If my mom has done nothing untoward with my record collection, then somewhere in Chicago, I still have this on vinyl.

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Oh, my god. I had forgotten that, but I had that record when I was a kid - that, and Walt Disney's disco album (Disco Mouse? am I remembering that correctly?)

My mother has pictures somewhere of me and my cousin, gettin' our groove on to this record. Unfortunately, those pictures were not destroyed when the house burned down . . .

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I don't think we had that one, but we did have "Mousercise".

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"Disco Duck" was a novelty record by LA-based DJ Rick Dees. It could almost be considered the high water mark of the disco era: When Disco Duck hit #1 on the Billboard charts, it was all downhill and backlash from there, and next thing you know, Chicago White Sox fans are threatening to tear Comiskey Park down on Disco Demolition Night.

The Disney album was, appropriately enough, Mickey Mouse Disco.

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i clicked on this, half-fearing it would be the notorious mom's apple pie (NSFW).

at one point someone put together a website called sesameseventies.com that was devoted to the history of this album, and included a lot of mp3s. the webmaster even said "this has never been released on cd. when it is, we will take down the mp3s," yadda yadda. sadly, the riaa seems to have gotten wind of this. you can view an internet cache here.

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that's because you totally thought it said "best album cover"

DIN'T U

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Eeeagh! Mom's Apple Pie! Just about as disturbing as the Blind Faith pedo cover! (Though, amusing enough, I've noticed the Marshall stack behind the cast-iron stove this time around. Funny, that.)

Too bad about the Sesame Seventies website. Does archive.org get multimedia files as well as the HTML? Not sure. I love any 2003-era site that tells me to "maximize your browser window", however.

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I tried to download an MP3 linked in someone's archiv.orged blog once. I got a file that looked about right, title-wise, but it was tiny and didn't make any sound.

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i haven't tried to d/load any mp3s from a wayback'ed website. try it, it might be fun!

my lone experience with the "mom's apple pie" cover was in a record store. i couldn't understand why anyone would sell or purchase that record for $50...until the nice guy behind the counter pulled it off the wall and let me take a closer look. ew. if i wanted to look at that, i'd pull out a mirror. i have no desire to look any more closely at it, thanks.

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It is a great record. So is its followup, Sesame Disco:


Here's what happened to me, though. I sampled a kick drum and portions of the bassline from C Is For Cookie and made a beat (also using an isolated snare from Trash). The way I chopped it, it went really well with this spanish guitar I'd sampled, but it's still recognizable to anyone who's got a nose for samples.

I did that years after originally picking up the record, because I was going through disco records I'd overlooked for sampling. I hadn't messed with it before because it actually took some surgery to extract portions of the bass from in between other instruments because it's never isolated as a phrase on the record. But within a few months, Ninja Tune did something that made me look silly.

They teamed up with CTW and reissued the (apparently classic) tape edit 12" of C Is For Cookie. It looks like this:


The idea is, the record represents a bit of hip hop pre-history because it features a club remix created before the advent of digital editing. The multitrack tapes were physically sliced, copied and spliced, in addition to having different elements mixed higher or lower and/or having effects applied to them.

So what do you suppose makes up a huge chunk of this remix? My bassline, isolated. This bugs me for two reasons - one is that if they'd done that on the LP version (or I'd ever found the insanely rare and valuable 12" release), I would have been saved a lot of sample chopping time. The other is that I would NEVER sample a reissue, especially one that came out on a sample-based music label. It'd be like using a paint-by-numbers book if you wanted to be an artist, you know? So I'm frightened of the idea of someone recognizing my bassline, knowing about this reissue (maybe without even knowing about the LP version) and assuming I did something I would never do.

Okay, I'm sure you didn't need to hear all that. But what you DO need to know is what the b-side of the record is.

Pinball Number Count by The Pointer Sisters (DJ Food edit)

Yeah, that's "one two three FOUR FIVE! six, seven eight NINE TEN! Eleven twelve!" from the pinball animations. It was secretly performed by the Pointer Sisters. And for the 12", all of the separate, tiny vignette versions from the show, with their different solos and numbers called, have been edited into one big funky track.

If you love old sesame street music like I do, you need this.

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Man, I had that album on 8-track tape!

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I have both albums at my parents somewhere. I have been meaning to transfer all my children albums and my father's children albums (imagine a album from the 1940s about bees that is a whole lot wrong) onto my computer and CD but I haven't had the chance. It really should be saved.

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I just remembered another album I had from that era:

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That was one of my favorites because the record pictured on the front was actually a raised-foil imprint. I got yelled at for trying to put it on my record player. My mom said I was going to ruin the needle (and it didn't work anyway).

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WHEN GUILELESS PUPPETS ATTEMPT DISCO WE ALL WIN/THE VELVET UNDERGROUND COVERS ARE PARTICULARLY INTRIGUING/

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Shake those tail feathers, Bernice!

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I think I had Sesame Disco, but not Fever. Though I do have a mix tape with "Rubber Duckie" and "Has Anybody Seen My Dog" on it.

Ah ... Marty ... one of the lost muppets ... where have you gone Don Music and Sherlock Hemlock.

"Rubber Duckie" is interesting to hear Henson ad-libbing to cover the extensive intrumental parts. He seems to run out of ideas by the end.

Interesting story: Before I was born, my parents were unfamiliar with "Sesame Street," as there wasn't much reason to be. But they had heard "Rubber Duckie," which was a moderate radio hit in the early 70s. They thought it was just some weird novelty song. Only years later did they discover it was sung by a puppet.

Then there's the story of when my father was pretty sure he heard Tom Lehrer singing on "Electric Company" ...

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Dammit! Always forget to sign these things!

Noah

PS Remember how Whack Flapjack had starred, in the 70s, in a movie called Disco Avenger and there was a fight scored with the "Rubber Duckie" track?

PPS Remember Al and Tipper getting down to "Disco Frog" on "Wannabe Radio"?

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