Dancing with Heavy Machinery

Did I say I never get to watch movies? Well, not entirely true. I love movies so much that I generally won't watch them if I can't arrange to sit through a film in its entirety. But some movies (like light comedies) don't suffer too much from being viewed over the course of 2 or more sittings.

So, my wife and I watched a variously inventive and charming film over a couple of nights last week: "Across the Universe". Although I'm a huge fan of the Beatles' music, the film had gotten lukewarm reviews, and I'd had no intention of seeing it. But a friend recommended it so highly that we rolled the Netflix dice and took a chance.

Firstly, I was very impressed, sometimes jaw-droppingly so, with the re-imagining of the Beatles's music. "I Want to Hold Your Hand" had always struck me as insipid faux-teenage puppy-love kind of stuff, with a melody that just wasn't their best. In the film it's done as a heart-wrenching ballad, and the lyrics, when divorced from the original bouncy beat, have a beautiful yearning in them that I'd never recognized before. There were many such moments in the film, where the depth of the Beatles music is revealed by audacious and brilliant arrangements.

Secondly, the visuals were often stunning (directed by Julie Taymor, of Lion King fame). The legendary puppet street-theatre troupe Bread and Puppet is used, and there was choreography that was grounded in the drama, not pasted on as it is so often in musicals. It reminded me very much of the work of ISO, the dance troupe that The Bobs did shows with in the 80's. As the film rolled on, more and more of the choreography was SO brilliant, in a way that I have never seen outside of ISO. I was beaming to see such great work. And when the credits rolled by, why, surprise! - the Choreographer was indeed Danny Ezralow, from ISO. I'm so glad that some of his work has made it to the big screen, in such a fine way.

I searched for youtube examples of his work - there are some, but I would say just see "Across the Universe". It's not a perfect movie, but it is full of beauty.

And, 2 other members of ISO, Jamey Hampton and Ashley Roland, have their own dance company called BODYVOX (in Portland, OR). They, too, have that powerful, witty ISO style that is so unique. I highly recommend catching them in Portland or on tour. And, they do happen to have a couple of youtube videos that are worth watching. They are short films, featuring dancing with heavy machinery. Do take a moment to watch:)

 

 

TV shows that are better than movies?

We've been watching a lot of TV lately. Well, not TV, not stuff that comes on a cable or over the airwaves, but shows we're renting from Netflix. We miss watching full-length movies, but by the time Q goes to bed we're exhausted, and need just a mere 25 minutes of chill out time before we're ready to hit the hay. And I'm sorry, but life is just too darn short to spend any of it watching commercials :) So, TV shows on DVD have been a godsend for us.

Some favorites we've been watching?

Slings and Arrows. Wow. This is truly better than just about any movie out there. The writing is so real, the cast is so true, it's so funny and so heartbreaking at the same time. It's from Canada, so chances are you've never even heard of it, but I'm telling you, this is the real deal. Rent it NOW! What's it about? Oh, golly, it's too much to encapsulate - Read about it on Netflix, for goshsakes! But it is kind of a "Waiting for Guffman" thing set at a Shakespearean theatre company.

Freaks and Geeks. So many great shows seem doomed to early extinction. This one focuses on high school years, and is one of the best explorations of the reality of high school I've seen. The parents are rather 2-dimensional, but the kids are very real. Funny and true.

WonderFalls. Only one season, so if you fall in love with it, know that it's doomed to end too soon. The heroine is a marvelously mixed-up college grad who has taken a deadening job in a souvenir shop at Niagara Falls, as a place to kind of 'drop out', only to find that various souvenirs 'talk' to her and convince her to do things which complicate her life terribly. Kind of like Joan of Arc, only funny. Or maybe Joan of Arc was funny, but this is funny in a different way.

Arrested Development. Best thing I've found on U.S. TV. A mixture of humor - reminds me of what Woody Allen would be doing if he hadn't gotten so darn serious. If you haven't seen it, give it a try. Better than so many movies (really!).

The Office. This is a funny series, but it can make you squirm uncomfortably. So, be forewarned, it may not be for you. If you've EVER worked in an office, however, you should be required to see it. (NB, I found the British series to be too acidic for my tastes - I just couldn't handle that much copper in my mouth. The U.S. version is somewhat lighter)

Sorry, gotta go. Time for more TV.

