Well, I’d like to hope that it’s not a total coincidence that I grew up watching this and Sesame Street and ended up an idealistic liberal sort who still desperately tries to look beyond all the horrible politics going on towards a spirit of collaboration. So maybe PBS helped a few 70s kids along the way?
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I don’t remember Vegetable Soup at all. I do remember Electric Company - with Spider-man! and 3-2-1 Contact! with the Blood Hound Gang!
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Hell yes! The old outro was bittersweet, because it meant Sesame Street was over but I did love hearing it.
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Something Sesame Street doesn’t do as much anymore is deal with emotions. Sure, they have Bert & Ernie segments where they’re sad, or angry, or frustrated, and yell I’M MAD! But they don’t have as many segments dealing with the unique sort of emotions kids have. The Lower Case N song and the Vivaldi Flower segments people posted were really moving to me as a little kid, but I didn’t know why, or what that meant.
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Interesting point. Was that intentional on their part, based on research, or did they just happen to move away from it?
And how different would the past year have been if they’d maintained that sort of subtle training?
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I think a bit of both. Prior to the HBO purchase, they were experimenting with shorter shows, shorter segments, and more Elmo, because (as I understand it) they’d found that kids have shorter attention spans these days and weren’t sitting still for an hour long show. I’m guessing that several minutes of Vivaldi playing to a sad lonely flower wasn’t at the top of the list of bits to keep.
Well… sadly, given that like half of the GOP candidates made “cut all PBS funding” part of their platform, I doubt their kids were watching much Sesame Street. Personally I think that in a time of short attention spans, bucking the trend and giving kids some slow, thoughtful TV makes more sense.
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Ahh! Another piece of music I haven’t heard in decades but is engrained in my head forever. Thank you.
I grew up watching Sesame Street and the Muppets. (In fact, when they built the Renaissance Center, which we could see from our dining room window, I called it “Oscar’s house”… or so my parents claim.) I don’t remember Vegetable Soup. I do vaguely recall the Electric Company, Big Blue Marble, and Captain Kangaroo.
There’s one song from Sesame Street that makes me tear up a little:
I guess I can understand why the Childrens’ Workshop felt Sesame Street going to cable was necessary for its survival… but I don’t like it. It’s clearly not going to be the same. 
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I’m still sad about the passing of Mr. Hooper.
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Did you grow up in Detroit?
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Good news, everyone, I found a short interview with the guy who made this and the upper case I song.
ETA - I didn’t see that @nungesser had already pointed out who sang the song. Making sure he sees this the link.
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I’m quite surprised there were no drugs involved here.
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Born and raised here in the D! 
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That was asserted “equivocally”.
Thank you, what a crazy interview! The number of things he’s been involved with are kind of amazing: sound design for The Black Hole, background audio for EPCOT, sound effects for movie trailers, and he came up with “Heroes in a Halfshell” for TMNT? This guy deserves to be on the $20 bill.
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Also mentioned in the interview but worth reposting: the long-lost third song he did for Sesame Street, which I have no memory of - “Imagination Land”.
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