Schoolhouse

I recently bought the Schoolhouse Rocks! Rocks compilation (and by "recently" I mean a few months ago). Mostly, the cover songs on the album are pretty faithful to the spirit of the original songs. For example, Pavement's version of "No More Kings" is straightforward (except maybe for some stuff at the end). As is Folk Implosion's of "I'm Just a Bill," despite being a bit more uptempo.

There's one song, though, that was weird even without a cover: "Little Twelvetoes".

First off, I'm not quite sure why they even included this song on the album. Does anyone remember this song? If you were to look back at your days of watching Saturday morning cartoons (when they resurrected the Cartoons on ABC in the mid-late 90s), which ones stand out? For me, the top three are probabaly the aforementioned "I'm Just a Bill," "Conjunction Junction," and maybe "Electricity," among others.

But it sure as shit isn't "Little Twelvetoes." I mean, I forgot all about the song until I started listening to Chavez and their cover of it.

Maybe it's because I'm still not quite sure what this song is about. I'm still not convinced it's an educational song. I think technically the purpose it to teach multiplication tables, especially (duh!) 12.

Except it doesn't do that. All it really does, in fact, is set up some imaginary system where some hillbilly finds an alien (I think) and says, "Well, if someone DID have 12 fingers, it WOULD be easier to multiply by 12, because they PROBABLY MIGHT have invented two other digits besides the ones we have already to stand for the other two numbers."

Confused already? Me too. I guess that might make for some freaky kind of science fiction scenario on an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. But how are kids supposed to learn anything from that?

The song doesn't really do anything beyond that. It's telling kids that they might as well stick to 10s instead of 12s because it will never get any easier, they will never have 12 toes.

Looking at the lyrics, the only time the song actually attempts to teach anything is at the very end, when it goes through the 12s:

One times 12 is twelve, two times 12 is 24.
Three times 12 is 36, four times 12 is 48, five times 12 is 60.
Six times 12 is 72, seven times 12 is 84.
Eight times 12 is 96, nine times 12 is 108, ten times 12 is 120.
Eleven times 12 is 132, and 12 times 12 is 144. WOW!

The problem is, it only goes through the numbers once. And there's a pinball machine in space. And the guy singing in the original song doesn't have a melody attached to this part, he just kinda says it.

If any one part of the song should have a better hook, it's this one. It's not really catchy, which it should be is to get kids to memorize it.

Which brings me to my point: Chavez and their outstanding version of the song, which is anything but.

I'm not sure if they picked the song or if whoever was organizing the comp told them to do "Little Twelvetoes," but either way it's an appropriate song for them, simply because they, like the song, were much forgotten about as a band.

And the more I listen to this song compared to the original version, I'm amazed at how they can get it to sound so different while keeping essentially the same structure. For example, the chorus is almost exactly the same.

It's the subtle differences, though, that make the song stand out from all the others in the compilation: The creepy backing vocals in said chorus. The main guitar riff. The part right after the chorus where they sing "Please come back again" and return from a piano riff to guitars.

Most important is the breakdown interlude in the middle where they go over the multiples of 12. It sounds like the alien being is actually transmitting the times tables down from his spacecraft, whereas in the original version it is all too obvious that its actually the voice of the narrator (mild-mannered jazz/folk musician Bob Dorough).

Like I said earlier, the other cover songs on the album don't sound too much different in tone from the originals (meaning, they're all pretty happy-sounding). This Chavez song, though, just obliterates any good-natured feel that I might get from watching the little hillbilly boy romp around in the original.

Instead, I get the same feeling I get when I'm listening to Coast-to-Coast A.M.-a little mysterious, a little wonderment and a little bit of incredulity.

Not that that's a bad thing-in fact, it's the very reason why its the best cover on the album. Few other things (on the covers album or off) do such things to your state of mind.