You all know the bit I’m talking about - it’s been used everywhere from the main theme to “Honey, I shrunk the kids” to a manic interlude in “Rhythm Section Want Ad” on They Might Be Giants’ first album, to the bassline of “Bus to Beelzebub” by Soul Coughing. It seems to be one of those melodies that I’ve always been familiar with; I swear it’s been used in numerous Warner Brother cartoon shorts.
In my mind it’s always associated with either factory-like imagery (it’s easy to imagine pistons pumping and machines putting rivets into a giant robot) or as something menacing/hellish. Or both.
Anyone know what I’m talking about, or where it originated?
I know exactly what you’re talking about…and the fact I can’t locate it is driving me batty. Here’s to hoping I find it or someone beats me out with, you know, actual knowledge.
Yeah, Raymond Scott was amazing. His electronic works are insane.
In fact, he’s the originator of about a million of those little tunes that you’ve heard a million times before. His “the melonball bounce,” originally composed for a sprite jingle in the fifties, recently showed up in a tic-tacs commercial.
I’m definitely going to check out some more of his work.
Looking at Wikipedia’s Raymond Scott page, I noticed that the use of “Powerhouse” was uncredited in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. I recall a few years borrowing the movie from a friend just to see if I could find the origin song in the credits and was quite perturbed when I hit a dead end; I knew James Horner (born in 1953) couldn’t possibly have written the music that was used in all the old Warner cartoons. Turns out he stole it, and got sued.
Horner is infamous for lifting themes and phrases from other works. I never knew he got sued for it, though.
Whenever anybody mentions Raymond Scott or the old Warner Bros. cartoon music, I have to recommend Bug Music by Don Byron. It contains some of my all-time favourite interpretations of his music, along with some excellent Duke Ellington and John Kirby pieces. If you want to explore other music in the same genre, this is an excellent place to start.
I would just add that (as has been pointed out before) the “Powerhouse” is the kind of music you would expect to hear if Rube Goldberg actually built one of his contraptions.
Raymond Scott was one of the few musicians of the 20th Century I’d dare to call “genius.” His work was remarkably influential, as it foreshadowed lounge music and exotica as well as electronica, and of course the film and cartoon scoring he was most associated with. Carl Stalling borrowed liberally from his work for the old Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies cartoon shorts, and he went on to inspire innovators from Esquivel to Frank Zappa to Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi.
No. The 2 commercials were from the end of 2005. The model was doing unlikely things with them with her tongue, such as juggling them and creating impossibly high single stacks.
