This is the worst kids' record that I've ever heard, and that's saying a lot. It's just so bad, it's difficult to put into words. I bought it because I thought the cover was sort of cool (even that falls apart; the longer you stare at it, the more problems you find with the art...for example, the dragon's tail, and his absence of back legs), which is never a great reason to buy an album, of course.
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| "Remember your complete involvement as you listened to your favorite tales?" Yikes. Remember the complete revulsion when you listened to this album? |
It's so obscure, KidStuff couldn't even be bothered to print any details about it on the sleeve, much less the year it was even made. It wasn't even on Discogs (it is now; I had to add it myself), and I suspect there was a good reason why. Most likely, I've brought back an unholy power that was supposed to stay buried forever. And for that, I'm sorry.
You won't be surprised to learn that the times given on the labels (the only info about this LP that we even get) are incorrect. KidStuff (really should be a backwards "S" there, but who cares) often credited their ridiculousness to the highfalutin title of "The Kid Stuff Repertory Co.," which in this case is just two men, a woman, a piano player straight out of a silent movie theater, and lots of accents that go all over the place from minute to minute (and some occasional ad-libbing). I'd be shocked if there was any organized method behind this "production" other than just buying a tape from amateur theatre students, or somebody's brother-in-law. I say "buying" a tape, but most likely, it was "trading for a sack of Big Macs, or possibly rolling papers."
My favorite line? "The dragon's tail whipped around his body like a whip." The whole thing somehow drags on for just over 28 minutes of your life--which you will never, ever get back--and the last few minutes are even extended by letting the piano player improvise and vamp endlessly (these are listed as two separate songs on the label, but that's wrong too).
The worst problem though, is the story, which makes no sense. There's a prince, whose father is a king (duh), but there's another princess somewhere, whose father is also a king (also duh), and they have the same voice, so meanwhile the listener (me) is thinking they are siblings, and perhaps don't know it? Eww. (Insert George Lucas joke here.) There's a dragon that's eaten nearly everyone, and the prince finds out that there are a bunch of random animals inside of each other (you read that right) like nesting dolls, that are "the source of the dragon's power," and he sets out to fight the dragon (hand-to-hand, I might add).
All of this confused me so much, I did what I do for nearly everything else that confuses me: consult Wikipedia, who tells me that "The Dragon and the Prince" (KidStuff obviously reversed it so they could retain the toy rights) is a Serbian fairy tale (so you know it's going to be extra happy). The synopsis sort of matches, in that there are various (but different) animals inside of one another, and they are the source of the dragon's power, who must be burst open...only in the KidStuff version, it's not very clear at all (and there's a second dragon for some reason at one point) how this works out, or even what happens to the dragon. They just stop talking about him. Also, the prince has to get three sticks that open a prison somehow, and all of the people that the dragon has eaten are captured there (alive, because reasons), which makes no sense EITHER...they are freed, of course, but the Wikipedia version ends with the whole town disappearing, and the prince crying and having to dig their graves. So, there's that uplifting ending to enjoy. (The KidStuff version only ends with the listeners crying.)
Here's the take-away. If you don't know, no matter what culture they are from, basically, fairy tales are drug-fueled, paste-eating fever dreams of nonsense, originally designed to control wayward children by scaring them in or out of doing something...this is all fine, but what boggles my mind is that somebody wrote this crap down, and saved it for posterity, as if it would be meaningful to any of us in the future. And that is the real crime, my friends.
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