’90s Cartoon Music, Bro

And some ’80s too. Notice how high-quality the music and themes from these shows were. They managed to explain the premise of the whole show and plot within a minute and mix it with some top-notch songwriting. Don’t believe me? Just look at this stuff! It really gives “Japanime” a run for its OST money.

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King Arthur and the Knights of Justice – This is the most metal cartoon theme of all time. Blazing dual guitars, catchy chorus, chord modulation going into the solo, etc. all in under a minute. There’s not much else to say except: can a punk like you handle it?

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Denver the Last Dinosaur – Are you thinking that maybe Denver is merely a hallucination of the kids in this show? Look at them, they’re some slackers! Wearing sunglasses in the shade, bmx-ing and skateboarding. They’re some suburban wastrels who are up to no good.

And since when did teenage kids have unending freedom to do whatever they wanted without parental supervision? Before the internet, is when! Now I don’t know about you, but if a bunch of my hippie/slacker kids were chilling in a tree house with some rock-star dinosaur every day, I’d have them sent to boarding-school.

Admittedly this song is pretty good. It rocks way hard. Way to go, Denver. I’m assuming he wrote the soundtrack.

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Bucky O’Hare – Don’t show this to people unless you’re itching to see some seizures. To be honest, this hombre was never a big Bucky fan, but credit for original/crazy theme songs needs to be given where it’s due. Because these lyrics are nuts. Nuts, as in, they’re nonsensical, but also clever. And that would be clever in a nerdy way that’s cool to kids who have no capacity to critically comprehend what they’re seeing on the ad-box.

Also, notice how badly the songwriters sweat Def Leppard‘s “Pour Some Sugar On Me” and Queen‘s “We Will Rock You”. Can’t you just imagine the groupies throwing their bras on-stage to this tune?

Also, this song is like … drugs.

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She-Ra – This one really demonstrates some imagination on behalf of its creators. This is the textbook example of a show that’s phoned-in. It’s the exact same show as He-Man, but the protagonist has boobs.

I’m not kidding, this show is pretty much identical, down to the intro, plot and characters. Unfortunately, the villain is nowhere as cool/dumb as Skeletor (which makes me think the real reason to watch He-Man was seeing Skeletor in action). Those villains are so one-dimensional, and She-Ra’s allies aren’t even hot. *Snore*

See, the reason none of us normal folk never have amazing secrets revealed to us is because we never raise swords and say nutty stuff. Or if we do, there’s always some mean Skeletor-like punk (or law enforcement) around to defeat us before we can unveil our potential. It’s a cruel world, indeed.

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Hammer Man – Uh, yeah. I recall watching this show as a wee boy on the parlor floor of a Bed & Breakfast in Scotland, and one of the women who ran the place walked by as the theme song was playing. She gave me a weak smile that was clearly hiding pain and sadness; an expression that only the Hammer Man theme song ever could summon — a mix of pity, guilt and horror.

The best part has gotta be the end where the cartoon Hammer and the real Hammer are pointing back and forth, (not so) humbly dousing one another with “props”. And yes, it’s that Hammer.

~ by chaosrexmachinae on March 12, 2008.