written and produced by Dean Parks and Carol Parks

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Welcome (back) to 1986, and to the golden age...

oh, who are we kidding; the real age of the Care Bears.

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As much as the classic Care Bears meant to me for a long long time,

this song is of course one of the all-time most nostalgic for me, and

one of which I’ve some of my fondest memories. In 1985—when the Care Bears were still Canadian (heau abeaut that, eh)—Canada’s animation studio Nelvana gave us the first Care Bears Movie. While a cartoon, the first CB film is not entirely unlike the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film five years later, in that it’s a movie based on a children’s entertainment franchise that actually carries with it a tinge of chill and darkness which is lacking in its sequels and accompanying cartoon series. TMNT, the first movie, is sort of similar in that respect, also a bit dark and chilling.

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In Care Bears Movie 1, the music is handled by Carole King and John Sebastian—and yes, as we’ve already covered a couple Carole King songs here, we will too eventually get to her CBM1 theme song (“Care-A-Lot”). CBM1 dropped when I was 2 years old, and yes, I did see it back then. Certain moments from it scared the heck out of me for many years. One year later, the (first) sequel hit.

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CBM2: A New Generation saw the bears and cousins as newborn cubs, being watched over by True Heart Bear and Noble Heart Horse (both notably absent in CBM1). We’ve got a somewhat separate storyline going on here, a different villain, and a new set of songs trotted out by husband and wife Dean and Carol Parks. The spouses wrote all the songs, and Carol sang half of them, backed on a few by their daughters Amanda and Acacia. The other half were performed by Debbie Allen and recording artist Stephen Bishop. In a couple of ways, I like the sequel better, but then in one or two others, I prefer the original CBM. As far as the music goes, I think the sequel is superior. That’s my opinion; I’m sure there’ll be dissent in the ranks. CBM2 closes with a flashback scene narrated by the lyrics of this song, “Forever Young,” which goes for 6 minutes and carries us through the entire end credits. Beautiful work, Mr. and Mrs. Parks. Sadly, Mrs. Carol Parks is no longer with us as of 2010. But she made it exceedingly easy to keep her memory alive with these beloved tunes.

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One more note on the song: it’s another that’s never been released on cassette, vinyl or CD (to my knowledge)*—at least not the original Parks version—and so to get the audio, I ripped the CBM2 DVD, snipped out the song and converted it. From there I gave it the audio treatment. For this reason, you’ll be able to hear the sound effects that accompany the movie’s final scene. When the song reaches its guitar-driven instrumental break, the credits hit. Funnily enough, I’m having trouble finding an “official” video for the song on YT... and I’m hesitant to link to my own, which already has the audio treatment. But here’s one I approve of, for this purpose—to let you listen to the original song in its entirety. This audio quality is good, even if the video quality suffers in comparison.

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*Update/correction! Okay, it’s now a week or two later, and as I’ve just catalogued “Care-A-Lot” from the first movie and found its vinyl soundtrack, I too found the sequel’s soundtrack, and there we are. It was indeed released on vinyl, just like the first, so I’ll place it down below. The first source where I located it is etsy.com, where as of this update it’s going for a mere $865. Pssh, who can’t afford that for one classic vinyl LP, right??...

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RIP Carol Parks, 10/30/49 to 10/21/10.

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Have notes to add? Let me know!

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YT:

full version