Playhouse Muppet Videos

[Cookie3001]

I'm always looking for more Muppet videos. I ordered a "Don't eat the Pictures VHS" that is arriving this week but I still want more. I have decided that this weekend I will take all my money and go to every used video store in my area and see what I can find. The rarest videos I have gotten this year (besides Don't Eat the Pictures) are the Jim Henson Home Video release of "Hey Cinderella", the Random House release of "Learning About Letters" and the "Best of The Muppet show" VHS with the Elton John, Julie Andrews and Gene Kelly.

 

[Blue Frackle]

I cannot recommend this guy's channel enough:

 

[minor muppetz]

Earlier last year when Frank Oz was promoting Muppet Guys Talking and talked about how the film could only be purchased via the official website, one of the things he said regarding his reasoning was that the Muppets were often unconventional.

In a way, these videos do kinda reflect that "unconventional" aspect, in that most of them are hosted by different characters and have different settings, but also many of them are different in terms of the opening/closing music. All the ones I saw as a kid began with an instrumental of the theme and ended with the fifth season closing theme, which I expected to be the case with all of them. After seeing more of them online over the years, I've seen that The Kermit and Piggy Story has a more romantic-sounding instrumental of the theme and Children's Songs and Stories with the Muppets has a music box-sounding rendition of the theme, while Country Music with the Muppets doesn't have the theme at all (starting with the very first clip before getting to the linking footage and having audio of the closing number playing over the credits).

But even when the theme is included, there are sometimes differences. While Rock Music has the closing theme, it opens with an instrumental of "Tenderly". While Muppet Weird Stuff does open and close with instrumentals, the opening music sounds different from the instrumental theme music heard at the beginning of The Muppet Revue and Muppet Moments (I think it might be the solo piano version from the Kaye Ballard episode at the start of Muppet Weird Stuff). Rowlf's Rhapsodies starts with a grand piano rendition of the theme (now that I think of it, that might be the same music used in The Kermit and Piggy Story) but while it does have a usual closing theme, it uses the version from the third and fourth season (I feel like the fifth season closing, with Lips' trumpet solo, is more fitting for the videos where something really wild happens during the closing credits sequences). And I recently found that Muppet Treasures doesn't have any versions of the theme, either, instead opening and closing with an instrumental of "There's No Business Like Show Business". I would have thought that one would have opened and closed with instrumentals of the regular theme, considering it's one of the videos to not focus on a theme.

Makes me wonder what music is used for the opening and close of Fozzie's Muppet Scrapbook. The usual instrumentals for the opening and closing? A closing theme that isn't the fifth season (maybe the first closing theme, which isn't in any of the other videos?)? Some comical-sounding variation of the music? Completely different music?

 

[Cookie3001]

I cannot recommend this guy's channel enough:

Joshua Gillespie is the best

 

[Blue Frackle]

I'm glad he's back and making videos.

 

[Cookie3001]

Here, I found Rock Music with The Muppets on Dailymotion
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1ysv0v

 

[LittleJerry92]

You’re welcome for that.

 

[Cookie3001]

You’re welcome for that.

did you post that?

 

[LittleJerry92]

Yup.

 

[Blue Frackle]

The intro of that is pure A E S T H E T I C.