So even though Lollapalooza is a good six weeks after the Austin City Limits Festival, those good folks in the City of Broad Shoulders just got around to announcing their Kidzapalooza lineup. Slowpokes.
As with the Austin Kiddie Limits lineup, this one too can be divided into two camps:
1) Adults Playing For Kids
2) Kids Playing For Adults
In the first category, you have the following (artists playing ACL Fest noted with a happy *):
-- Peter Himmelman: Kids' singer-songwriter of the highest order
-- Wee Hairy Beasties: Americana/insect-based rock from Jon Langford, Sally Timms, and other Bloodshot Records staples
-- The Sippy Cups* -- Psychedelic-inspired rock and pop
-- CandyBand: Punk music from four Detroit-area moms
-- The Hipwaders: Occasionally retro power-pop
-- Q Brothers* -- Hip-hop
-- Peter DiStefano & Perry Farrell: This has nothing to do with their appearance here (replicating their appearance last year), but that new Satellite Party album cover is one of the weirdest I've seen in some time. (Note: "Weirdest" is a gentle term for "bizarre." Or "awful.")
In the second category are bands made up of youngsters or recently-adulted young folks. Again, I don't know much about these bands, though I believe the Blisters and the Alvin Ailey Dance School both showed up at last year's Lollapalooza.
-- Paul Green School of Rock All-Stars*
-- The Blisters: Oddly enough, Jeff Tweedy's kid is playing Lollapalooza while his dad isn't. (Even though Wilco -- but not the blisters -- are playing the ACL Fest. Weird.)
-- Rock For Kids Youth Jam Band: I keep having this feeling that they're gonna break into an extended version of My Morning Jacket's "Mageetah."
-- Alvin Ailey Dance School
-- John Yost's Rhythm Revolution
Lollapalooza is August 3-5, 2007 in Chicago's Grant Park.
And for those of you looking to score some free tickets, the Paul Frank Store in Chicago is hosting a party this Saturday, June 2, from 11 AM to 1 PM. You can tell me how those Paul Green's School of Rock All-Stars sound, and maybe win some free tickets.
Austin Kiddie Limits: The Early Guide
Anyone who's read Neal Pollack's Alternadad knows that Neal's family's experience 2 or 3 years agao at the Austin City Limits Festival, though not a debacle on the level of Woodstock '99, wasn't a familial high point, either.
Still, that's not gonna bring the fine friends at the ACL Festival down, because once again they're organizing Austin Kiddie Limits, a separate stage just for the young folk at this year's edition scheduled for September 14 through 16, 2007. (Note: that's "young folk," not "Young Folks" -- Peter Bjorn & John are on an entirely different stage.)
In any case, I'll leave the obsessive "this lineup is awesome/this lineup is sucks" discussion for the 93% of the lineup not specifically for the kids to other websites; this is the place for the obsessive "this lineup is awesome/this lineup is sucks" discussion pertaining to kids music.
Now, the lineup can be basically divided into two categories:
1) Adults Playing For Kids
2) Kids Playing For Adults
In the former category, you have the following:
-- The Sippy Cups -- Psychedelic-inspired kids rock, with a hint of punk and Replacements tossed in. Also, costumes. As a result, those attending ACL for Bob Dylan and Bjork might find them slightly amusing.
-- Daddy A Go Go -- Straight-ahead rock 'n' roll with a side of smart-aleckness. It's exactly as if ACL artist LCD Soundsystem played Southern-fried rock with teenagers. OK, it's nothing like that, but until Jimmy Buffett plays ACL Fest, I got nothin'.
-- Farmer Jason -- Countryfied rock without a trace of irony. The obvious parental equivalent would be Jason and the Scorchers, but no dice.
-- Sara Hickman -- I understand from the folks in charge that she'll be pulling double-duty, playing both an adult and the kids stage.
-- Q Brothers -- Good-time hip-hop and rap. (Is there any other kind for kids? I mean, is gangsta rap for youngsters doomed to be forever untapped?
