Mortal Kombat – The Album

Video games and popular songs. They come and go, don’t you know. Way back in the ’80s, the shit got started with Buckner & Garcia’s classic “Pac-Man Fever.” There was also an album of the same name by the duo, and as I recall they even got to “perform” on “American Bandstand” at the time. Of course, the arcade craze soon turned into a giant money pit and soon home console gaming started taking over once more near the end of the decade, coupled with the truly awesome god of home computing at the time, the Commodore 64.

By the early ’90s, though, one-on-one fighting games started reeling the kids back into the arcades, and business was once again booming. One of those first 2-D fighters was of course “Mortal Kombat.” Its violent content caused enough of an uproar that when the game was ported to home consoles, the Super Nintendo version was blood-free. But hey, this did not stop the likes of Johnny Cage and Sub Zero from invading your favorite local dance floor.

Enter The Immortals.

Whoever the hell they were, they decided to take standard-grade techno and couple it with sound clips from the game as well as throw on a bunch of hilariously bad original lyrics. Who could not thrill to an Ecstasy-fueled trip while getting all huggy and lovey-dovey on complete strangers while “Sonya (Go Go Go)” or “Scorpion (Lost Soul Bent On Revenge)” pounded away? Indeed, it was “Techno Syndrome (Mortal Kombat)” itself that was a club hit, and also appeared in the craptastic feature film based on the game. This truly was proof positive that America is the land of plenty, and that if you have a “good enough” idea, you can market the hell out of it and enough lemmings will flock to the fly pile.

As we all know, the “Mortal Kombat” franchise went on to spawn four more arcade machines, and luckily there were no other CDs. Still, I wouldn’t have minded some tracks along the lines of “Baraka (He Will Julienne Your Potatoes Beautifully)” or “Reptile (His Acid Reflux Will Literally Melt Your Skull).” If anyone wants to buy these ideas from me, let me know. I got a million of ’em.

The Adventures of MC Skat Cat and the Stray Mob

Boy, the early ’90s sure were adventurous times, weren’t they? We had Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer tearing up the charts, and just around the bend there would be Nirvana and the whole grunge scene. Alternative music was going to hit an unforeseen high in both sales and radio play. It felt like anything could happen.

And well, anything did happen.

As we all know, Paula Abdul once had a very profitable music career. She couldn’t sing to save her life, but like many other artists of the time, her videos sold her music. It was all about the image. And so, while she was riding one of her higher than high crests, she recorded a song with MC Skat Kat. That song was another big hit for Abdul. Of course, it was “Opposites Attract” and once again the video was eye candy for any MTV viewer. However, Paula was seen getting her groove on with an animated MC Skat Kat who was literally a feline. Was this the beginning of the downhill plunge, or was it when she had Keanu Reeves do his cameo bit in “Rush Rush”? It matters not.

The point is some record exec thought that MC Skat Kat could be the next big rap artist and went about getting the kitty his own recording contract and LP. It was 1991 and, well, this was no longer the days when something like Jive Bunny and the Master Mixers were tearing up the charts. A lot of changes were happening constantly, and needless to say an animated cat making a rap album wasn’t going to be taken any more seriously than Vanilla Ice.

But Ice sold a shitload of records. MC Skat Kat on the other hand sold…well, I’m thinking if I can’t remember, then it must not have been much. Of course with songs like “I Ain’t No Kitty,” “”No Dogs Allowed,” “On the Prowl,” and “Kat Stories” one begins to wonder if this damn thing wasn’t actually targeted at actual cats. Paula Abdul showed up rather expectedly to lend some “credence” to the project and duetted once again with Skat on “Skat Strut,” but no one really gave a shit (although the video was a hit on MTV). And if they did, surely they were kicking themselves sometime shortly afterward for actually buying the thing.

According to Skat Kat’s Wikipedia page, he later returned one more time in 1995 in a star-studded ad about recycling (the spot also featured such heavyweights as Kenny Loggins, Lita Ford, and Bugs Bunny), along with a new song called “Take it Back.” The song was released as a single. And once again, no once cared. Skat Kat has not been heard from since.

Now if his name had only been “MC Scat Cat” then the moniker would have gone along perfectly with the product. Ba-doom-ching.