Kids Music? NPR? Yeah, That's Me.

Hey there to all of you visiting thanks to my discussion on kids music with NPR's Melissa Block on All Things Considered this afternoon. I really didn't expect you over here today, just look, the place is a mess. Dusty and everything.

Oh, well, always glad to have friends over.

Just in case you're new 'round these parts, in addition to writing here (I've got interviews, news, and well over 200 reviews here), my writing can also be found at Offsprung, the Land of Nod music store, and assorted other places on the web and print.

I'm also proud to be a co-creator of the Fids and Kamily awards, which determines the best of the year's music for kids and families by polling a number of critics and others involved with the kids' music business. My co-creators, Bill Childs of Spare the Rock, Spoil the Child and Amy Davis of the Lovely Mrs. Davis Tells You What to Think, are good resources if you're interested in this stuff -- Bill and his daughter Ella have got a great radio show and Amy covers not only music but other kids' pop cultural stuff.

Don't ignore the other links in the sidebar to the right -- more radio shows, websites, and links to my posts here organized by artist or category, or even by age-appropriateness of the CD.

Thanks for stopping by. More great stuff appears weekly from places that continue to surprise me. For links to my reviews of the CDs discussed on the program, click below...
Peter Himmelman's My Green Kite (review, samples)

DeSoto Records' Play (review, samples)

Renee and Jeremy's It's A Big World (review, samples)

The Terrible Twos' If You Ever See An Owl (review, samples)

The Little Mo' McCoury CD won't be out 'til mid-August, and I haven't reviewed it yet. (Listened to it, yes. Reviewed it, no.) You can hear samples of the tracks here.

Origins

In case you were wondering how this website got its name, I answer the question here. Actually, the post just refers you back here (the answer is within, might be a Zen-like answer), but it gives me another opportunity to mention that Offsprung is up and running. Do stop by.

One More Place That Talks About Kids Music

Hey, there's this great new website called Offsprung that's about parenting, about humor, about interconnecting, man, and it's being headed up by Neal Pollack, and it's got this great kids music website that's known as Zooglobble and--

Wait a minute.

Yeah, that's me over there, spreading the word about kids music far and wide.

For the most part, I'll be posting the same things there that I'm posting here, though there will be the occasional Offsprung-only post (and some stuff posted here I'm just too lazy to post there) -- I'll try to remember to let you know here when I'm posting something just for the other site. As you may have already heard, The Lovely Mrs. Davis has her own site over there called Huxtabled, in which she'll tackle kids TV and video. Maybe we'll even get into a few point/counterpoint things.

You can read my welcome to the world here. Do stop by, say hello, and check out the other writers there. Should be a fun community.

It's All About May

Even with a broadband connection, the internet can actually be painfully slow. There have been a number of (mostly Internet-related) projects I've looked forward to talking about here for quite some time, but haven't been able to because the progress of those projects has been, well, 2-AM-get-the-baby-back-to-sleep-lullaby-like slow.

A flurry of e-mails over the past week or two, however, leads me to believe that I'll be able to talk about many of those projects here in the next month.

And, yes, I'll get back to posting reviews and the long-awaited Top 5 Kids Songs of All Time very shortly.

Whose Idea Was It To Only Put 24 Hours In a Day, Anyway?

So many things to do (or write about), so little time.

Which is probably good, otherwise I'd be spending too much time thinking about this weekend's Dan Zanes concert in Tucson. We are very excited about going, sad that our son won't be joining us. (We decided that a 2-hour drive and a concert smack dab in the middle of naptime was a perfect storm that might very well ruin the show for the rest of us.) We've been watching Zanes' All Around the Kitchen DVD this week to try to give our daughter some sense of what the show might be like, though we keep saying things like, "Yeah, I like her voice, but she's not going to be at the show."

What does the show look like now? Well, the Old Town School of Folk Music's burgeoning video library has a video of the band from a show last November. (Warning: took me forever to download)

In the meantime, I've got a couple reviews (I hope), maybe some other stuff. And, yes, I will get the contest winners announced very soon. Really.