...in search of the greatest rock and roll moment in muppets history (vol. 2)...
…PART ONE CAN BE FOUND HERE…
“Just because you haven’t found your talent yet, doesn’t mean you don’t have one.”
-Kermit the Frog-
Well whew, phew, achoo and aloo. Halfway to the finish line and what have we discovered so far? There are muppets, and there are just puppets. Rock and roll is a delicate flower. A delicate flower covered in piss stains, sequins, snakeskin and clam sauce. We’ve seen stars and they’re just like us! We’ve seen Muppets imprisioned, Muppets emboldened, Muppets embiggened and Muppets explosioned. We got rickrolled. Buddy Rich a space genie.
Most importantly we intimately banged our heads, preparing ourselves to continue hunt onto this a very most important journey…
RATING — 9/10 boomboxes on full blast
Alright alright alright. I do not want to make this some cheap rap rock crossover like the judgement night soundtrack (so good) or walk this way with Run DMC but no article about Muppet music can be without the various brilliant works of hip hop art that dwabble through youtube so fugg it I’m dropping them in. Consider this your low rider break, grab your pumas and do a head spin ya woggler.
RATING – 7/10 stinky ass mezcals in shooter boots
The Alkaholiks were super underrated at the time and still are now. Grover similarly is a way underrated Muppet. Some of Grover’s ongoing bits are him working odd jobs, blue collar jobs, and customer service jobs which gives him some good alliance with the alcoholing. Also the wiki for Grover has his list of global names all of which are variances of super duper rad…
In Afghanistan, his name is Kajkoal,[7] meaning a bowl and refers to his mouth.
In Brazil, he is known as Cosmo, although the 2007 version maintains the name Grover.
In Czech Republic, he is called Bohouš.
In Egypt, he is called Gaafar.
In Germany, he is Grobi, a diminutive of the German grob, meaning "rough" or "rude".
In Gulf Cooperation Council, he is called Qarqor
In Indonesia, he is called Gatot.
In Israel, he is called Kruvi, which is a play on the word kruv ("cabbage").
In Latin America and Puerto Rico, he is known as Archibaldo.
In Norway, he is known as Gunnar and voiced by Harald Mæle.
In Pakistan, he is Banka, meaning immature or youthful.
In Poland, he is called Florek ("Sesame Street" only).
In Portugal, he is Gualter (Walter).
In South Korea, he is Geurobeo (그로버).
In Spain, he is called Coco, which is Spanish for coconut, referring to the shape of his head and mouth.
In Turkey, he is known as Açıkgöz, meaning "leery".
RATING — 6/10 fake drug deals gone well
Sticking with that Grover action we got a video capturing all those odd jobs he is rocking while Rick Ross raps his Hustlin’ song. I’m here mainly for the Rick Ross vs. Rick Ross fight, while Grover is here working absolutely any and every job. Personally I am on career number 44 at this point so I feel strong kinship with my blue buddy. Career #45 last night had me delivering plugs and music stingers to help a Florida comedian eat floor cake and break cuban cigars with iCarly & Kesha. I am four steps away from my first prop comedy show as Gallagher-3 (aka Guyagher). My twist is I load the stage with fruits and vegetables but forget the sledgehammer and struggle to break things, giving up early in the first set to go back to being a plug boy. #PlugLife
RATING — 6/10 squawking cawking chicken flap slapping quack claps
We head next to my beloved Bay Area to catch the Muppets doing some Humpty pronounced with an Umpty (coincidentally that is quite a Muppet thought) with our pal Grover singing Oakland legend Shock G’s great raps. This video is fire but loses a few chicken ass claps for only being a minute or so long.
RATING — 7/10 ya-yas, yo-yos, ye-yes and yowzas
Another one minute clip this time with Dr. Teeth as ODB. The wutang clan is filled with nothing but non-stop all-day rap legends, but ODB in his short time on earth and in the group proved to be the brightest most electric and shredding star of them all. I think this video gives respect to dirty as best as a Muppet possibly could.
RATING — 6/10 red eyed dry mouthed microwaved burritos and peanut butter pretzels
Afroman’s 2000 weed opus cut to a minute and trimmed to Bert & Ernie shenanigans. Afroman’s comedy music is a perfect match for the Muppets. Here is the same song but with Big Bird rapping it and it works almost as well. I was going to just include 4 music video recommendations in this article…but then I got high. I was going to talk about losing my job…but then I got high…you get it…i’m sorry…
RATING — 7/10 brass, silver, copper and steel monkeys
This is a super strong triple group of Muppets. Beaker + Animal + Swedish Chef is a guaranteed party. The berets, green leaves and turtlenecks really nail the good vibes as well, and another one minute clip to just give the right amount of amuse bouche. These three Mupps should start a podcast or a Chopped type cooking show. This video is unfortunately missing a Muppet breakdance though.
