book. But they were selling Bartman, I think, before the series premiered because just Batman was so popular. They're just like, I can draw Bartman and he'll sell shirts. i wasn't even thinking of the bart man character connection

because he does not appear in the video yeah for all the doing the bart man there's no reference to the superhero persona of bart simpson bart man so that is something that was born perhaps out of this extremely cynical concept that was built for this song which is to say that it was never necessarily intended to be a superman a superhero thing except batman was popular so here's a really lazy wordplay i think so yeah so this song is based on popular merchandise yeah 1990 i think michael jackson's like i like that bartman merchandise i'll do a song about that uh and yeah i, when it was time to make the music video, obviously this was going to be their pick for the music video you do first.

This is the Michael Jackson song. And so they're desperate for a director at Gracie Films. As Brad Bird tells the story, he was asked four times before he finally agreed, just getting pressured a whole lot. I'll be your friend. And I mean, bird didn't like working on this i'll just quote bird's 2018 tweet about to do the bart man quote hardest thing i've ever done full animation to music banged out in a few weeks in a foreign country with a ton of

different characters a crew that had never drawn them before and a simultaneous world tv premiere weeks away oy varga studios pulled it off end quote so yeah it's uh like apparently the boarding of the entire thing was done in los angeles in two days and then bird and his team just flew to hungary holy hell it's uh it's an insane production that Bird did not enjoy. I hope he at least got paid pretty well for it. He tells also the story of when he arrived in Budapest and told them, like, no, this is full animation, better than the TV show. Their faces just turned white because that is way harder to do. The dancing is very fluid in the video.

With what they were working with they really pulled it off i think you know some things don't look like they should they they did a really good job when you think about this was made in a matter of weeks a very very good job i think but you really have to pay that consideration to it because if you just look at it as an artifact of early simpsons stuff it, it is a really tedious six minutes to watch. Oh, it's deeply embarrassing. But I do remember that this is 1990. There's only like 20 episodes of the show

at this point in history. You don't have like the Simpsons fountain on your TV that you can just like turn on like a fire hose. So for me, like seeing this video on MTV, like, oh, I can access more Simpsons or hearing the tape was like, sort of like Simpsons methadone where i'm like i can hear the character voices uh when there's only like seven hours of simpsons in your life it uh another five minutes feels pretty good yeah on the american

side uh along with brad burda's directory at greg vanzo's assistant director jeffrey lynch also helped board it and eric stefani and david silverman also involved yes that eric stefani oh yeah and uh but yes animated this in budapest hungary i never had an occasion to talk about it yet on the show so how about a quick history of varga animation the unknown animation production house of the simpsons early years So Hungary and it has a long history with animation. Like there's decades of gorgeous and challenging artistic works made in Hungary, very different from what you'd see made in America. But its history isn't as well known in America, I think in part because a lot of its art was being made under a communist government that America wouldn't want to propagandize by showing off Hungarian cartoons.

That's where a lot of the Hungarian animation world was born out of. But as private ownership laws started to strengthen under the communist rule, which would soon end, it would end in 1990. But in 88, as private ownership was starting to be allowed, Kassab Varga, along with a group of other highly skilled Hungarian animators, started Varga Studios, based out of Budapest, but would have offices in Los Angeles and London. And speaking of Hungarian animators, Gabor Chupo. I was going to say, wasn't he from Hungary? Yes, yeah.

He emigrated in 1975. He sought asylum in the capitalist arms of America. I was going to say, wasn't he from Hungary? Yes, yeah. He emigrated in 1975. He sought asylum in the capitalist arms of America, and he moved there. But he definitely was a contemporary of Varga, and I think, you know, had connections with them. So cut to 1988. Gabor at his Klaski Chupo company, working on the Simpson shorts, which is already pushing them kind of as far as they can go with the staff they have bart is hired to be the star of butterfinger commercials and my guess is that klaski chupo could not handle the workload of those butterfinger commercials and instead he hooks them up with his friends at varga and and they are the first animators on the butterfinger commercials they're the first people who drew Milhouse then.

Yes. Yeah. The two. I could only find there's, I believe, only two 1988 Butterfinger commercials that Varga did. The one with Milhouse and the one where Bart has a green shirt and he's teasing Maggie and Lisa. So Varga worked on that. So, of course, in 1990, when they're looking for somebody else to take on another job again, who does know how to draw Bart, at least, they go to the Butterfinger guys.

They go to Varga and they're going to do Do the Bartman there. But the scale of a Butterfinger 30 second commercial compared to the Do the Bartman video, completely different. Six minutes of full animation with 30,000 characters dancing in the background. All set to musical rhythms there yeah i think my guess is that this production on this going as hairy as it did is why varga's days were kind of numbered and uh after this they would do three more butterfinger commercials and the bart versus space means commercials oh those are beautiful. And then after that, though, every commercial is Rough Draft Studios

and Varga is off of it. They also animated a very off-model Animaniac short, the only one they got to do. After that, they were like, no, you get the boot. Do you have the name for that one? It's, I forget the name of it, but it's the one where Yakko is talking

about the different time zones. Okay. It's a weird looking one. I can kind of see that in my head. I summon that image. But they worked's a weird looking one. I can kind of see that in my head. I summon that image. But they worked on a lot of European and UK productions, including Stressed Eric. They were the animation producers on that.

And the truly hideous looking, though I've never watched a second of it, Mr. Bean cartoons. You've maybe... Oh, I've seen these. Yeah. It's a good caricature of that character, but I've never watched the cartoons

it looks so bad it doesn't look good those i haven't watched a lot of it but i've seen a few episodes of it yes you're right it does not look good at all but i will say they capture the spirit of what mr bean is which is a funny looking british man getting into misadventures and uh yes varga that's that is their short term with the simpsons now last credit i'll talk about in this is the choreography is credit to michael chambers you probably know more as boogaloo shrimp from the break-in movies a break-in and break into electric boogaloo uh he did a lot of hollywood choreography at the time and on a lot of music videos. Within a year of this music video being released, he would play both the good robot Bill in Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey. Oh, awesome.

