Kids tunes : great childrens music on CD

They Might Be Giants - Here Come the ABCs

Cormac — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 12:41:39 +0000

Price: $18.59

The predecessor of “Here Come the 123s“, this maybe isn’t quite as good but it still rocks. As you’d expect from TMBG, it’s quirky indie rock that’s clever, tuneful and FUN. Each song has some kind of letters-related theme - from simple letter tunes like “C is for Conifers” or “Go for G!” to craziness like “Who put the alphabet in alphabetical order?”. Educationally what you’d expect from this is that kids will get a sense that learning letters is “fun” rather than “work”, and maybe pick up a few letters on the way, rather than necessarily being taught anything in any kind of structured fashion. That’s ok though when the songs are this enjoyable, or at least ok by me and my kids.

There’s a DVD too that comes with the CD with home-made-y animated/puppet videos for each song - they’re not slick, but they’re funny and good, and they help tie the letter shapes to the letter names.

I’m one of those people who once thought “elemeno” was a single letter so my favourite song on this is probably “LMNO”, but there’s lots of other highlights to choose from, like the whimsical organ-based instrumental “Rolling O” or “Flying V” with its little Cuban piano muntuno. Isabelle’s favourite is “E eats everything” in which all the letters have various food quirks, except for E, who eats everything. “That’s a really good song”, she says. “Yeah, well”, says I. “It’d be nice if you ate everything.” “Don’t be silly, Dad.”

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Beethoven’s Wig

Cormac — Mon, 31 May 2010 21:39:11 +0000

Price: $15.38

Silly / funny words sung along with classical music’s greatest hits. This grabbed me right from the start:

Beethoven’s wig is long and curly and it’s white

Beethoven takes his wig off when he sleeps at night

Because it’s big

It’s very big

Beethoven’s wig! Is! Big!

… sung to the tune of Beethoven’s 5th, with full orchestral accompaniment. Yeah, yeah I know - it’s pure daft, but it never fails to make me grin and the longest tune takes less than two and a half minutes, so the joke never gets old. It’s made funnier still by the main singer singing in his normal voice while the others sing in “opera” voices.

I hadn’t really realised how catchy some of these tunes are - I suppose without words to sing you’re less likely to sing them in the shower, but now I have words you’ll hear Verdi and Liszt if you stand outside my bathroom door. The words have also attached the titles and composers to the tunes in my head for the first time, so when I hear them on the radio I’m not going “hmmm I’ve heard that before” but rather going “Aha! It’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik!”

The music without the lyrics is on the CD too, and it’s a joy to listen too - well-recorded and played with relish. Classical music purists will probably dismiss this as a trivialisation of something serious and magnificent, but I love it, Niamh and Isabelle love it, and I bet Mozart would have loved it too.

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The Broadside Band - Old English Nursery Rhymes

Cormac — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 12:58:40 +0000

Price: $21.79

Heather loves nursery rhymes, so we’ve listened to a lot of nursery rhyme CDs, and this is the best we’ve come across. It’s got pretty much every English rhyme - Baa Baa Black Sheep, Little Bo Peep, Jack and Jill, Three Blind Mice, Lavender’s Blue, Mary had a Little Lamb, Ring o’ rosies, etc, etc - 52 tracks in all. The music is performed in an old English folk style, which sounds pretty much like you’d imagine it - picture a pub in merrie old England with long wooden tables serving tankards of ale and pigeon pie, or perhaps a scene from the court of Charles II complete with minstrels and jester, and this is the kind of soundtrack you might expect. Or I might expect, I’ve really no idea how closely my imagined Olde England corresponds to reality. Anyway, it’s a little bit like Irish traditional music, but more sedate and formal and somehow more medieval, played on fiddles, lutes and recorders and sung by two English-accented singers who sound faintly like Chumbawamba.

I’ve always had a soft spot for nursery rhymes myself, and have often plundered them in my own songwriting even before we had kids, but even I’d be unlikely to sit and listen to this all the way through for pure enjoyment. I would, however, happily listen to half an hour of it - it’s well arranged and well performed, and it’s head-and-shoulders above most of its competition, avoiding the usual irritating mannerisms you find on nursery rhyme collections. Plus, out of all the nursery rhyme CDs we have, this is the one Heather means when she points at the CD player and shouts “IMES! IMES!”.

