It was a little dicey there for awhile -- you could tell from Facebook that the fans at least were getting restless (and nervous) -- but it's official -- Season 3 of the Imagination Movers' self-titled Disney Channel show is going to happen. Here's an article from Variety discussing the move -- it notes that production will start back up in New Orleans in June and that the production order includes a concert special, a first for the band on Disney. (And, yeah, there's another album coming out on June 8.)
Even though Seasons 1 and 2 started in the fall of 2008 and 2009, with a June production start, I'm guessing that fall 2010 may be hard to accomplish.
What the article doesn't mention is Nancy Kanter (Senior VP of Programming for Playhouse Disney) saying (in the press release) that Season Three "will expand the Movers world beyond the Idea Warehouse and will include more surprise visitors and guest stars."
So there you go -- perhaps they'll start going the Yo Gabba Gabba! route and inviting a whole bunch of guest stars from the real world. Come to think of it, maybe the Movers should challenge the folks at YGG -- which just started its third season -- to a friendly rumble. Or maybe a pickup basketball game. I think the guys have the moves, but Brobee et al. got height, and you can't teach height.
Concert Review: Imagination Movers (Mesa, December 2009)
We are no longer the Imagination Movers' target audience, if indeed we ever were. Back before they were a Disney sensation, they were known to us only via CDs, CDs that I was just sort of "meh" about. And their good fortune (based on a lot of work) of securing a Disney TV show didn't help us, a non-cable-TV household. (We've only seen the show maybe a couple times.)
So while I was definitely interested in seeing the band in concert on their West Coast swing, I wasn't quite sure what to expect, either from my own perspective or that of Miss Mary Mack and Little Boy Blue.
First off, I expected, and found, a sizable audience for the band. The lovely new Mesa Arts Center was hopping Friday with attendees for various events, but the Movers had the biggest theatre and given that the Ikeda Theatre seats nearly 1,600, I'd guess that at least 1,000 of those were filled, which, well, beat out Dan Zanes when he last came through on a Friday night.
It helps to have Disney's muscle backing the band, I suppose, so I got this shot of labelmates' TMBG's cover/reworking of "Davy Crockett (In Outer Space)" playing on the video screen before the show. (I have chosen to omit photos of my kids' slackjawed appreciation of the familiar video.)
But 7:08 rolled around, the scrim went up, the band came out, and we were off.
Video: "Farm" / "Can You Do It" - Imagination Movers
So, as I mentioned before, Disney's started posting videos of their musical acts on YouTube, and I'm going to post a few of them here. This time around, it's the Imagination Movers, who've just released a new album, For Those About To Hop. There aren't any videos from that album (yet), but here are a couple of videos from the first season of their Disney TV show, embedded for your (or your kids') instant gratification.
Imagination Movers - "Farm"
(I'm sorry, even after hearing this maybe 50 times or more, the line "The roosters! / The roosters! / The roosters are tired!" puts a smile on my face. I'm a dork.)