And twice, he was the Urkelbot on Family Matters. Both quality robots. I mean, he knows how to robot dance, I guess, this Boogaloo shrimp. I'm having my tiny mind blown by the idea that there may actually just be a cadre of different dancers that played Urkelbot. The secret of Urkelbot was they just hire a great dancer, put him in an Urkelbot costume. Just like how there are people who prefer certain Jasons from Friday the 13th, I bet in the Family Matters community, there's a deep discussion about which is the best Urkel bot. I would think he's got to be the best Urkel bot.

They're too busy trying to unearth what happened to the middle sister. She went to college early. Yes, that's what happened. The music video is a Michael Jackson novelty song, I think is at least fun. This minute- long startup is very much a michael jackson kind of or prestige music video thing of like a minute long startup

to a song and same with like the dream sequence beginning and opening to like opening and closing to that that really fits for 80s music videos and drawing a lot from season one and it's the first thing you saw the simpsons was a school assembly yeah yeah yeah it's a homer marge and maggie arrive at a school assembly just like they did in the christmas special uh rob cohen says that he one of his first simpsons writing gigs was helping writing the rappers for this song as in the beginning and not the raps within the song yeah so uh millhouse, he's miscolored with black hair in this whole thing. But again, they did this very quickly. But Brad Burt snuck in Sideshow Bob.

Yeah, yeah, I really love that. And he made sure to get references to his episode in there. And also you get Marsha Wallace in there too. I like that. I think they just put in that minute just so MTV could cut it out too. Like I swear when I saw this on MTV, the opening minute was usually not there and definitely not i mean when the bart song begins like first off his references to banana peels and mothballs so lame what a lame

kid there's all these weird i mean i know like a lot of the joke in season one it's like a 60s family living in the late 80s early 90s but there's so many like weird bart like ancient pranks like mothballs and stew and banana peels and oh i put a fake spider down your dress eek yeah it's just so corny uh yeah that and and same i had to look up the lyric on like i'm the kid that made delinquency and art because yeah nancy says it's so fast it's the first time i looked up that lyric. I'm like, what is she saying? And I like the posing on Bart as he's rolling up his sleeves and getting ready to dance. And though it's also very egotistical of him to be like, this is the next phase in the big Bart craze. And also, I don't like seeing Martin Prince and Milhouse shake their hips in the way that they do in this song. It makes me uncomfortable.

Work that pelvis. But then in the next bit of the song, it basically becomes a mini deep, deep trouble in this clip here. There's a lot of weeks. I got in trouble, yeah, pretty deep. Homer was yellow, Mom was too. Because I put mothballs in the beef stew. Punishment time in the air lurks gloom. Sitting by myself, confining my room.

When all else fails, nothing else left to do. I turn on the music so I can feel the groove. Move your body, we got the motion. Put your back in a right-wing motion. Move your hips from side to side now. Put the stick, let your feet grind now. there's a lot of vamping by nancy yeah when they can't figure out something to make it more bart like they're like can you just say whoa mama a few times in the background but yeah nancy really feels like the one voice actress on this record who has completely embraced that this she's going for it like no this is that we're gonna make this work no matter what everyone else i feel like is

just kind of sheepishly trying to get their way through it yeah i think she's she's enjoying being the star of the album like this is i they they put a lot of work into making this the family's album and kind of balancing it out. But this is the Bart album, and they'd have been better off just doing all Bart, like just do a number of Bart songs. And of course, in the mugshot of Bart, we have to get in the A113 again. It was novel then. Brad Bird's beloved Easterter egg and uh also michael jackson has to get a reference to bad like michael jackson in there and they even draw bart having the mj kind of like superman split curl on his hair too and that uh and then after that there's actually a cut scene from it

me and bob were looking at before this where they show like people bart manning in like france and in front of the statue of liberty and through the berlin wall after being smashed and in front of that broken berlin wall is a deal the foreign exchange student and his nemesis american spy so wow i don't know why they cut it for later viewings of it like on the dvd that footage isn't there i don't know i didn't i didn't see anything like objectionable in there i mean maybe, maybe a Berlin Wall thing. But even Alf smashed the Berlin Wall in that cartoon All-Stars cartoon we watched. He finally freed us all from communism's tyranny. Yeah, Bart, then, he has some fun dances.

I like his, like, hands above his head, fingers shaking motion. That's some fun jazz hands there and uh yes then lisa starts blowing her damn saxophone which uh when in 1989 when i want or 1990 when i watched this i remember seeing it on fox kids like the next saturday and they bleeped out the damn and it's like they're like fox kids premiering this and they they i remember they or they i think they silenced it not even bleeped it and i also think it's kind of lame that bart references you can't touch this like he just says you can't touch this like that's uh it's just a name here's another popular song if i remember from last summer i mean at this point they had to have just been trying to cobble together anything that would like hit any sort of touchstone people recognize because again this song has nothing other than bart's kinda he's he's a prankster

he's a he's an you know he's bad he's a bad kid he does bad stuff we have literally nothing else to talk about please fill something some time here i love it i love when bart says like he can't do it he'd never prove anything like then it's just like a 10 second pause as he just looks at the dancers like okay let's reset this song. We had a moment together. The one thing I really like in this, there's a Life in Hell reference in the video where when Bart's in trouble and like Homer and Marge are looming over him and he's like in a white corner. It's like when Bong goes in trouble in Life in Hell. There's the shadow of Binky or whatever.

I totally missed that. That is very intentionally a Life in Hell reference. You know, i don't know exactly how to do the bart man but i can't swivel my butt on a bar stool yeah i can do that well i can't do it now but uh just wait a few months oh oh yes yeah well buy a home bar stool oh well what kind of a loser would i be yeah the the nuclear explosion animation is kind of fun i do like the skeleton the green skeleton bart that kind of pops into frame that's a fun fun drawing there's a lot of fun drawings in here

like i think bird's favorite stuff he draws in there's just the like 10 seconds of crusty gets busted of like you get crusty pork products yeah you get the itchy and scratchy opening and you get sideshow bob watching in a jail like that. That's just some good shots there. And yeah, then you just get a big crowd shot of just every possible identifiable character in Springfield. I think they were pilfering the character packs into Season 2 because they've got Carl there. They've got the Capital City goofball. They've got a lot of like season two characters in there and uh seeing jock dance with helen then transforms into cashmere and then into miss milan and then into carl and then he's he's shocked to be dancing with a man it's one of the few milan appearances they had one other

attractive woman they could play with i think that you know did michael jackson see that and then think like well the black or white video needs to have even better morphing. Morphing. The morphing. It gave him the morphing. Morphing was so popular back then. Rangers did it. Michael Jackson did it.

