TVSquad

Sheesh, I guess I haven't checked out Muppet News Flash in awhile, and wound up missing out on some cool Muppet news.

First, a Fraggle Rock album will hit stores in October. There's pretty much zero information on Fraggle Rockin', except that it will contain music from the series. Amazon doesn't even have an album image. Did I mention it's a three-disc set? That's all kinds of awesome.

The Simpsons: Testify is a brand new album that will hit stores on September 18. The new album features original songs from season ten through eighteen, with such musicians as "Weird Al" Yankovic, David Byrne, Jackson Browne, and, of course, the Simpsons clan and the many residents of Springfield.

The album will feature music from some of the show's recent parodies of big musicals from such episodes as "Yokel Chords," "My Fair Laddy" and "The President Wore Pearls." The album also includes Ricky Gervais' ode to Marge from the episode "Homer Simpson, This is Your Wife."

First of all, some Adult Swim news:

The first Brak Show webisode is now online. Go watch it.

Also, some cool news for Metalocalypse fans: a brand new Dethklok album will be released on September 25, followed by the release of the first season DVD one week later. Before all of that, however, a brand new 2nd season, with that fresh "2nd season smell" will hit Adult Swim one week before the CD release. NOTE: Thanks to Holly for pointing out that this information changed since I first posted this.

Finally, you can bid on a tour of the Robot Chicken studio. Seth Green himself will be your tour guide.

This link is NOT SAFE FOR WORK. Notice I didn't use the standard internet abbreviation "NSFW," because I didn't want some benighted person in an office thinking, "'Not Suitable For Winger?' That has nothing to do with me, I was never in that band, and I don't even like the song 'Seventeen.' Everything about that acronym tells me to click that link."

When I first typed that headline I accidentally typed "Everybody HITS Chris." Then I couldn't help but imagine a sitcom where every episode revolved around the main character being slapped around by everyone else. Sorry, I'm just really amused by my mistakes.

So anyway, Vincent Martella, who plays Chris' best friend Greg on the series, is also a musician. You can listen to one of his original songs on his MySpace page. The song, "Closest Thing to Heaven," probably won't blow the lid off popular music as we know it, but I sure as hell wasn't writing songs like that when I was his age, and the fact that he's performing his own music and not just singing some other person's songs is pretty cool. If you want to hear more of Vin Man's singing, click here for his rendition of some popular tunes. If his music doesn't quite do it for you, step outside, find the nearest junior high girl, and have her listen to it, because this music is really for them and not for you.

The album is available on iTunes.

A few years ago I received a Hanna Barbera three-disc set of cartoon themes, comedy bits and sound effects. I have the content of all three albums on my iPod, which is quite entertaining when the iPod is on shuffle. After every few songs there will be a short clip of some wacky sound effect. Trust me, you've never heard "Smells Like Teen Spirit" until you've heard it followed by Fred Flintstone yelling "yabba dabba doo!"

I like cartoon music, that's my point. So this caught my interest, naturally. Scott Bradley was the musical composer for MGM animation, scoring Tom and Jerry cartoons and the works of Tex Avery. The first three-disc volume covers the 1950s and is limited to 3000 copies. If enough people show interest in the project, other volumes will follow, covering other decades. I suppose people like myself would love to have something like this, but I think even cartoonphiles have to admit that what made these soundtracks so great was seeing them paired up with the cartoons themselves. The next time you catch Tom and Jerry, pay close attention to the music: it stops, starts, takes weird detours, adds subtle gags to the scene, and twists and contorts to fit the action. Some of the most talented musicians in the business worked on those old cartoons, but I get the feeling that hearing the music by itself might leave one as half empty as watching the same cartoon with the mute button pressed.

[via Toon Zone]