Because NPR Hasn't Given Me My Own Show. Yet.

My talk with NPR's Melissa Block yesterday was only 9 minutes long, not nearly enough time to cover all the great music that's been released recently. If you're new here, a very brief guide is below, but if you're looking for more music for kids and families, here are some suggestions:

-- The Deedle Deedle Dees - Freedom in a Box: I do wish that I'd had a couple more minutes to talk about this band, a group of history obsessives who marry historical narratives (and some non-historical narratives) to fabulous, rollicking songs. (Review, interview with songwriter Lloyd Miller)
-- The Nields - All Together Singing in the Kitchen: A personal collection of family favorites (and a few originals) sung by a female folk duo recorded in an appealing ragged, lo-fi manner. (Review)
-- Gustafer Yellowgold's Wide Wild World (DVD/CD): This DVD about a yellow alien now living on earth has some great pop tunes (found also on the accompanying CD) and simple but arresting animation. (Review)
-- Sugar Free Allstars - Dos Ninos: Funky keyboard-and-drums duo lays down grooves set to songs about taking a bath, going to the zoo, and banana pudding. A bunch of fun. (Review)
-- Rocknoceros - Dark Side of the Moon Bounce: For the young'uns, to be sure, but sharp, simple arrangements and a sense of humor make this a great CD for the preschool set and their families. (Review)
-- Gwendolyn and the Good Time Gang - Get Up and Dance!: Another CD mostly for preschoolers, Gwendolyn's enthusiasm and the musicianship of the Good Time Gang make multiple listens easy on the ears. (Review)
-- Asylum Street Spankers - Mommy Says No!: Some of the songs and humor will go right over the kids' heads (I hope), but there's a big heart here, too, and the Americana and roots playing is killer. (Review)

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.

Review Two-Fer: My Best Friend is a Salamander / My Lemonade Stand - Peter Himmelman

In reviewing music here, I've tried not only to cover the latest releases from musicians familiar and not, but also filling in gaps from albums released - gasp! - more than a couple years ago, especially from significant artists. Consider this the missing pieces of my Peter Himmelman coverage, the other two albums for families I've not yet reviewed here.

My Best Friend is a Salamander, released in 1997, was Himmelman's first album for kids and families, and the first thing you might be struck by in listening to it is how it could have been released this year. Ten years later, and Himmelman's still taking socially exciting trips. What is different is just how... odd those first songs were. While on his excellent 2007 release My Green Kite he's singing about kites or feet --fairly recognizable subjects treated in mostly recognizable ways -- early on he had a much more skewed, Shel Silverstein-esque approach. He sings about his best friend... who's a salamander. In "Larry's a Sunflower Now," a dreamy adult-sounding pop tune, the narrator (who poured water all around the subject to help him grow) tells Larry's worried mom," Look at the bright side / There's nothing you can do / Larry's gettin' lots of fresh air / The sun is on his faces and / Birds are in his hair today." Himmelman's fascination with rhyming wordplay -- which continues today -- is most evident here on the gentle "An Ant Named Jane," though a number of other songs have the touch of spoken-word.

Seven years later and one album in the meantime...
... Himmelman released My Lemonade Stand in 2004. After the very-weird-at-times My Fabulous Plum (review here), My Lemonade Stand seems downright conventional. Listened to on its own, however, it's still got its fair share of only-in-Himmelman weirdness. The nine-year-old subject of the tinged-with-sadness "Beard Boy" grows a beard and all of a sudden reads the Wall Street Journal. "Murray Malone" is a trumpet-playing mouse (who does indeed play a pretty mean trumpet). And while Himmelman still indulges his fondness for rhymeplay, especially in extended outros, here he's crafting more direct pop tunes -- the summery title track, the revved-up gospel-tinged "That's No Lie," and my favorite track, the blue-eyed soul of "Willa," about an excitable little dog. And the album closer, "Love Can Travel," tells a story of two kids separated by a move who continue their friendship with a chorus that soars every time it's repeated.

Both albums are targeted for kids ages 3 through 9. You can hear samples and tracks at Himmelman's here.

