Monday Morning Smile: "Down by the Salley Gardens" - Yale Whiffenpoofs

Miss Mary Mack had her first school choir concert of the year last week. 90-odd kids singing with no small degree of talent. Hearing her sing in that choir made me happy for many reasons, not the least of which was that I'd heard her singing this song through the house for the past month and so I was glad to hear it in polished, choral form.

My favorite song her choir sang was "Down by the Salley Gardens," which is based on an 1889 poem by W.B. Yeats with a vocal setting by Benjamin Britten:

Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;
She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take life easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;
But I, being young and foolish, with her did not agree.

In a field by the river my love and I did stand,
And on my leaning shoulder she placed her snow-white hand.
She bid me take love easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.

As you might expect, hearing these words from a bunch of middle schoolers put a different spin on the text. But Britten's setting (and his piano accompaniment) is so very lovely and made me smile. Wistfully, perhaps, but smile nonetheless.

Also: so short -- totally memorizable. Now to track down chords.

Anyway, this is one of the best versions I could find online. It omits the piano and so isn't quite the version I heard, but the melody is the same.

Yale Whiffenpoofs - "Down by the Salley Gardens" [YouTube]

Oh, what the heck, here's a bonus version, recorded many years ago. It's a solo artist, but hews much more closely to Britten's piano-aided setting.

Nicolai Gedda, accompanied by Gerald Moore - "Down by the Salley Gardens" [YouTube]

Wordzworth

[With apologies to The New Yorker's "Shouts & Murmurs" section.]

KIDZ BOP Hits The Books! KIDZ BOP and ADAMS MEDIA INTRODUCE THE FIRST-EVER BOOK SERIES BASED ON THE #1 KIDS’ MUSIC BRAND THIS AUGUST: BOSTON, MA (August 1, 2011) — Happy Birthday KIDZ BOP! The #1 music brand for kids ages 5-12 in the U.S is turning 10 this summer. To celebrate, KIDZ BOP is turning the page, starting a new chapter and launching the first-ever KIDZ BOP books! KIDZ BOP invites fans and young readers to join the party when three all-new book titles hit shelves this week. [Press Release]

MEMORANDUM

To:Philip Browner, Senior Executive VP
From:Justine Brennan, VP for New Products

Now that the first three books in the "KIDZ BOP BOOKS" series ready for immediate release, I wanted to let you know we have finalized the galleys for the next books in the series. Just as the Kidz Bop albums bring in tween-aged kids to sing along, we've brought in kids as young as 6 to help use rewrite great books at a more age-appropriate level. They've been a key partner in our authoring process.

As you are aware, our long term plan is to alternate applying the Kidz Bop touch to new books with tackling more classic literature. (I'm pleased with our progress on our version of The Hunger Games, in which Katniss and Peeta are sent to the Capitol for a fun party and foosball tournament.) You are welcome to review the galleys for this set of Kidz Bop takes on classic literature at any time, but I wanted to give you a sense of what the books will entail. Please pass along any comments you might have.

Justine

*******

Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell To Arms

"It is very dangerous. DANGEROUS [shouted]" The nurse went into the room and shut the door. I sat outside in the hall. Everything was gone inside of me. I did not think. I could not think. I knew she was going to die SMILE and I prayed that she would not FLOP. Don't let her die. Oh, God, please don't let her die. I'll do anything for you if you won't ler her die. Please, please, please, dear God, don't let her die. Dear God, don't let her die. Please, please, please don't let her die. God please make her not die. I'll do anything you say if you don't let her die. You took the baby but don't let her die. That was all right but don't let her die. Please, please, dear God, don't let her die."

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
"'Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn’t touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent GRAIL HAD BEEN SENT. I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror RAVEN ERROR - of an intense and hopeless despair SUGARLESS ECLAIRE. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper WHISPER [shouted] at some image, at some vision - he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath -

'"The horror! The horror!" I'M AN EXPLORER! AN EXPLORER!'"

