V04-T10 Defreeze Walt Disney

.....[yaaaawwn...] So, is it February yet? Where was I? Oh, yeah. "A whole different kind of tribute" to Disney.

Volume 4: "THE LITTLE BROWN ONES ARE THORAZINE, GEORGE", track 10

• 01:30 "DEFREEZE WALT DISNEY" (Steve Westfield, Dave Montovani)
• performed by Pajama Slave Dancers
• original source: [see below] LP BLOOD, SWEAT AND BEERS Restless 72234-1 (US) 1988
• and my source: the same

.....First things first; while the album listed above is definitely the source I used for the compilation tape, the recording sounds very much like an earlier release by the same band on their own label with a different line-up. After using this track I discovered the two LP's released on their Pajamarama Records label, CHEAP IS REAL (PR881, 1985) and PAJAMA BEACH PARTY (PR883, 1986). Of the 18 songs on BLOOD, SWEAT AND BEERS, seven come from the 1985 album and four came from the 1986 album. However, between the 1985 album (where "DEFREEZE WALT DISNEY" originally appeared) and the 1986 album the band changed their drummer and bass player. The 1986 personnel are the ones also credited on the 1988 album. A subsequent Restless album, 1989's HEAVY PETTING ZOO, was followed by long stretches of few releases, mainly live recordings and re-recordings of songs like these from the 1980's. The question I can't seem to answer is whether the version I used is a re-recording with the second line-up or the 1985 recording with the original musicians going uncredited. For the sake of argument, the 1985 bassist was Jim-Joe Greedy and the drummer was Jon Long. In 1986 the bassist was Scott Blood and the drummer was Dirk Futon.

.....The song itself is about the persistent rumor that Walt Disney was cryonically frozen at the time of death until a cure for whatever killed him (it was lung cancer; the stress of trying to breathe induced a heart attack) could be found. Despite a total lack of any physical evidence even suggesting he was frozen there have been numerous people who, for almost four decades now, have claimed to "know" that his corpse is being kept in a secret chamber somewhere and was not cremated in the 1960's as public records indicate. This tenacious belief as been the subject of parody by everyone from "Robot Chicken" to "iCarly". I'd have to rewatch the first "Shrek" movie to see if it includes any allusions to the rumors, but most of its swipes at Disney are more specifically aimed at Michael Eisner.

.....The reason for defreezin' is, according to the song, to revive the Disney corporation and that "he sure was a nice old geezer". Ultimately, however, it was turning away from Walt's preoccupation with nature documentaries full of fabricated 'facts' and whites-only feature films that saved the company. While Walt was driven to animate only European fairy tales (Cinderella, Pinocchio, Snow White, etc.), from the mid-1980's on the animation drew on traditional stories from Europe (Beauty And The Beast, The Little Mermaid) and everywhere else (Mulan, Hercules, Aladdin, Brother Bear) as well. And the steady money really comes from Disney's cable channel, which has always had a more varied mix of ethnicities than the broadcast networks but without that fact ever being an issue. Walt was anything but "a nice old geezer" and I'm guessing if he could be revived today that an afternoon watching Euro-, Afro- and Sino-American kids interacting innocuously on a channel named for him would give him a cardiac arrest, stroke and aneurysm before sundown. Call it Stravinsky's revenge.

.....Speaking of other ethnicities, we're going to be turning Japanese in the next post. And no, it's not about the Vapors' song.