Now we can just do it on an Instagram story whenever we want. And also like his eat your heart out, Michael. Like, Jesus Christ, we get it. You like Michael Jackson. like jesus christ we get it you like michael jackson uh and yeah then of course like many music video before it it was all a dream but there's no like uh thriller style or was it bart didn't get cat eyes and vincent price didn't laugh at the camera if only if only and uh yes on the single version of it to out time, they had like three or four different mixes of it. It's like a funky remix.

Oh, terrible. What's the acapella one? Just like no, well, no backing track. It's just Nancy, right? Here, give it a listen. Do the Bartman. Pick your feet up off the floor. Let them glide.

Do the Bartman. Do the Bartman. She can do it. You can do it. So can I. Do the Bartman. Do the Bartman. She can do it, you can do it, so can I. Do the Bartman. Do the Bartman. Now here's a dance beat that you can't deny.

Now I'm in the house feeling good today. I've had that nightmare. That's all I hear. God, why has, like, that feels like something someone should have abused by now. Like, someone should be making viral videos where they set that shit to, like, KMFDM songs i need something that can at least be a tiktok yeah free idea tiktokers out there yeah the the bad bard house mix is just a lamer version of the song but the

the acapella one is just so weird because you can hear what nancy is singing along to like i think that's her guide track you can hear. And also, without the music, you can really tell Michael Jackson is singing, Do the Bartman. That ain't Kip Lennon. No way. But let's stop talking about Michael Jackson and move on to a much easier to celebrate person from the 90s and 80s, DJ Jazzy Jeff. This is a great song on this album.

Because it tells a consistent story from start to finish. Totally. Dude, the barman just rips this off. It's just like, here's me getting in trouble for about three seconds. And it's pretty deep. He even says pretty deep. Like, okay, come on. And I think War of the Simpsons borrowed the plot line from Deep, Deep Trouble.

I think so. When they have a party when mom and dad are gone. I wonder what came first. So this is deep deep trouble music video and song we're talking about even though it's not the second track on the album it's actually the fifth but fuck it we're going out of order in this case uh but the uh yeah this premiered in march of 1991 so definitely production had begun on war of the simpsons so i'm curious which came first which house party yeah came premiered alongside bart's dog it's enough which is the lesser dog of death yes yeah and uh yes so the production of this song as dj jazzy jeff tells it is that

uh graining came to him with lyrics and said he wanted to write a rap song for Bart. So the lyrics, all Matt Groening. And I actually found a September 19, nine Washington Post article where that is about the popularity of bootleg Bart shirts in the African-American community. And they even ask Groening about it. And he's like, wow, I love seeing all these fans of Bart. It's great. And, you know, I'm actually writing a rap song that bart's gonna be singing you guys should look forward to it oh boy uh and jazzy jeff uh he reflects on it well he says this song's almost as remembered as his fresh prince work like it's he says he hears about

deep deep trouble every now and then it's so weird i listened to the song so many times that as we were doing season one again and when we did it, when we get to the lines that were sampled, I'd think of just how they were using the song. Yeah. Okie dokie. I only think of it in the- Bart, go to your room. Yeah, right. The feeling I had listening to this for the first time in a long time before I did any actual looking into it was, oh, wow, this is just a fresh print song like when i was listening to it i was just like the lyrics

and the delivery and everything it just i'm finding out matt graining wrote the lyrics it's hilarious because it sounds like he was just listening to parents don't understand on repeat and then said well i can do that very much so it's so striking yeah no i i mean it comes it's absolutely just a fresh print song though it also just comes from the very like g-rated 80s rap of just like well then i did this and then i did that and then i did oh yeah that it's like here's who i am and first i woke up and here's my entire day and then i did i mean like this song samples slick rick and dougie fresh's lotty dotdi which is also that song of just like uh i think it's the ultimate i went to an explanation of my day rap song the uh la-di-da-di which is that's the when you hear goes a little something like this that's from okay i've heard that sample a lot oh it's uh it's a

classic sample this this also comes from the days like i i remember reading how the beastie boy said if they had had to license the samples they did for Paul's Boutique like two years later, they could never have afforded. Like, I think this is when samples were being undercharged in 1990 and much easier to get. Production on the music video happened in late 1990 into 91 when it was chosen as a second single. Greg Vanzo, who was assistant director on Do the Bartman, took over directing on this one. And this was going to be run out of his just started up Rough Draft Studios in South Korea. If you look on the production side of it, all the Hungarian names that were on Do the Bartman, those are replaced with Korean names on the production for this.

Though David Silverman is credited with additional directing, Jeffrey Lynch again names on the production for this. Now, David Silverman is credited with additional directing. Jeffrey Lynch, again, worked on the storyboard with it too. And Rich Moore and Wes Archer also did a lot of work on it. It's like all the best people working on this. That's why it looks so good. It's a great video. This is a gorgeous video. The way better music video than Do The Bart Man.

And I think like Rough Draft understood more of just the snappiness needed. Like, and just, I love, I love how a rough draft designed Bart looks like his head is just like, it's bigger. I don't know how to explain it, but actually I think the life in hell joke is from this one because there's a lot of crossover between these two songs. So I get confused as to what is in what video, but yeah. And yes, to point out all the voice samples in it, you've got march saying go to your room that's from homer's night out yeah bart saying well you're damned if you do you damned if you don't bart's the genius uh bart saying what are we talking about and where's your sense of humor man and okie dokie all from moaning lisa and also this song references uh the drums

from james brown's funky drummer uh that you'll you'll hear it at the start of House Party. And several beats are just Jazzy Jeff stealing from himself from Girls Ain't Nothin' But Trouble. So he's like, that was a good little beat. Deep Trouble, perhaps? I just love all the posing on it. Like every pose is great. And you get the tease at the start of seeing Bart's smooth head. And if you're watching a second time like oh i can see he got his head