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

"It is a truth universally acknowledged VERY SUNNY, that a single man in possession of a good fortune WITH MONEY must be in want of a wife HONEY.

However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters. IT'S SO TRUE, IT AINT' EVEN FUNNY.

"My dear Mr. Bennet,'' said his lady to him one day, "have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?''

Mr. Bennet replied that he had not.

"But it is,'' returned she, "for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she told me all about it.''

Mr. Bennet made no answer.

"Do not you want to know who has taken it?'' cried his wife impatiently.

"You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it.''

This was invitation enough. [The kids' view here -- and I quote -- "Blah, blah, blah, amiright?" We've turned this into a 48-page graphic novel. It really rocks. I'll route you a copy under separate cover.]

Jack Kerouac, On the Road

"At this time, 1947, 2007 KIDZ bop was going like mad all over America. The fellows at the Loop blew, but with a tired air, because bop was somewhere between its Charlie Parker Ornithology KELLY CLARKSON period and another period that began with Miles Davis JUSTIN BIEBER. And as I sat there listening to that sound of the night which KIDZ bop has come to represent for all of us, I thought of my friends from one end of the country to the other and how they were really all in the same vast backyard doing something so frantic and rushing-about. And for the first time in my life, the following afternoon, I went into the West. It was a warm and beautiful day for hitchhiking BIKE-RIDING. To get out of the impossible complexities of Chicago traffic I took a bus to Joliet, Illinois, went by the Joliet pen ZOO, stationed myself just outside town after a walk through its leafy rickety streets behind, and pointed [UNINTELLIGIBLE SHOUTING] my way. All the way from New York to Joliet by bus, and I had spent more than half my money. WHOO-HOO!"

Monday Morning Smile: "All Is Not Lost" - OK Go

Speaking of Pilobolus, OK Go's latest video is a collaboration between the band and the dance troupe for OK Go's new song "All Is Not Lost." It takes just a little while to figure out what's going on, and then it becomes increasingly hypnotic. You and your kids can even play with an interactive version of the video.

Also, I'm thinking of just renaming these "Monday Morning Smile" videos for OK Go since I seem to use them a lot for this purpose.

OK Go - "All Is Not Lost" [YouTube]

Spotify for Kids

When I first heard about Spotify's launch here in the United States, my initial reaction was pretty much... "so what?" It wasn't that I didn't appreciate the promise of unlimited music for free, it was more that I recognized the potential downside for me -- I'm already swimming in music, new and old, kindie and not, and the promise of unlimited music seemed either like a burden or fairly useless.

But, I dragged out my invite, signed up, and I've spent a few days exploring the library. Not so much for personal reasons -- I'm still drowning in music, though I can see how it could be useful for research/writing purposes (I'm already using it for a particular project). No, I've been exploring the collection of kids music on Spotify.

The verdict? Pretty good, but not perfect.

The upside: The collection really is pretty broad. All of Dan Zanes' family albums, all the Laurie Berkner Band, all of They Might Be Giants' family stuff, all of Justin Roberts' family stuff. Imagination Movers, Elizabeth Mitchell, Recess Monkey, Secret Agent 23 Skidoo, Caspar Babypants, the list goes on. The Many Hands compilation is there, too.

The downside: The collection isn't complete, and it can be hard to find albums at times.
For example, Frances England's first and third albums are in the library, but her second, Family Tree, isn't. Lunch Money's debut disk Silly Reflection is in there. The Deedle Deedle Dees? Not there. Holly Throsby's See!? Not there. Raffi's very first album is there, as is a couple compilations from a few years back, but there's pretty much a thirty-year gap between the two.

Not only is the collection spotty, it's not always possible to find what they do have. Gwendolyn and the Good Time Gang is there for their first two albums, but their name is spelled 3 different ways, so there's more in there than you might think on first search. Dan Zanes' Night Time! doesn't show up unless you specifically search for that album. In other words, gratification isn't instant.