-- Jambo Kidz -- Bluesy stuff from LA
-- Bummkinn Band -- Gentle country for the kids. Not Shania Twain country, much more traditional.
-- Jellydots -- If you've been reading this website for any length of time, you're familiar with Doug Snyder and his band, The Jellydots. Awesome stuff.
In the second category are bands made up of youngsters or recently-adulted young folks. I really got nothing on these three except that the School of Rock has a Police song up on AKL's Myspace page (a perfectly acceptable version, and timely to boot), and the Steps is an Austin-based band.
-- Paul Green School of Rock All-Stars
-- The Steps
-- We Go To 11
As 2 1/2 afternoons of music go, pretty good. (And the evenings, not for the kiddos, might have a band or two worth catching...) If we can avoid chucking juice boxes onto the stage, then even better.
More details to come.
Review: Animal Playground (Putumayo) - Various Artists
I’ve long believed that Putumayo’s strength -- at least in its kids’ music releases -- is compiling good, if not entirely challenging, mix CDs. They’re not trying to compile an anthology -- if they throw in a few good songs you’ve never heard of amidst the familiar ones, then they’ve succeeded in their modest goals. On that count alone, their new Animal Playground disk, released this week, is a typical Putumayo release, mixing some familiar animal-themed songs in with the unfamiliar in a combination that will make it easy for a parent to pop in the CD and for the kids to enjoy.
On the familiar side is Asheba’s “No More Monkeys,” which I will admit to loathing. I like some of Asheba’s music, but there’s something about the slightly hyperactive rhythm of this particular track that sets me on edge and my finger for the skip button. I know, the kids love it (so much so, Putumayo’s included a video for the song on the disk), but I don’t. Somewhat less familiar (but more enjoyable to me) is the Wee Hairy Beasties’ “Animal Crackers,” a fun and bouncy leadoff track.
I've also thought that Putumayo's popularity (as opposed to their strength) has a lot to do with flattering mostly white middle- to upper-middle class people that they have a funky, global perspective. (Putumayo may just have best CD covers in the record business in that regard.) But just because that might be true doesn't mean that Putumayo's not good at finding fun tracks from around the globe. They are, and this album is no exception. The Be Good Tanyas, a Vancouver band which had never really interested me before, gives the album its best track, a gently bopping song anchored by the chorus’ phrase “The littlest birds / Sing the sweetest songs.” (It’s the “Sheep” of this album, for those of you who recall Putumayo’s last Playground disk, Folk Playground, and its standout Zoe Lewis track.)
The foreign-language tracks are fun, though, really, Putumayo could have put these songs on a future collection called, say, Robot Playground or Sports Playground and you or your child would never have known the difference. I doubt many parents will use Putumayo’s liner notes; Ze’ Renato’s swinging “Cantiga do Sapo” is Brazilian tune apparently about a frog, though it could just as well be about a dog, or rapid inflation in South American economies. A couple exceptions -- the 30-year-old track “Nella Vecchia Fattoria” from the Italian group Quartetto Cetra is unmistakably “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.” And Ladysmith Black Mambazo does a peaceful “Mbube,” better known here as “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” They might be in foreign languages, but even your 3-year-old who’s limited to a 100 words of English will recognize and enjoy those tracks.
Given the language barriers on many of these tracks, the 36-minute album is pretty much an all-ages affair, though the English-language tracks make it more of a disk for 2- to 7-year-olds. You can hear samples of the tracks here.
Animal Playground is a decent collection of music and one that most families will listen to and find some favorites in. You might be able to make a better mix tape, but it’ll probably be in far fewer languages. That’s not a good reason to get this (or any) album, but it’s not a bad thing, either. Recommended.Interview: Lloyd Miller (Ulysses Dee of the Deedle Deedle Dees)
Lloyd Miller is the chief songwriter and ringleader (Ulysses Dee) of the New York City-based band The Deedle Deedle Dees. On their excellent latest album, Freedom in a Box (review), they mix very punk songs like "Obedience School" with hook-y history songs like "Henry Box Brown." Somehow, it all works.
