on the turntable
The Muppet Movie, Original Soundtrack Recording, 1979
The Muppet Movie is a great film with a very memorable song, Rainbow Connection. It's a song of wishes and hopes, for all the "lovers and dreamers." I used to play the easy-for-piano version of this song as a kid, singing it as best I could, and I always loved the wistfulness of it. When my husband played Rainbow Connection on his guitar and sang it for me when we were dating, I knew that he was a dreamer, too.
The movie starts with this song, as Kermit is singing it while playing his banjo on a relaxing afternoon in the Florida Swamp. He has no idea about how his life is going to change. An agent, Dom Deloise, overhears Kermit's singing and banjo-playing and encourages him to pursue a career in Hollywood. Kermit likes the idea of potentially making millions of people happy, so he sets off across the country for Hollywood. All goes wrong until Animal, transformed into a giant by Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker, saves the day for Kermit and the familiar gang of friends that Kermit has acquired along his journey, and they finally get their big break into show business when they are hired by a big-time producer... Orson Welles.
Like another "song about rainbows" from my all-time favorite movie, the song expresses an urge for something more. The Florida Swamp is, in a way, Kermit's "Kansas", and Hollywood is his Emerald City of Oz. The journey across country is like the journey down the Yellow Brick Road, and you could say that Welles is the movie's Wizard.
Rainbow Connection is the theme song for the Jim Henson Company in the way When You Wish Upon A Star is for Disney. The Jim Henson Company created the Muppets, and all the lovable puppets of Sesame Street, like Big Bird, Elmo, etc., which seem to me all the more lovable now because they feel more "real" to me than many of today's animated characters. Jim Henson Company also made the movie The Dark Crystal, which I was simultaneously enraptured and creeped out by as a kid, and the recent MirrorMask, which I didn't love. (It's a Neil Gaiman story, and my tastes are pretty ambivalent toward his stuff.)
Jim Henson was a wonderfully creative person, and in reading more about him, I learned that he came up with the characters for the Muppets while a freshman at the University of MD, College Park. He majored in art, but eventually graduating with a B.S. in Home Economics (because that is where he could work with textiles). While a freshman, he was asked to create Sam and Friends, a five-minute puppet show for WRC-TV which featured Kermit the Frog. Before that, while in high school, he had worked on creating puppets for a Saturday morning TV program for kids. Henson would go on to completely transform puppetry, making them more life-like than ever before. He made magic.
Here is Jim Henson as Kermit the Frog, singing Rainbow Connection:
The Muppet Movie is a great film with a very memorable song, Rainbow Connection. It's a song of wishes and hopes, for all the "lovers and dreamers." I used to play the easy-for-piano version of this song as a kid, singing it as best I could, and I always loved the wistfulness of it. When my husband played Rainbow Connection on his guitar and sang it for me when we were dating, I knew that he was a dreamer, too.
The movie starts with this song, as Kermit is singing it while playing his banjo on a relaxing afternoon in the Florida Swamp. He has no idea about how his life is going to change. An agent, Dom Deloise, overhears Kermit's singing and banjo-playing and encourages him to pursue a career in Hollywood. Kermit likes the idea of potentially making millions of people happy, so he sets off across the country for Hollywood. All goes wrong until Animal, transformed into a giant by Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker, saves the day for Kermit and the familiar gang of friends that Kermit has acquired along his journey, and they finally get their big break into show business when they are hired by a big-time producer... Orson Welles.
Like another "song about rainbows" from my all-time favorite movie, the song expresses an urge for something more. The Florida Swamp is, in a way, Kermit's "Kansas", and Hollywood is his Emerald City of Oz. The journey across country is like the journey down the Yellow Brick Road, and you could say that Welles is the movie's Wizard.
Rainbow Connection is the theme song for the Jim Henson Company in the way When You Wish Upon A Star is for Disney. The Jim Henson Company created the Muppets, and all the lovable puppets of Sesame Street, like Big Bird, Elmo, etc., which seem to me all the more lovable now because they feel more "real" to me than many of today's animated characters. Jim Henson Company also made the movie The Dark Crystal, which I was simultaneously enraptured and creeped out by as a kid, and the recent MirrorMask, which I didn't love. (It's a Neil Gaiman story, and my tastes are pretty ambivalent toward his stuff.)
Jim Henson was a wonderfully creative person, and in reading more about him, I learned that he came up with the characters for the Muppets while a freshman at the University of MD, College Park. He majored in art, but eventually graduating with a B.S. in Home Economics (because that is where he could work with textiles). While a freshman, he was asked to create Sam and Friends, a five-minute puppet show for WRC-TV which featured Kermit the Frog. Before that, while in high school, he had worked on creating puppets for a Saturday morning TV program for kids. Henson would go on to completely transform puppetry, making them more life-like than ever before. He made magic.
Here is Jim Henson as Kermit the Frog, singing Rainbow Connection:
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