And if you think it's mystifying for the listener, it's mystifying for the independent artist, too, a little bit. I was pleased as punch -- but also surprised -- to see Johnny Bregar's take on "Green Beans Everywhere" for the Kindie Songwriting Club on Spotify. (Find it! Stream it! It's great!) But I'd done absolutely nothing to put it there. And the rest of Volume 1 is nowhere to be found. While I wouldn't have been surprised if Bregar had placed the song there, he says he'd done absolutely nothing to get the song online.

Not that all my (and your) clicking will make Johnny rich. A (non-kindie) musician acquaintance of mine says that his band's payment for each Spotify spin is $0.0004. That's four-one-hundredths... of a cent. Or, as my friend puts it, a million people could listen to a 10-song album in its entirety -- that's theoretically a platinum album -- and generate exactly $4,000 for the artist who made the album.

Beyond that, the ads are a bit of a problem. Not the existence of the ads themselves -- they've got to pay for the licensing rights and bandwidth somehow -- but rather the content. When I listened, I was presented with ads for musicians who were not exactly kid-friendly. Maybe as the content and listening patterns mature in the States, we'll get more contextual ads, but for the moment, if you're looking to stream albums for your kids, you're either going to have to seriously monitor the ads or splurge for one of the 2 paid upgraded memberships ($4.99 or $9.99/month), both of which are ad-free.

But it's hard to be too churlish about a system that more succeeds than fails in its promise to provide unlimited music at your fingertips for free. [Ed.: Sorry -- I had news on, and links to, a new DZ album, but it turns out that Spotify shouldn't have had the album yet. It's OK, patience is a virtue and will be rewarded soon enough.]

Kindie-Chartin': Sirius-XM's Kids Place Live "13 Under 13"

A few weeks back, I attempted to provide some sense of the relative popularity of various family musicians by taking a look at the quasi-objective metric of Facebook fans.

The purpose of the review was not to start fights between artists. As I noted in the piece...

1) I know that the number of fans someone has on Facebook has nothing to with quality or talent or anything. Mostly.
2) I'm not trying to start any fights between artists. [See? I wasn't kidding!]
3) As someone who considers how to bring artists in concert to a place that's not New York or DC where concerts happen weekly, the lack of hard data in evaluating an artist's popularity does not help. I can tell you exactly who I would bring in if attendance and cost were no object. But they are.

Nor was I attempting to be exhaustive in my review of artists (as soon as I finished, I came up with another half-dozen artists I could have mentioned). If you're an artist at the level of the folks I mentioned, then perhaps you're doing OK.

But Facebook isn't a perfect proxy. (Again, as I noted... "it's a poor proxy for album sales and possibly for concert attendance, and it's a single data source.") So this piece is a second -- and definitely not the last -- way to look at popularity. (Hence my new title for the series - "Kindie-Chartin'.")

I decided to look at Sirius-XM's Kids Place Live. The station, likely has the largest audience of any family music radio station, especially since it broadcasts kids music 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. (It also has nearly 11,000 fans on its own Facebook page.) As such, songs that do well there are songs that have resonated with a large group of kids on a national basis. Clearly, interest on the part of the DJs there have some influence on what does and doesn't get played, but when you're programming as much live music as KPL does, you need to respect what kids do (and don't) respond to.

One way to evaluate airplay would be to search playlists, but that would take forever just to get a "point-in-time" view of whatever artists I (or you) feel like searching. Better (and perhaps easier) to look at their weekly "13 Under 13" broadcasts, which count down thirteen of the most popular songs on the station for the past week.

