So recently in the classic clips on YouTube thread we were talking a little bit about the two Chrissy's (of the Alphabeats and Monotones) and how the writers most likely didn't care too much about consistency/minutia on such minor characters back then.
But it seems they were a little consistent on the names of one-shot characters who were not referred to by name in their own segments.
I remember when I first saw Count It Higher: Great Music Videos from Sesame Street, I thought it was great that they cared to remember that the singers of The Ten Commandments of Health were named Dr. Thad and the Medications, as listed when the song was included as an album track in Born to Add. And until then I didn't really think about whether they were used in other segments, but at that point I did wonder.
Album releases of "(I Can't Get No) Co-Operation" list the singers as Mick Swagger and the Sesame Street Cobblestones, while Rock & Roll is slightly consistent by referring to them as just the Cobblestones. But the lead singer didn't need to be named. After all, the group they parody is not called "Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones".
I wonder about Bruce Stringbean and the S. Street Band. Bruce Stringbean was only in two numbers, "Born to Add" and "Barn in the USA", which came over a decade apart. He doesn't look too different, just as different as a character would between that time, not to mention as different as the average Anything Muppet appears in multiple segments. It's the same AM, the same hair, the same voice, and while he's not wearing the leather jacket, it's the same shirt. But I wonder, if the Born to Add album didn't list the same group for both songs (or if I hadn't seen the track and singer listing first), would I register that they were the same character? With the song being in a rerelease of an album that had another song where Christopher Cerf did a Bruce Springsteen parody, I wouldn't be surprised if they decided to just call them the same thing. It's also possible that they chose to do another Springsteen parody and somebody remembered "Born to Add" and decided to bring that character back.
While not a one-shot, it is amazing that the green Anything Muppet known as Tony was identified by name when Gordon introduced an airing of "Lulu's Back in Town", and was soon given that name on the style guide. And I think I recently read that the name was used in another sketch.
Unfortunately, poor Max Monster didn't get the consistency, though I don't blame them since until recently the fans didn't even know about this. He appeared with that name in an episode that came shortly before "Comb Your Face", where the script just called him "monster" (and album releases call him "a monster"), likely they didn't decide to use him until taping (and maybe they put him in at the last minute in an attempt to make him a recurring character), and then on the video Monster Hits he was called Furline Husky.
I wonder if those various groups were named in the scripts or if the names first appeared on the album track listings (or home videos where they had on-screen captions identifying them). It is a little cool that they did that as opposed to just listing them all as "The Anything People" or "Anything Muppets" like some album tracks do (when I first saw the term listed on albums, they were for songs I had not been familiar with seeing and wondered what an Anything Muppet was).
I wonder, if the songs had appeared on an official album, if they would have applied names to characters like the cowboys who sang the two "Try, Try Again" songs or the monster who sang "Disco Toothbrush" or the shark who sang "Pearl White Teeth" or the baritone who sang "Ah, For the Joys of the Countryside".
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