Really sorry to see Pancake Mountain call it quits. See the farewell video here.
Scott Stuckey, the mastermind of the indie children’s show, is a long-time friend. He poured his creative genius into PM, really left it all on the field. So many cool musicians visited the Mountain for the privilege of playing for dancing kiddies and being interviewed by sheep puppet Rufus Leaking. Ian MacKaye wrote the song Vowel Movement for the show, it’s one of the best songs I’ve ever heard for kids (and Scott’s video for it is great). My six-year-old loves it.
But in the end commercial TV just wasn’t biting and you can only keep a labor of love going so long on free labor.
I’m proud to have been a part of PM in the early days, mostly doing still photos but also helping with scripting and whatever else needed doing. It was pretty amazing - one day Henry Rollins would come in for a sketch, the next we’d be filming George Clinton in the alley behind the 930 Club (while the band was still playing inside!), the next we’d be setting up a kids’ dance party with Thievery Corporation.
I can’t say I’m surprised PM didn’t quite make it to the next level, simply because you’d expect resistance and lack of vision from the TV powers-that-be for such a scrappy, quirky, underdog production. But those were the attributes that made it so damn cool. The bands sure ‘got it’ though.
Scott, congratulations and kudos for all that you did achieve with Pancake Mountain. You showed a whole way of doing things - a truly indie/DIY approach that celebrated both music and kids in a totally non-cheesy way that adults could actually stomach as well. Looking forward to whatever comes next!
