Review in Brief: American History + Rock 'N' Roll = Deedle Deedle Dees
I think the world of Brooklyn's Deedle Deedle Dees for many reasons. Some of them are obvious -- catchy tunes, they RAWK -- and some are less so. One of those "less-so" reasons is that the band is so clearly following their muse, writing and playing songs that interest them.
I mean, I can't think of any other kids musician or band who would record a song about, say, Eleanor Roosevelt, as the Dees have done on their latest album American History + Rock 'N' Roll = Deedle Deedle Dees. But there it is, a dreamy song about Eleanor Roosevelt, getting advice about what to do as she was becoming First Lady -- it's a nice character sketch.
"Nice character sketch" is a good description for the Dees' history-based music -- rather than trying to sing about the big, important historical events, they're more apt to sing about the smaller historical moments or non-Presidents -- the saucy, horn-assisted strut of "Bring 'Em In" (a possibly true story about the pitcher Satchel Paige) or the party of "Tres Muralistas" (about the Mexican muralists Diego Rivera, Jose Orozco, and David Siqueiros). And when they do hit the people you're more likely to read about in a fifth grade history book, it's more about just trying to give the audience a little hook to remember the person by; in "Tub-Tub-Ma-Ma-Ga-Ga," it's remembering that Harriet Tubman led people by walking, rather than trying to explain (in song) what the Underground Railroad was.
Musically, the album moves from shuffling rock ("Little Red Airplane") to horn-aided Mexican-tinged folk ("Tres Muralistas") to punk ("Put on the Dress," based on a true story of -- and featuring on the record -- Bill Childs). The musicianship is solid throughout and I especially enjoyed some of instrumental flourishes (the guitar on "John Muir" or the piano on "Si Se Puede!")
Though the Dees have songs for younger kids (primarily from chief Dee songwriter Lloyd Miller/Ulysses Dee), this album is entirely history-based. As a result, while younger kids will probably enjoy dancing around to the music, kids ages 7 and up will most appreciate the songs and stories told here. You can hear some samples here and I highly recommend the song notes the band's been posting here.
These are not the catchy, big-picture pop tunes of Schoolhouse Rock; instead, this album is more interested in the nooks and crannies of history. I hope the Dees continue to follow their personal muses -- their music isn't necessarily for every listener, but it's vibrant. The fact that it's an excellent historical survey is just a bonus. Definitely recommended.
[Disclosure notice: The band provided a copy for possible review.]

We are not "gamers" by any stretch of the imagination -- somehow, being the sole kid without an Atari 2600 on my block growing up did not lead me to overcompensate by buying every single gaming console ever made.
One of the most welcome trends of the past decade, kids music-wise, is that artists who spend most of their time making music for adults don't have a problem occasionally making music for kids, joining the lucky group of folks for whom making music for families is a full-time gig. Often these albums appear at the midpoint of an artist's career -- think of They Might Be Giants, or Barenaked Ladies, or The Verve Pipe -- well after they've established themselves. But I think we've gotten to the point where up-and-coming artists -- potential Next Big Things -- feel like recording family music is a perfectly acceptable detour along the way.
It's hard to review an album when in one sense you've been reviewing it for a couple years now. From the
The most ambitious kids music holiday album of the year comes courtesy of
To say that the collaboration of
Robert Burke Warren, AKA
Let's stop for a moment to appreciate
There are 3 operative points of comparison when discussing
Books are so 20th century, right? Then why do people insist on continuing to write them? Who knows, but in the case of
As a reviewer, I tend to dislike absolute statements because you never know what you'll hear or read or see afterwards that will cause you to regret your previous absolute. So with that in mind, let me say this with no "possibly"s or "maybe"s to get in the way:
The advantage of Field Trips with Recess Monkey, the first DVD from Seattle's
Is it poetry set to music, or music made of poetry? That's the question posed by these two albums.
The debut album from Twin Cities band
Although the Baltimore band
I've been watching a lot of kids music DVDs lately, and I've found that my appreciation of the individual DVDs is roughly commensurate with my appreciation of the artist. Or, to be all math-like, E(d) = E(a) * PQ. (Enjoyment of DVD equals enjoyment of artist multiplied by the production quality of the DVD.)
A small delight.
Where would kids music be without Belinda Miller and Hova Najarian, the hosts of the 
There's this ice cream shop in San Francisco called
One of the signs of the maturation of the kids music genre is that there are more debut albums with a sense of confidence. Rather than tentative steps into what might be an unfamiliar world, more folks seem to have a very clear understanding of what their sound is and how their image might support it.
