Sing Along With Lloyd

That would be Lloyd Miller of the Brooklyn band The Deedle Deedle Dees. I'm a big fan of the Dees, of course, for many reasons -- they rock, they're lots of fun in concert, and they know how to craft educational songs you'll listen to for purely un-educational reasons (hint: they craft actual stories). Also, they're a great bunch of guys. It probably won't come as much of a surprise to you, then, that Miller doesn't just write original songs about historical figures, but he's also a collector of old songs. Miller merges those two aspects of his musical life on a set of mp3s he's posted to his Bandcamp page. They're songs from the 2009 edition of his annual Mother's Day singalong. Says Miller:

I recorded these tracks so that my bandmates for the event could learn the tunes. Like all the recordings on this page, these recordings are very raw. But I kind of like them. I thought I might as well put them online so everyone could have them.

In days of old (ie, 10 years ago? 5 years ago?), artists like Miller would have held on to them for a decade then released them on a B-sides/rarities collection. Now they get posted online for your free streaming or downloading enjoyment. I'll re-empasize Lloyd's point -- these are definitely lo-fi recordings (midway through one track on his Nature Babies collection from last year, his phone starts ringing) and shouldn't be considered final products or actual releases. And he has an occasionally uneasy relationship with some of the songs (Miller, on his bluesy "Wheels on the Bus" from Sing Along With Lloyd -- "'Wheels on the Bus' is lame. I never liked it and I still don't. Even so, my daughter only wanted this song before bed for about a year and a half."). But they're still interesting to listen to for various reasons -- the singalong disk is great for parents wondering how to inject a little variety into songs they sing on a daily basis. But it's the new stuff I'm going to post below...

Readers Who Need Readers: Baa Baa Buckle My Shoe

It's time for another edition of "Readers Who Need Readers," in which the Zooglobble hive mind helps one of our own track long-lost songs... 1998 -- bell bottoms were the rage, people loved Grease in the theatres, and a little comic strip named Garfield made its debut. Oh, wait, that was 1978. 1998 was the year we spent a lot of time thinking about President Clinton and arguing over whether Shakespeare in Love or Saving Private Ryan was the better movie. (To my neighbor's chagrin, I firmly believe the former, although the latter isn't without its moments.) It's also the year a Zooglobble reader spent some time listening to a couple songs lost to the mists of time... She writes:

I’ve been searching for a couple of children’s songs that I used to play for my son (about 1998-1999). One was a version of “Baa Baa Black Sheep” – but it was just music and animal sounds (plus a cow bell or two), no lyrics. The other song was called (I think) “Buckle My Shoe Rap” and featured a rapper and a kid rapper. I thought it might be LL Cool J, but all my searches have been in vain.

So how about it? I'm stumped... it could be anything, and since it predates my immersion into the genre by a couple years, it's not in my collection. (I've got a number of pre-2000 albums, just not these.) Can anyone help?

Video: "Little Broken Truck" (Live) - Caspar Babypants

I'm posting this live video of Chris Ballew, er, Caspar Babypants, playing "Little Broken Truck" live at Seattle's Town Hall for two reasons: 1. It shows how compelling a little shaker and a little harmonica can be (reminder to self: sometimes simple is OK) 2. Ballew's daughter Josie singing her parts while swinging her elbows from side to side, just because I totally see Miss Mary Mack in her. Not that she does the elbows swinging thing, but it's that attitude... Oh, and "Frederick Babyshirt" and "Josephine Babyhat" - hah!

Dancing About Architecture From Kids Musicians

... or, in more search-friendly terms, writing about music -- ie, blogs -- by kids musicians. I know that Warren covered this last week, but I've had this on my to-do list for awhile, so I'm going to press forward with a highlighting of another wave of kids musicians turning their thoughts to the blogosphere. Some have a lot to do with the kids music genre, some very little. But I'm guessing at least one of 'em will be of interest to most of you and/or your RSS reader... -- Ann Torralba, best known as Little Miss Ann, is trying her hand writing about kids music at littleshouldersmusic, focusing in particular about music in the Chicago area where Ann lives. -- Bill Harley has long been one of the most talented wordsmiths in the kids music field, so I'm glad to see that he's started a blog. He tells his stories very well, and anyone interested about the arts and school culture generally will find this of value. -- Robert Burke Warren had a long career making music for adults before starting to make music for kids as Uncle Rock. Now he's got a blog in which he's every bit as thoughtful on paper as he is in person. -- Debbie Cavalier records music for kids under the moniker Debbie and Friends but her day job (OK, other day job) is Dean of Continuing Education at Berklee College, so, uh, yeah, she knows something about music education. She has not one, but two blogs. One, on Music, Education and Technology, is geared more toward Berklee's students, but occasionally deals with stuff of interest to a broader audience, while the other, Kid's Music Matters, is a pretty good example of an artist blog, mixing self-promotional stuff with more behind-the-scenes stuff.

Listen To This: "Alive!" - Duplex

When I was picking out a track for your listening pleasure from the upcoming Duplex album Worser, I was tempted to pick one of the more rockin' tracks. Heck, I even uploaded one of 'em. (And if you need to listen to one of the more rockin' tracks, I have it on good authority that Bill may have one on this weekend's show.) But it was this track, "Alive!," that I kept thinking about. It's a lot more swirling than most kids tracks. It's also beautiful. Streaming with permission from Veda Hille, it's... Duplex - "Alive!"

Kids Music Goes Commercial

I was walking somewhere the other day and out of the corner of my eye - or whatever the audio equivalent of that is - I caught a TV ad with a familiar song. The song? Great Lake Swimmers' "See You on the Moon," being used to sell Honda Insights...

Of course, a 30-second clip can't adequately describe how awesome the song is, awesome enough that it became the title track of a decent kids-comp and then got repurposed for an even better kids-comp. The Jellydots' "Bicycle" got picked up by Shimano for a bike ad last year, and Kira Willey's "Colors" got used for a Dell ad, too. And beyond that?