Maker Songs for Maker Kids

I don't know if this generation of kids are any more DIY than previous generations, but those kids with maker tendencies (or parents who want to encourage those tendencies) have never had as many opportunities to indulge them (not to mention temptations to ignore them).

I was listening to The Board of Education's fine new album Binary when it occurred to me that the song "I'm Not Here Right Now," about a kid not so keen on sitting in a classroom but very keen on getting out and constructing and exploring, could be an anthem for today's maker kids.

So here's a playlist to be inspired by the next time you and your kids are turning a cardboard box into a race car, learning basic electronic circuitry, or building your own cardboard drum set.  I tried to stay pretty close to the maker concept (and avoiding music-making or cooking and the like), but strayed occasionally into maker-friendly songs that more generally celebrate imaginative use of found objects and creating one's own entertainment.  (Also, despite the number of tracks covering the Woody Guthrie classic, this is nowhere near the number of versions of "Bling Blang" that are available.)

Yes, I understand the slight irony of listening to others' creative works while creating your own, but nobody's perfect.  Go forth and create!

Maker Songs for Maker Kids [Spotify url]

Billy Kelly – The Ballad of Johnny Box
The Biscuit Brothers – I Did It Myself
The Board of Education – Vasimr (to Mars!)
The Board of Education – I'm Not Here Right Now
The Board of Education – Know Your Inventors, Pt. II
The Board of Education – Know Your Inventors, Part I
The Board of Education – Lunchtime (Tin Foil Robots)
Brady Rymer – Bling Blang
Caspar Babypants – Googly Eyes
Coal Train Railroad – With A Box
Dan Zanes & Friends – Thrift Shop
Dog On Fleas – Bling-blang
Elizabeth Mitchell – Bling Blang
Fox and Branch – Bling Blang
Frances England – Bling Blang
The Hipwaders – Art Car
The Hipwaders – My New Camera
Imagination Movers – Imagination Movers Theme
The Jellydots – Adventure Quest!
Johnny Bregar – Yes I Can
Johnny Keener – Bling Blang
Justin Roberts – Cardboard Box
Keith Munslow – Cardboard Box
Lucky Diaz and the Family Jam Band – Lemonade Stand
Lunch Money – Come Over to My Dollhouse
Matt Clark – Cardboard Box
Metric – Everybody Has a Talent
Monty Harper – My Video Camera
The Pop Ups – Box of Crayons
Ralph's World – Sunny Day Rainy Day Anytime Band
Recess Monkey – Fort
Recess Monkey – Science Fair
Recess Monkey – Toolbox
Recess Monkey – I Got A Toy, But I Played With the Box
Secret Agent 23 Skidoo – Hot Lava
Secret Agent 23 Skidoo – Brainstorm
Secret Agent 23 Skidoo – Bored Is A Bad Word
Sugar Free Allstars – Cardboard Box
They Might Be Giants – Science Is Real
They Might Be Giants – Put It to the Test
They Might Be Giants – Computer Assisted Design
They Might Be Giants – Where Do They Make Balloons?
They Might Be Giants – The Edison Museum

How I Got Here: Drew Holloway (Harry Nilsson's The Point!)

Continuing our "How I Got Here" series featuring kindie artsts talking about albums that influenced them as musicians, Recess Monkey's songwriter-savant Drew Holloway talks today about one of the kids music albums that can truly be called "classic" -- Harry Nilsson's animated special/soundtrack The Point!.  While Holloway doesn't cite Nilsson's work as an influence on the band's latest album, the excellent In Tents, his recognition of the importance of the story throughline in Nilsson's music definitely shows up in more than one RM disk.

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When I was in college in the mid-nineties a friend gave me the gift of Harry Nilsson. I received a three-disc greatest hits collection with a bushy-bearded, flat-cap-wearing fella on the cover. Though I wasn’t quite sure at first, I recognized some tunes like “Coconut” and “One.” Popping the first CD in, I was instantly mesmerized by the honeyed tones of Harry’s layered voice.  One song in particular, the super-earwormy “Me and My Arrow” seemed like the theme song for a cartoon I somehow missed growing up. Well it was.

The Point! is a made-for-TV animated tale from the early seventies that through song and narration tells the story of a young boy Oblio, and his best pal Arrow. Born with out a pointed head, Oblio is banished from the Land of Point. He and Arrow embark on a journey that eventually leads them back home with a lesson to share. Their trip is a little “trippy,” due in part to Nilsson’s acidic state of mind while conceiving the idea for the story. On the whole however, The Point! has a big heart, a nice smattering of humor and is chock-full of incredible pop songs, my favorite being “Think About Your Troubles.”