I
The kids music resurgence has been relatively brief, and so we haven't necessarily had the time to watch too many bands mature and change their sounds over time. An exception is the Bay Area band
It's hard to write a review about Field Trip, the recently-released fifth album from Seattle's
I hesitate to call the DC-area-based duo
At the risk of over-simplification, I think there are five kinds of kids music albums:
Giving Family Photograph, the first album from the bi-coastal
I'll start this review of Family Time, the first kids music album from
Here's a sign of how oddball a CD is: when you cover a Talking Heads song on your kids' album, and it might just be the least weird song on there.
With about 30 years of recording behind them,
The story of Brooklyn's Libby Shapiro isn't terribly novel at this point. As she puts it in her PR materials:
Rather than record a full-length follow-up to their fine 2007 collection Educated Kid, the Bay Area band
I've been listening a lot to Pink, the third album from the DC-area band
I wouldn't say that
It's a sign, I think, of how popular
However you feel about
One thought I had upon spinning Here I Am!, the upcoming first album from
Austin's
It seems like kids music is the new "side project" for an increasing number of musicians. What better way to deflate expectations and clear out a little creative room than by deciding to create music for the elementary school set? I don't mean that negatively at all -- in fact, it's that "anything goes" approach that helps to make the genre vibrant.
Well, there's certainly no flies on New York's
When I say that Wag Your Tail,
Let's think about the kids music artists who have released three easy-to-recommend CDs in the past five years. Hmmm.... Dan Zanes, Recess Monkey, Justin Roberts, Ralph's World, and... who? I mean, if you expand that time frame out a bit, you could add They Might Be Giants, Elizabeth Mitchell, maybe Laurie Berkner. But to be that consistent over that amount of time says something -- that's an all-star list of kids musicians right there.
Is releasing a kids' music album in November like releasing a movie in January? Because December 31st is the deadline for having your movie considered for the upcoming Oscars, it's implied that studios dump all their really bad movies in January. So, if you just miss the October 31st deadline for 
I've been waiting a long time to review this album, longer than I should. I'd been waiting for Austin, Texas artist
You've probably noticed that I don't review a lot of "educational" CDs. There are a couple reasons for that -- first, I don't have much of a clue as to their pedagogical soundness. Second, and perhaps more importantly for the purposes of this site, the music usually just doesn't move me. We are about entertainment and community around here -- if your kids happen to learn something found in a textbook, too, well, that's just a bonus.
With the release today of their One Day Soon EP, San Francisco's
With several albums for adults under their belts, you would be forgiven for thinking the New York band
It's been nearly 7 months since I first watched (
With their latest album, Massachusetts'
Like many people, I first became interested in kids music when I first had kids. Which meant that my first exposure to the genre (as a parent) was to lullaby CDs, or to rendition of classics sung by families for years and years.
Though there are many charms of kids music, subtlety is usually not one of them. Not that that's a bad thing, mind you, but most kids' music is direct and to the point, especially lyrically.
When you receive as much kids music for review as I do, you have to guard against certain biases. Given the glut of material, what tends to get reviewed is either stuff that's in the traditional folk/pop/rock vein, but very good (see: Justin Roberts, Ralph's World, Laurie Berkner, Recess Monkey, etc.); not in that folk/pop/rock vein (see: hip-hop, country, jazz); and stuff that's just so out there that you have to tell someone about it if only to show what risks people are taking these days. (And then you have Dan Zanes, who in the Venn diagram of those 3 categories is the only one who intersects all three.) With the last category especially, there's some risk that the uniqueness of the material is outweighing, you know, the actual interest to the kids.
Over the course of four albums, the Seattle trio 
I admit it. I'm old. Not, like, Social Security old, but old enough that if I use the phrase "OMG" I mean it ironically. I am old enough, however, to have a kid who, though she isn't quite out of the "kids music" phase yet, will start listening to music I haven't introduced her to.
It's not like we weren't prepared for the possibility of a
Imagine if Kanye West decided his next album would be a bluegrass album. Or if Metallica felt they had a polka album in them. How would their fans react? How would the bluegrass or polka purists react? Most importantly, would the music be any good?
A number of months ago, someone e-mailed me and suggested I check out the kids music of Boston-area musician
Ralph Covert has few peers when it comes to kids' music songwriting -- Justin Roberts?, the guys from Recess Monkey?, Molly Ledford from Lunch Money? -- the list is short. Over the course of six original albums in his guise as
I'd like to think that my
New York's
It's unfair, but I'll start this review of Pop Fly, the sixth solo kids' music album from Chicago's
There's nothing terribly fancy about Ditties for Kiddies, a benefit CD for the
One of the things I like most about the kids' music genre is the feeling that artists are following their own muse, no matter how skewed, when they jump in. Oh, sure, with everybody thinking that kids music is the Next Big Thing, there are more than enough CDs that scream opportunism. But there are still plenty of musicians making their music, their way.
