Brady Rymer Celebrates Earth Day With A Pig On His Head

There's no detail on the website at the moment, but The Green Apple Festival, a 3-city 200-artist music and arts festival schedule for Earth Day weekend (April 20-22, 2007) will include a free concert featuring The Laurie Berkner Band and Brady Rymer and the Little Band That Could. Rymer will open up the Sunday, April 22nd show in New York City's Central Park at noon, with Laurie headlining at 1 PM. Should be pretty cool...

No word on who's scheduled to shout "The Sounds of Silence!....." into the deep Manhattan night.

Shows are also scheduled for Chicago and San Francisco -- I can think of a few bands in both places that might be a good Earth Day backing band...

I'm the Ted Williams of Live, Kid-Friendly Music

Ted Williams was the last person to hit .400 for a baseball season, and now I'm duplicating the feat (using my own, very narrow, self-selected definition). 5 shows, 2 with our family's attendance...

-- Trout Fishing in America: They played here the weekend before last. I know that Trout's music appeals to all ages, but the fact that they played at the auditorium smack-dab in the community of Sun City -- which prohibits kids from living there -- amused me slightly. In any case, it's a long drive out there from our house, and since we were co-hosting a Chinese New Year's party that night, we took a pass. Hopefully next time...
-- Baby Loves Disco: All four of us attended the soiree in Scottsdale this weekend and had a fun time (again). I'll have more on this maybe next week.
-- The Terrible Twos: Argh. This show was schedule at the very last minute, so late that there was zero confirmation of the show except on the band's myspace page. We had guests visiting that afternoon, and shooing them out the door a little early so we could see a show that no human had actually confirmed seemed, well, my wife drew the line at that. And, yeah, that would have been bush-league. (So needless to say, I was a little disappointed when the venue's owner called up later that night and said that, yes, the show did indeed go on.) Hopefully next time...
-- Dan Zanes: Sunday, April 22nd, Tucson. We are there. I can't wait. I'm bringin' the uke.

-- Finally, some radio show's hootenanny in Brooklyn on March 24: Either that or the Park Slope Parents CD-release party on March 25th would be a lot of fun. It would also be terribly inconvenient, geographically (not to mention I'm already out of town that weekend).

So are you listening, West Coast? San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland -- I'm talking to you -- each of you have enough kids' artists that you could put together a pretty good hootenanny yourself. (Or if you all want to come out to Phoenix, let me know...) Don't let the East Coast Bias win!

See How Great the Terrible Twos Can Be

I live in Maricopa County, Arizona, which is about 9,200 square miles large, bigger than the states of New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island. Well, I may live in a larger county, but the residents of those fine states (and a few others) have the opportunity with just an hour or two's drive to see a pretty cool kids band. (OK, Delaware's probably three hours, but still.)

Bill over at Spare the Rock has some free tickets to give away for this Saturday's Terrible Twos NYC debut at The Livingroom. Go here to enter.

(And if you're wondering, why should I care?, read this review. The album's getting re-released in April.)

But Do They Have Deedle Deedle Deetention?

Did you fall in love with "Major Deegan" by the Deedle Deedle Dees off the Park Slope Parents Album?

Are you a teacher?

Well, then, the band's new blog is for you. It will be "a resource for teachers who would like to use the music of the Deedle Deedle Dees in their classrooms. Lesson plans, background notes, activity and coloring sheets, and reading lists will all be here for you to use."

And regardless whether you're a teacher or just a payer of property taxes to your local school district, you can hear four songs from their upcoming March 3 release Freedom in a Box at their Myspace page. The mixture of their history songs with their toddler movement songs seems a bit awkward over the space of just four songs, but they're definitely interesting. "Henry Box Brown" has got the banjo thing down pat, and "Nellie Bly" would be what you'd get if The Band ever decided to write a song about, well, Nellie Bly...

Review: Park Slope Parents The Album (Vol. 1) - Various Artists

Compilations are notoriously hard things to compile. Any fool can put together a CD of good or popular songs, but their appeal as a single entity often fades after time. (Really, who listens to those Now! CDs, like, six months later?) The key is finding some loosely unifying theme or spirit to guide the collection.

Park Slope Parents The Album (Vol. 1) has just enough theme to carry the day. The 17-track collection plucks chooses songs old and new, released and not, from mainly New York City artists. There are a few tracks that deal with life in New York City -- David Weinstone (Music for Aardvarks) contributes his simple "Subway" ("Bing bong / the doors open on the train / bing bong / All the people pile in") while Michael Leyden has a more rocking take in "I Hear a Train."

Any compilation should also be measured by how well it does in helping you to discover new artists, rediscover chestnuts from old artists, and getting new tracks from your favorite artists. In terms of discovering new artists, Courtney Kaiser and Benjamin Cartel's "The Season Song" is a perfect pop tune from an adult band (whose members both teach in schools) writing a kids' song (specifically for this album). Dan Zanes contributes the "The Monkey's Wedding" from his Parades and Panoramas disk while Daniel Schorr's "Good Boy with a Bad Reputation" (off his first album) is a great example of his countryfied Dwight Yoakam-esque rock.

And the new tracks. These, my friends, are why you should get yourself on the CDBaby waiting list and order the disk. Smack dab in the middle of the disk are two great new cuts. The Deedle Deedle Dees contribute their ode to New York City roadways (had to balance out the public transportation songs, I suppose) with "Major Deegan," which was recorded for their upcoming album. The loping song sounds timeless, especially with those "whoo-whoo's". And The Quiet Two continue their surreal attack on kids' music with the loopy and giddy "When I Dream." AudraRox's reggae song of tolerance "Moms & Dads" and the sometimes-out-of-control (in a good way) "Drunken Sailor" contributed by Astrograss (with backing vocals from AudraRox's Audra and Jen) are just as good.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the sweetest track, the album closer "Fools Will Try." Somehow these Brooklyn parents got Ralph Covert to contribute a track from his 1997 album Birthday, and it's nothing less than some of the best advice you can give to a child. This is one of those songs that should appear on a lot of new parents' mix CDs...

The album is probably most appropriate for kids 3 through 8 (who probably don't care less about the appropriateness of a compilation and who just care whether a CD has good songs, which this one does in spades). The album is a fundraiser for Park Slope Parents, an informational website for parents in Park Slope, Brooklyn. For those of you who don't live in New York City, I'd recommend the CDBaby page, where you can hear samples. (The cover, by the way, is by children's author and illustrator Mo Willems, who contributes drawings that are more "Knuffle Bunny" than "Pigeon.")

Though collected for kids living in New York City, Park Slope Parents The Album (Vol. 1) is appropriate for families visiting New York City, learning about New York City, oh, heck, lovers of good music. It's a great collection of music and it's definitely recommended.