shaved and like that cutaway to him in this like sort of film noir background as the narrator yeah it's really cool like it's always like at a dutch angle too it was so good that bart versus space mutants ripped it off to make that the game over screen. Oh, yeah. They're just like, what if the game over screen just was this drawing from a cartoon? Bart's in jail now. Everything about this song and this video feels so head and shoulders above everything else associated with this album that it makes me like, you know, it's still a cheesy novelty song. But like it has a point like it has lyrics like it has a it maintains a thread the entire way through the video clearly got much better production than do the bart man like it it doesn't necessarily make me want another simpsons novelty album that was more based around stuff

like this but i it makes me kind of sad for what could have been considering how mediocre everything else is on this album yeah i still stand by this is the best song on the entire album it's not my favorite song but it is the best song and the right lane for them to be in like this is yeah this is the tone that every song should have been and and well also in six months they got time to write five original songs they're not writing five more original songs fair fair and and they got to get to at least 40 minutes for it to be able to charge uh the full album price for it and uh yeah there's there's just a lot of fun little little cartoony bits in this like king kong homer being shot at by bart in his airplane i think the bart's nightmare took that idea. 100%. We can make that into a bad minigame. And also, they do cut about 10 seconds from the album version because there's even more redundant Bartness of like, my name's Bart. That's with an R and a B.

Capital B. Capital B, yeah. And a further description of how angry Homer is at him when he wakes him up. But why don't we hear just a little of it? alarm was buzzing i was snoozing supposed to get up now but i was refusing to let reality become an intrusion because in dreamy dreamland i was cruising but the buzz kept buzzing my head kept buzzing gave the radio a throw and heard an explosion opened up my eyes to my surprise there stood homer and his temperature rise i was chilling he was yelling face all distorted because he was propelling i said i'm sorry, but that didn't cut it.

I started to protest, but dad said, shut it. Get up. Move along. Move it on the double. Because if you don't, you're in deep, deep trouble. This is definitely also Homer as the mean dad in the show, not like the insane goofball he would become. It's so weird how this is just like, oh, these are just older versions of these characters and all of these songs except

for maybe bart well green loves mean dad homer i think he's i think he's pulling from something real there with his own homer i mean what we see happen to bart is like this weird like humiliation torture graining's own father would do to him that if he was bad he'd take him down to get his head shaved yes yeah he would it wouldn't let him be have his hippie long hair yeah so that happens in like the life and hell comics and in the shorts too he's drawing from his own childhood but never in the show yeah yeah i think maybe they've uh the other writers just fell in love with goofball homer there's enough child abuse in this show let's just leave the strangling in and uh yeah also they have just cleverer ideas for the very long chorus there you have to deal with in this song just like in do the bart man and this song they're like well every time we're

gonna have a chorus it'll be a different bart punishment dream sequence of him going to trial him going to the electric chair or him going to hell and being reincarnated. Like, they're all super fun. And great drawings. The snail Bart design, rather. Yeah, snail Bart's great. I love the reaction faces on him when he's electrocuted. Like, those are so David Silverman.

There's like 40 David Silverman drawings in that little animation. And also more deep references to what had been done on the show. Like when Bart is on trial in the dream sequence, there's Wiggum is mad he's holding up a skateboard. That's because he had shouted at Bart when he goes on his skateboard on the lamppost in the opening of the show. You've got Skinner mad about the wiener spray paint.

He sold him spray paint. And Jebediah is mad about his head, which he's holding up as he explains it. I love all those references there. And there was a single version of this and I can't find a few of the songs that were on it, so I don't know what they are. Okay, yeah, I have some issues with that too.

I had looked it up. So I went to eBay and found people selling UK and German versions of the single, both on CD, on cassette and on lp for deep deep trouble and at best they have other remixes of this or they have soul stew or a u.s cassette i it's looking like that has sibling rivalry on it but none of them have the two b sides i saw listed on the wikipedia which are there are a few things and nine and one which i don't know what those are i have no i could not find anything about them so if you're out there

and you know let us know i'd like to know if these are like simpson songs or they're just like dj jazzy jeff songs you threw on there or here's what i can tell you about nine and one at least is that uh by going to the wikipedia, it goes to a Wikipedia page called Dokeka Kaiena, which I assume is another language in translation of whatever that song title is. Also, that Wikipedia page has been deleted. Oh, wow. Okay. So maybe I need to find another country than UK and German for those singles on it. Yeah. Also, there's the the references in here like the lawn mowing thing they just take the setup of bart being jealous of a lawnmower from call of the simpsons

and they they just draw the slugfest game of when they say nintendo for cash they're they're just playing slugfest i think as a kid i really like bart saying nintendo yeah there's a certain appeal to it. Because my brain was poisoned. And also, when Bart is outside getting a sunbathing, he's drinking a squishy out of the Space Mutant cups that he got a squishy in in Telltale Head. Awesome. These are deep cuts.

All stuff we'd only recognize if we had just done all of season one, like we just did. So I've learned so much but yeah also when have the simpsons ever owned a sprinkler or been to a boat show yeah that's that's what homer says i took me a long time to understand he said to the boat show i thought he said like do the bojo now we can't go do the bojo that's a that's a lesser dance compared to the bar we'll call you hoju you know on uh of one of the best jokes in bojack horseman i love is the recurring gag that he has the song do the bojack from the 90s which is just a making fun of do the bart man as well uh but yeah i think i think too

this just goes by a lot faster and it's just three three and a half minutes like they they speed this up and probably were given less of a budget than do the bart man had and uh yeah i guess the the epilogue honestly feels tacked on to me but they just reuse shots from the bart's haircut short from tracy ullman yeah and this video landed when everyone was sick of this album yeah it was this is really getting out of hand kind of era for this kind of product. But again, and still Ireland, number one single, this song. Hey, they're smart. They're smart people. Nancy Cartwright could have had a killer rap career in Ireland.

She could. Yeah, actually, I read a quote from Ricky Gervais about how when he first got into the simpsons he just thought it was an annoying novelty song group first before he saw any of the show because the the song as big as sings the blues was here this it was even bigger in the uk like gigantic it was the precursor to crazy frog yeah oh. It comes from a very similar place. All right. Let's talk about the second track on the album itself. And let's kind of speed through these songs, though.