It is possible that Brooklyn-based
I hesitate to use the phrase "the most unusual kids' album you'll hear all year," because, I assure you, no matter how unusual a particular kids music album, I've heard odder ones (don't get me started). So let me describe Ladybug One, the second kids' CD from the Seattle-area
The first, and most TMBG-like in sound, is Austin's
Now if Mr. Leebot sounds like TMBG from 20+ years ago, on his debut Playground Fortune Teller, the Bay Area's
Meet The SqueeGees, the first full-length CD from the Los Angeles-area band 
The
Here it is, the most eagerly anticipated kids music release of the year.
Another month, another breezy mix CD from
Despite the fact that jazz is one of the great American art forms, its current popularity among the population is not exactly mass-market. As a result, I'm hesitant to call Let's Go Everywhere, the first kids music CD from the popular modern jazz trio
The second album from LA's
I can't say that I've been the biggest 
Austin's
If you've read this website over the past five or six months, you know how big a fan I (and the rest of my family) have become of Austin's 
Sometimes people hear kids' music and think, "Hey, I could do that!" Sometimes those people decide they'll try their hand at writing and recording kids music of their own. At which point they find out it's lot harder than it looks. (No, I'm not speaking from personal recording experience, just lots of personal listening experience.)
I have been a fan of Rhode Island-based
I love what
A hazard in reviewing kids' music is the need to be conversant with a broad range of musical styles. For "adult" music, editors generally wouldn't have the same person reviewing classical music and metal, but in this field, well, anything goes.
When the Seattle band
I have come to think of Morgan Taylor, the creator of
The latest in
The
Though this is the best kids music album title (or at least most amusing to parents) since the Sippy Cups' "Electric Storyland," people who expect Dean Jones' Napper's Delight to be a traditional lullaby album or a goofy riff on a traditional lullaby album will be disappointed.
How to describe Jump in the Jumpy House, the recently-released third CD for kids from San Jose, California-based artist
Spend 2 minutes and 16 seconds, listening to "Educated Kid," the title track and leadoff single from the Bay Area trio 
I play the violin and not the fiddle, so my bluegrass bona fides are slim. But I'm familiar with Del McCoury, who's been making bluegrass music for a long time, and making music with his sons for a couple decades or more.
Despite the fact that everybody and their drummer is recording kids music these days, it still takes a certain amount of courage for an artist to release a kids' CD as their very first album.
Can sequels upstage the original?
For those of you wondering, yes, this album is better than its cover. Usually.
In reviewing this CD, let me be clear from the start that ours is not, for the most part, a television-watching household. It's not really a principled stand as much as it is a reflection of our busy lives. We just don't have much time to watch TV if we want to do other things like, you know, bathe and eat.
In 2002, Belinda and Hova compiled their first Greasy Kid Stuff collection, filled with their broadcast's most popular songs from 7 years of Saturday-morning radio shows. This collection has a very goofy vibe to it that owes as much of its energy to Dr. Demento as it does 120 Minutes. Finding out from the liner notes that the very odd "There's a New Sound (The Sound of Worms)" was "without a doubt the most-requested song" on the show in the mid-'90s is a bracing tonic in thinking about what kids actually like to hear. Although I think the silly outweighs the rock, even the silly has a lot of rock to it (check out the surf "Ants in My Pants"), and the rock -- exemplified by the Mr. T Experience's cover of "Up and Down" from Schoolhouse Rock and the by-now-immortal "Jockey Monkey" from James Kochalka Superstar.
The sequel, released a couple years later, is more at the 120 Minutes-end of the GKS spectrum. With tracks from Cub, Supernova, and They Might Be Giants, the album has much more of an indie-rock feel. "Dictionary" is another great indie-rock track, done by Muckafurgason (two-thirds of which would later become the kids' band The Quiet Two. But the less-familiar names also turn in enjoyable tracks, most notably the surprisingly sweet (with pointed commentary near the end) "The Dinosaur Song," from Drew Farmer.
Two is better than one. Or, in this particular case, fifty-one is better than two.
My Best Friend is a Salamander, released in 1997, was Himmelman's first album for kids and families, and the first thing you might be struck by in listening to it is how it could have been released this year. Ten years later, and Himmelman's still taking socially exciting trips. What is different is just how... odd those first songs were. While on his excellent 2007 release My Green Kite he's singing about kites or feet --fairly recognizable subjects treated in mostly recognizable ways -- early on he had a much more skewed, Shel Silverstein-esque approach. He sings about his best friend... who's a salamander. In "Larry's a Sunflower Now," a dreamy adult-sounding pop tune, the narrator (who poured water all around the subject to help him grow) tells Larry's worried mom," Look at the bright side / There's nothing you can do / Larry's gettin' lots of fresh air / The sun is on his faces and / Birds are in his hair today." Himmelman's fascination with rhyming wordplay -- which continues today -- is most evident here on the gentle "An Ant Named Jane," though a number of other songs have the touch of spoken-word.