Editing Bruce Haack (section)

===From Party Machine to death (1977–1988)===
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''Haackula'', Haack's darkest album, struck out into dark, yet playful territory. It seems to have inspired Haack's final landmark work, 1981's ''Bite''. The albums share several song titles and lyrics tone different from Haack's usually idealistic style. Though ''Bite'' is harsher than his other works, it features his innovative, educational touch: A thorough primer on electronics and synthesizers makes up a large portion of the liner notes, and Haack adds a new collaborator for this album, 13-year-old vocalist Ed Harvey.

Haack's failing health slowed Dimension 5's musical output in the early 1980s, but Nelson and Pandel kept the label alive by publishing songbooks, like ''Fun to Sing'' and ''The World's Best Funny Songs'', and re-released selected older albums as cassettes which are still available today. In 1982, Haack recorded his swan song, a proto hip-hop collaboration with [[Def Jam|Def Jam's]] [[Russell Simmons]], entitled "Party Machine". Haack died in 1988 from heart failure, but his label and commitment to making creative children's music survives. While Dimension 5's later musical releases — mostly singalong albums featuring Nelson — may lack the iconoclastic spark of the early records, Nelson and Pandel's continued work reveals the depth of their friendship with Haack, a distinctive and pioneering electronic musician.