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

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The Laurie Berkner Band – Rocketship Run (2008, Two Tomatoes)
purchase this album (Amazon)

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 →

DVD Review: “Igor”

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I was disappointed with the animation montage shown at this year’s Academy Awards ceremony. The presentation was incomplete, as it did not include the well-done Igor, which was released in the fall and has just come out on DVD.  Having missed it in the theaters (much to the chagrin of my 7-year-old son), when I finally had the opportunity to watch the film on DVD, I wish I could have seen it on the big screen. Igor is a visually wonderful movie that contains outstanding performances by the entire cast, is strange yet very humorous, and an actual message that isn’t too preachy (hello WALL-E, I’m talking to you).

John Cusack, in a rare lighthearted performance (it reminded me of his early ’80s work like Better Off Dead), stars as the titular character, a hunchbacked assistant to Dr. Glickenstein (John Cleese). Igor lives in a country of evil scientists involved with an annual evil invention contest held by their ruler, the sneaky Prince Malpert (Jay Leno). Dr. Glickenstein is an idiot and Igor ends up covering for his mistakes. When the doltish doctor dies, Igor decides to prove once and for all that all Igors are not alike and that he is as smart as any other evildoer. With the help of two sidekicks (that he created), Brain, a lamebrain in a jar (Sean Hayes) and Scamper, a cynical bunny who can’t die (Steve Buscemi), Igor creates Eva (Molly Shannon), thinking she will be the ultimate mean monster — but instead, she’s a sweet creation who loves show tunes.

Initially, Igor tries to turn Eva evil, but he is soon swayed by her sweetness and eventually falls in love with her. Unfortunately, the truly evil Dr. Schadenfreude (Eddie Izzard) and his shape-shifting girlfriend, Jaclyn (Jennifer Coolidge), get their hands on Eva and plan to use her to win the competition. It’s up to Igor and his sidekicks to save Eva – and their country – from real evildoers. Continue reading →

CD Review: “MeeWee: Hip-Hop for Kids”

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MeeWee: Hip-Hop for Kids (2008, MeeWee Entertainment)
purchase this album (Amazon)

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:

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