RATING — 8/10 bow wow wow yippie yo yippie yays
Rowlf was the first Muppet with a regular gig on network TV as a sidekick on the Jimmy Dean show. He was also apparently Jim Henson’s spiritual Muppet equivalent. While it is obvious to have the dog do snoop dogg, it is also the correct decision and the editor of this video has snoop morph into Rowlf and uses expert dog Muppets to drive the concept home. Strong mash.
RATING — 7/10 bottles full of bubb
Up until this point this list has been decidedly absent of my true spiritual Muppet equivalent Fozzie “fugging” Bear. Fozzie is rad for so many reasons, but mainly his ongoing entertainment comedy grind and terrible jokes. He has a catch phrase, his chosen attire is naked with a porkpie hat and a necktie, and we would be about 100,000 bad jokes less in the world without our great fozzies. This is probably the strongest lip sync edit of all these rap mashups too.
RATING — 7/10 ‘51 studebaker commanders
Keeping with the Fozzie and Dr. Dre ties, let’s get straight to the source. If you haven’t seen the great Laurence Fishbourne & Jeff Goldblum film this song is from, I highly recommend it. Dr. Dre is often a little too spinal and grumpy in his music videos so having Fozzy handle lines in this video is a super pleasant improvement. Also seeing DomDeluise get told off by Kermit, Fozzy almost get shot, and a full song edit gives this clip some extra yuks. Also a rap song with numbers makes this almost ok for the kiddos. Almost… YouTube user Benitcolo here has many many great Muppet rap edits if you want to keep working down this path you can see Ms. Piggy as MC Lyte, Cookie Monster as Sir Mix-A-Lot, Rawlf as Tupac and Kermit as Apache.
RATING — 7/10 motorcycle wheelies on the broken backs of demo derby debris
When ATLiens released when I was just starting high school, me and my friends pretty much would play that record on repeat while we played rock and roll racing on the SNES. At the time I thought that this was the best video game of all time and the best rap record of all time. And they are. Also Gonzo is an incredible Muppet, one of a kind, ate tires, dating chickens, non-binary, and a stunt worker on top of it all. Brief aside if you like stunts and rock you should watch the aptly titled Stunt Rock. It is stunts and rock.
RANKING — 5/10 falco fist pumps
Alright we near closer to the end of all this research. Time to celebrate with Beaker singing Ode to Joy all by his lonesome (multiplied by 6). Classical music was occasionally very punk rock. Some would claim Beethoven was the original punk rock. Some would not.
RATING — 8/10 red lentil mushroom kale shepherd's pie bakes
The Muppets would dabble in outright punk with this thrasher. The potatoes mosh so hard they become a pile of mash (gory!). In the vegetable and legume kingdom what is the most punk rock? I am unsure but the Dead Kennedy’s provided an album called Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables and it wouldn’t have been out of place to have seen Sid Knish open one of their early sets at Gilman. While we boat this gravy canal check out this vegetable guitar, listen to the vienna vegetable orchestra, celebrate your vegetarian rock stars, and give a vegetable a call. Asparagus is the most punk rock vegetable by the way. Asparagus and/or brussel sprouts. Stinky, they make you piss yellow, and they stand out in any meal.
RANKING — 9/10 low sparks of high heeled boys
Debbie Harry is a total badass. One of the only performers on this list to actually sing live with the Muppets she is also rocking a frilly sparkly purple sweatsuit and highheels. I think all the Muppets in this band are actually playing too. Amazing synth solos and a bunch of screaming frogs. On the scale of one to rock this is pretty close to the tops so far on this list.
RATING — 1.5 thumbs kind of pointing up but not really, but then they tango
Let’s go old school. Some of the original Muppets were just gloved hands. I really want this to be better but it is just elevator music and some hands kind of flopping around. But true genius must start somewhere and I would say the silver lining is all the thumb wrestling you are doing now is preparing you for a battle with Roman Reigns in 2029 at the Scranton Wrestlemania.
RATING — 7/10 doomy anxious teeth chattering muttered sputterings
Existential dread set to jazz beats and bells. I’m pretty sure that is the conceptual start of all proto-post-puke-indie-prog-grim-beat-ska-pronk bands. The music in this one is done by electronic music pioneer Raymond Scott a true genius whose work helped score dozens of cartoons, but whose legacy was closer to Stockhausen & Zappa that to Bugs Bunny and the Wil E. Coyote.
RATING — 7/10 knee highed sock and shocked monsters
I think I got to bundle a bunch of these monster ones together. This got a sequel. And another sequel. And definitely was an antecedent for the great MahnaMahna. Smoke machines, dancing slinkies and nonsense words are all staples of classic rock and roll.
