The Grasshoppers

I've got a weird record for you tonight. It's Sing Along with the Grasshoppers. 

But, but, but, that's just a rip off the Chipmunks!

To which i reply: among like a dozen other groups. And, Dave and Alvin and Simon and Theodore were really just a musical version of Chip and Dale, which evolved out of the mice from Cinderella, which used the relatively simple concept of recording slow audio and speeding it up. Which is to say, it's hard to copyright the idea that you can playback recorded audio at a faster speed. I mean it's the standard technique for the person on the other end of a phone conversation from at least the 40s.

Is Eddie Maynard and his Orchestra better than Ross Bagdasarian and his Orchestra? 

No?

Can you even tell the difference? 

Nooo???

Does it matter? 

Noooooo?????

Everybody sounds pretty much the same if you record them in a low octave at 1/4 speed and play it back 2 times faster. Need i even mention Sir Mix-A-Lot's "Buttermilk Biscuits?"

Sadly, there aren't any funky beats on this Spinorama knock off children's classic. Plus, i'm kinda freaked out by the story about stomping on them because they won't sing (i have an active imagination),  and don't even get me started on feeding girls fruit or popcorn to get them to kiss you.

I guess i'm kind of stuck on one particular question, and that question is who in their right mind would hire lawyers and spend all their money trying to defend their copyright for something like this?

The answer is no one. Bagdasarian was the piano player in Rear Window, wrote an actual hit song for Dean Martin, and first uttered the phrase "oo ee oo aa aa, ting, tang, walla walla bing bang." Eddie Maynard doesn't even have a wikipedia page, and even i can't pretend it's the same Grasshoppers that Ben Orr played in before meeting Ric Ocasek. It'd be funny if it were, though.

Once upon a time, some musicians were so hard up for a gig that they just rerecorded songs from David Seville and the Chipmunks to sell to parents who wanted their kids to go be entertained in a different room for 35 minutes. And being the kindhearted soul that he was, Bagdasarian just shook his head and said have at it losers, you're not exactly cramping my style. Where's my hula hoop?

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