“Positive Energy. A fitting label for an artist who has built a career on blending an imaginative spirit with pleasure and connection… an inspiring testament to the magic that can happen when creativity transcends generations, whether you are a lifelong Doctor Noize fan or new to the band.”
— Zillions Magazine
So here it is. An album that summarizes — by looking backwards and forwards — my career and purpose as Doctor Noize before I take an extended break from Doctor Noize albums to focus on music geared decidedly toward adults. I release Positive Energy! (The Music of Doctor Noize) just as one of the songs on it, The Monster Dance, is about to debut in a new show featuring four monsters at Universal Kids Theme Park & Resort alongside the likes of SpongeBob, Minions, Trolls and Shrek.
It is my profound hope that, even if you don’t have kids or think you’d never love family music, you give a deep listen to this album. I believe you’ll smile from ear to ear and become immersed in a world of musical adventurousness, diversity, character, story, performance and production unlike any body of work you’ve heard or imagined. I truly feel philosophers and musicians will love this album. Here’s a short Making Of Positive Energy! Video about the endeavor made by my most trusted filmmaker, Sidney:
The Hits… But Also The Why
Positive Energy! contains two tracks from each children’s album I’ve produced.* It also has four recent singles — Juntos, I’m Listening, Diversity, and Some People See, But I Don’t — recorded exclusively for this retrospective with luminaries from the genre and my life. The 12 page album credits reflect the depth of its musical collaboration.
The track list is not created as a greatest hits collection, even though it does contain some of my biggest hits — #1 singles, chart hits from three decades, iTunes Essential Recordings, music called Essential Recordings by major publications and given awards by organizations that supposedly know stuff, songs made into stage musicals and shows, songs in multiple hugely popular mobile apps, songs from animated videos with millions of views, songs commissioned for orchestral shows, and songs that are collaborations with major Grammy winning stars in multiple genres.
Instead, it’s carefully curated so audiophiles, kids, parents, thinkers and educators will get a taste of the unique and deep creative adventure they will go on if they listen to all the Doctor Noize albums. Each album is actually a musical centered on specific story, character and learning goals. I’ve always said in interviews that my primary children’s music influence was… Pixar. So it was important to me to balance the hits with the purpose behind them on this one retrospective album, which unlike other Doctor Noize albums is a collection of songs instead of a musical. This was crucial because, moving forward, this will probably be the Doctor Noize album people hear the most.
So… even just by listening to this album, you’ll be a party to adventurousness, inclusivity, and the courage to start something (album #1); the complexities of leadership, purpose and teamwork (#2); grammar, words and creativity (#3); the orchestra, instruments, musical structure and music history (#4 & #5); punctuation, wordplay and writing (#6); self-sufficiency, composition and genre (#7); environmentalism, sustainability & globalism (#8); mood food, spontaneity and second chances (#9); diversity and curiosity (this collection #10); live performance, handling the highs and the challenges of success (#11); and the recording studio, the inevitability of endings, and the beauty of new beginnings (#12).
Hopefully a Doctor Noize story arc well told, summarized on this retrospective. I’m a lifelong explorer, learner and educator, from youth to college to adulthood, and I make no apology for subversively wrapping heaps of philosophy and education into the fun. Give it a listen.
A Colorful World
It was also important to me that the retrospective reflects the breadth and depth of music the Doctor Noize albums introduce fellow journeyers to. These tracks represent a wide range of genres with the best musicians in those fields: members of major rock bands like Huey Lewis & The News, Tower Of Power and the Chris Isaak Band; one of the world’s great orchestras; Grammy-winning opera and stage singers Isabel Leonard and Nathan Gunn; Grammy-winning and nominated kids’ music pals like Alphabet Rockers, 123 Andrés and Justin Roberts; Grammy-winning and nominated musicians in other genres like Jeremy Cohen, Ricky Kej and Lonnie Park; acclaimed student ensembles like the Colorado Children’s Chorale and Stanford Chamber Chorale; the decades-long and truly exceptional regular Doctor Noize character voice cast of folks like Ben Evans and Katy Digovich; and even pieces composed with kids at the many workshops I’ve done nationwide. All produced from the very first album in an audiophile style that’s not at all what most listeners expect or require from kids’ music.