But we have a cover of a Chuck Berry song here. Yeah, I mean, I think I'm doing a disservice to classic rock and roll. But this sounds like an Umjamer Lammy song. Totally. 100%. Well, I think, you know, honestly, I think a Chuck Berry song is a smart pick for a Bart cover because he writes very immature songs. Like, these are the songs Bart would love. But also, like, if you know I'm Jimmer Lammy, it's the rock and roll version of Parapetid. But it's like the man sings, then you play the guitar part back at him.

That's what it feels like. There's a lamb on stage with him doing this. But that's not just any man singing bob oh boy that's a toad from the super mario brothers movie himself it's uh david johansson of the new york dolls aka buster poindexter uh from hot hot hot or scrooged if you're an 80s kid you probably saw him in there the always a waterworks i one of the funniest funniest things i learned from reading the oral history oral history david johansson recorded this while he was on the set of car 54 where are you oh no wow that was like a year uh close to the dragnet movie right i i can't believe they made it after the dragn movie. Yeah, maybe a few years after it.

I think it's one of those movies they sat on for a year. After they finished it, it was like, what the fuck? It came out in 1993 or something like that. And then Comedy Central ran it. But yes, John Boylan said he had to get him to record it from the set in Canada and send in the music track of it. I was going to say, it's interesting because it really doesn't sound much like him. Like, even as Buster Poindexter, like, it is,

it doesn't, I don't really get David Johansson vibes off of this performance at all, and I wonder if that's kind of on purpose that maybe he doesn't really want to make it known that, hey, I'm singing on this Simpsons novelty album. Well, here, you can hear him right now. Soon as three o'clock rolls around, I'm out of here, man, I'm going to town. You're driving there, you're novelty album uh well here you can hear him right now yeah yeah a lot of vamping from bart with a lot of these covers i feel they're getting really sweaty like how do we work in some simpsons elements so there'll be like a little mini

sketch you know on the end in the beginning or there'll be like bart vamping or like here's a sax solo lisa is here in the song that's her playing it uh or they have a guitar solo by joe fucking walsh of the eagles yeah is auto here is that who that is i mean it's insane he did this i mean i he was a friend of boy, plus he was on Geffen Records at the time as a solo artist. So I can see favors being called in. But like, they're not even, have Bart say like, good work, Joe Walsh. Like, advertise that. I can't believe Joe Walsh betrayed them and showed up on Duckman later.

It's true. That's right. Actually, he sings a song on Duckman. About his dead uncle or whatever yeah i remember he has a joke in there about stealing david geffen's wallet there's he's like david geffen needs to be more careful with his wallet yeah that wasn't a good impression i need to be more tired talking duck man coming soon if you vote for it but i mean i think at least they they went to the trouble of writing bart new asides in the big space of time of like,

They at least found some fun parts to shove in Bart to say, Whoa, mama. Whoa, mama is just the secret spice they add to every song. A dash of whoa, mama. But the next song is far more bluesy and fitting with the blues style. That was more rhythm and blues school days, but Homer fully gets into the blues. You know, parent falling is all I crave. A big bag of pork rinds gonna carry me to my grave.

Born under a bed of dice. I've been down since I began to crawl. If it wasn't for bad luck, I tell ya, I wouldn't have no luck at all. Such a weird cover. Man, I am going to tell you, and I'm going to date this podcast immediately by saying this, but this is like blues version identical energy to that Puddle of Mud cover of About a Girl.

It is that same energy. I'm not so much singing this as i am screaming it uh in a barely tolerable way yeah like it's so weird because they don't know who the character is because the only right homer things in this are beer and pork rinds and bowling right it's like that's what homer is also dan hasn't figured out the voice dan has not figured out the singing voice and he's also doing 20 let's call it blues man on top of that yes it's uh more than a little of the uh billy crystal school of blues man voice in there so it's just it's just hard to listen to and again very little simpsons content i i do like that dan at least is having fun improvising in the character of homer that's his one of his biggest strengths

as a performer of homer that he can improvise in character pretty well. Yeah, that end bit with him giving himself a blues name does feel like just him improv-ing. It does not feel like written. If you've heard him on talk shows improv-ing as Homer, that's the same sort of jokes you get, I think. And yes, the song is Born Under a Bad Sign by Albert King, who is a very close friend or possible half-brother and musical collaborator with bb king who plays on this this is a bb king cover of this song or he's i mean he played on the originals or at least

performances of it with albert king so fitting to get bb albert king wasn't yet passed away but he would pass away in 92 i believe he had retired at this point so this album is 30 years old a lot of the songs they're covering are not that old on this album no yeah uh but but them getting bb king the uh as john boylan says it the only way they could get him was while he was on tour of the pacific rim so bb king recorded his part in melbourne australia and shipped it to them and it barely made it in time to mix it over Dan's recording. And yeah, I had that clip there because it's the only big change in the lyrics. The original lyrics are, you know, wine and women is all I crave. A big-legged woman gonna carry me to my grave.

So that's the Homer-fied line in there. I think maybe they saw, like, Homer wouldn't say a big-legged woman or why this albert king has a gigantrous fetish is what we're learning he there's should be a line there about like uh step on me born under a bad sign again i i at least like it's not it's not great i wouldn't listen to it normally but i do think dan at least has fun in it and that comes through yeah and you can't complain about bb king you know hearing him play lucille it's just a lovely music oh and if you missed one other musical collaborator on this song and also a couple of others on this album which is the horn section from tower of power

yes that's right yes yeah they they are back up in a lot of this for oakland's own tower of power i forgot they were on that one this one too yeah uh growing up in northern california tower of power i mean i didn't listen to them but uh if you had a county fair in northern california there is a 95 chance tower of power played at it every single year between the mid 80s and let's say the late 90s and, they were also a big part of the next song Mona and Lisa blues, which Jean and Reese, they worked on expanding their one minute long song into a two minute long song.

And here's a taste of the new lyrics that came in after the first verse. I wish I had a pony. I wish I were 18. I wish I had a dime for every kid who treats me mean. They tease me cause I'm different. A little different from the rest. Oh yes. Well I'm down so low. If cheered up, I'd still be depressed Ah, yes. Yeah, it's not bad. She's fine. She does a good job. I think Yardley does a good job on this album. Yardley Smith is a good singer. I want to say that.

