Review: Listen UP! - Danny Adlerman & Friends

New Jersey-based Danny Adlerman is part of the kids' music equivalent of the Rat Pack (or the Brat Pack, or the Frat Pack, depending on your generation) -- along with Kevin Kammeraad and Jim Dague of ScribbleMonster, they seem to be responsible for about 10% of the kids' music released every year, and they all seem to be on each other's albums. Adlerman's latest contribution to the genre is the recently-released Listen UP!, and while Dague isn't here, Kevin Kammeraad and a whole host of others join in. One benefit of having such a large extended musical family is a sense of familiarity blended with a diverse set of approaches. Although the songs are typically squarely in the rock tradition (the Who-inflected "Veggie Song," for example, or the big guitar-pop of "Crooked"), the musicians also tackle a few less straightforward songs such as the call-and-response game of "Flea Fly." In either case, the band sounds great together, especially on my favorite track, the goofy wordplay of "The Dozsins." I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention Jim Babjak from the Smithereens, who plays on the album and co-wrote 5 of the album's songs. A couple of the tracks -- "In the Future" and "Somewhere I Wonder" sound like they could have fit into a Smithereens album without much rewriting. Lyrically, those songs don't have an obvious "kids' music" stamp too them. Other songs, feature topics like eating pizza ("Too Much Pizza Blues") and the hundredth day of school (the old-timey "Hundred's Day," natch). Overall, the album is nice blend of songs targeted right at the kids and songs less age-specific. I think the album is most appropriate for kids ages 5 through 9. You can hear samples from the 37-minute album at its CDBaby page. I hope Danny Adlerman keeps hanging out with his friends, because he's got a good thing going on musically. With a gentle sense of humor and playfulness, Listen UP! will be popular with many families looking for an album of kid-appropriate rock-n-roll. Recommended.

The Stuff of Kids Music

I have, in the past, babbled on regarding the need for artists to improve their album art and overall packaging. Why? Because unlike many other genres of music, children's music is still very much reliant on physical modes of distribution and, as a result, the physical products counts, and far more than just about any genre. Children's music publicist/all-around-good-person Beth Blenz Clucas' recent newsletter offers the thoughts of some of her clients on this very issue. It's worth a read, and not just because it agrees with my world view. There are some very good reasons given for why actual CDs won't go away, but one of my favorite has to do with cassettes. A couple people make the comment that cassettes, which I would guess many of us haven't purchased a cassette since, oh, buying that Erasure "A Little Respect" cassingle, took forever to go away in the kids' music industry. It's a technologically lagging genre. That does not indicate the dominance of downloads any time soon. Frankly, because the parents are buying this music, not their 3-year-olds, and because the parents who are interested in this music grew up in a time before downloading, we're still comfortable with the physical product. Don't get me wrong, we still get music from iTunes and eMusic and elsewhere, but we like the physical product, too. We like to give the physical product to friends when they're having kids, and to the kids themselves at the birthday party. Face it, it's hard to wrap a download. I realize that eventually CDs will go away even in the kids' music genre, but it won't really start taking hold until our 6- and 10-year-olds, who will have grown up in a downloading world, become parents themselves. And even then, their parents will still give their grandkids physical CDs. (For whatever it's worth, here are more of my thoughts on 21st century kids music.)

Listen To This: Beneath the Planet of Key Wilde & Mr. Clarke

I know. I've been writing about Key Wilde & Mr. Clarke a lot recently. You might be wondering if the whole thing hasn't been played out at this point. I'm sorry, nope. Go listen to the newest addition, track #4, "John the Rabbit," and tell me that it doesn't put a smile on your face, especially the new verses. Very loping, very winning.

Review in Brief: Songs for Ice Cream Trucks - Michael Hearst

You know, it's a shame that the ice cream truck industry seems to have withered away. (At least it has in our neighborhood.) Who can resist ice-cream-on-demand? Well, perhaps the industry's demise can be traced to the lack of variety in ice cream songs, with parents and kids rushing indoors at the slightest hint of another overly familiar ice cream truck song. Friends, Michael Hearst is here to do what he can for the industry with his recently-released Songs for Ice Cream Trucks. Yes, it's 31 minutes (could that have been intentional?) of all-new ice cream music, which sounds just like those ice cream songs of old, only better. Hearst uses a variety of vintage instruments -- glockenspiel, thermin, and a Casiotone -- to create his musical soundscapes, and they sound just like the trucks you know and love. I preferred the slightly peppier pieces, like the opener "Ice Cream!" or "Tones for Cones," though possibly my favorite flavor, er, song was the slow and oom-pah filled "What's Your Favorite Flavor?" The title scans so well to the opening melody of that song that I wonder if there aren't lyrics to all these songs here. (As it is only the closer, "Before I Drive Away," has vocal accompaniment.) The downside of the album is that the songs begin to melt together -- it's better at creating a mood of happiness and occasional wistfulness than at being a great musical album. Virtually instrumental in nature, this is truly one of those "all-ages" albums. You can listen to tracks at the album's Myspace page or samples at the album's page. (Order the album here.) I love ice cream, but even I have a limit, and I think that will be many people's reaction here -- Michael Hearst's songs have an undeniable allure, but taken in one sitting the album will probably be too much for many fans. Still, Songs for Ice Cream Trucks achieves its own little piece of perfection and in small amounts (ie. mix tapes or shuffle play) is quite refreshing.

