Category Archives: Music

A year or two ago, Jack’s Big Music Show was my daughter’s favorite thing to watch on TV. It was one of the first shows she really got into, actually, and I liked it too — it offers plenty of bright colors, with nifty-looking puppets designed by Sesame Street vets, positive messages, and a parade of cool guest stars (my personal favorite: Andrew Bird as the dulcimer-fixing Dr. Stringz). Due in part to the typically transitive tastes of children, and in part to the show’s abnormally long, Sopranos-style hiatuses, Sophie moved on from Jack’s fairly quickly; ordinarily, I might have encouraged her to keep on watching it, not least because I’d already invested in at least one Jack’s DVD — but in this case, I was actually sort of happy to watch her enthusiasm fade. Why? Because each episode features a pair of music videos, and many of them feature Laurie “Oh God, Not Her Again” Berkner.

Berkner is an extremely popular kids’ musician who has been selling oodles of albums for over a decade — at this point, she’s pretty much her own media empire; sort of the Oprah of kids’ music, with albums, DVDs, and even a book under her belt. Personally, I find her unsettling — I don’t trust anyone whose facial muscles are strong enough to support all that smiling, and she has the shake-you-by-the-lapels singing style of a Junior Miss pageant contestant — but kids and parents loooooooooooooove Laurie Berkner, to the extent that Rocketship Run, her first album in six years, is a very big deal. It’s also pretty good, actually, which, perversely, only makes me hate her more.

Rocketship Run represented a first for me: Instead of ripping it to my hard drive and listening to it with my daughter, I waited until she and my wife were going on a car ride together, and handed it off for them to share on their trip. This accomplished two things: First, it saved me from at least one round of listening to the album, and second, it would give me an objective pair of opinions I could trust before I filtered Rocketship through my grumpy dad’s-ear perspective. It was a big hit, of course — my wife actually said the words “I love it,” and my daughter immediately insisted on having the album on her iPod. All 24 freakin’ tracks of it. Continue reading →

CD Review: “MeeWee: Hip-Hop for Kids”

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MeeWee: Hip-Hop for Kids (2008, MeeWee Entertainment)
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To those of us who grew up during hip-hop’s mid-to-late ’80s golden era, the idea of a hip-hop album for kids may seem silly and unnecessary; after all, you can play a lot of those old hits without worrying about objectionable content. (My daughter, for instance, developed an intense appreciation for Heavy D at a very early age.) And then there’s this project’s name: MeeWee? Seriously? When I first heard about this album, I didn’t even want to say the title, let alone listen to the music.

Here’s the good news, then: MeeWee: Hip-Hop for Kids is much better than its title. It isn’t as much fun as the hip-hop hits you remember from your younger days, but for the most part, it avoids using the music to do any truly obnoxious pandering to kids, and the majority of the songs do a fine job of holding up to repeated listens. (A notable exception is the horrible “Keyvo,” which makes me want to give whoever recorded it a few solid punches to his MeeWee.) Some of them are really pretty catchy, actually; for instance, I’ve found myself randomly getting “I Can Be Anything” stuck in my head, and songs like “So Much Love to Give” deftly combine positive messages with solid pop arrangements.

MeeWee was developed by a former teacher and one of the producers of MTV’s Lyricist Lounge, and MeeWee Entertainment has been doing a great job of outreaching the album to childcare professionals (teachers, camp counselors, dance instructors), offering them free downloads as well as lesson plans and other materials. It’s a smart way of getting the word out, and for the K-3 set, MeeWee might work as a spoonful of sugar to help the educational message go down. Older kids are a lot savvier about music, though — hip-hop in particular — and for future installments, the company could, and should, do a better job of connecting the dots between real hip-hop and age-appropriate messages. This stuff is cute, but it’s canned, and the world is still waiting for an album of kids’ songs from rappers with household names. (Biz Markie and the Roots have contributed to Yo Gabba Gabba!, after all.) In the meantime, there’s no arguing with results like these:

CD Review: The Baby Grands, “The Baby Grands”

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The Baby Grands – The Baby Grands (2008, Backspace)

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As has been discussed many times here at Dadnabbit, we no longer live in the dark old days of children’s music, when parents had slim choices for audio entertainment, and most of them involved sitting through untold hours of synth-laden arrangements and cutesy-poo lyrics. We’ve entered a more enlightened era, one in which artists who cater to kids often try to target adult tastes too — but even now, there’s a pretty stark split in kids’ music; some artists try to infuse their music with an approximation of the manic energy of youth, while others take a more thoughtful, laid back approach.

Atlanta’s Baby Grands fit the latter description, and even if their press materials overplay their hand a bit — whoever came up with the phrase “manna from kid music heaven” may wish to consider trying decaf — the trio’s self-titled debut still manages to blend a kid’s-eye view with smart pop songwriting with admirable, uncommon skill. Singer Donny Todd, multi-instrumentalist Ben Rowell, and lyricist Marc Castelo (whose presence makes the Baby Grands the kidscene equivalent of Procol Harum or the Dead, I guess) set out to create what they call “Kids’ music that’s not jus for kids,” and they get about as close as you could reasonably expect; you’re probably never going to reach for “Panda Rock” or “Diggin’ a Hole to China” when the little ones aren’t around, but (as I can attest from personal experience) you may very well find yourself humming the melody to “Sugar Makes Me Loco.”

What it lacks in wacky sound effects and silly gags, The Baby Grands more than makes up for with themes that will be relevant to its key demographic — stuff like the alphabet (“Why Is It W?”), the planets (“Pluto”), hopes and dreams (“Dream Big”), and the family pet (“Wet Nose Friend,” which is not, as I’d initially assumed, about my year-old son). It’s all uplifting, sweetly melodic stuff, with all the replay value you’d hope for from a band that got its start from a chance meeting at a playgroup. Try some samples at the Baby Grands’ MySpace page, or have a look at the good time had by all at their record release party last November:

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Category Archives: Music

CD Review: The Laurie Berkner Band, “Rocketship Run”

CD Review: “MeeWee: Hip-Hop for Kids”

CD Review: The Baby Grands, “The Baby Grands”