Hi! I didn't know if you knew this, but Bob's website (www.bobmcgrath.com) has a whole bunch of pictures from his life, including some Japanese records that we're missing! I'll see if I can figure out the record numbers and where they go. I think Discogs.com and 45cat.com have stuff we need, too. I've been gone for so long, it's hard to keep from jumping from page to page!
I pulled a bunch of stuff from discogs.com recently, including some updated/improved covers of stuff we had, and a few we didn't. I haven't had a chance to go through 45cat though.
And the hits keep on coming! Just messing around sites like 45cat.com and discogs.com, I'm finding things that we've never had before, or I'm finally finding the pictures for pages we made 10 years ago. Here is a South African 45 of Rubber Duckie. I'm pretty sure that every single country where Columbia operated (they were using CBS at the time for everything outside the US and Canada) released Rubber Duckie, if not the whole album. We have a torn picture of a Japanese cover of the entire book and record edition, and I don't even think the show was on over there then, but I guess they sold it as an educational record. I'm pretty sure the whole world got Rubber Duckie just as a novelty song, even if they had no connection to the show. I have a list on my profile page of countries that had CBS records in 1970. I should go look at it again to see if I can add any. By the way, I've never found a picture sleeve for any country of the "pop" release. I guess they figured all the kid records got the picture sleeves and book and record sets.
And here is an Italian 45 of the disco version of Rubber Duckie. It's funny that most of the world's records for Sesame Street Fever were on the same label as Saturday Night Fever (Polydor), so I'm sure that made the side-by-side comparison even funnier. Polydor owned RSO at the time, but I guess it was never used worldwide. Anyway, Merry late Christmas!
P.S. I knew I forgot one! Here is a UK 45 of Sesame Street Fever. If it looks a little weird, that's because there's no paper label. Some European 45's during this period would have a "label" actually stamped into the vinyl. I'm not sure when it started or stopped, but I think that's our first example of a Muppet-related release to be made that way!
Yeah, the album wasn't recorded until 1970 (I'm guessing after they finished taping the 1st season), so I don't know why they said that.
And I thought about Bob having been a big star over there, which might have helped promote the album, since he's on the cover, and sings on a bunch of songs.
I also started looking at International Muppet singles, and I can't believe I never thought to look for the Canada 45 of the Arista single of Mahna Mahna! I made a place for it, and I think we can rework some other stuff, because Discogs has a whole bunch of European Muppet stuff, but it's kind of confusing, because some countries have the same number, but a different B-side. I'll look at those soon.
Yeah, we've had that for a while on the International Sesame Street Singles page. Other countries seem to pair up different artists on oldies singles more than we do. Dead Skunk was a US novelty song that hit #16 in 1973, the same position as Rubber Duckie!
Sorry to keep spamming your wall with new topics, but I keep thinking of stuff. Talking about the different ways the Sight and Sound tapes came with and without books, how do you feel about showing pictures of the different versions of the Golden tapes? They came in just a tape case, and they also came in a big hollow cardboard box, and you could see the tape at the bottom. Do you think we should show both versions where we have examples? I think I asked you this years ago, but I forgot if we ever decided.
On a related note, I've decided to attack the renumbering of the Golden book and tape sets, which is another whole problem. More on that soon!
I wanted to mention that I'm pleasantly surprised to run across so many picture sites, and other places that I'm finding things I've never seen before. There seem to be a lot more than there were 10 years ago!
Hey, remember Best of Sesame Street, the tape from the Book of the Month Club that we never knew what to do with? Somebody put it up on Discogs.com. It's a 3-tape set, and unfortunately, they only put up tapes 2 and 3, but that's more than we had before. I haven't found proof that this also came out on records, but since this was from 1983, I'm pretty sure it did!
I don't know if you go to Discogs that often, but there seems to be a ton of new stuff there. I'm also working on a bunch of tape stuff that I've never gotten to before. And here I thought I'd run out of things to do!
I don't spend much time on discogs, although I sometimes wind up on there when I do google searches. I still have a tendency to browse on ebay when I have the time - I never know what will show up :)
Oh, and after I posted that, I saw that Discogs shows the tape inserts where they actually give you the album numbers of where all the songs came from. There were a couple of mistakes on there (like they gave an album that a song was from, but it wasn't the first album a song was from), and I was able to piece together the albums that Tape 1's songs were from, but I still don't know the right song titles. We'll find it someday!