Music director and DJ Robbie Schaefer describes the list as a "subjective snapshot of our live shows for that week," reflecting not only programmed spins and listener requests, but also the more nebulous concept of "momentum," which might take into account responses on Facebook and listener e-mails. In other words -- and this is my phrasing, not Schaefer's -- the list is as much art as science. But, it's put together by DJs who are spending many hours a week interacting with their listeners and who get reminded repeatedly when songs do (or don't) get a reaction from their audience.
Beyond the chart itself, Gwyneth Butera runs the Kids Place Live Fans website, which includes listings of most "13 Under 13" shows and ratings. (Yay for historical data!)

I've gone back and looked at approaching 2 years' worth of "13 Under 13" data to compile a listing of 2010's most popular songs on Kids Place Live. The listing was pretty simple -- if a song was #1 on the chart, I gave it 13 points; #2, 12 points; and so on. The more total points a song had, the more popular it was.

Now, as always, some caveats:

1) Again, I'm not trying to pick any fights.
2) Getting played on Kids Place Live isn't necessarily a reflection on an artist's worth. Songs don't get played on Kids Place Live (or any radio station) for a wide variety of reasons. For example, most of their programs target the, say, 4-to-9-year-old age range.
3) As noted above, the "13 Under 13" lists are as much art as science and doesn't wholly reflect actual airplay. I'm sure Heywood Banks is driving a very nice car as a result of the regular airplay of his song "Toast" on KPL even though his song doesn't make the weekly list. And raise your hand if you think the Hampsterdance needs to be played one more time each week. (I thought so.)
4) Gwyneth is an intrepid traveler and only had maybe 85% of the charts. To make comparing easier, I guessed placements for the missing weeks. These charts tend to be fairly slow-moving -- typically only one song enters and leaves the chart each week -- so I'm probably only off by one or two chart positions for any missing week. But it's a reason why I'm only presenting the Top Five and Top Ten songs for 2010 and not ranking within those.

OK, you've read long enough. Here, in alphabetical order, are the top five songs on Kids Place Live for 2010 (songs that first made an appearance on the charts in 2010):

Kristin Andreassen - "Crayola Doesn't Make a Color for Your Eyes"
Jonathan Coulton - "Princess Who Saved Herself"
Joe McDermott - "Clap Your Hands"
Justin Roberts - "Sleepoverland"
Tim and the Space Cadets - "Superhero"

These five songs were pretty clearly head and shoulders above the rest in terms of their point totals. The next five?

The Verve Pipe - "We Had to Go Home"
Elizabeth Mitchell - "Shoo Lie Loo"
Brady Rymer - "Love Me for Who I Am"
Keith Munslow - "Watchin' All the Cars Go By"
Recess Monkey - "Jet Pack"

There were a total of 50 songs that charted. (Remember, it's typically only one new song each week.) Now, if you go by artist rather than just song, you get a slightly different list. Here's the top ten "13 Under 13" artists for 2010 (again, based on songs that first chart in 2010).

Caspar Babypants
Dean Jones/Dog on Fleas
Joe McDermott
Jonathan Coulton
Justin Roberts
Keith Munslow
Kristin Andreassen
Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem
Recess Monkey
Tim and the Space Cadets

This list features some folks like Caspar Babypants and Rani Arbo who had multiple songs chart on the list but didn't necessarily have one super-popular song. Having multiple songs in a year doesn't typically happen, due in part to the relatively slow pace of chart movement. (Other artists, like the Verve Pipe, have multiple songs hitting the charts, but over multiple years.) Alternately, you could look at albums -- Many Hands: Family Music for Haiti had not one, not two, but three songs hit the charts (the JoCo track, along with Emily Curtis' "We Belong" and Grenadilla's "Arabella Angelique"). [Plus, as Gwyneth subsequently noted to me, a fourth song, "Little by Little," entered the charts in 2011.]

One final comment: Having looked at charts through June of this year, that Jonathan Coulton track may prove to be one of the most popular Kids Place Live tracks ever -- it's hit the top of the charts for a second time. Everybody responded so enthusiastically to the song from the get-go, and it's clear that it's incredibly popular with listeners of all ages.