My Week with Muppet Music – Monday

Retail Peek-A-Boo
Monday, July 15

At last, a Tough Pigs column where I get to review Muppet Hits and answer the question, “What do Jeff Buckley, Frank Sinatra, Queen and the Muppets have in common?”

The answer, obviously, is “compilation albums.” Sure, it might be all the rage now, especially if you’re dead, but those crazy show-biz trend-setting Muppets were repackaging their “lost” tunes long before it was fashionable. 1993’s Muppet Hits album is a cut and paste job from two out-of-print Muppet Show cast albums, which basically means that some lucky Jim Henson Records executive got to put together a mixed tape of all his favorite stuff, and then actually release it.

(When I say “lucky,” of course I mean “lucky” in the sense of “someone who has a really cool job for about three weeks, until that job, along with the whole department, suddenly ceases to exist.” But still. Hands up, who wouldn’t trade a lifetime of security for three volatile weeks in a brand new disaster-bound Henson venture?)

I have no idea how many copies of Muppet Hits were printed, but I do know this — you can’t buy it anymore, and it’s doing better as a bootleg than it ever did when it was openly available in stores. For some reason, we Muppet fans don’t like to make life easy on ourselves, or on JHC — we’re constantly engaged in an inexplicable game of Retail Peek-A-Boo.

JHC: Do you want Muppet stuff?

Fans: Yes! Yes we do!

JHC: Do you REALLY want Muppet stuff?

Fans: Yes! Please let us buy Muppet stuff!

JHC: Okay, you win! It’s in stores now! Knock yourselves out!

[ FANS HIDE. SOUND OF CRICKETS CHIRPING. A TUMBLEWEED ROLLS BY. ]

And then, years later, suddenly it’s doing a roaring trade as a rare cassette or MP3. But that doesn’t help our poor little hypothetical Henson Records exec, does it?

But this album is such a blast, it should be in every fan’s collection. Maybe the problem is that all the fans already had the albums it was culled from, or maybe we were just slow to discard our old 8-tracks and join the CD revolution, I don’t know, but from the moment Kermit chirps, “It’s the Muppet Show!” and Sam Pottle’s theme starts up, this is fantastic entertainment.

In between the tracks, there’s a bunch of comedy clips, the kind I usually find annoying on soundtrack albums. But these are all short, and for the most part, the routines are actually deserving of a word like “classic” — Fozzie’s audio-only hat tricks (“What, you couldn’t hear my ears wiggle?”), Sam’s intro to Wayne and Wanda (“Besides being tremendous singers, they’re also church people”), and a couple of gorgeous Statler and Waldorf moments. (Waldorf’s response to “Happy Feet”: “You know, on the show that wasn’t funny. But on the record, it doesn’t even make sense!”)

Some of the material just doesn’t play properly on an album — Marvin Suggs and his Muppaphone, Wayne and Wanda’s “Trees,” and Zoot’s “Sax and Violence” being prime examples of essentially visual gags. The Muppaphone and “Trees” kinda work, but it helps to know what you’re missing, whereas “Sax and Violence” is just music and an explosion.

Some of the tracks, of course, are beyond any kind of criticism. (Like I’m even gonna try to take a crack at “Mahna Mahna.”) I could have lumped “Happy Feet” into that list of visual sketches just now, but I didn’t… partly because Waldorf has already complained about it, and partly because it’s such a great sing-along, tap-along, frog-along number that it deserves to be on an album. “Cuento Le Gusta,” “The Rhyming Song,” “Upidee,” “Borneo,” “I’m Five” and the unutterably perfect Richard/Jerry duet “Mr. Bassman” also all get thumbs up, from both the Ebert and the Roeper sides of my brain.

“Coconut” nearly made the list, but the song just bugs me. “There’s A New Sound” is just weird, despite the big “yay” factor of being a Scooter song. (No worm I’ve ever heard sounds anything like this.) There’s also not enough Gonzo or Rowlf.

All up, I’d like to finish by urging you to go buy Muppet Hits from your nearest retail store, but I can’t, because it’s not available anymore. So the best compromise I can suggest is this: (A) bug someone to dupe a copy for you, and (B) next time you see a Jim Henson Records executive, toss a few coins in his cup. C’mon, it’s been eight years since his last paycheck.

by Kynan Barker