I Alone
I didn’t necessarily plan it that way, but while I was assembling The Joy of Trash: Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place’s Definitive Guide to the Very Worst of Everything I noticed that almost every piece in it has a twin.
Jeremy Saville’s Loqueesha, for example, is accompanied by an equally aghast rant against his lesser known but every bit as deplorable directorial debut The Test, which is less a conventional film than a cinematic crime against women.
My article on the fascinatingly misguided animated special Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue, meanwhile has not one but two weird offspring in the form of pieces written specifically for the book about two other fascinating nadirs in anti-drug propaganda.
First I discovered that in addition to being the canine face of “Just Say No”, McGruff the Crime Dog inexplicably but delightfully put out whole LPs of anti-drug hysteria, most notably 1986’s McGruff’s Smart Kids, which, like all great works of art, is credited to The Advertising Council.
McGruff’s Smart Kids was designed for a very specific purpose: to scare the children of the mid 1980s out of using drugs and alcohol by wildly over-stating the danger of substances like marijuana.
It’s a blatant exercise in fear-mongering that’s also shockingly sophisticated and ambitious from a musical standpoint, with a sonic palette that moves confidently from the fluid jazz-rock of Steely Dan on “Alcohol” to the catchy, New Order-style New Wave of “Inhalants” even if the lyrics are every bit as dreadful and heavy handed as you would imagine from a project like this while the vocals are substantially worse.
They inexplicably had a guy with a McGruff rasp who could not sing for shit handle lead vocals on McGruff’s Smart Kids Album instead of a professional singer with a gruff voice.
Here’s the thing: nobody after 1987 was supposed to listen to McGruff’s Smart Kids Album, particularly not adults or professional pop culture writers. I’m not sure anyone was supposed to listen to McGruff’s Smart Kids Album at the time of its release either.
Yet because McGruff’s Smart Kids Album is such an unexpected sonic delight it is not at all unusual for the chorus to one of its songs to be running wild through my mind. When I do find myself humming the chorus to one of McGruff’s anti-drug anthems I wonder if I am literally the only person in the world thinking of that particular song on that particular day. Or week. Or month. Or year. Or ever.
Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue’s other companion piece in The Joy of Trash is Robert Evans’ 1981 anti-drug special Get High on Yourself, which the legendary producer, executive and raconteur hilariously and unforgettably described as the “Woodstock of the 1980s” in the film version of The Kid Stays in the Picture.
Unlike Woodstock, Get High on Yourself has been more or less completely forgotten, despite being a huge deal at the time of its airing and the cornerstone of an entire week of programming ostensibly designed to get viewers off drugs and high on themselves.
The cornerstone of Get High on Yourself is an all-star performance of the title song, an annoyingly infectious ditty written by Steve Karmen, a veteran composer of advertising jingles best known for writing “I Love New York”, the official song of New York.
For “We Are the World”, mega-stars/songwriters Lionel Ritchie and Michael Jackson joined forces with super-producer Quincy Jones. For Get High on Yourself, in sharp contrast, Robert Evans got a guy who could write a dynamite jingle for dog food or lite beer.
“Get High on Yourself” is consequently catchy as fuck, as the most infectious jingles invariably are, even if it is spectacularly inept at actually getting its message across.
Since watching “Get High on Yourself”, I have continued to enjoy drugs and alcohol but that infernal song has gotten stuck in my head the same way the dope anti-dope jams on McGruff’s Smart Kids Album have.
Now I am infecting you with these infernal compositions as well so that, at the very least, you can feel my pain as well as my morbid fascination.
You’re welcome and also I’m sorry.
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