RATING – 4/10 roly poly cave trolly goalies
Glow worms are super cool. They dangle from New Zealand & Mozambique caves and give you real life avatar energy.
They are super metal also. They inject poison into slugs and snails, liquifying the slug/snail meat and leave sticky slimy hangings from cave ceilings to entrap the insects.
RATING — 6/10 grootslang hydras lilypad hopping skunk apes
This is not a rock song. But it is an awesome song and deserves to be on the list. Also it led to some version of a rock and roll moment. In 1996 in Whanganui, New Zealand, a 21-year-old man burst into the radio station Star FM and took the manager hostage, demanding that Kermit the Frog's rendition of the song be played. This is basically the plot to the 1994 movie Airheads so basically the dude ate a glow worm, watched airheads, and then set forth to save the world with the acoustic stylings of Kermit & Paul Williams. Bravo!
RATING — 8/10 translucent sheets and grimy treats
And maybe your nightmare too at this point if you have made it through this entire article? When Alice Cooper toured in 2020 his tour was titled Make America Sick Again. His platform was to Get Brian Johnson back in AC/DC; add Lemmy to Mount Rushmore; and to put Groucho Marx on the $50 bill. This video is one of the only Muppet musical ghost videos I found.
RATING — 8/10 shotgun hammerships sawdust and steel smokes
Statler & Waldorf lampoon the Swedish Chef as he cover’s Black Betty by Ram Jam whose lead singer Bill Bartlett was pretty Muppet like. If Statler & Waldorf were to lampoon this article this would be the time where they lambast me to include another dozen or so links and keep going….
RATING — 3/10 tea cookies in a doilied tin
I’ve complained about the Baz Luhrman Elvis movie before and will continue to do so. You are telling a story about ELVIS. One of the most alien human beings ever. A man who would make women and men weep and pee their pants and pass out when he performed. He of TCB, and graceland, and endless vegas. And you make a movie about his boss? Seriously people I am all for creative innovation, but if you want to be innovative why not take a hologram Elvis impersonator and send him to mars and broadcast a 40 year sitcom set on the ship's grand voyage and featuring a live alien laugh track? I don’t need the story of Bill in accounting’s mission to get HR payroll set for the folks laminating jumpsuits. But even that would be better than Tom Hanks playing a cackling nose disguised as the Col. Tom Parker…
RATING – 6/10 studio 54’s at Area51 down the street from Route 66
OK deep breath only got two more here. Diana Ross is a different sort of rock and roll. Her Muppet hangover is sexy singing while getting chased by different rainbowed dancing birds. Maybe I should have made this list, the search for the MOST Muppet music Muppet clip, instead of focusing on rock and roll? This wouldn’t win that either but it does win my heart.
10/10 – espresso dipped cookies and candy canes
SO this song began its life as a story called Starfish and PeePee. Prince is currently the only stranger whose passing led me to have multiple days worth of tears. My grandma used to work with his bodyguard and would always tell me to go to his parties at Paisley Park. Me being an idiot kid did not believe that was a true actual option even though my Grandma insisted that it was, that he played the parties, and that there would be pretty boys and girls there. So even though I lived a handful of blocks away from Prince's house (which oddly enough was kitty corner from a blank country road Target) I spent my high school making hunting graffiti on local park restrooms and trying to get high by inhaling cigars. When I went to college the first pretty girl I met at a party asked me where I was from. I told her Minnesota, and she said “Oh man, I bet we crossed paths. Did you used to go to Prince’s parties?”. Needless to say she did not spend much more time talking to me and I immediately called my grandma and apologized. The moral of the story is ALWAYS TRUST YOUR GRANDMA. And you can also always trust Prince to be the best.
This video is an automatic 10/10 because anything with Prince is an automatic 10/10.
"EAT DRUMS!"
-Animal The Muppet”
With much further ado, but certainly a bit of ado and some adon’t for good measure….the top nine most rockingest Muppet performances on a scale of rock to awesome we have…
9.Alice Cooper & The Muppets - "Welcome To My Nightmare"
8.Sid Knishes and his Mosh Pit-tatoes
7.Ernie and Bert go BRUTAL
6.Heavy Metal Cookie Monster - "Galoshes"
5.The Muppet Show - Buddy Rich vs Animal Drum Battle
4.Debbie Harry & The Muppet Band ~ Call Me
3.Rock n Roll Monster
2.Prince " Starfish and Coffee" with the Muppets
1.Riverbottom Nightmare Band - Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas
Wocka Wocka Wocka!
GENIUS. Fun to read, informative, funny, thought-provoking and worth sharing. An excellent compilation and a great ride. THANK YOU for making this!