This song, my one note I have, is meandering and not funny. There's no joy to be had in even more moaning lisa blues the point of the song has gotten out in the one minutes it's in the show you don't need to hear another verse about how she's still sad and sad in other ways and even then it's played over like credits so you can kind of tune out yeah yeah again the music in the background is like beautiful you got walsh on this again too uh along with uh tower power and john sebastian on harmonica uh john sebastian of the loving spoonful and uh and no stranger to novelty sitcom songs as he is the singer and songwriter of the welcome back cotter theme welcome back interesting oh man

it was very smart of them to put deep deep trouble between the the two lisa songs so i would just fast forward through that entire block because i i was not you know a cd listener at the time it was a cassette tape so man yeah this was a fast forward for sure and then boy you're not into the lisa songs not really that was me too yeah i i agree i i'm still not though i think again i think yarley smith she's a good singer. Oh, yeah, yeah. Underrated singing voice. And what's best in the worst song she's on, which is the last one, that's when she's forced to sing in the Lisa voice. In this one, she's free.

She doesn't have to do the Lisa voice. And also, I think it's weird that Bleeding Gums isn't on this one, but he is on the next one. That is a weird choice. Yeah. But he also doesn't sing. He isn't on this one, but he is on the next one. That is a weird choice, yeah. But he also doesn't sing. Very much so. Like, they get Ron Taylor, a Broadway singer, to do that character, and he doesn't sing on this or the other one.

It should be a duet with him or him having his own verses or he has actual problems, you know, compared to, there could be some sort of comedic, you know, concept here. You know, maybe Ron Taylor, he was in a similar to michael jackson situation of not being allowed to sing on a geffen record it could have been like performing straight for six months or something like that yeah who knows but then comes the next song uh deep deep troubles next on the album then god bless the child which it's my favorite as an adult just because god bless the child billy holidays version is one of my all-time favorite songs ever. Wow. So hearing a competent cover of it is a favorite song of mine. So it's hard to screw up.

And I think this was, I've had to say, the first way I heard this song. Oh, no. But again, Yardley does a good job of it. I just think this kind of music is not for me, so I just don't really get it. Oh, come on. It's jazzy and bluesy. It's, you know, it's...

Yeah, like, I'm familiar with the original song, and it is a very nice song. I think I just... I skipped this one constantly on the tape, like, literally went to the trouble of fast-forwarding it. Oh, me too. And I think it's just... I could not...

Like, again, it is a largely joke-free song. There is not really a lot of fast forwarding it and i think it's just i could not like again it is a largely joke free song there is not really a lot of lisa simpson in it it's just kind of like she's performing this nice blues song and i think when i was like 10 that did nothing for me and the sketch is like there's a sketch yeah the skits heard it too the sketch is just like her meekly thanking them for letting her record it's like this, this isn't like, why is this in here? They needed something to make it not just the cover. And they had to work really hard. Sorry, Henry. Yeah, no, I think those skits are the only thing that make it not a cover because you're at least, I think the joke is that Lisa acts meek or is being meek before she sings.

But when she sings, she starts wailing away at the song. Okay. before she sings but when she sings she starts wailing away at the song like okay and that uh and then when you find out that bleeding gums is there watching over her i think it works it's just like oh he's inspired her he's like lisa you would do a great job covering billy holiday give it a try but i will tell you guys i like this song so much that uh at age 14 when i was on a family vacation on a cruise ship i went to the piano bar and i requested the uh the piano songstress sing this song because i just knew it as the lisa song and she was very impressed like how do you know this song and i did not say because of a simpsons novelty record wow was this was this ever sung on the muppet show or

something i think so i mean this is a it's a fairly famous just you know standard you'd call it i guess but uh well here let's just hear a little of lisa bread and such. You can help yourself, but don't take too much. Mama may have, Papa may have, God bless the because there's sax in there while she's singing. And they're like, we need to explain that that wasn't Lisa on the sax. And it also gives you like a Simpsons element to add in to the song. You know, listening back to this, I will knock it points for most of the music behind her sounds like a sub-karaoke-like track. It's not a very good version of it. She insists on the sax being real, but not the other instruments.

Yeah. This is a very synthy period, though, for music. It reminds me of Kokomo or something, actually, some of those beats. Yeah, there are a million better covers of god bless the child but i i still i love that song but it that's why it is my favorite song on the album just because i like hearing a cover of that song but i don't think it's the best song i will say just my favorite fair but now let's go to nobody's favorite i don't think i love to see you smile correct yes Can we play the clip of it first Because I have a shocking revelation

For you guys You've got a friend In me I was like This is the Toy Story song Yeah Winter or the fall The only place He wrote the same song twice!

Here's the thing. When you have written as many songs as Randy Newman has over the years, there's a good chance you're going to repeat yourself. Oh, man. It's crazy. When he handed in the song to Toy Story, John Lasseter was like, wait a minute. Haven't I heard this in the hit movie Parenthood?

Maybe they were like we have to accept whatever randy newman if we get randy newman he insists on no notes i haven't heard that song in like 20 years so i didn't know it was like a new song at the time but i also didn't know how close it was to you've got a friend in me nine months before this album came out this song lost the best song oscar race to the little mermaid like that's how recent this song was it parenthood was a 1989 film and it was written for that randy newman i think wrote more than one song for it but and then it was like a 20 teen 20 teens tv show too set in berkeley california which i've i've wanted to watch it just because it's based where we live but obviously i

don't think they actually filmed it here because i think we would have heard about the tv show starring dax shepherd that's always filming in our neighborhoods but uh technically it was in berkeley but i get dumbstruck every i hadn't heard this song in a long time and i just forget every time like it is just you've got a friend of me he just ripped himself off yeah i thought youtube went to the wrong video because i wasn't looking at the screen like wait a minute why is oh my god oh and also this is not the blues like this isn't they're not singing blues like this is just i don't know i guess i guess it's a bluesy and that randy newman is like doing piano-y jazzy kind of stuff it also feels like julia's protesting having to sing sing because one of her lines is so bad,

I remember like, like a watch without a title. She's doing a lot of talk singing. She would eventually learn to sing as Marge. Yeah, I think, but I think she's just doing all this under protest. It comes across. This is an unlistenable song.

