"Electricity," by Schoolhouse Rock

From the archive of educational songs comes this entry to Spoken Interludes. I offer you the Schoolhouse Rock classic "Electricity!"

I love Schoolhouse Rock (it was my favorite part of ABC Saturday morning cartoons). The Schoolhouse Rock segments always seemed to be paired with a commercial for Tootsie Pops and the Arbor Day Foundation (you know the one...with a red bird, perhaps a cardinal, chirping around some nonsense that "Trees are Teriffic!").

"Electricity!" is a bonus because it features TWO spoken interludes:

A generator is a machine that contains a powerful magnet that creates a magnetic field. When wires are rotated rapidly through this field, then a current of electricity is produced.

Now, if we only had a superhero who could stand here and turn the generator real fast, then we wouldn't need to burn so much fuel to make . . . electricity

and

Electricity at rest is called static electricity
Like in the winter, wearing a heavy coat
You get a shock off the doorknob
Or you scrape across a carpet
And sneak up on your very best friend
And zap him on the ear with a shock of -
Electricity, electricity

"Dressed in Black," by The Shangri-Las

Like many of the songs added to the blog this summer, I heard this one while holding a paint brush, listening to WMSE (recurring theme, right?)

In this entry, we showcase the Shangri-Las again. Two years after the Shangri-Las had a hit with "Leader of the Pack," the band released "Dressed in Black"

They said he was much too wild for me
They said I didn't know what I was getting myself into
They said a whole lotta things
But there are some things they could never understand
That a girl can tell by the way a boy holds her hand
Or maybe they thought we were too young to be in love this way
Well, I don't care what people say
This girl's love is getting stronger with each passing day

This song features a bonus, second interlude:

I climb the stairs
I shut the door
I turn the lock
Alone once more
And no one can hear me cry
No one

Possibly the darkest entry on this blog so far...

"Mrs. Bailey's Barbeque and Grill," by Sleepy

While making my way to Minnesota last week, I was listening to an archived show from WMSE's "The Rock Ride" (3:00-6:00PM, Monday afternoon, streaming archives available). Again, another find from the 1960s, this time from the British isles.

This entry is from an obscure British band, Sleepy, called "Mrs. Bailey's Barbeque and Grill":

Reduce a half pint of red wine by boiling it for five minutes.
A sprig of rosemary
Six crushed peppercorns
And some celery salt
Add an ounce of flour into an ounce of butter
And stir while the sauce thickens
Gently take four raisins and place them on pieces of bread
Rubbed with garlic and fried with oil

Its inclusion is a bit random, somewhat incomplete, however, it sounds like a good recipe (or at least a start...)!