Listen to This: New Songs from Brady Rymer

Those of you in the New York City area may be heading down to Central Park for Sunday's Green Apple Music & Arts Festival -- if you do, you may get to hear some new songs from Brady Rymer when he plays on the same stage as Laurie Berkner. Luckily for those of us for whom a trip to NYC this weekend would be so not carbon-neutral, Time Out New York Kids has posted rough cuts mp3s of a couple new songs at the end of an interview with Brady and Laurie. The first song, "One True You," is one of those midtempo feel-good Rymer songs that I don't have any great affinity for, although Rymer does these songs better than just about anyone. (And, if you're an adoptive parent, don't worry, the "families look like one another" theme is in the first verse only.) My preferrred song is the second, "Road Trip," which is a rave-up and lots of fun. Appropriate, perhaps, for our own road trip to Tucson this weekend. (Have I mentioned we're seeing Dan Zanes this weekend?)

The Top 50 Kids Songs of All Time: Songs 6 - 10

Let me tell you, it is no easier trying to figure out how to order the top sixth through tenth kids songs of all time than it is ordering songs 46 through 50. We're getting to songs that are ingrained in our (English-speaking North American) DNA, or should be. Previous entries: Songs 11 through 15 Songs 16 through 20 Songs 21 through 25 Songs 26 through 30 Songs 31 through 35 Songs 36 through 40 Songs 41 through 45 Songs 46 through 50 10. "Mary Had a Little Lamb" - Sarah Josepha Hale (words) / Lowell Mason (melody): The fact that this agrarian-based song still has currency in spite of today's urban/suburban lifestyle speaks volumes of the text's popularity. (Wikipedia says that, like Academy Award-bait movies, it's inspired by true events.) Of course, the fact that you can play the melody, say, a Little Tikes one-octave (no-sharps, no-flats) technicolor toy piano (hypothetically speaking, of course) doesn't hurt, either. (You know the tune, so instead listen to Thomas Edison repeat the poem -- no music -- on the 50th anniversary of the first-ever audio recording of, well, anything here. Or you can watch Stevie Ray Vaughan burn through his version here. Or, and I'm not necessarily recommending this, you can watch Paul McCartney and Wings give their rendition here. People, why do you hate melody so much?) 9. "I've Been Working on the Railroad" - traditional, mostly: It's three, three, three songs in one! It's a railroad song, it's a nonsense set of lyrics, and it's a song about kitchens and banjos. (That last section was actually an older song credited to J.H. Cave folded into this one.) One of the depressing sidenotes of this whole Top 50 songs project is finding the racist undertones of many of the more traditional songs -- the first printed version of the song was done in minstrel dialect and was partially racist. And "Dinah" was a generic name for an African-American woman. Guess I have yet another reason for singing my kids' names instead from now on. (Listen to a ukelele-based version here. Raffi's and Laurie Berkner's versions are excellent, as is Johnny Bregar's, which you can listen to a sample of here.) 8. "Down by the Bay" - traditional: Y'know, if every time I came home, my mother insisted on asking utterly non-sensical questions, maybe I'd stay away, too. "For the last time, Mom, I've never seen a whale with a freakin' polka-dot tail! [Breaks into uncontrollable sobs]" Having said that, it's an animal song and a rhyming-challenge song, probably the best in that regard. (Raffi's version is the standard, but Candy Band's version at the link is a little more, uh, rocking. Loretta Lucas' version on the Family Hootenanny comp is appealing, too -- listen to a sample here.) 7. "Itsy Bitsy Spider" - traditional: Such a simple little song, the best hand/finger-motion song out there. Of course, as Ralph Covert noted on one of his Ralph's World songs, it's a very existentialist song -- the spider climbs up, the rain washes the spider down, and the spider goes back up again. (Now playing: The Camus Children's Album!) See Devon's thoughts here... though, I'm sorry, "eensey weensey" just sounds wrong to me. (Despite the fact that Gwendolyn agrees with Devon, I like her version -- click on the Get Up & Dance album to listen. Listen to a snippet of Ralph's version here, watch Carly Simon work it into her last big hit here. I remember that video. I don't remember it being nearly 7 minutes long, though...) 6. "Freight Train" - Elizabeth Cotten: This is a kids' song that was, well, written by a kid. Cotten wrote this song when she was just 11 or 12 years old. Now, she didn't record this song until nearly 50 years afterwards, when through a series of coincidences, she ended up working in the Seeger household. (Yes, those Seegers.) And it was at that point, when she was approaching 60, that she started her singing career. She toured for more than 30 years, until she was 90+ years of age. I love the way the song slides in between major and minor keys. It's about trains! (But, uh, much more.) (Watch Cotten perform her song here. I've also always been partial to Elizabeth Mitchell's rendition, which you can listen to here (click on "Flower," then "Listen").)