Crowing, crowing...gone

Goodbye, little crow...

On the ides of May, I found the little crow dead. The parents had already gotten the news, and though they still hung around in the trees for a couple of days, they no longer cawed or circled overhead. I missed their fierce protectiveness. I picked up the crow with a plastic bag, it was so very light. It's gone now.

An amazing couple of weeks. On May 1 I was out jogging, and about 25 minutes into my jog I had a brief zzzt, a blip where I lost consciousness. I remember turning my head to the right as I came to a cross street to check for traffic, and then the briefest moment of 'static', and when I came to I felt like I'd missed a moment of life. Very strange feeling. Heck, I'm wired differently from most people, my fibromyalgia sends electricity shooting up and down my body from time to time, my thoughts are often a little out of left field, but this was a totally new sensation.

Anyway, I kept jogging, but the same thing happened again. So I walked the rest of the way home, felt light-headed. For a few days felt kind of dizzy, so I went to the doctor. She listened to my heart, sounded fine. She explained what it probably was, an electrical misfiring of the heart. Then she had an EKG machine rolled in, just to check and see if everything was okay.

NOT, apparently. She said it looked like I'd had a heart attack. Whoa. But I always take everything with a grain of salt (metaphorically speaking only- I've got to watch my blood pressure!), so I chilled on the freak-out, left that all to her. She was freaked, I'll tell you. So I was sent for a bunch more testing. Carotid artery free and clear, stress test checked out normal, cardiologist says it doesn't look like a heart attack, looks like I'm fine. Whatever happened while jogging was just 'something'. Nothing to worry about.

Okay. I'm cool. Still, it was a couple of weeks of uncertainty. And much of that time I had crows cawing and swooping at me. Enough to give a guy a heart attack!

I'm Crowing

I've had a few days of being hectored and cawed at by nervous, anxious parental crows. Their fledgling disappeared the day after it was found here, and the Mom and Dad have kept a hawk-like watch on me ever since. They think I stole it.

Whenever I go near the windows of the studio, they Kraw out a loud alarm. When I cross the yard, they swoop down from the redwood tree where they're keeping watch. But their baby was, until today, nowhere to be seen. I searched the yard for the stray feathers that cats and other crow-eaters leave behind after a meal, but there were none. Still, the chances of the little crow's survival seemed dim, as the parents still seemed to think I had it hidden away somewhere.

Then, this morning as I came home from Choir, the fledgling was in the road in front of my house. I tried to shoo it to safety, but its parents came swooping when I threatened to get near it. I was heartened to find it alive - I was starting to feel really bad being yelled at by crows all day long for the kidnapping of their child. Now they could see their young one was alive, and would leave me alone.

Not so fast. The fledge found its way back to my backyard - it can fly well enough to get over fences, but still not so well to return to its 75-foot high nest. Now its been in the backyard for a few hours, and it caws in its little crow voice, and its parents caw back from their redwood tree, and I have to cover my head and run for it every time I leave the studio - the parents are VERY protective now.

Sheesh. Life with crow.

Crows in my yard

This morning there's a pair of crows cawing raucously all around my studio. Here's why...

As I was about to open the door to my back stoop yesterday morning, I noticed a small crow sitting there. On the doormat. A strange sight. I considered if it might have hurt itself, but there were no windows it would have crashed into, and it's an odd area for a bird to land in. But when I opened the door, the crow merely blinked, looked at me, and apparently wasn't about to move.

My first thought was "Sick bird? West Nile Virus?", so I called their hotline. They told me that unless the bird was dead, they weren't interested. They told me to call back if it died, and they'd be happy to help. Well...uh, okay.

I'd seen injured birds perk up and fly away, so I decided to give it a few hours and see what happened. Maybe as the sun moved onto the stoop, the warmth would help the bird.

A couple hours later, the bird had moved just enough to get itself out of the sun and into the shade. I went up to it to say hello and to see if I could determine any obvious injury, but a loud cawing went up from the surrounding trees, and a couple of crows came swooping over, so I retreated.