Like this version of this song. I'm not exactly a randy newman fan otherwise but this version is straight up unlistenable i'm sure julie was like listen i gotta film the tracy allman show that show's gonna last more than this dumb cartoon you're making me do so let's get on with it uh yeah i forget she's doing them simultaneously as is dan i was forgetting that i i do like that okay a compliment i'll give this is it feels like dan and julie are singing this together and there's some chemistry in there i feel like you can hear her smile as she says smile like there's doesn't it start with her kind of cute with him saying uh barge i have something to tell you or something there's just something like weird that's terrible and

intro and then it ends with march going like i really do mean that homer i know you do like oh oh the worst terrible saccharine uh though the piano is played by dr john a rock and roll hall of famer musician i think his most famous song is Right Place, Wrong Time. But yeah, so again, another like completely unnecessary star on this song as well. The next song is, I guess, technically a Marge song, but they just make it her giving instructions over an instrumental track. And I heard the original and it's not much different. No, it's basically the same. It's the King Curtis song, Memphis Soul Stew. track like and i heard the original and it's not much different no it's basically the same it's uh

the king curtis song uh memphis soul stew this is a cover of it they called springfield soul stew uh king curtis aka curtis osley passed away very tragically and at just age 37 in 1971 murdered actually uh but this this is his most famous song i think that he is the you know is credited for him but like he did the sax playing in respect like that's that's how awesome king curtis is like he all and yakety sax that's also his sax playing and uh and he opened for the beatles at shea stadium king curtis a big deal and memphis soul stew is a really nice song i just like it and and also hearing it i'm like oh the cowboy bebop song mushroom hunting really ripped this oh you're right and at least julie gets to have fun without singing on this

one yeah yeah here why don't we hear just a couple ingredients of springfield soul stew. I'm having trouble saying this. And today's special is Springfield Soul Stew. We sell so much of this people wonder what we put in it. Well, we're going to tell you right now. Give me about a half a teacup of base. That's just the base rip for mushroom hunting like that i'm pretty sure it's pretty much the exact same but i do feel bad that uh marge's one song is a recipe and she again is just like

doomed to mom what does marge do cook okay yes yeah we'll write a song for her the stew based blues song what's a stew song we could get for her? But, I mean, at least Julie doesn't have to sing in this one. And it's, you know, it's maybe one of the best songs because it's just, like, a nice song. Just a nice blues song. Yeah, there's nothing outwardly offensive about it. It's not unlistenable, you know.

It just doesn't have a lot to it, you know. And I think that's kind of by design. Just hearing all that stuff about King Curtis, it's like, God, just the musical pedigree that is in any way associated with this thing just feels blasphemous. Like, just wrong. It's the power of David Geffen. It's meant as a tribute to him, I feel like. This soulless corporate mandatory album is a tribute to these great, great people.

If only he could see it now uh so the next song i think is the best song on it as far as a song about simpsons that's funny but it's uh i do enjoy it what would we call the musical style like like i said earlier it sounds like a peter gabriel song to me yeah like i can't really place what kind of music this is alex do you have any description like what is this song i mean it feels kind of in the same vein as the attempts at rap in in on this album but it's obviously not a rap song i think i i think you're in the right wheel like the general vicinity with the with the the peter gabriel stuff like it's that kind of like late 80s kind of like not power pop but like you know

that sort of like rockish pop yeah but like i i don't i think that having montgomery burns at this at the front of this thing is really throwing me off because i don't know how to assign a musical genre to mr burns it's funny because he was a strong character but again he is not the character he would eventually become like his traits here like mean boss yes like we don't have the fun old timiness the like you know super villainy it's like mean boss and you know toady that's basically the relationship happening there are some fun lines in this and i do like harry has such like a youthful exuberance in this version of burns with all of his screaming one so is this is harry this is not the other guy

this is fully harry yes yeah okay uh okay. Boylan said that Harry was actually, he called him the best on this because he has an actual music background, not just in Spinal Tap, but he knows how to sing and play music. So he took to this very well. And yes, look at all these idiots, written by Jeff Martin,

who's also the best songwriter the Simpsons show ever had. He's great. And he was a new writer for season two. So he's just been being thrown into this new project after getting hired. I wish if we get him a second time, I'm asking him about Do the Bart and

Look at All These Idiots. But why don't we hear a little bit of this? This is right after Smithers' guitar solo. That man by the cooler drinking water as if it's free. Oh, that's Homer Simpson, sir. A drone from Sector 7G. Yes, we'll call this Simpson to my office and stay to watch the fun.

If he's six feet when he enters, he'll be two feet when I'm done. It brings a ray of sunshine to my unhappy life to make him kneel before me and slowly twist the knife. Look at all those idiots! Look at all those idiots. Look at all those boobs. An office full of morons. A factory full of fools. Isn't it a wonder that I'm singing, singing the blues?

Take me home, sir, I'm trained. I think I actually thought of another genre description for this one. I think this is the one produced by Rick James. Oh, yeah. It does have that feel. Like not a song he would write for himself, but one that he would be more than happy to pass off to say like

Eddie Murphy or the Mary Jane Girls. Yeah, this does have a Murphy-ish vibe to it. I was also thinking if you cut out the vocals, this could be a Streets of Rage level song. Totally, totally. I like listening back to it. I do like they fit in a Sector 7G joke in the song. Yeah.

That's good. And earlier, there's a Release the Hounds joke, too. Yeah, and it's based on another trait of Burns. Like, what does he do? And he would do this throughout the series. He looks at monitors. Yes, yeah, yeah. burns like what does he do and he would do this you know throughout the series he looks at monitors yes yeah yeah i also like uh as the song starts trailing off you know smithers is giving him the note of like you should be singing sir oh yes singing the blues and and even as they're like

why are they still singing like oh uh they're they're not getting paid for this are they and even like says i turned it up at the very end he says like uh they don't get their own coffee oh okay that's cute i never made that out i like the i like jokes about background singers that's my favorite part of the last song and the only part i like about it and honestly if i was if this song should not be the last song look at all these idiots should be the last song it's a fun thing to go out on in my mind it was yeah because i never listened to sibling rivalry like ever what is this like an andrew lloyd webber song is that what they're trying to do here it feels like like a like a off-broadway kind of number right yeah yeah i

well you know what i'll play it first Confusion. Shuts out the sun and kills all glee. What are these blues? We're here to tell you. It's sibling rivalry. I don't want to share. I want to make you nuts. Give you what you got. Gotta have it all.

