First a holiday album, now this: San Diego-area folk-rockers Hullabaloo are offering their new Best of Hullabaloo album for free in the month of February. As one might expect, it's a greatest hits compilation and, yeah, it seems to hit all of the band's highlights from their first six years. The band thanks Stroller Strides for making the download possible, though exactly how is not clear. (One presumes the dozens of shows they've played for the groups have probably won them a few fans in the sippy-cup-toting set.) As long as you have an e-mail address to share, go here to download it, or just click on the links below...
Track listing:
Video: "Super Friend Vacation" - Todd McHatton
This song from Todd McHatton is a couple years old, and I can't say that I'd probably listen to the song more than a couple times on its own. But the video for "Super Friend Vacation" puts a dorky grin on my face every time. McHatton's note on the very low-budget video -- "We had to give up on the editing process about half-way into it and just let these two knuckleheads do their thing" -- is spot-on. (PS -- download the song here.)
Super Friend Vacation from Todd McHatton on Vimeo.
Review: Rise and Shine - Key Wilde & Mr. Clarke

Video: "Baby In My Pocket" - Dean Jones
If the video for "Isthmus Be The Pirate Waltz" from Dean Jones was raucous and a big party, this video for "Baby In My Pocket" from the same Rock Paper Scissors album is a warm fuzzy of a blanket. (No sign of the Felice Brothers on this track.) It's lo-fi, but a nice little 75-second break.
Dean Jones (w/ Earmight) "Baby In My Pocket" [YouTube]
Video: "Sippy TV" - The Sippy Cups
The Bay Area's Sippy Cups have been running a series of video podcasts this fall and winter on their website, iTunes, and YouTube. They're not always music-based, and the one below ("Hair Professor Meets the Flower Tower," #7 of a planned 13) isn't really, either. But the moment at about 2:26 into the podcast made smile a big grin.
Is Kids Music Recession-Proof?

Back in the day (all the way up through last year!) we used to set up shop in your town (we were in 36 u.s. cities by 2006) and just sort of....stick around. the monthly gigs were great for everyone...except for us, the humble mom and pop disco. soooooo, this year we're trying something new. We'll be touring around like a band, going from town to town in a bus....sort of like the circus. This spring we'll be announcing our road trip 2009 dates but until then, if you really need to get your disco on in the USa we'll be throwing down in NYC twice a month starting in february. [Ed: funky editing and capitalization theirs]It makes it sound mostly like things needed to get mixed up a bit, which is probably true. The BLD model, which involved local parents hosting the monthly events for what I would guess was not much cash, probably burned out a lot of said parents. (The Phoenix-area BLD went bye-bye a couple years for that exact reason.) But go back to that cached BLD Seattle site and you'll see another explanation:
good people of SEATTLE, the baby loves disco flag flies at half mast as we have to postpone all future disco dates due to these touch [sic]economic times which have cast a long shadow on many of our good friends here.That quotation could be found on many of the other location sites, which are now wiped out on the relaunched BLD site. I'm not shocked that that forthrightness has disappeared -- I'd want to emphasize the new start, too. This shouldn't be taken as criticism of BLD and the broad Baby Loves Music empire, which has turned out some really good music and events.