Sesame Street: Sesame Disco

Album Review

By the time the late '70s rolled around, everything had to have a disco element to it. This included breakfast cereals, eyeglasses, and shoe polish, so why not Sesame Street? As decades passed, this boiling soup of disco dancing simmered itself back down to a normal level of popularity, leaving relics such as this amid wrinkled photographs of people wearing strange shiny outfits. Perhaps not surprisingly, the entire disco groove actually suits the Muppets from this popular children's show perfectly. Nobody looks better in disco duds than Bert and Grover, and in fact the whole pursuit of happiness via shaking one's booty seems just about right for this crew. All this and more is displayed in the color cover photography, while more pictures are featured in a gatefold that is for diehard fans of the show only. Visuals aside, the music on this record is wonderful. The session band is loaded with players who sound like they are right off disco sessions, while others in the cast play with enthusiastic fervor, as if their heads were full of jingling coins based on the sounds they were making. After a typically saccharine opening of "What Makes Music?," things get down to business with "Me Lost Me Cookie at the Disco," one of those moments from this show that deliciously borders on outright lunacy. The second side is totally killer, featuring Kermit in two show-stoppers, one of them a disco version of "Bein' Green," probably the one thing the world really needed in terms of disco music at that point in time. Oscar the Grouch also comes on strong with "Doin' the Trash." While this title has yet to find its way into the cartons DJs haul around to their nightclub sets, it wouldn't be a bad idea.