I called the local Animal Control to see what they could do. Almost immediately a guy came out, armed with a net, a box and some gloves. I led him to the back yard, and as he picked up the small crow, the 2 vigilant crows from the trees swooped around us. "Get under cover", he said, "they might peck at you."

He examined the bird, and found no injuries. He explained it was a fledge, and he quickly spotted the nest it came from, in a very tall tree a few hundred feet away. He said that often Crow fledglings didn't make it far on their first flight, and sometimes took a day or two to finally get the strength and gumption to fly back up to the nest. There was a risk of the young crow being eaten by a cat or some such, but that risk was better than taking the fledge somewhere 'safe', as the handling by humans would imprint it and doom its ultimate survival chances. So, he told me to leave the young crow alone, and that it should be off and flying in a couple of days. Sure, I'm cool with that.

This morning, I wondered if the young crow had already made its way home. As I opened my back door to go to my studio, however, loud and very close Crow Caws attacked my ears. I backed into the house. They were being very vigilant. I put on a hat, let them swoop out of sight, and dashed under the shade trees to my studio door. As I type, the Mom and Dad crows continue to caw. I can't see the fledge anywhere from my windows, but I suppose the parents are making a noise to urge their young one to fly. Crows never sounded so sweet!

45's were sleazy, mp3s are...?

Early on (like, when I was 10 years old) I had a moral judgment against 45 singles. They were a ripoff (LPs had a much better song-per-dollar ratio); they were a shallow glimpse into an artist's work (way too short); they were the sound-bites of their day. I don't know how my little 10-year old brain came to this judgment, but there it was.

This is odd, as I loved AM radio at the time, and AM radio is nothing but 3 minute songs, all artfully done, all hugely appreciated by me.

I suppose part of the distinction is that radio goes on and on. A song is played in a context - a context of other hits songs, a dj with a personality, advertisements, weather reports, etc. When you put a 45 on a record player, it begins playing, and 2 or 3 minutes later it's over. That's it. Empty silence. The song feels small and cheap when it's laid bare like that. An LP included and embraced the song with others, all by the same artist, in a large canvas of sound that went on and on... (for 15 minutes). I Loved, and still Love, an album of songs.

Okay, and there was one other thing that made me dislike 45s. When I was an immensely shy 11 year old, I'd somehow managed to land a girlfriend while in summer school. We went on a double-date to this guy's house. He had a make-out room in his garage, with a record player that played a stack of 45s. The music was dumb, it was make-out music intended to make girls somehow melt. But I was frozen in fear-of-kissing-a-girl land, and the sound of this gawdawful music along with my cold-sweat fear made my stomach turn. I loved music too much to have it used in such a way. It was sleazy. Cheap. Tawdry, even.

But, like I say, my general dislike of 45's predated that experience.

Another 45 vs. LP experience involved discovering the one-hit-wonder phenomenon. A hit song of '70 was "Spirit in the Sky" by Norman Greenbaum. I liked it. Still like it. A friend of mine had the LP which contained the song, and one day at his house he put it on. Bad LP. One good song on the whole thing. I didn't know that there were artists who made such good and bad music at the same time. I was used to the Beatles, the Doors, Led Zeppelin - people who made good LPs.

So, what about mp3s? Are they the 45 singles of today?

Being a lover of albums of songs, the playlist "revolution" that we're currently in is not my bag. I still love to hear a group of songs by an artist, all of a high caliber of artistic integrity, in an album format. One-hit wonders are okay, but just okay. But mp3s are not sleazy. Unlike a 45, they offer good value for the money. And, it's so easy to put them in a playlist and surround them with other good stuff .It's like having your very own jukebox. Which, I must admit, I did rather like when I was a lad (even if they offered very poor value for the money).

Music Doesn't Smell

Don't know why this crossed my mind, or if it's even true, but it seems to me that music doesn't smell. For such a powerful, visceral, emotional art form, that's a strange thing. But I think it's true.

Name me a music that smells - cause I can't think of one.

Oh, there's music that stinks out loud, but I'm not talking about judgments of taste.

I go to a museum, somehow a painting has a smell to it. Sculpture? I can smell it. Pencil shavings, charcoal, they all have an olfactory component.

Theatre - I can smell the actors.

Movies - well, there's popcorn isn't there?