My primary protagonist Phineas McBoof’s story is modeled after the Beatles (he’s named after Paul McCartney and his story follows the Beatles’ real-life story arc), but he and his International Band of Misunderstood Geniuses largely reflect a better version of what I have attempted to be as an artist myself. Their kooky curiosity and fun-filled meticulousness reflect my own journey from young rock bandleader, to classical music Major, to studying with iconic Stanford electronic music pioneers, to Master of Recording Arts, to college music professor, all while being a recording artist — a career where, like Phineas, I’ve tried to learn, explore and connect as much as I’ve tried to create things. This makes my recordings come from a slightly different place than many artists. If you do anything to test this claim, please check out the sequence on Positive Energy! of This One Moment, Cast Your Spell, and Phineas McBoof Crashes The Symphony to hear a story, orchestration, and purpose unlike anything else. Then realize I’m crazy and, ya know, go back to your day.
4 Songs… From Future Albums???
Positive Energy! also contains two tracks each from the final two Doctor Noize albums that are not yet released… so I don’t have to do another Doctor Noize retrospective album.** I sketched out the arc of the story of Phineas McBoof and The International Band of Misunderstood Geniuses from the very first album,; the final two stories were planned all along and are essential to the point. The first two albums are about the creation of Phineas’ Band; the middle albums are about the Band at its peak of fame; and the last two are about the beauty of the inevitable end of something successful, as the Band’s members move on to independent careers and lives.
You can find info on the previously-released songs and albums online; here are summaries of the four new tracks from the as-yet-unreleased albums…
LIVE FROM THELONIOUS! Album: The semifinal Doctor Noize album will be about putting on a live rock stage show and the challenges of balancing a band-first show with many now-famous members. Its tracks on Positive Energy! are:
(1) Make Us Into We: This song introduces the final two regular Doctor Noize characters, P-Rex and Lauruh The Stegosauruh, voiced by my now-adult daughters Riley and Sidney, who were one and three when I started Doctor Noize. P-Rex and Lauruh are a couple*** who’ve been roaming the earth inexplicably for 65 million years in what Phineas calls the world’s most stable relationship before he invites them to join the band, which he does after they hop up onstage for this song in the story.
(2) Make It Bloom: This is a song I wrote when I was 17 years old. I’ve always loved it and wanted it to have a special place on an album. Now it’ll be on two albums! It’s a sweet and philosophical duet on life and taking your shots with graceful positivity and acceptance with my model for such things, my daughter Sidney Grace as P-Rex.
HERE’S TO YOU Album: The final album will explore working in the studio and feature the final creations of a band now heading their separate ways. It’s consistent to the inspiration of the very first Doctor Noize album: If The Ballad of Phineas McBoof is the Band’s Please Please Me, Here’s To You is their Let It Be. It teaches that all good things eventually end, and there’s beauty in that. Its tracks on Positive Energy! are:
(1) I’m Haunted: The core of this song (music and words) was written with students at the Redding School of the Arts in CA. I went to my lodging that night and scored it for orchestra and kids’ choir as part of my engagement as Artist In Residence. Two multigenerational ensembles (orchestra and children's choir) learned it at rehearsal the next day and performed it 48 hours after our writing session to about 1,000 people. The second half of this track is the live recording of that performance, a nod to the many Doctor Noize songwriting workshops I’ve done across the country.
(2) Here’s To You (My Last Song): This is the last song on the last Doctor Noize album. When you hear it, you won’t need a description of its meaning to me. In the album’s story, our beloved Band decides to go their separate ways after recording one last epic tune in the studio. Doctor Noize tells ‘em goodbye and stays behind to play one last song before he turns out the light and closes the door on a huge chapter of his life. It’s a little nostalgic Easter egg because, even though it’s a completely different genre and style, this track follows the exact same chord progression as the first Doctor Noize hit, Banana… ending on an unresolved ii chord as the Doc sings “This world is yours…” to end his career, inviting the next generation to take up the mantle moving forward…
I hope you love this album and feel it’s a worthy representation of what I’ve aimed to bring the world in my career as Doctor Noize. From this day forward, I will continue working for and with kids as Doctor Noize… but I will spend even more time doing things for and with adults as Cory Cullinan. A priority shift. One I’m looking forward to. As the Phineas story says… in endings and changes there are beautiful beginnings.
Thanks for your time. Share positive energy. Go make the world you live in.
— Cory Cullinan / Doctor Noize
*Three from each of the two orchestral albums, because I love ‘em so much and feel they’re a unique contribution to the recording world.
**’Cause nobody needs that.
***I’ll admit I loved adding two gay dinosaurs to the Band, partly because they reflect great new personalities in our diverse Band, and partly because I enjoy ruining dinosaurs for human dinosaurs who don’t celebrate all forms of true love. I love love. As I head toward making albums with songs kids probably shouldn’t listen to, you should know that Mr. Rogers I’m not…