Channel Frederator Blog

Earlier this month, I blogged about Alex Budovsky’s music video for “Last Time at Clerkenwell” by The Real Tuesday Weld. At the time, I didn’t realize that Stephen Coates (the guy behind TRTW) was such a heavy duty fan of animation. The music video above is “The Show Must Go On” which was made by the small Brooklyn animation house Giant Squid Eye Productions. Giant Squid Eye is George Fort (director) and Monica Smith (producer). (Recently, George worked on backgrounds for over-the-top action fest Superjail—coming to Adult Swim this fall. And Monica was color key designer for Supernormal on CITV. A super coincidence?)

Of interest to animation history buffs is the new score Coates composed for Winsor McCay’s The Centaurs. The Centaurs was an unfinished animated film that only survives in fragments. McCay worked on it between 1918 and 1921. Most of the completed footage deteriorated due to poor storage. I think it’s really, really [Read more…]

I’ve seen Alex Budovsky’s mesmerizing Last Time at Clerkenwell at a number of screenings recently, and each time I’ve been exposed to its boppy music, it’s been stuck in my head for days.

The music is by The Real Tuesday Weld (aka Stephen Coates). (Budovsky made two animated music videos for Coates. The first one, Bath Time in Clerkenwell, is equally unforgetable.)

It reminded me of another award-winning animated short with an extremely catchy tune (and a bird protagonist): John Dilworth’s The Dirdy Birdy. (The “ah ha ha ha ho ho ho”s starts at :46.)

Music is “The Big Laugh” from Comedy Short Cuts. Composed by Jürgen Schlachter.

[Note: NSFW due to bird butt!]

So…which of these toons wins First Place for “music most likely to permanently burn itself into your brain”?

—Anne D. Bernstein