Hi, everyone! I'm Andrew and
today, I’m taking you to School!
Get ready, Kids. It’s time to Rock... Schoolhouse Rock!
Debuting on ABC (which coincidentally you’d learn about in school) on January 6, 1973, Schoolhouse Rock! had one mission: to teach young viewers about everything they’d learn in school in a colorful, musical way. And boy did it succeed. Including with me.
When I was a kid, I always looked forward to school, doing the work, hanging with my friends (yes, I had some), and enjoying whenever we had fun in class. Then when it's to go back home, doing my homework and watching the news and Jeopardy!. Yep... I was a geek. But one of the biggest joys of my life was watching cartoons during the day, The Simpsons reruns every night, and -- every week alongside all the other animated hits on One Saturday Morning on ABC -- Schoolhouse Rock!. Despite being almost three decades old, I loved everything about it and had the featured segment in the center of my mind soon after it aired. Like many people across generations starting with the one, SHR! was a cartoon that I cherished watching as a kid and now holds much more love and respect for it as an adult.
Now, we’ll begin our course with some math. What do you get when you take a times table, multiply by some superb singing, multiply by catchy compositions and choruses, multiply by adorable animation and memorable music? You get… Multiplication Rock!
In the first season, viewers learned about the multiplication table, with each song - all of which music and lyrics written (and mostly performed [except where mentioned]) by Bob Dorough - centering on each number between 0 and 12 (with the exception of 1 & 10, which does appear in several songs).
“Three is a Magic Number” [animation and designs by Focus Design/Tom Yohe]:
This sweet and mellow ditty features the lines based around people, things and entities in groups of three.
I love the beat -- which starts off slow and mellow (with the sweet use of xylophone[?]), then quickly picks up with percussion, bass and harmony with the backup vocalists.
There’s also another version of the song that appeared in the first episode of Curiosity Shop (which also aired on ABC in 1971) with an extra verse and round of the chorus (at 27:49). Here it is for your viewing pleasure:
For favorite funnys: I love the the disasters the magician went threw, when he got stampeded by the football team, the giant with the #30 jersey, the three kids on unicycles colliding to make a
“My Hero Zero”: Who knew the number 0 has equal importance? This song teaches us about the Powers of 10 -- that adding a zero to a singular number creates a bigger, stronger number -- one = X0, two = X00, three = X,000, four = X0,000, etc.
“Elementary, My Dear” [Phil Kimmelman & Associates/Jack Sidebotham]:
You know the story of Noah’s Ark. But did you ever wonder why he wanted his animal friends by two? Well, this next ditty tells you a version of it involving the number of animals that lived and procreated in . I love that they made the story as child-friendly as possible while keeping in the most important elements -- the ark itself, the rainstorm, the many animals going in two by two, and . I also love that the title is a reference to the catchphrase of Sherlock Holmes (“Elementary, My Dear Watson”). Oh yeah, and there’s a consistent gag throughout that features animals coming down the ark ramp in vehicles or with signs that weren’t yet invented like go-karts, rickshaws, etc. There’s also a brilliant way to solve multiple-digit multiplication problems by breaking down the number by placements and adding up the sub-solutions for one ultimate solution.
“The Four-Legged Zoo” [PK&A/Bob Eggers]:
We're going to the zoo. And then, we're gonna see some animals.
Having a chorus of kids is a brilliant choice -- they genuinely sound like they're having fun singing and singing about seeing animals at the zoo, and Dorough's vocals work very well. And they sound adorable. The music and lyrics are charmingly quirky, and the animation doubly so -- those animals and settings look realistic yet colorful and adorable. Also, the reference to Cinderella was funny and well-used.
“Ready or Not, Here I Come” [PK&A/Tom Yohe]:
A big guy and his little friends are playing hide-and-seek at a farmland and he wants to count by fives.
For starters, I love Dorough’s “down-home country-like” voice as the big guy; it has a laid-back, chill and fun vibe to it. The music’s fast pace and Dorough’s vocals really drives home the counting by fives. The animation (by PK&A and Yohe) of the numbers is fantastic, especially when a number appears within the 0 of a previous number. Also, counting by fives with your fingers and toes (with each five represented by a finger/toe) is a nifty trick.
“I Got Six” (performed by Grady Tate) [PK&A/Yohe]:
In this next segment, we meet people (starting with one person, then with increasing numbers) buying or owning things
This episode has one of my favorite beats and of them all: a funk/soul blend and the quick-yet-smooth pace and vocals from Tate and the female backup singers gives me that makes me groove like I’m on Soul Train.
There’s a moment I didn’t like: during one moment with the prince with six rings on each finger, he’s revealed to have a harem of 11 wives, with each wife bearing a harem of six babies. That has to be a stereotype of foreign people if I’ve ever seen one; too bad it’s true. What keeps me from outright despising it is the fact that the harems are tied to the point of the song.
“Lucky Seven Sampson” [PK&A/Rowland B. Wilson]:
Meet Lucky Seven Sampson, a rabbit who roams and rollicks ‘round . He also is very lucky, having good things come his way (while others in his path get some kind of environmental misfortune). He also turns other numbers up by 7.