Fast-forward to 2007, Recess Monkey had released two CDs, Welcome to Monkey Town and Aminal House, and we were playing with ideas for our third release. I had recently gotten Morgan Taylor’s first Gustafer Yellowgold CD and loved his mix of storytelling and angular songwriting. It instantly reminded me of that Harry Nilsson record I had been meaning to digest. I began listening to The Point soundtrack over and over again. With each repetition of Harry’s record, the excitement for creating a sweeping story through song became stronger and stronger.

In the spring of that year, we sat down as a band to watch The Point!. It certainly had an impact as we began writing what would become Wonderstuff. All that was needed to complete our project was some time to learn the ukulele, leading a two-week summer camp for elementary school kids and spending many late summer evenings doing overdubs and writing and recording narrations.

That summer was highly creative and full twists and turns. Not unlike the story of the great Harry Nilsson, who, might I add, was one of the Beatles’ favorite artists. There’s all the proof you need, right? There is a recent documentary, Who is Harry Nilsson and Why is Everyone Talking About Him? that is available to stream on Netflix. I highly recommend it and of course, giving The Point! a spin and/or a viewing.

Photo Credit: Kevin Fry

Interview: Jack Forman (Recess Monkey)

If Recess Monkey aren't the hardest-working band in kids music, then there's some other band who's figured out how break the 24-hours-in-a-day rule.  The Seattle trio has been cranking out a new studio yearly like clockwork, touring locally and nationally, and coming up with crazy-cool collaborative notions like Kindiependent, the Seattle-area collective of kindie rockers.

Their latest project, the recently released album In Tents, has also spurred a burst of creallaborativity (that's a word I just made up to reflect "collaborative creativity"), as it was the soundtrack for a kid-friendly circus show by Seattle-based troupe Teatro ZinZanni.

Last month bassist Jack Forman took time out during a "dingy, Kafka-esque Seattle morning" (his words, not mine), to talk about the album, the circus, and keeping things fresh when you're so busy).

Zooglobble: What are your childhood memories of the circus?

Jack Forman: I didn't go to the circus a lot.  I did go to the Ringling circus with my grandma in Indiana.  They had real Transformers and Truckosaurus, when I was 7 or 8 years old.  I've been interested in that combination of humor and darkness.

What are your favorite types of circus acts?

Oh, the contortion stuff, acrobatics, gymnasts.  There's this 11-year-old gymnast named Saffi Watson in the ZinZanni show, she's just insane.

Those are some of my favorites.  They're so good you sometimes forget they're just people.  I saw a Cirque du Soleil show recently, and when one of the trampoline gymnasts couldn't nail a landing, it was almost a good thing, because it reminded you just how hard these things are.

Yeah, there's the humanity, too.  It's refreshing to see when they've trained their whole life.

What came first - the album or the show?

The album came first -- we've been thinking about it for a couple years.  We kinda joked about it -- you know, hokey melodies for 3 year-olds, dinosaurs, clowns like you'd see at a teacher supply store.  But then we decided we wanted to steal back the idea from the cheesy preschool store and make it our own.  Give it a rich treatment, work with Dean [Jones, musician/producer].

Four months out from recording, I mentioned it to Korum [Bischoff[, who's a drummer for Johnny Bregar and who also works with Teatro ZinZanni, and before we knew it we spent 6 monhts with them working on a storyline.  Now we're so excited -- it's the coolest live show we've ever done.

So it's awesome live?

It's the first time we've played a record this fully live.  We've focursed on making our show dance-driven.  It's a pretty intense set, fully high-energy, sing-alongable.  Kids never sit and listen.  That's just what works for us. So there are a number of songs we've never played live.  For this show, we play 13 of the 15 songs from In Tents.

"Carousel" is my favorite musically, underscoring the performance.  There are 8 performers with costumes, a ballerina with 10-foot wings.  It's collaborative, complementary.  It's similar in some ways to a Flaming Lips show -- amazing visuals, interactive.  There are some moments where we're part of a larger team.  It's a dream come true.

Are there other favorites from the album?

"House of Cards," we don't do live, but the lyrics are really funny, and was the song most changed by Dean.  It started out as a ragtime song, then became a samba with a crummy Casio loop.  "Bouncy House" is really fun to play live.  You nailed the comparison to "Get Back" in your review -- yeah, even to the guest on keyboards.  (It was Drew's favorite song at some point at least.)

So you're probably the "Hardwest Working Band" in kids music... how do you keep the music and performances fresh?

Well, thank you for the premise of the question, that it's still fresh.  I was really worried a few albums ago (around Aminal House) -- how do you do it if you think it's the best you've done?  And it's been satisfying to detect growth each time.  We're playing more every year, which has helped as we've played new genres and can play new licks we couldn't do a couple years ago.  We've got 75-100 shows 'til the end of the year, but there's time to think about next year.  Maybe a concept record, maybe something more loose.

