A Hundred Million Years Ago, in 1987

Record Review: Once Upon A Dinosaur
Artist: Jane Murphy et al

As a dedicated crate digger, I know how rare it is to find an album that is musically impressive, educational and heartwarming enough to make you smile. But when I recently came across a record with cover art depicting triceratops going down a slide and a dimetrodon holding colored balloons, I knew I had found something special.

The album, "Once Upon A Dinosaur," is children's songwriter Jane Murphy's musical attempt to open children's hearts and minds to those most fascinating of ancient creatures, the dinosaurs. Originally released on vinyl and cassette in 1987 and now available on compact disc on Amazon.com, "Once Upon A Dinosaur" explores what life as a dinosaur was all about as well as asking what our lives would be like if dinosaurs were still around today.

The album kicks off with a rocker, namely, The Fossil Rock. The Fossil Rock follows the story of some scientists who chip, chip away until they uncover bones so big, they could only belong to a dinosaur. The song itself is fairly repetitive, but a key change and some soulful saxophone make this opening number engaging as well as educational.

The album's strongest song is the next tune, "We Want To Learn About Dinosaurs." Regardless of whether listeners approach the album with a sense of ironic amusment or genuine childlike wonder, they'll be taken aback by this ballad's emotional impact. With sweeping harp arpeggios and a plaintive piano finale, the instrumentation in "We Want To Learn About Dinosaurs" is powerful on its own, but the children's chorus featured on the song is what pushes the album into truly heart-rending territory.

The rest of the album follows through on its promise to teach us about dinosaurs. In just 37 minutes, many different dinosaurs are discussed, with songs switching perspectives as well as topics. Some song tell a story from the third person, such as the fifties doo-wop number, "Ankylosaurus and Paleocincus," which chronicles the unlikely friendship between two dinos with spiky shells. Others resort to the first-person to better explore a character, as in "The Stegosaurus" or "Big Bad Al," the latter of which is a daunting depiction of Tyrannosaurus' smaller ancestor, the Allosaurus. "The Brachiosaurus' Song" is a ballad about what it's like to weigh as much as 20 elephants. Although Brachiosaurus lived millions of years ago, it's hard not to interpret some of the lyrics to "The Brachiosaurus' Song" as a dig at modern American obesity and ignorance, especially the line: "I may be huge, but I'm not clever at all/because my brain's just the size of a ping-pong ball." Interesting.

As socially relevant as these songs may be, the album truly shines when the vocalists address the dinosaurs and dinosaur lovers directly, such as on the closing number, "Where Have They Gone?" The song begins with a lone male vocalist listing off the names of the dinosaurs alphabetically, a lonely echo enveloping his voice as it travels up and down the scale. Soon after, the children join in, their voices gradually steering the song's mood from one of melancholy abandonment to solemn curiosity. Like a kid's choir singing to the baby Jesus at a holiday pageant, the children's voices in "Once Upon A Dinosaur" have a timeless resonance, as if the dinosaurs they are addressing are as near to their hearts as they are distant on the geological timeline.

Still, I did have a bone to pick with "Once Upon A Dinosaur." The album's utopian depiction of dino/human co-existence will appeal to those who have always resented scientists saying dinosaurs couldn't have lived with us (which is another way of saying we couldn't have lived with them). However, "Once Upon A Dinosaur" assumes in several cases that if dinosaurs were alive today, they would serve mostly as pets.

In "My Pet Tyrannosaurus," a witch's hex turns the family dog into a T-Rex. This tale of a girl taking her T-Rex to school and attempting to keep it out of the family fridge is amusing--as is mom's proclamation that "this house just isn't big enough for a tyrant lizard"--but the part about T-Rex enjoying being "tickled on the nose and washed down with the garden hose" is highly unlikely, not to mention a slight to T-Rex's tough-guy reputation. The mention of a "dinosaur zoo" elsewhere in the album is also alarming in spite of its naivete. These well-intentioned sentiments are forgiveable considering "Once Upon A Dinosaur" is an album made for and by children, but the assumptions of dinodomesticity smack of the same hubris that eventually led to Jurassic Park's demise.

Fortunately, the beats and instrumentation on the album are every bit as diverse as the lyrics and subject matter. There's some honky-tonk, some (reptile) rap and some synth-bass and synth-percussion that would be right at home on an album by the Flying Lizards, another group whose records I found at the sale.

Thematically, the album's premise that dinosaurs never go out of style rings true, and the fact that "Once Opon A Dinosaur" sounds very 1987 is ultimately irrelevant. In the end, it's just a big, educational dance party, as the song "Dinosaur Dance" makes abundantly clear. As the song's chorus contends, "Whether up on two feet, or down on all fours/it's fun to dance like the dinosaurs." How very, very true.