Lloyd recently answered some questions about his musical history and history in general. Read on for his views on saving social studies from sucking, playing the double bass, Satchel Paige, and Kenny Rogers' "The Gambler." (And thanks to Lloyd for the time.)
***********
What are your earliest memories of listening to music? Playing music?
As a kid, music was usually something I did at church or school and I have mostly negative memories of it. Probably because "music" to me meant sitting in your folding chair and singing the same songs every week in unison. I can remember very vividly sitting on the concrete steps outside this portable where I had music class for many years -- I was sent out there on a regular basis because I misbehaved in some way, I can't remember how.
The only school song I remember enjoying went "Old Roger is dead and laid in his grave, laid in his grave, laid in his grave / Old Roger is dead and laid in his grave / Hee Ha! Laid in his grave." There were a few verses, each with a related motion. In my favorite verse, Roger jumps up and gives "a fright" to an old woman who is picking apples from the tree that grows over him. I've tried to do this song at my sing-a-longs in Brooklyn but no one seems to know it.
Other music that made an impression was of the mass-produced variety. At some point I got the Disco Duck album and that was very important. That Davy Crockett song was the only song I sang for a period of months in early elementary school. And, oh man, "The Gambler." At about age seven, I asked this guy with a guitar at a restaurant to play it and he did and it was the most amazing thing. I listened to this song recently and was quite bored.
As far as playing music goes, most of my early history took place in the back row (I was tall) of some huge group singing some badly-written Bible song. It wasn't until junior high that I discovered -- simultaneously -- the mirror and David Lee Roth and began performing lip-sync concerts that eventually led to me joining a real band with other human beings. Naturally this first band was a heavy metal cover band and I was the lead singer. Sweet Emotion was our name and we played the first of our two gigs at a church dance.
Review Two-Fer: Collections from Smithsonian Folkways and Yazoo
There was a time where not every kids’ musician had a Myspace page or was prepping a music video.
I’m talking, of course, about the late 1990s.
In the late 1990s, the only record company that seemed to anticipate the forthcoming resurgence of kids music was Smithsonian Folkways, which in 1998 issued the Smithsonian Folkways Children’s Music Collection, a 26-track CD culled from the venerable institution’s massive collection of children’s music recordings.
How venerable is the collection? Well, you need look no further than the four artists leading off the set -- Woody Guthrie, Ella Jenkins, Pete Seeger, and Lead Belly, who represent the most important kids’ musicians of the first three-quarters of the 20th century, the 1927 Yankees of kids’ music. Their tracks here are representative of the artists’ work -- Jenkins’ take on “Mary Mack,” a song she made her own, includes enthusiastic children’s participation, and while Seeger lends his sweet, clear voice to “All Around the Kitchen.”
There are other tracks here from Guthrie, Jenkins, and Seeger, but there are some other great tracks here from artists you’ve probably never heard, or even heard of. Lord Invader with the Calypso Orchestra turns in a rendition of “Merrily We Roll Along” guaranteed to get your family dancing around (or at least bobbing their heads). The Canadian folksinger Alan Mills has a gentle Animal Alphabet Song from the early 1970s. And “Hey, Coal Miner,” co-written by troubadour Larry Long and a 6th grade class in Alabama, combines both social history and fun chorus (“Hey… coal miner!”) into one infectious mix. While releases from the 1950s predominate, the album covers releases from the ‘60s all the way into the ‘90s.
There are a mix of age ranges here, some songs appropriate for kids as young as 2, with the upper range easily heading into double digits. As is always the case with Smithsonian Folkways releases, the liner notes to the album are an essential component of the release. You can hear samples at many online stores or you can also visit this page and the "Children's Music" program (#16) for another audio introduction to the overall collection.
This isn’t a perfect album to listen to straight through -- it’s more of an anthology than a mix tape, something you’d dip into occasionally, or to find some artist or song you want to explore further. Still, there is relatively little of the sense that you're listening to something "good for you" -- it's much more a sense of "fun for you." And there’s no better overview of 20th century children’s music than this album. Highly recommended.