We really just enjoy each other creatively.

Other things you're doing to help with that?

On the business stuff, I took a year off to be with [my son] Oscar.  I do the booking and other stuff.  It gives Drew and Daron time to have more creative energy.  That's worked, I think.  It's helped to preserve the artistic core of the band.

What's next?

We're playing a lot -- a lot of time on the road with library shows and on the East Coast.  We'll probably add some circus shows. [Note: They're playing a handful of shows in August and September.]  And we're thinking about the new record -- themes, song ideas.

Photo by Kevin Fry

Review: In Tents - Recess Monkey

It's time for the annual kids' music reviewer's dilemma:

How to review the new Recess Monkey album.

Some kids' music albums are just so plain bad that it is easy to mock them (if you go in for that sort of thing) or ignore them completely (my preferred approach).  Other albums have such a unique sound that describing the sound becomes the hook of the review.  And then there are the artists take their own sweet time releasing their music, which makes returning to their music almost like hearing a unique take in and of itself.

Which brings us to the Seattle trio.  They're good (scratch that first approach), have no particularly unique sound (forget the second), and are incredibly prolific (they've now recorded 8 albums in less than 8 years -- they've likely written and recorded an album in the time it's taken me to write this review -- so I guess that take on the album's out, too).  I tried dealing with this problem by writing an entire review in haiku form last year, but for the band's latest album In Tents, I'm forgoing the weird stuff in favor of a plain review.

As you might suspect from the album title, the album is a concept album about circuses, but as with their previous albums, most of which have revolved around a theme of some sort (superheroes, space, monsters), it's a loose concept.  Yes, the leadoff title track is about performing in a tent, but the following track "Popcorn" could easily be on a food-themed or movie-themed album.  Most of the songs, in other words, stand on their own (except for "The Dancin' Bear," the Beastie Boys homage which is so deliriously odd and funky that it stands, or dances, on its own).

The album starts out with a very modern sound - "Popcorn" has a modern sound, while "Sit and Spin" (Tilt-a-Whirl, natch) has a driving chorus.  But as the album progresses, it regresses sonically.  "Human Cannonbal" sounds just a bit like the Who in their more musical-minded moments.  And for much of the rest of the album ("Dancin' Bear" notwithstanding), the band returns to the Beatles sound which inspired their early work -- "Bouncy House" includes echoes of "Get Back" and "Edwina Mae" sounds like A Hard Day's Night-era music, for example, and other songs like "House of Cards" have the 1920s vaudeville sound that runs through a lot of the Fab Four's work with George Martin.

In fact, as I listened to the album, I was reminded in more ways than one of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.  Some of the reason are minor (the Beatles' circus costumes on the album cover suggesting this album's theme) and some larger (the wistful song "Crystal Ball" and album closer "Show on the Road" striking echoes of that album -- "Crystal Ball" even includes a "When I'm Sixty-Four" shoutout).

Dean Jones' production here is clean -- it sounds a lot like any other Recess Monkey album, sonically, albeit with a little more trombone.  (I loved, though, the production choice in "I Could See (Magically)" to fuzz up the sound at the begin and to clear it all up once the narrator gets glasses.)  And he also lets the band's natural humor show through (Mayor Monkey! Drew Holloway's manic over-singing in "Sit and Spin").

As with most Recess Monkey albums, this album is most appropriate for kids ages 4 through 8.  You can listen to a few of the tracks at the band's homepage.  As always, the physical packaging for the album, this time featuring a backstory for the circus theme, is excellent.

There's not a lot of backstory here -- Recess Monkey makes music for kids, with joy and without pretense.  There are lots of other bands who do that, too, but few if any who do it as well.  As bands go, I'm not sure they're the Beatles of kids music -- who would want to saddle anyone with those expectations -- but when you look at the consistently high level of musical quality the band's given us over the past few years, perhaps it's not such a totally ridiculous claim.  It's a tough call, but I think In Tents is my favorite Recess Monkey album yet.  Highly recommended.

Note: I was provided a copy of the album for possible review.  Also, the band was invaluable in helping to create Hand Aid's "Felt Around the World."  But I'm a looooongtime fan.

Video: "Gotta Get Up" - Sugar Free Allstars

Oklahoma's Sugar Free Allstars are celebrating today's release of their new album All on a Sunday Afternoon with their first video from the album.  Directed by Kyle Roberts, it's for the funky "Gotta Get Up," and it's like a live-action Toy Story with a touch of Soul Train.  Shawana Kemp from Shine and the Moonbeams and Jack Forman from Recess Monkey (I like the surfeit of monkey-themed toys in the video) lend a hand musically, but really, what other reason do you need for watching besides action figures cooking omelettes?

Sugar Free Allstars - "Gotta Get Up" [YouTube]