Poetry, books, that musty smell, that inky smell.

Various musical instruments have their smell. Woodwinds, brass have metallic smells, their cases have slight moisture in them, slightly mildewed. Guitars, violins, etc., they've all got that old wood musk, old varnish tang to them. Pianos with their polish and their wool felt smells. The musicians themselves? Sure, they smell.

But once the music is in the air, the notes themselves don't carry the smell. The notes are super-fresh, clean, devoid of smell. It's not bad. It's just profoundly curious.

Profoundly curious to me :)

Do I chill to Barney?

What do kids' musicians listen to when we're not on the job?

Do we worship the Wiggles? Boogie down to some Barney? Relax to Raffi? Sip some Chardonnay on Sesame Street?

Get real. We're grown-ups. We like all kinds of music (including, in my case, some Sesame Street).

Still, even I was stunned when fellow kids' musician Tito Uquillas (of Hipwaders fame) and I got into lengthy talks about Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica. I mean, I know I grew up with that music, it's part of my musical heritage, but somehow I didn't think any other kids' musicians were hip to it. Man, Tito knows his music, he's way into getting the groove right, and his tastes stretch into the far cobwebby corners of pop. It's really exciting talking with him, like high school days when my friends and I would sit around all afternoon and discover new music.

I recently did an interview with musician and blogger Eric Herman. We went on and on about about Zappa and other influences from our past. (I can go on and on when it comes to music...) Can you hear Zappa in either of our 'canons of work'? I doubt it.

I've sat with Justin Roberts in his apartment, digging some mid-60's Wayne Shorter. He spun some Kurt Elling and some new stuff I hadn't heard. Now, Justin's music for kids bears little outward signs of his appreciation of Jazz. But, the music that a songwriter listens to informs his music in ways that usually have more to do with quality and depth.

Do the Hipwaders sound like Beefheart? No, but you can hear the attention to groove and musicality. The appreciation of music is evident.

Lately I'm listening to mainly classical music. A ton of Mahler. Did it make me go all classical on my latest CD? No. Perhaps it did get me to pay even closer attention to orchestration/arrangement and interplay of voices. Or maybe not. The main thing is, I'm still thrilled to listen to music. Just about any music (except Barney or the Wiggles). You dig?

Touch the Sound - What a film!

I saw the most beautiful film the other week. It's called "Touch the Sound", about the soulful and amazing percussionist Evelyn Glennie, who happens to be deaf. She lives and breathes music, and she has learned to hear with her body. The film is drop-dead gorgeous, remarkable footage that is stirring and evocative and so fresh. It reminded me of the great Chinese cinematographers of the past decade in its attention to color and movement.

The movie, by filmmaker Thomas Riedelsheimer (RIVERS AND TIDE: ANDY GOLDSWORTHY WORKING WITH TIME), takes its time - if you're in the mood for an action pic tonight, this probably won't fit the bill. But when you're ready for something in a thoughtful vein, you've just got to see this.

It features a lot of duet work with guitarist Fred Frith in a huge abandoned factory in Germany, and includes solo snare drumming in Grand Central Station, a fantastic jam session with Taiko drummers in Japan, a visit to Evelyn's home farm in Scotland.

Don't miss the scene where Evelyn teaches, via a bass drum, a young deaf girl how to hear with her body. It's powerful and wonderful. Our bodies and minds are capable of SO much. This movie is affirming, of both humanity and art.

Evolution of a musician - Part 1

Before I saw/heard the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show along with the rest of America in 1964, music was not a passion of mine. There were no musical instruments in our house. My parents had a slim collection of LPs. Our record player was a strange sleep-teaching device with a clock built into it that my dad had bought to try and learn more via sleeping.

My mom was the one that played records or listened to the radio. She would sing while vacuuming, and I thought she sounded pretty good, like Barbra Streisand.

When my mom and I went on errands in the car, the radio was always on. AM Radio, circa 1960-1963. With my mom. Her stations...I liked Nat King Cole ("Lazy Hazy Crazy Days of Summer") and Barbra Streisand.. Maybe I liked them 'cause they were on TV a lot at the time, and I liked their personalities. I didn't like Sinatra or any of the Rat Pack. "High Hopes" really bugged me - Sinatra sounded stupid singing about little kid stuff, I did not trust him. He seemed vaguely mean.But Bobby Darin, Mack the Knife? I liked when that song came on.

