Kids music not just for kids anymore
Our family has a favorite new CD: Alphabutt by Kimya Dawson. One-half of anti-folk duo the Moldy Peaches, Dawson crossed over into mainstream pop culture when several of her originals featured prominently on the soundtrack of the Oscar-nominated 2007 film Juno. This new K Records release is a children’s album, featuring lively selections about furry critters (“We’re All Animals”, “Seven Hungry Tigers”) and a ditty celebrating Fabio’s younger brother (“Bobby-O”) that sticks in my head with all the unyielding tenacity of “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go”.
So what’s the big deal? Obviously, lots of families listen to music together. But the popularity of Alphabutt around our house might strike an observer as odd for two reasons. First, we don’t have any children. The next time the Census Bureau comes around, they will find God willing two middle-aged gay white men, a Boston terrier, a golden retriever, and a pair of canaries named Johnny and Junior. But kids? Zero.
The other curiosity, especially in light of the first disclosure, is that Alphabutt is far from the only children’s record in rotation. It joins other popular titles such as For All My Little Friends, Tiny Tim’s 1969 swan song for Reprise Records. Two of my most treasured possessions, items I’d rescue immediately after the boyfriend and pets in the event of a house fire, are a 1977 Caedmon LP of Tammy Grimes reading Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are, and my mint-condition copy of My Name Is Roosevelt Franklin, featuring kid-sized soul stirrers performed by the trailblazing African-American Muppet.
I used to feel ashamed of my children’s music fixation. I worried that it signaled some sort of emotional retardation. And, worse, that passengers who climbed into my car, only to discover that my FM dial was locked on Radio Disney, would forever after regard me with the same mix of distaste and pity I show toward single adults of a certain age who collect baby dolls. But I got past that. Guests in my home routinely look at the CD collection and remark, “I had no idea Bananarama had made so many records.” I have owned at least three copies of Jim Nabors’ Christmas album. So why feel weird that songs from Schoolhouse Rock outnumber Aretha Franklin on my iPod?
Like most things in life, I blame this odd predicament on my parents. While I had my own records as a tyke, they were few: The ubiquitous recording of Peter And The Wolf, and a LP of lullabies so tedious I would only go down for my nap peacefully if my mother promised not to play it. But no real kids fare. I pined for copies of the irritating novelty songs other neighborhood kids knew by heart: “On Top Of Spaghetti”, “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah”. If there is another child out there who attended grade school in the 1970s, yet never heard Free To Be…You And Me until they were old enough to drink, I have yet to meet him or her.
Now I’m overcompensating, squandering my discretionary income on second-hand albums by Christian hand puppets and small-time regional TV clowns, while Mom and Dad not-so-subtly hint at what a great rate my brother got on his mortgage. But I always knew the straight life wasn’t for me. Heck, I often find it hard to differentiate old-school punk from contemporary kids’ music. Two of my favorite jams on Alphabutt, “Little Monster Babies” and “Wiggle My Tooth”, feature toy piano, ramshackle percussion, and the most rudimentary guitar playing imaginable kind of like the Raincoats or the Slits.
Plus, several Alphabutt standouts deal with bodily functions; the title track is a list song about farts. That is so punk rock. And just the sort of content bound to make some suburban parent furious that their precious darling didn’t have to show ID before checking it out from the library. Maybe if this stripe of right-leaning moral guardian had learned to sing-along with Dawson’s “Pee-Pee in the Potty”, instead of, oh, I don’t know, “Onward Christian Soldiers”, they wouldn’t look so constipated and unhappy when they take the podium at PTA meetings today.
In fact, the children’s music scene seems to draw an unusually high number of veteran punk rockers. Jason Ringenberg, formerly of Jason & the Scorchers, has been quite successful in his kid-friendly Farmer Jason incarnation. Dan Zanes of the Del Fuegos and Chip Kinman from Rank & File also have cut albums aimed at the under-10 set, as have Los Lobos. That’s like half the roster from the golden age of Slash Records. If Darby Crash were alive today, he’d be singing “The Itsy Bitsy Spider”.
The funny thing is, I don’t even like Kimya Dawson that much. I bought my youngest niece a copy of the Juno soundtrack last Christmas, but mostly so I could ensure that she would have heard at least one Velvet Underground song before going off to college. Ultimately, that’s a big part of why I’m enthralled with Alphabutt: It’s a gateway record, too. If it conditions a generation of youngsters to crave more D.I.Y. indie-rock and feminist post-punk, that’s fine by me. And if they grown up knowing that everyone cuts the big cheese now and then, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of (as long as you say “excuse me”), even better.