I love and enjoy the country/folk music and vibe, and the animation looks lovely (especially LSS himself). Dorough’s voice works for LSS as well, and he has quite a nuanced range from the other songs he sings. The way he sings "STAAAAAR" is both amazing and hilarious. Also hilarious is his antics to benefit himself and hinder the men he comes across -- making a mess of a proprietor's fruit stand, snatching a guy's seven-scoop ice cream (while still singing, somehow) and swiping a construction worker's lunch. I guess the lucky thing about him is that he can do anything against humans and get away with it. Seems like a dream.
“Figure Eight” (performed by Blossom Dearie) [PK&A/Yohe]:
On a winter’s day at a schoolhouse, a girl pictures herself as a prima figure skater on the icy pond nearby.
I personally like this song the least because of its soft, sad piano-based sound and tone that reminds me of such music in drama (and a few horror and thriller) movies of the early decade. I did like when the beat and tone shifts halfway and at the end to a different, stronger and more chipper key. While its singer Dearie has a beautiful voice (she also reminds me of the voice of Didi Conn from Benson and Shining Time Station) -- and she did great here with a sweet, daydream-y like performance, I don’t think this is my favorite song (both involving her and otherwise. The animation does make it a bit better with it’s smooth “kid skating'' movements and the cute representations of the table problems (fish, balloons, Keystone Kops. marathon skater, polar bear on a pole, etc.)
Also - sidenote: The intro would be used for SHR!’s first, more forgotten intro.
“Naughty Number Nine” (performed by Grady Tate) [PK&A/Yohe]:
In this segment, a suited fat cat with just as big an infatuation with the number 9 as Trent from Total Drama is at the local billiard hall shooting some serious pool -- with a white mouse he pocketed used as the cue ball.
Another brilliant tool found here is this: If you replace the 9 in a problem with a 10 for a different solution, and then subtract the solution with the number you multiplied by 10, you get the solution to a number you multiplied by 9.
I adore the production: a slow-burn soul/R&B groove that makes you think it was birthed by Marvin Gaye or Isaac Hayes or Barry White (but you know… kid-friendly). I also found the fact that the fat cat playing pool and the mouse’s antics to survive the game hilarious.
No song for 10 (for obvious reasons -- it’s why we have “My Hero Zero”), so moving on to…
“The Good Eleven” [Focus/J. Side.]:
It’s like a little angel flying into your life to make it twice as good. Or like the Doublemint twins doubling your pleasure and fun. Or like when Tia and Tamera meet for the first time and realize they have the other’s face. You see, when you multiply by 11, you'll see double -- and feeling a lot more.
The production and vocals have a fast yet smooth pace to them that I like, and I also like the town and nuanced animation style -- with fewer, colder colors and simpler, bolder designs, which puts stronger focus on the topic at hand. It’s also low on my rankings (may be just over even lower than “Figure Eight” depending on when you ask me), but it’s still pretty good.
“Little Twelvetoes” [PK&A/RB.W]
Finally, it’s him! Little Twelvetoes, an alien from another planet with a fascinating trait -- he has twelve fingers and toes. And even more fascinating -- he has a detachable body, with every limb and appendage expanding, separating and contracting at will. You see, this purpose of him though is to teach the viewers about the duodecimal system aka the base twelve (or [much less often] the dozenal or the uncial) -- a positional notation numeral system using 12 as its base. As such, two flipped symbols are formed and put in the place of 10 and 11 (↊/dec and ↋/el, resp.) with 10 taking the place of 12 and named doe. And here to represent that is Little Twelvetoes.
I personally believe “Little Twelvetoes” is one of my top favorite Multiplication Rock songs (if not); and maybe even one of my favorite songs from all of Schoolhouse Rock!. The piano-driven music -- with deep hits of electric guitar and bass -- may be repetitive, but it’s very well-done, fits the quirky, ethereal tone and unique subject, and is as memorable as the best of them (and to me, it really is one of the best). Dorough is at his best (tied with “Ready or Not, Here I Come”) as he gives a smooth, crystal-clear jazz-like spoken-word performance in most of the song, and it holds me close to really give the subject attention, and is still on target when he softly and coolly sings both the table-based bridge and the chorus (with both bonus points for elongating the “sss” in the title and they way he sings “Please Come Back Home”).
The animation is par with all the other segments, but what I love about it is that it takes place at night, features a randomly-placed constellational pinball machine, and has an adorable (yet creepy-looking to some people) protagonist with a pop-up body that teaches us a new way to do math. What's not to love?
I have said I liked “Figure Eight” the least because of its solemn, melancholy composition, and this one may sound a bit similar in tone, but the reason I like “Twelvetoes” way, way more because it has a faster, stronger, tighter pace and edge that’s better on the ears than the former. Yes, it does make me sad as it ends; not because of its fading ending, but because it…ends.
And this here is the end of Multiplication Rock! -- part one of my review of Schoolhouse Rock! Thank you for checking in. I'll be back soon with Part 2, where we will expand our English and the way we speak and write when we learn about Grammar Rock!
I'm Andrew, and Knowledge is Power!