I had a teenage Aunt, who played the radio around my grandparent's pool. Top 40 radio. It didn't grab me. "Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny", Elvis, Beach Boys, it just didn't do it for me. Elvis seemed old-fashioned and corny. I remember seeing a Beach Boy record at a neighbors' house, and even though surfing and all was cool, something about the cover made me feel that they were 'uncool', out-of-date. Before the Beatles arrived, music in general felt stale to this 7-year old.

Still, since I remember all that earlier music, it must have some kind of influence on me. Here is what music looked like in my house in 1963 (our entire record collection):

Keeley Smith? - A nice record, but I didn't love it.

 

 

 

Spellbound - I hated when my mom put this on. Very spooky music, scared me like crazy.

 

 

 

 

Tito Puente - Not something I ever requested to hear, but it did have a good party atmosphere to it.

 

 

 

 

Harry Belafonte - Love is a Gentle Thing. I loved this record. Harry's voice was so comforting to me.

 

 

 

 

Barbra Streisand. I thought her voice was SO pretty. I had a 6-year old crush on her.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Allan Sherman - A funny record. Harvey and Sheila? I didn't quite get all the jokes, but I knew it was funny. I puzzled over the cover a lot. What is a celebrity? Why are those people standing in a field?

 

 

 

I loved this record - recorded live, so that even if I didn't get a grown-up joke, I knew it was funny 'cause the audience was laughing. I laughed right along with them. It was a special treat when years later I got to appear on their show. And yes, Tommy is very smart and organized in real life, he seemed to be the one holding the show together.

 

 

 

 

The Limelighters - Like the Smothers Brothers, recorded live, so I could clue into what was supposed to be funny.

 

 

 

Kingston Trio - I actually borrowed this from my parents a couple years ago, to revisit. I can see why I liked it as a kid - some humor, some good songs and singing, high energy. But some of the humor is really racist and distasteful. It doesn't hold up so well over the decades.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Porgy & Bess Soundtrack. This one was a little scary to me - the overture is very dramatic and big and dark in a way. But I did love the music very much, and Gershwin remains one of my favorite composers. This LP is deep in me.

 

 

 

The Music Man - "Marian the Librarian" was a favorite tune. I loved the way the long note is held out on "Maaaaaaaaaa-rian". And I loved the way Robert Preston sang. There are a lot of good songs on that record.

 

 

 

 

 

Glenn Yarborough - I never put this record on myself. When my mom played it, it was okay, just not my thing.

 

 

 

Dinah Washington. I loved her voice. More than Barbra Streisand's (although I didn't develop a crush on Dinah). Some of the record goes awash in Nelson Riddle-style arrangements (which I've never cared for), but some of it swings hard and true. And her voice is ALWAYS good on it.

 

Gershwin for Moderns - Ted Heath. While this music has been re-released, I couldn't find a picture of the original cover art. I don't remember anyone playing this record when I was young. I think it was my dad's record]. Since he never listened to music, that would explain why this record never got played. He claimed to like Stan Kenton, but his record collection was all on 78's in the garage.

 

A huge, wonderful memory of my early years was when the whole family went to the record store one night. Only that one time, never before or since, we just got up after dinner and went to the music store, where you could listen to records in listening booths. We each got to pick out a record to take home. Wow! I got this Huckleberry Hound story LP.

 

 

 

And that's what I was listening to before the Beatles arrived.

 

Economics Lesson for Today

Okay, so it looks like we're headed for a recession. Alright then, we're in a recession. Whaddya want, you want me to say, "this is the worst financial crisis since the 2nd World War"? What was the financial crisis before then? Oh, yeah...the Great Depression.

Well, that's what some say is going on. I'm not a wall street guy. I don't get simple math, let alone high finance. But there was a remarkable interview on "Fresh Air" with a guy who was able to explain the current crisis in simple terms. I mean, it was almost fun, to be able to get my mind around everything that's going on. Almost fun, except that the news is pretty grim.

However, I thought it was important enough, and enjoyable enough, to let you know about it.