Readers who find that the number of songs that they and their family enjoy off that album is fairly high may find themselves interested in another release of kids and family music which predates even the music on the Smithsonian Folkways collection. Yazoo Records’ The Story That The Crow Told Me, Vol 1, released in 2000, is a collection of rural American children’s songs recorded in the 1920s and ‘30s. Richard Nevins took 23 recordings from the original 78s and remastered them for the collection.
There are some definite gems collected on the CD. One has to believe that Dan Zanes had listened to Chubby Parker’s version of “King Kong Kitchie Kitchie Ki-me-o” before recording his own take -- Parker’s version has its own swing. Fisher Hendley & His Aristocratic Pigs (yes, that was their name and isn’t it awesome?) do a fun western-style “Hop Along Peter.” And Lew Childre’s “Horsie Keep Your Tail Up” has its own bluesy charms.
To me, the disk as a whole suffers somewhat from a certain sameness in musical approaches -- one song begins to blend into the next over its 67-minute runtime. I think the segment of fans who like the genre of music will really like this disk, maybe even more so than the Smithsonian disk, but it’s not going to be for everyone. I would note that the remastering is every bit Smithsonian's equal, but the liner notes are lacking, with only a few lyrical excerpts.
The album’s appropriate for all ages, but kids ages 3 through 7 will probably appreciate it more than others. You can hear samples here.
As you might gather from what’s already been written, if you’re just dipping your toes into kids music that was recorded, well, to be honest, before you were born, you’re better off starting out with the Smithsonian disk. But for its particular narrow genre, The Story That The Crow Told Me holds its own against the Smithsonian disk. The total audience may much less broad for this CD, but it's got its own charms. Recommended.
In the late 1990s, the only record company that seemed to anticipate the forthcoming resurgence of kids music was Smithsonian Folkways, which in 1998 issued the Smithsonian Folkways Children’s Music Collection, a 26-track CD culled from the venerable institution’s massive collection of children’s music recordings.
How venerable is the collection? Well, you need look no further than the four artists leading off the set -- Woody Guthrie, Ella Jenkins, Pete Seeger, and Lead Belly, who represent the most important kids’ musicians of the first three-quarters of the 20th century, the 1927 Yankees of kids’ music. Their tracks here are representative of the artists’ work -- Jenkins’ take on “Mary Mack,” a song she made her own, includes enthusiastic children’s participation, and while Seeger lends his sweet, clear voice to “All Around the Kitchen.”
There are other tracks here from Guthrie, Jenkins, and Seeger, but there are some other great tracks here from artists you’ve probably never heard, or even heard of. Lord Invader with the Calypso Orchestra turns in a rendition of “Merrily We Roll Along” guaranteed to get your family dancing around (or at least bobbing their heads). The Canadian folksinger Alan Mills has a gentle Animal Alphabet Song from the early 1970s. And “Hey, Coal Miner,” co-written by troubadour Larry Long and a 6th grade class in Alabama, combines both social history and fun chorus (“Hey… coal miner!”) into one infectious mix. While releases from the 1950s predominate, the album covers releases from the ‘60s all the way into the ‘90s.
There are a mix of age ranges here, some songs appropriate for kids as young as 2, with the upper range easily heading into double digits. As is always the case with Smithsonian Folkways releases, the liner notes to the album are an essential component of the release. You can hear samples at many online stores or you can also visit this page and the "Children's Music" program (#16) for another audio introduction to the overall collection.
This isn’t a perfect album to listen to straight through -- it’s more of an anthology than a mix tape, something you’d dip into occasionally, or to find some artist or song you want to explore further. Still, there is relatively little of the sense that you're listening to something "good for you" -- it's much more a sense of "fun for you." And there’s no better overview of 20th century children’s music than this album. Highly recommended.
