Dean Jones and the Felice Brothers Play Rock Paper Scissors
Those yelps of delight you might have heard from parts of the Kindie Twitterverse last week were from some folks getting their hands on the latest album from Dean Jones, member of the great kindie collective Dog On Fleas. It's called Rock Paper Scissors and it features The Felice Brothers (returning the favor to Jones, who sometimes plays horn with the band) on a number of tracks, along with a bunch of other guest artists such as Uncle Rock.
Early spins of the album reveal a disk that is messy in all the right ways; it features Dean playing a bunch of instruments, including the car-horn o-phone -- how could it not be? It'll be for sale any day now, so stay tuned... Tracklisting below...Video: "Ed" - Clementown
I already mentioned this video in my review of Polkabats and Octopus Slacks, the debut CD from Clementown, based on the poetry and pictures of Calef Brown. But now it's been posted in a much larger format to YouTube. So you can enjoy the dreamy soundscape accompanying Brown's art (and words). I love the way it looks old -- is there a computer macro for that the way you can make any video look like a Ken Burns documentary?
Clementown - "Ed" [YouTube]
Video: "The Teens" - Recess Monkey
One of my favorite tracks from Recess Monkey's Field Trip is the Elvis Costello homage "The Teens." Now the band's got Daron Henry in the goofy (but kinda tecnically advanced) video for the song, starring as Nineteen, Eighteen, Seventeen, Sixteen, Fifteen, Fourteen, Thirteen, and, er, Twelve...teen.
Recess Monkey - "The Teens" [YouTube]
Video: "Wake Up" - The Hipwaders
It is supposed to be 95 degrees here tomorrow. The cognitive dissonance produced by watching this video while possessed of that knowledge is nearly overwhelming, but seeing animated kids get hit by or dumped on with snow is worth it, I guess. Here it is, "Wake Up," the first video from The Hipwaders' Christmastime album, A Kindie Christmas. Nice song, cute video (animated by Planet Sunday). Nobody more than I would like to wake up someplace cool right now.
The Hipwaders - "Wake Up" [YouTube]
Interview: Roland Stringer (The Secret Mountain)
Founded in 200, The Secret Mountain initially focused solely on music CDs for children in Canada and France. It started released book/CD cominbations in 2003; in 2005, it started releasing titles in the U.S. market. Over that time, though they've covered a broad range of musical artists, from longtime Canadian artists to Trout Fishing in America to a collection of Jewish lullabies from around the world, one theme that runs throughout their collections are an attention to detail and quality in their product.
I recently talked with The Secret Mountain's founder, Roland Stringer, about the genesis of his company, how the book/CD combinations come about, and more about the company's latest release, Sunday in Kyoto.
Zooglobble: What were your earliest musical memories?
Roland Stringer: I was born in 1960, so I was part of that whole wave that grew up on the Beatles. I had that cliched scene of my sisters going crazy because they were watching the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show.
I grew up in a small French-speaking town in Western Canada, so I heard a lot of traditional French music on the radio. As I grew up, in pre-teen years and beyond, I listened to Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, James Taylor, Simon and Garfunkel -- these North American artists.
What led to the founding of The Secret Mountain?
By the end of the '80s, I was doing artist management, music publishing, touring, a lot of everything. By chance, one of the artists I was working with did their first children's record in 1990. It was a project for freinds and family, but it went over well. So I produced kids records through the '90s.
In 2000, though, vinyl was gone, and the CD is a piece of plastic. I though it'd be nice to give the kids something more imaginative, involving storytelling, pictures, drawings, with music from around the world. I was wanting to work with illustrators on one end, storytellers on the other, and they really were doing the same thing. I was just coming up with the package.
You know, I was always interested in looking at the vinyl -- I remember studying those album covers from the Who or Genesis.
How do you decide on the music?
