*1/2 Various ArtistsSATURDAY MORNING: CARTOONS' GREATEST HITS(MCA)
As part of an ongoing conspiracy to convince everyone under 30 that
their childhoods and shared cultural memories can be reduced to a catalogue of
TV reruns and 30-second sound bites, MCA gives us an album of cartoon themes
by/for a generation of rockers who grew up in front of the tube trashing their
brains on The Flintstones, their stomachs on sugar, and their bodies on
Sunday-afternoon all-ages shows. Brilliant marketing: the incidental trivia of
yesterday covered by the disposable alterna-tykes of today. (A partial list:
Wax, Tripping Daisy,
Toadies,
Collective Soul.) The connection between
performer and song is designed to be more important than the unimaginative
recitations themselves -- a backhanded swipe at most of the bands. There's the
rare exception:
Mary Lou Lord's
"Sugar Sugar," which some people didn't even
know was in a cartoon;
Liz Phair's
"The Tra La La Song," from Banana
Splits; the
Violent Femmes'
space-age/punkabilly of The Jetsons'
"Eep Opp Ork Ah-Ah."
But every track is longer than necessary, with bands filling in bridges and
verses to round out ephemeral 30-second jingles into the three-minute pop songs
they were never meant to be. Meathead hardcore thugs Face to Face doing
"Popeye" is funny -- until the chorus, at which point you're ready to move on
to, say, the Murmurs doing the H.R. Pufnstuf theme. After doing that 19
times, you'll concede Saturday Morning was much better in concept
than execution.
-- Carly Carioli
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