Sometimes I see her doing homework. I'm working hard all by myself. All right, no more. No more. All right, you know what? Yeah, you're right. It's totally musical theater. It is that Murray Head chess soundtrack sounding like 80s musical theater garbage.

Yeah. Yeah. So my theory of why this is a bad song and indulgent and has like five different tones in it and it's two minutes too long is because james l brooks wrote this song and no one's gonna tell him to edit his song and it has him he has a stink all over i mean he's very talented man of course but i think he was really caught up in the brother sister stuff because the show he would create after this was literally called Sibs. Oh, that's right, yeah.

So I think he was really into, like, brother-sister relationship comedy. And that's why a lot of this is corny because, like, a 48-year-old man is writing this in 1990. It's like, what does Bart do? Oh, yeah, the whole fake spider gag. The length of time it takes to describe a fake spider put on her is like,

we see it coming, guys, please. And poor Yardley is forced to sing in the Lisaisa voice and she's trying to like it just sounds like an adult doing a cutesy voice and it also really takes you out of it like and yeah it goes from like operatic to a ballad to uh and then also like gospel oh yeah and and also the end bit where it's almost like they're singing about how they're in love with each other, but sibling love. And the last word you hear is like, Lisa, let go of my hand. That's what the album goes out on. What a terrible way to leave you with. The only bit I like in it is that the background singers get to sing about how hard it is to be a background singer for like five seconds.

I wonder if that was like a Sam Simon simon add-on or something just to add a joke to this fucking thing but yeah i just think brooks no one can tell brooks this needs to be shorter you should work on this again this is a mistake it makes a degree of sense that they would put this at the end because so much of this album is clearly focused around trying to make bart in particular but also lisa you know, the center of the Simpsons universe. And so, of course, you put them in this big, you know, theater sounding, you know, like presumably epic sounding song where they get to do a duet together. It's just that it's a complete and utter failure in every way. It really is. And Alex has to go very soon.

One last point I wanted to make is I honestly think James L. Brooks was thinking of like an off-Broadway musical called Bart and Lisa. I think you're right. And this could be the opening number about them. I think you're right. I bet he had five other ideas for songs just to like, and this is where it starts out. But obviously, or each bit of this that feels like a different song just gets expanded into one song for the Bart and Lisa musical. It could be the You're a good man charlie brown for

the simpsons i bet honestly i bet he was thinking of that like i i don't think brooks yeah i you know i know his career so well of like tv and movies but i can't recall if he ever got into the broadway wasn't that one movie he did supposed to be musical but then jesus christ right that terrible i i forgot what was that it's like Terms of Endearment sequel or something. Oh, well, that's Blue Velvet. No, it's Blue something. But it was like, I'll do anything I think was supposed to be a musical. He definitely did a musical. So yes, he was just in musical mode at the time. But this song is always a surprise to me when I go back because I definitely told my mom start the

cassette over let's hear bart man i don't want to hear the sibling song oh man well any any final thoughts uh on this guys i it's always fun to go back to it it's a week album full of uh at best okay covers of great songs and worse like some just incredibly treacly or just crap music yeah and it and it's also it should have embraced being a novelty album way more than it did and having dignity yeah yeah i i think it brings me back to 1990 but it's so deeply embarrassing and if you think we're being too mean the writers don't like it either they spent the rest of the show making fun of this and in their interviews are like, well, that was such crap. And the yellow album is worse.

We'll someday get to that yellow album. Any final thoughts, Alex? Yeah, I would say, just as an addition, this is maybe one of the greatest examples in modern pop culture that you can throw a whole lot of very talented musicians at a thing and if they are just there

for a paycheck, it will not make the thing any better at all the only artists who seem to have had any fun with this whatsoever are dj jazzy jeff and the fresh prince everyone else you can tell they they were just happy for the check yeah yeah they took i you know i bet it was easy to entice them of just like if you have a songwriting credit on this album that will definitely sell at least a million copies that is a giant payday for you so you know i bet it didn't take too many favors to call in joe walsh for an afternoon to just be like oh yeah i can cover this we're done give me give me eight million dollars but man well thank you so much alex for for joining us for this uh return

to this classic album uh thank you so much for having me for joining us for this return to this classic album. Thank you so much for having me. This has been a fun trip down memory lane and the many poor decisions I made as a child. I appreciated having that moment. And please let all of our listeners know where they can find you online. Sure thing. I work for giantbomb.com. It is a website about video games, and we are continuing to stream video games all through this coronavirus nonsense. I am Alex underscore Navarro on Twitter, and I'm there a little too often. It's hard to stay away. But yes, thank you so much, Alex, for coming back.

And we love to have you back, at least, you know, when we get to the Yellow Album, maybe in a couple of years for its 30th anniversary. Actually, I guess 2028 is that anniversary. So you just get to the anniversary was supposed to come out yeah but thank you alex thank you thank you guys oh by the way i looked it up the james l brooks musical was i'll do anything in 1994 okay it was written as a musical the songs were recorded and you know you know filmed but that tested so poorly it was rewritten to be a non-musical wow yeah so he clearly had a musical on the brain uh and he was surrounded by the staff of gracie films who didn't have the guts to tell

him he can't write a musical and he's bad at it uh you know look you can't be great at everything james you've got all those oscars and emmys it's fine it's fine and probably a grammy or two for this right yeah yeah i think this got a Grammy. I do believe. At least he got, like, platinum records to put on the wall from this. So that's been another episode of Talking Simpsons. Thanks so much for listening to us. If you want to support the show and get all of our episodes one week ahead of time and ad-free, please go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons.

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Well, take it, Lisa Ooh, thank you. Now let's take it on home Cause we gotta go home That's my girl A brother and a sister We will always be this close Let go of my hand, Lisa