"Fresh Air from WHYY, April 3, 2008 · Perplexed by the U.S. economy? You're not alone. Law professor Michael Greenberger joins Fresh Air to explain the sub-prime mortgage crisis, credit defaults, the shaky future of other types of loans and what we can expect from the U.S. financial markets."

Happy listening!

Radio interviews this week

Did an interview with KPFA's Dean Suzuki on Sunday night. His show runs from 10-12pm. My bedtime is usually 9pm these days. And Q has been on a night-terrors tear for a couple of weeks, so sleep has been at a super-premium. Still, I figured I always love talking music with Dean (he's a doctor of music, puts his stethoscope to new music of all kinds, from minimalism to pop), and that I could manage to be coherent.

I don't know how it sounded out on the airwaves, but I was struggling to find each word in a sentence. I had things that I wanted to say, but my brain and my tongue had gone to bed a couple hours before. Ah, well...At least we played tons of music, from Fall of Troy, I'm Growing, and even the cut I co-wrote with Richard Bob and sang on from the latest Bobs CD (Funk Shui from Get Your Monkey Off My Dog).

I've got another radio interview later this week - with a Vancouver BC radio station (Brent and Woofy), but that's at 10am on Saturday. Don't know if I'll be any more coherent, but at least it won't be past my bedtime!

And it's rather trippy, going from being interviewed by a doctor of post-miminmalism to a guy with a talking stuffed dog. Is life weird, or what?

How to Find Good Music

Listened to some of an interview/guest DJ spot with Ray Davies on All Songs Considered over breakfast this morning. (Great interview, btw) He recounted radio in the UK back in the 50's, how there were just 2 stations in the UK proper, then the US Armed forces stuff and radio Luxembourg. Got me thinking, reminiscing of my own days in the 60's of twisting the dial on my little AM transistor radio, looking for new music. The mystical, magical activity of twisting the dial slowly back and forth late at night, hearing something great, but fuzzy, trying to tune it in, only to have it disappear into the cosmos again. The local stations were strong and dependable, but finding even them was not completely scientific - the dial just swept across an arc of 160 degrees, there were no presets, you had to listen for what you want.

Fast forward to today, and there are new ways to find new music, or, to put it more precisely, music you haven't heard before. iTunes, iLike, Lastfm. They work, kind of. My favorite so far is Goombah. They really do seem to lead me to new stuff that I haven't heard before. I have my tastes, just like anyone, but I want to be surprised. They seem to deliver.

But I wonder if Goombah, or anyone else out there, could devise a device that simulates an AM or a short wave radio. You sweep the dial, and you hear snatches of music. When you hear something you like, you try to tune it in. Boy, that would be heaven! Perhaps its appeal would only be to a nostalgic older generation. But I think its appeal would go deeper.

Playlists, as they currently are, are intended to be turned on and left alone. Yes, you can skip past songs you don't care for, but the interaction is sporadic. With a radio dial, the interaction is in the moment, intense. You are concentrating on finding something, and only when you find a station that you like do you sit back and see what comes next. It becomes a moment of concentrated musical discovery.

If someone develops this idea, let me know. I don't need credit, I just want to use it!

Post Reviews Please

Some really fine reviews and notices for I'm Growing have been coming in. Emails of appreciation from people like you, and reviews from newspaper, magazines and blogs. I'm so glad people are liking it and hip to it.

It's especially sweet when a reviewer not only likes it, but seems to understand why I had to make this cd. From zooglobble, the reviewer writes: "One of the things I like most about the kids' music genre is the feeling that artists are following their own muse, no matter how skewed, when they jump in...Which brings me to Gunnar Madsen."

Or this, from KidsMusicThatRocks: "It's incredibly interesting to see how the course of Madsen's life affected the development of these particular tunes: Madsen didn't simply make up and throw together a bunch of songs just to have a kids' album on the market."

Makes me feel all warm and cuddly!

But I still need help getting the word out to more people. Will you help?

