Thursday, January 17, 2013 at 2:17PM Brooklyn, Michael McDonald, New York City, The Pop Ups, videos, winter in Videos Wednesday, December 19, 2012 at 8:05AM Last year, when the 54th Grammy nominations for best children's album were announced, I couldn't help myself and wrote a piece on the results that very night. Clearly, I was stunned and I needed to write something to get all the thoughts bouncing around my head out of there and onto the page.
This year? Well, it's been two weeks, and I'm finally finding the time to write about the 55th Grammy nominations for best children's album. Why the difference? Well, first let's list out the nominees themselves:
Can You Canoe? - The Okee Dokee Brothers [Okee Dokee Music LLC]
High Dive And Other Things That Could Have Happened... - Bill Harley [Round River Records]
JumpinJazz Kids - A Swinging Jungle Tale - Featuring Al Jarreau, Hubert Laws And Dee Dee Bridgewater - James Murray and Various Artists [JumpinJazzKids]
Little Seed: Songs For Children By Woody Guthrie - Elizabeth Mitchell [Smithsonian Folkways Recordings]
Radio Jungle - The Pop Ups [The Pop Ups]
It's true that I like the list of nominees more than I like last year's list. (Note: I haven't heard the JumpinJazz disk, so am totally clueless regarding that nomination, though I recognize a few of those artists in the title of the album, which in my less generous moments I feel cranky about.) But that by itself shouldn't make this list better than last year's. Just because I like the Pop Ups (fairly new on the scene, this is just their second album) a lot more than Papa Hugs doesn't make the list better or more legitimate.
I think more importantly, for people who follow the kindie scene, four of those five nominees are going to be very familiar. This in itself is a big change from last year, when a couple of the nominees drew a collective "who in the world is that?" Is that an improvement? I would say that it is. I think in order for the category to have any legitimacy, it's important artists recognized as very longtime participants and artists recognized as among the most popular be represented in the nominee list. They shouldn't be the only artists represented, but the presence of Bill Harley (a former winner and nominee with more than 30 years of experience in the field) and Elizabeth Mitchell (recording on the venerable Smithsonian Folkways label and a major, popular star) gives credence to the slate.
I'd seen some statistics from last year's nominees that suggested membership and participation in Grammy365, the Grammys' own social networking site for its members, significantly drove the nomination results last year. Nominees last year had literally hundreds times more members than well-known previous nominees. I would hesitate to attribute causation, but without a doubt there was correlation. The Grammys have always been at least in part a personal popularity contest; Grammy365 just made it that more obvious.
So in the wake of the nomination list, I wondered how the kindie community that didn't get nominated would react. Would they decide to completely abandon the Grammys? Or would they embrace the social networking that clearly is now required in the niche categories. It seems like the answer is clear. Folks looking to grab a nomination next December, your path is now set -- make a really good album and prepare to spend more time at your computer.
***
OK, enough faux-serious consideration of the Grammy nomination process. What you really wanted to know is why I threw a Breakfast Club reference in the title of this post. Well, as I was thinking about the "gang of disparate outsiders" that a nominee list in niche genres like this one can sometimes feel like, my thoughts turned fairly quickly to the John Hughes teen classic about 5 (ding! blog post!) kids from very different cliques brought together in detention one Saturday. So, without further ado: How the 55th Children's Music Grammy Nominations Are Like Characters from the Movie The Breakfast Club.
Okee Dokee Brothers: If you canoe halfway down the Mississippi River, then you clearly have some sort of athletic ability, much like Emilio Estevez's wrestling character Andrew Clark. Joe and Justin are rebels against the idea of kids spending their time indoors, but they are, without a doubt, the nicest rebels you will ever care to meet. (Also: not that Charlie Sheen is in the movie, but I find it amusing that you'd never really know that Sheen and Estevez -- two guys with different last names -- are, in fact, brothers while you could totally believe that the brothers-in-band-name-only Joe and Justin are also brothers in real life.)
Bill Harley: The veteran (in the kids' music field), Harley is clearly the John Bender of the group, the slightly older kid (let's face it, Judd Nelson didn't look like a kid at all), delivering sage advice. And just like Bender and the school library, this is likely not his last trip to the Grammy breakfast club.
