Customer Reviews

The Flintstones - Modern Stone-Age Melodies - Original Songs From The Classic TV Show Soundtrack

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What we have here is a CD of songs from the Flintstones television series. If you love the Flintstones as much as I do, you will love this CD. Most of the songs here will be familiar to anyone who grew up watching Flintstones reruns over and over again. In between the songs, they have inserted instrumental background music from the show. I love this CD, but there are several notable songs that are not included. There is nothing from the episodes featuring Hot Lips Hannigan, Ann-Margrock or the Swedish musicians. There is also one song that doesn't belong here, in my opinion, which is the awful "They'll Never Split Us Apart" from an Alice in Wonderland TV special. Despite those criticisms, I would recommend this CD to fans of the Flintstones.

One of the legendary lost albums of my college years was a "Flintstones Greatest Hits" that we were never able to track down despite much diligent searching. Because of this I decided to take matters into my own hands and employ the decidedly lo-fi technique of taping them directly from the television, something I had perfected in earlier years with Monkees songs. I used the taped songs as fillers in album or compilations that I made for friends and they were met with unanimous enthusiasm. Years later I was in a local Camelot Music store and happened across a cassette of this disc in the childrens section. I quickly snapped it up and wore it out over the next few months playing it in the car for my kids. After the tape died I found a copy of the CD, and I have yet to wear it out despite much use. This is a great collection, almost perfect except for a few ill- conceived songs like "Dino The Dinosaur" from the later years. This disc is packed with extras and is worth a complete listen if only for the rarities that sometimes follow as much as 20 seconds after a particular song ends. What made me write this review? Tonight my daughter and two friends did a dance and gymnastics bit in the school variety show. The song they chose? Why "The Bedrock Twitch" of course.

And after all, who isn't a fan of the Flintstones? The original theme song for the show is here, including some lyrics that didn't make it into the final show. Very interesting.

Whether there truly IS a "Rock And Roll Heaven" is not a point of discussion here; suffice it to say, Bill Hanna's (and whoever was the vocalist for the song) place is assured there, merely on the basis of "The Bedrock Twitch." Absolutely: the finest cartoon "Elvis impersonation" existant. And BTW, the (sic) "BC-52's" version from that atrocious movie is an abomination. As is usually the case, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it..."

That the piece-of-junk "Honeymooners" knockoff "The Flintstones" lasted six seasons was a tribute to the barrenness of ABC's schedule, especially when the only decent thing about Hanna-Barbera cartoons was their music, which we have in this tie-in to a now forgotten feature tentpole, in the cues and occasional musical numbers that waded among the unfunny lines and canned laughs. One not knowing better would think it an animated variety show, especially as Bill and Joe snagged famous cameos like Ann-Margret who likely aren't here due to rights problems. They somehow got Hoagy Carmichael (who is here) to swallow hard and emit this nonsense with Alan "Fred Flintstone" Reed:

Hoagy: Do you want this allegro, pianissimo or andante? (This would be great in a "what-does-not-belong-here" question on a reading-comprehension test.)

Fred: Look, I don't want to talk about Italian food. Play!

Then Fred mauls "Star Dust" with dummy lines, which must have gotten Hoagy thinking hard about his royalties; happily Bix' great friend comes back with a nice bit of fluff called "Yabba-Dabba-Doo!TM" (well, that's how it's spelled). Bill and Joe share most of the song credits, which in Joe's case is as honest as Irving Mills sidling up to the Duke; but Bill Hanna wrote songs for Harman-Ising shorts and sang in barbershop quartets, and he unquestionably penned at least some lyrics to Hoyt Curtin's sprightly, pleasing melodies. Thinking of Hoyt Curtin makes one realize that most TV series of the day (heck, of any day) could have survived on just their theme songs; by rights "The Jetsons" should have been a two-minute show.

Somewhere along the way the successive owners and distributors of H-B's forlorn properties (Bill and Joe, Columbia's old Screen Gems, Taft Broadcasting, Great American Broadcasting, Mouth of the South, Time Warner) rightly thought them garbage and discarded production elements; despite this the album has decent sound and reveals the surprise that the infernal laugh tracks were laid down last, not that omitting them would have made Fred and the Gang any funnier. A demerit to Rhino for not acknowledging or indexing the cues, and for including two minutes of "dead air" on the last track.