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Annie Soundtrack

Cormac — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:36:55 +0000

Price: $14.10

Isabelle’s school put on two Christmas musicals this year - Bugsy Malone with the older kids and Annie with the younger. I didn’t really know what to expect, I hadn’t been to a school musical since I played Gertie Cummins (yes, a girl - I went to an all-boys school from the age of 8 ) in “Oklahoma!” myself, but I ended up enjoying it enormously. Doing these things as a kid, making a mistake IN FRONT OF ALL THOSE PEOPLE was horrifying, but when you’re in the audience the mistakes and the oddball things the children do are most of the fun - like a girl in senior infants reprimanding her classmate for looking the wrong way on stage, or a looooong pause in the dialogue ending in one boy reminding another of his lines in a loud whisper.

Isabelle’s class played a chorus of orphans. They shuffled onstage in their “orphanage-y” outfits, holding hands and blinking in the stage lights and looking tiny, to sing and do a kind of action dance during two of the songs. Really the experience was a bit overwhelming for Isabelle - she had sung the songs at home enough that Heather picked up the chorus of “Tomorrow” (singing “Tomowwo, onee a dee aweee” in her high chair), but on stage she spent half her time try to spot me and Niamh in the crowd, staring at the older girls and licking her lips over and over. She was still my favourite actor on the stage, of course, but I think she’ll enjoy it more next year.

This CD has become very popular in the house since. The big hit has been “The Hard-Knock Life” (you might know the chorus from the Jay-Z tune) which has knocked “Emmo dong” (”Elmo’s Song”, from Sesame St) off the number 1 spot in Heather’s most-requested-music list. “Daddeee! Had not IIIIFE!”, she says. Quite right too, it’s an absolute cracker. Other favourites are “Maybe” and “You’re never fully dressed without a smile”, and they’ve infiltrated themselves into mine and the kids’ consciousness to the extent that, at this stage, we’re starting to wreck Niamh’s head:

“Aaaargh! Guys! Please! It’s like I’m surrounded by the cast of Annie with you all breaking into song! Can’t you be quiet for JUST ONE MINUTE?”

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Captain Bogg and Salty - Pegleg Tango

Cormac — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 21:39:04 +0000

Price: $15.38

ARRRRRRR!!!

Normally I don’t get into music quickly - even stuff I end up loving will often take me 3 or 4 or 10 listens before I start to like it. Not so this CD - the first time I heard “Pieces of 8ight” I just couldn’t keep the smile off my face, it’s just so ridiculously up my street. I’m favourably disposed to seafaring and pirate-y stuff for a start, having worked as an oceanographer for a while and being, believe it or not, actually descended from pirates - according to my mother-in-law’s genealogical books the surname Parle comes from French pirates shipwrecked off south-eastern Ireland. There are other origin stories for the name, of course, but that’s the one I’m going with (wouldn’t you?). And as for the music, well, there’s a Russian-sounding melody and a xylophone and lots of “HEY!”s (Isabelle thinks it sounds like Gogol Bordello), so how can I resist? Isabelle loves it too - the first time I put it on she instantly got up and started dancing round the kitchen . And it’s got an amazing video, check it out:

The rest of the music is very diverse (Niamh thought it was a compilation at first) - there are other pirate-y sounding tracks like “Scallywag”, then there’s some Pogues-y traditional sea-shanty fare like “Weigh anchor” and then there’s rock’n'roll tunes like “Pirate party” and one real Flaming-Lips-style noughties indie rocker about a sea monster. The only misstep is yet another version of “Nellie the Elephant” (what is it with rock bands and Nellie the Elephant?) that doesn’t measure up to Mandy Miller’s original but the hilarious introduction to the song makes up for it. The rest is all great - really well-written party songs with really funny lyrics and interludes. I’d absolutely love to see them live, though being from the north-western US I don’t expect they’ll be setting their compasses for Ireland anytime soon. The album has achieved the ultimate accolade in my book - I’ve gone and learned two of the songs - so next time you’re at a party with me (not that I go to many parties these days) expect to hear me calling on myself to sing them.