JumpinJazz: I haven't heard a peep out of this album, the folks behind this album, or, well, anything. I didn't know this album existed until it was nominated. They're even more unknown than Ally Sheedy's basket case Allison Reynolds. I am, however, looking forward to whatever musical collaboration the Okee Dokee Brothers and Jarreau and Bridgewater and the rest provide us when they hook up at the end of the Grammys.
Elizabeth Mitchell: Elizabeth Mitchell is as close to kids music royalty this field gets (I tend to think of Harley more as the long-serving court jester), so I've assigned her Molly Ringwald's character, the "princess" Claire Standish. She comes from the privileged background of being a Smithsonian Folkways artist and so has the fine lineage. Yet this is her first time in the Grammy kids music breakfast club.
Pop Ups: Which brings us to the last nominee, the Brooklyn duo the Pop Ups, and the last kid in detention, Anthony Michael Hall's Brian Johnson, the nerd of the group. I'll admit it, I'm pressed to find a logical connection here (not that the connections above aren't tenuous at best), but I think it's fair to say that if you're willing to go all in and not just record kids music but create a whole puppet musical multiple times over, then you have a bit of nerd in you as well.
Wednesday, November 14, 2012 at 4:00AM I don't think write, record, and film a video for a benefit song was one of the 40 things the Pop Ups mention in their new song, "40 Things To Do in a Blackout," but singing along definitely was. The new track was inspired by (if that's an appropriate phrase) Hurricane Sandy, and all proceeds benefit Hurricane Sandy relief efforts. (Purchase the track via Bandcamp, Amazon, and -- soon -- iTunes.) The song takes a while to get a head of steam, but once it does, it's a ton of fun and worth a buck. The video is just that much more fun. After all, everything's better with puppets (another suggestion from the band, of course).
The Pop Ups - "40 Things To Do in a Blackout" [YouTube]
New York City, The Pop Ups, charity, puppets, streaming music, videos in Videos Tuesday, October 16, 2012 at 4:44PM I am not a huge Halloween fan, and so I'll be upfront and say that I'm not gonna feature too many Halloween-related tracks here. (At least, I'm sayin' that now.) So when I say that the new "Halloween" track from puppet/kindie (kindie/puppet?) band The Pop Ups, "Miss Elephant's Gerald," isn't very Halloween-y, that's actually a good thing from my perspective.
It does swing, however.
(Below the video is a Bandcamp widget from which you can purchase the track -- also available on iTunes.)
The Pop Ups - "Miss Elephant's Gerald" [YouTube]
Brooklyn, Ella Fitzgerald, Halloween, New York City, The Pop Ups, jazz, puppets, videos in Videos Tuesday, April 3, 2012 at 9:00AM 
Radio Jungle album coverHas any kids' act in the modern, kindie era raised such a ruckus with their debut album as the Brooklyn duo The Pop Ups with Outside Voices? You remember that album, right? So did everyone else.
Expectations are high, therefore, with the release of Radio Jungle, the follow-up up to that 2010 album. Can they meet them?
Pretty much, yeah. At their very best, nobody makes better modern pop for preschoolers than the Pop Ups. Leadoff singles "Connect the Stars" (featuring Shine and the Moonbeams' Shawana Kemp on vocals plus Oran Etkin on tenor sax) and '80s throwback "Box of Crayons" should rule kindie radio airwaves through fall. And if that's enough, "Pop Up City" (with hints of Prince and Springsteen) and the flamenco'd tune "The Bat" there to extend the band's dominance through 2013. These songs should be blasting out from every lemonade stand and driveway art show.
The rest of the album, starting with "Math Rock," isn't as pure pop joy as those first four songs, but do have their own charms. All these songs are probably part of the forthcoming Pop Ups puppet show, but it's more obvious with these latter tracks, such as the counting on "Math Rock," the color matching on "Color Wheel," and the phonetic spelling of words on "Elephant." These last six songs are more Broadway than Brill Building. (OK, off-Broadway.)
The 38-minute album is most appropriate for kids ages 3 through 7. You can hear the album at the band's Bandcamp page (or stream below). Radio Jungle is a solid follow-up to, and equal of, its storied predecessor. It's a little more showtune-y than Outside Voices, so your family's personal preferences may vary, but you'll probably still swoon over most of these tracks, too. Highly recommended.
Disclosure: I was provided with a copy of the album for possible review.
Brooklyn, New York City, Oran Etkin, Shine and the Moonbeams, The Pop Ups, reviews in Reviews 