Post your own review on iTunes or Amazon or CDBaby. Just click on a link to post your review and/or comments. Add your voice to some of these blog reviews:

"Brilliant arrangements and performances. Period. And funny! And fun! And entertaining for everyone in the family! What more could a kid and his grownups want?" - KidsMusicThatRocks.blogspot.com

"Deliciously good music" - Thingamababy.com

"The best "Beethoven's Wig" piece never written" - Zooglobble.com

"Overall, this one disappoints" - OutWithTheKids.blogspot.com

"Spirited, quirky children's CD" - CommonSenseMedia.org

I am deeply grateful for all your support. Making music is a huge part of my life, and I couldn't be doing it without people like you!

love and peace,

 

Gunnar

Too Good for Kids?

I just had a little email conversation with Bill Harley, about a comment he received after a recent concert. The person told him "You're too good to sing for kids."

Well, that's a nice compliment in its way. I suppose one way to interpret it is "most music for kids is pretty bad, but your music is good." And that's nice. Somewhat true, even.

But, TOO good for kids? It's not like "Well, I got pretty good at writing music for kids. So good in fact that I moved on to writing for teenagers, then I got super good and started writing for college age kids. But I'm SO past that now - I've been writing fantastic music for middle age people, and now my agent says I'm ready to launch into music for the silver set..."

The goal is good music - for whatever age. I was a kid. I still have many thriving inner children, and every one of those inner children inside me wants good stuff. I suppose I have inner teenagers, inner middle aged men...So I write for me, or, uh, them, or, uh...you know. For all of me.

In a recent review of "I'm Growing", the author has a witty interchange with his wife about the 'appropriateness' of the song "Pumpkin Hair" for kids. She maintains that lyrics like "If she will let me be her guy, I'll never go free-rangin" aren't right for young kids. He counters with "But he's talking about marrying a woman and committing himself to her. Isn't that what Mom and Dad have done?" The review (on Thingamababy) has sparked a lot of comments. What is appropriate? Opinions vary,obviously.

Dan Zanes writes that one of his most-requested songs is an old sea shanty called "Pay Me My Money Down", which sings about jail, a bar, money ;the usual concerns of sailors of yore (perhaps of sailors of now, too). He apparently didn't think twice about putting it on his CD "Night Time".

Lately I've been teaching choir to grades 4-6 at my son's montessori school. It's a cool challenge to find songs that will capture them and inspire them. I mean, my childhood experience singing choir was generally snooze-ville. I wanted rock and roll, please. But rock and roll and 60 voices don't really work (except for the intro to "You Can't Always Get What you Want"). Sea Shanties survive the choir treatment well, so we're doing "Drunken Sailor". A song that cannot be done in public schools (see "drunken"). The kids LOVE it, and it's inspired some great discussion. One kid knew of other verses, including one about doing something with the captain's daughter - Why didn't I include that verse? he asked. Because, I said, that verse was inappropriate. We went on to talk about why sailors (of yore) felt the need to get drunk, and how a "dose of salt and water" was to make the sailor throw up and get sober faster ("eww, yuch!").

Kids know a lot about life. Sheltering them from inappropriate things is, well, appropriate, but they're bound to learn of things outside of your control, and then they're going to have questions about that stuff. Are you just going to pretend not to hear? Why not let sea shanties about drunken sailors and jail be a starting point for talking about these real issues? Songs offer a 'safe' way for kids to explore and approach issues that are all around them and can feel overwhelming.

It's not like I have any songs about jail or drunkeness on "I'm Growing", but still the review on Commonsense Media has a kind of disclaimer, saying that the cd "might require just a bit of discussion or explanation". I would hope! What a wonderful thing to fill a child (or a grown-up) with questions, with a yearning to find out more? That's why I don't dumb-down the words in my songwriting. I want kids running to the dictionary (or the computer) to figure out what "obfuscate" means. I want them to challenge their teacher to use it in a sentence!

I want music that a family can enjoy together. My family all sat around the record player and laughed when we put on the Smothers Brothers. Much of it was over my head, but because my parents were laughing, I wanted to know MORE. And this was something we could share together. My dad didn't like the Beatles, I didn't like my mom's LP of the soundtrack to "Vertigo", but we could all get behind the Limelighters and the Smothers Brothers. (Okay, I'm beginning to carbon-date myself...)

So it is today. I'm writing music for families to enjoy together. That's what Dan Zanes is doing. That's what Bill Harley is doing. Making music that's too good to be JUST kids music.