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Sesame Street Platinum All-Time Favourites

Cormac — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:19:10 +0000

Price: $15.38

I mustn’t have watched much TV as a kid, because when people around me have nostalgic conversations about Grange Hill and He-Man and the like I’m utterly lost, but, like everyone else who grew up in the 70s, I did watch Sesame Street. I honestly can’t remember what I thought of it at the time, but then we put this CD on in the kitchen and heard:

Sunny day, sweeping the clouds away

On my way to where the air is sweet

Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street

Niamh, washing the dishes, just said “Oooooooh!”. Then on came:

Who are the people in your neighbourhood, in your neighbourhood

In your neigh-bour-hood …

… and I couldn’t stop grinning, I felt like I was 5 again. Obviously not every song you might have loved in your childhood is here (like the sadly absent “One of these kids is doing his own thing”), but there’s a wide enough selection from across the years to put a smile on the face of any grown-up - from “C is for Cookie” to “Elmo’s song”.

As for Isabelle’s and Heather’s reactions - well, Sesame St is famous for testing everything they do on kids and only using stuff that the kids really engage with, and it shows. They’ve never seen the show, but Isabelle has really taken to the characters just based on the songs - “Who’s singing this? Grover? Is he a boy? He sounds like Mrs. Piggy.” (yes, Mrs. Piggy, she doesn’t really get the Mrs./Miss thing just yet - she calls Heather “Little Mrs. Mischief”) - and now she’s listening to lyrics a bit she’s getting a big kick out of the idea of monsters singing about how much they love rubbish and frogs lamenting their colour. And Heather spent Friday morning squealing with delight while “dancing” her baby dolly up and down on the kitchen floor to “Rubber Duckie”.

So - a fun nostalgic treat for adults, and the kids dig it too.

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Celtic Dreamland

Cormac — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 19:59:36 +0000

Price: $17.30

This is my second discovery from myself and Heather’s weaning week. I normally shy away from anything with the word “celtic” in it. Not that I’ve got anything against Irish music - I could sing you ballads all night long (or could have once, fatherhood hasn’t been kind to my memory) - but “celtic” makes me think of … well, druids and healing crystals. And Enya. So I was half expecting New Age renditions of Danny Boy, but happily I got almost the exact opposite - honest-to-goodness performances of some really top-notch Irish/Scottish music I had (mostly) never heard before. The tunes are not strictly lullabies, but they - songs and traditional dancing music both - are all quiet and soothing and I guess babies don’t care about strict definitions one way or the other.

My favourite tune is called “Goodnight and joy” - it seems to be a variation on the well-known “The Parting Glass” and it makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck every time I hear it. The other highlight is a jig called “The Dove’s Return” played on harp which is … well, I hesitate to use the word “magical” because the word is almost as suspect as “celtic”, but really it is magical - plus it’s got pretty much the perfect rocking-to-sleep tempo and rhythm and on a normal night it’s rare that Heather makes it to the end awake.

Highlights aside, this is consistently good all the way through and I’d recommend it to anyone. Like Asian Dreamland it performed well in rigorous field-testing, and it has the added benefit, on account of the music being so good, of being inclined to distract you from the fact that you’ve been pacing the floor half the night and have to go work in 3 hours. A sanity saver.

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Beethoven lives upstairs

Cormac — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:23:39 +0000

Price: $17.30

A children’s introduction to Beethoven, this is the story of a young boy called Christoph who lives in 1820s Vienna. After his father’s death, his mother takes in a lodger who Christoph thinks is a madman - eccentric, unkempt in the extreme and constantly making a racket in his room. He writes to his uncle to complain, and the story continues in the form of letters between the two of them. The boy’s initial hostility towards the lodger (none other than Ludwig Van Beethoven) softens and eventually, as the premiere of the 9th symphony approaches, they kinda become friends.

Beethoven’s music underscores the text throughout - symphonies 5-9, the Moonlight and Pathetique sonatas and lots more. The music isn’t separate from the story, it’s more like the soundtrack - I guess the theory is that your child (and you) will come to know and love the tunes by osmosis. It’s hard to tell how well the theory has worked on Isabelle - I did try to see how she’d get on listening to the 5th symphony on its own one day and was amazed at how quiet she was being until I realised she had fallen asleep.

She really loves this CD though, whatever about the theory. On our first listen in the car during our summer holidays she dozed off halfway through and we thought it was obviously too old for her and were trying to decide what older kid to pass it on to (it didn’t help either that Niamh took against the boy narrator, Christoph, because he was “a whinger”). When she woke up she surprised us by demanding to continue listening, and then demanding the album regularly (along with Peter and the Wolf) all through the holiday (and since).