Readers who find that the number of songs that they and their family enjoy off that album is fairly high may find themselves interested in another release of kids and family music which predates even the music on the Smithsonian Folkways collection. Yazoo Records’ The Story That The Crow Told Me, Vol 1, released in 2000, is a collection of rural American children’s songs recorded in the 1920s and ‘30s. Richard Nevins took 23 recordings from the original 78s and remastered them for the collection.
There are some definite gems collected on the CD. One has to believe that Dan Zanes had listened to Chubby Parker’s version of “King Kong Kitchie Kitchie Ki-me-o” before recording his own take -- Parker’s version has its own swing. Fisher Hendley & His Aristocratic Pigs (yes, that was their name and isn’t it awesome?) do a fun western-style “Hop Along Peter.” And Lew Childre’s “Horsie Keep Your Tail Up” has its own bluesy charms.
To me, the disk as a whole suffers somewhat from a certain sameness in musical approaches -- one song begins to blend into the next over its 67-minute runtime. I think the segment of fans who like the genre of music will really like this disk, maybe even more so than the Smithsonian disk, but it’s not going to be for everyone. I would note that the remastering is every bit Smithsonian's equal, but the liner notes are lacking, with only a few lyrical excerpts.
The album’s appropriate for all ages, but kids ages 3 through 7 will probably appreciate it more than others. You can hear samples here.
As you might gather from what’s already been written, if you’re just dipping your toes into kids music that was recorded, well, to be honest, before you were born, you’re better off starting out with the Smithsonian disk. But for its particular narrow genre, The Story That The Crow Told Me holds its own against the Smithsonian disk. The total audience may much less broad for this CD, but it's got its own charms. Recommended.Notes On Playing Kids Music Live
[Read to the very end to find out a cool announcement about a Phoenix-area show.]
Unlike some of my Offsprung colleagues (Dr. Flea, Erica Perl, do stop by), I'm an amateur practitioner of music, kids' or otherwise. I enjoy playing, but my audiences are rarely any larger than the 3 other members of my immediate family.
So, remember the Singalong Saturday that my local record store, Stinkweeds, was going to host with my help? (Humor me and say yes.)
Yeah, it was lots of fun. Lots of people -- maybe 40 -- for something that was publicized at close to the last minute. I brought some rhythm instruments (shakers, Casio drum machines... OK, no drum machines). The weather cooperated -- wonderfully mild.
And the music? Well, it can be viewed in one of two ways.
1) Dario's Magic Bus was a nifty little trio of Dario on guitar and Jason and Justin playing upright bass and a single-drum drum set.
2) I played, too.
That's right. In the corner stood me and my lime green Dan Zanes ukelele, playing along with "Itsy Bitsy Spider," "Old MacDonald," and the like.
There's just an itsy bitsy problem.
My current chordal knowledge on the uke is limited to 5, maybe 6 chords, much less if I don't have my chord book in front of me.
And so, if the band wasn't playing in the key of the chords I was familiar with, I was forced to strum idly with a silly grin on my face. Which is a not uncommon expression for me, but typically I'm not looking that way in front of three dozen strangers.
I really don't mind improvising, but if I were going to do that, I'd much rather pull out my violin, where my ability to transpose is crudely competent.
But when I'm asked to lead the crowd in "Pay Me My Money Down" (Dario, while very cool, didn't have a setlist long enough for the full hour) it's, well, a lot harder than you'd think.
It's not just skill in playing music, there's a definite art in working the crowd, and one that I've got a lot to learn about.
That's why I'm very excited that Stinkweeds will have the Jellydots' Doug Snyder at their next Singalong Saturday, on June 9th at 10 AM. It'll be the last Singalong before the summer break, so come early as I think this free event will be even more popular than the first one.
Don't worry, the owner and I are already thinking about events for the fall. And, as far as I'm aware, I'm not on that calendar of events.
By the way, Doug's now living in Phoenix, and so if you or your kids are lookin' for guitar lessons (you've always wanted to learn how to play "Bicycle," right?), drop him a line through his website.