You probably heard about the new Sesame Street deal with Warner Music to make records and CD's again, and that kind of brought me out of retirement. Anyway, I'm also running across things I've never seen before, and I wanted to share them with you like I used to. I can't believe after 13 years (today!), we're still finding stuff in the records/tapes/etc. area!
Hey Ken! It's great to see you back on the wiki - I had wondered how you had been. New music is always fantastic; I don't have as much time to work on it as I used to, but I look forward to what you find!
And yes, the stuff that is out there seems endless. For example, this (if we have it on the wiki, I can't find it much to my frustration). Although mostly at this time of year I always want to find that (apparently mythical) "True Blue Miracle" 45rpm...
Hmmm. That looks like a promo cassette they gave away with a comic book. I'm pretty sure we don't have it. I can't even remember what all the sections were called now, but I guess it would be in International Sesame Street albums. I can't remember if certain countries got their own. I wonder why they said UK, because Australia has a whole bunch more SS stuff going back to the beginning. I'll have to keep looking.
Oh yeah, messing around eBay, I ran into stuff that might explain other stuff we were stumped on. Also, Amazon has a whole bunch of used SS records, and the neat thing is that even if an item is not currently for sale, they leave the entry up (with pictures!), so I've already seen some stuff that I've never seen before. So stay tuned, while I go dig out my notes!
1) This is a promo for 2 of the songs from Sesame Disco, but they're from 2 different 45's. So if you could make a place for it near the end of the 99000 series, that would be great. It's funny that Disco Frog is the long version, but Happiest is the short version. I still think that they never made the last 2 we've been looking for, but you never know!
2) This is an example of when they would use the Columbia CC 45's, but use a CRA on the label, with a number that's 1000 more (75007=76007). I've never seen an example of them changing these (the 45's from SS1) to a CRA on the cover, but we have seen them on the 45's from Havin' Fun with Ernie and Bert. I think they just used the original numbers, and then about the time they ran out of them, they took the 45's out of print altogether, because soon after this, the 99000 series started. I've heard of Disneyland Records doing that in the 1950's when they changed their WDL prefix to a DQ prefix on their animated soundtracks, and they used whatever they had until they printed some more of the new numbers, and sometimes the labels didn't match the covers.
3) Remember those singles from Sesame Street Fever that had a totally different numbering system? I finally figured out why. I give you this! Those 3 singles came in a boxed set, with: a Sesame Street Feverscope, a chart on how to do the Pigeon, a poster of the album cover, stickers, and a surprise Muppet doll! The pictures are great, but too bad some of the stuff is missing.
Hey Ken -- check out the forums -- we found a whole bunch more info on the Sight & Sound lyrics/cassette packs :)
1) We have this promo on the singles page already -- right at the end of the 99000 series as you suggested. There was also one for Sesame Country of all things.
2) Added an entry for that one and the label If we really want to show the cover there, we can re-use the one from the CC section as it is the same; I wasn't sure.
Ok. I added the box set. Since we don't know what number the 3rd album is, I left that one off for now, although I'm guessing it must be SFT79008 (assuming it was numbered in this sequence).
The other two singles are the SFT79006, and SFT79007.
I just found SFT79005 -- it's the Canadian "Special Disco Remix" of the entire LP. The labels actually say "Sesame Street Disco Fever"....
I think 79005, 79006, and 79007 are the set, so that means we have examples of all 3. I don't know if they were sold separately, but I see them a lot, along with the regular ones.
SFT 79005 is definitely the full LP - the label scans are in discogs and show it clearly, and also that it is a Canadian release, and a disco remix version. We actually mention it on the International Singles page, because we have promo singles from it. I've added it to the main SS Fever album page.
So it seems unlikely it was in a set with two singles that are not disco-remixes, and it would be a bit strange to re-use the number for just one of the singles and then use a different number on the other two (wouldn't it?)....
I swear I remember seeing a yellow label 45 of SS Fever and Trash, which would be the missing 2 songs, and the number would be in sequence with the other 2. There seems to be some confusion about numbering on these. Remember how some of them have a 1 in front of the number on the sleeve, but not the 45? I'll have to do some more digging.
Yeah. The regular 45s have two different numbers (with and without the 1). But I still think the 3rd "SFT" single must have been 79008 if it exists.
It looks to me like that seller on amazon had the regular single for Fever/Trash (with the orange label) and then the yellow ones for the other two. But it's not very clear, nor can we read what it says >_<
Oh wow. That's definitely a weird one. How utterly bizarre that it was released in Australia as well! I wish we knew how much of the original theme is included in the final song...
But yes, I think it could go with the other covers.