The story really draws you in after a while (even Niamh got to like Christoph eventually) - it’s fiction, of course, but you feel like you’re getting a real insight into the composer’s life and times - and naturally the music is fantastic. So while I can’t guarantee that your children will be able to tell the 7th symphony from the 6th after listening to this, if they’re anything like mine they’ll enjoy listening to it (Isabelle grandly declared that this is the third best CD ever, after Rompe and Mamma Mia) and you might too.

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Raffi - Singable songs for the very young

Cormac — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:25:15 +0000

Price: $17.30

Raffi is a kind of godfather of children’s music - not that he invented it, but he’s very much associated with its rise as a distinct genre in the 1970s, and he’s still putting out records (most recently in 2006). He’s better-known on the far side of the Atlantic where this record, released in 1976, remains a best-seller, but even so you’ll most likely recognise some of the songs. “Mr. Sun”, for instance, was used regularly in “Bosco” (a 70s/80s Irish kids tv show) in the part where they used to go through The Magic Door. “Brush your teeth” is, according to Isabelle, now used in Barney, and then there’s a few singalongs that everyone knows, like “Baa baa black sheep” and “Going to the zoo”.

It’s not hard to see the reasons for this guy’s enduring success. There’s none of the grating in-your-face cheerfuless you get in some kids music and TV, he just sings the songs straight up like some kind of friendly uncle. His voice is warm and rich, his band (in which Daniel Lanois plays mandolin) is capable without getting in the way and he totally doesn’t talk down to his audience. Even “Brush your teeth”, in which you might reasonably expect children to be hectored about not eating sweets, turns about to be a funny little rhyme based on the sound that the toothbrush makes in your mouth. I don’t know about your kids, but this approach is far more effective at encouraging mine to brush than my best technical explanation of cavity formation by acid-forming bacteria in the presence of sugars.

As well as being a really enjoyable listen, with some emotional depth amongst the fun like the poignant little “I wonder if I’m growing”, there’s some great jumping off points here for family singalongs. I spent this evening amusing everyone with my extra nonsense couplets for “Down by the bay” (like “Did you ever see some trees/Doing a sneeze?”), and “Willoughby Wallaby Woo” makes Isabelle completely crack up with laughter when you add teachers from her school to the song like this:

Willoughby Wallaby Woo, an elephant sat on you

Willoughby Wallaby Wee, an elephant sat on me

Willoughby Wallaby Wister Hoey, an elephant sat on Mister Hoey

Willoughby Wallaby Wiss Ryan, an elephant sat on Miss Ryan

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Mary Poppins soundtrack

Cormac — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:27:37 +0000

Price: $14.10

Mary Poppins is one of the two kids DVDs in my parents’ house, and it’s the one Isabelle always wants to watch when we visit. If you haven’t seen the film then you should - recently Isabelle was watching a bit of it before bed, and after she was tucked in myself and Niamh and both my parents all sat down and had an absolute blast watching the rest. It’s funny and crazy and warm-hearted, with an ending that’ll make any Dad cheer.

The songs were written, funny enough, by the Sherman brothers who also wrote the music for The Jungle Book - real old-school professional songwriters whose father was also a songwriter, on Tin Pan Alley, and whose grandfather had been a composer in the court of Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria. They won Best Song and Best Musical Score Oscars for this, and the music is so different from The Jungle Book you’d hardly believe the same people wrote it. Instead of jazz it’s English music hall, which means there’s sentimental ballads like “Feed the birds”, comic songs like “I love to laugh” and dance numbers with oom-pahs and frantic singalong choruses like “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”. Every single song is a knockout and, though the performances are far less “perfect” then you’d find in more recent Disney films - Julie Andrews is probably the only actor in this who’d be allowed sing in a modern movie - they’re bursting with character and all the better for it. I really can’t recommend this highly enough, it’s a true cast-iron classic - I even love Dick Van Dyke’s (as Bert) famously terrible cockney accent.

Speaking of Dick Van Dyke as Bert, I was casting around for his name when we were listening to the CD in the kitchen last week and Isabelle says “I know his name, it’s Youbert”. Youbert? It was only when “Jolly Holiday” came on and Mary sang “It’s a jolly holiday with you, Bert” did I realise where she got it from. So she’s listening to the words now, hmmm. I think it’s time to discreetly hide about half my CDs.