Both albums are pretty good, though I think My Lemonade Stand is definitely the better album, particularly if you've enjoyed My Green Kite. They're both recommended, however -- your preference may primarily depend on your family's appreciation for Silverstein-style oddity.

Music Criticism and a Nice Kids' Desk

Sharp-eyed readers of this website will notice a new button in the sidebar, one for the Land of Nod Music Store. In part of my plan to take over the world spread quality kids' music criticism, Zooglobble music reviews will now appear at the Land of Nod's newly relaunched music store. If you go over there (really, go, check it out), you'll see that all their CDs are priced at $13.98 or less, with free shipping to boot.

Why the Land of Nod? Well, I think they're a kids' retailer who definitely "gets it," musically. Their selection is broad (rock, classical, folk, the whole gamut), but definitely hand-picked. They've been doing kids' music in their stores for some time. (When I first talked with them, I suggested a number of CDs they should pick up, including Lunch Money's Silly Reflection. They said, "Yeah, we've carried that for awhile.") And Scott Eirinberg, one of the co-founders, is a big music fan, dating back to his college music journalism days (and before, no doubt).

Finally, a couple notes for those worried about conflict of interest issues. First, I am not getting paid in any way based on sales from this site. I'll link to Land of Nod pages if applicable and/or if I remember, but there's no quid pro quo involved. Second, the reviews are unedited. Well, they've edited out links to other stores (fair enough) and cleaned up spelling and grammar (thank you!), but other than that, they've left the reviews intact, warts and criticisms and all. (See their page for Woody Guthrie's Songs To Grow On For Mother and Child for an example of a less-than-stellar review.)

So I'm proud to be associated with the store and hope my reviews there help some more people discover music for their family.

CD Review: Old McDonald's EIEI Radio - The Biscuit Brothers

Like many people my age, I grew up on PBS shows. Sesame Street, Electric Company, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood -- all of them great. (And so was Scooby-Doo, but that's not relevant here.) So it's been a little weird to me that the great TV kids' music show of this generation -- Jack's Big Music Show -- has never been anywhere near PBS.

Which isn't to say that PBS doesn't have a show worthy of adulation right in its own backyard, if only it would share it with the world.

My friends, meet the Biscuit Brothers. Produced in the musical city of Austin, Texas (and appearing on a few PBS stations, mostly in Texas), this show centers around the titular brothers, Buford and Dusty Biscuit, who live on, yes, Old McDonald's farm. Along with their sister Buttermilk Biscuit and Tiny Scarecrow, the funniest muppet this side of Kermit, they explore different components of music -- tempo, melody, or emotion, for example.

Want to listen for yourself? Then try their second kids album, Old McDonald's EIEI Radio, released this spring.

Lest this sound somewhat dry, let me assure you that it's not. It's rarely didactic, and the show would much rather make its point through humor, as in the classic "Chickens Playing Bongos," which features many different instruments (ferrets playing french horns, for example). The skit "Traffic Report" demonstrates the importance of conducting by illustrating what can sometimes happen without a conductor helping to orchestrate musicians' entrances and exits.

The music is pretty darn good, too. Buford and Dusty (better known to friends in Austin as Allen Robertson and Jerome Schoolar) have some fabulous Americana roots arrangements of children's classics -- "Oh, Susanna!" and "I've Been Working on the Railroad" are particularly sharp. But they don't limit themselves to Americana. Their revisionist lyrics to Jacques Offenbach's classical "Can Can" (as a how-to entitled "The Can, Can!") are a hoot and a half, while The 'All Coming 'Round the Mountain' Music Block," shows how the same song can be arranged in many different ways (one of which is, apparently, lovingly ripping off the guitar riff from the Beatles' "Daytripper"). Some of the originals are classics (the aforementiond "Chickens Playing Bongos," the snappy "Make Your Shoes Move!," which includes Tiny Scarecow's classic, "Help! I'm being chased by bees... No, that's OK, they were just bees of the mind"), while I don't think the slow songs near the end worked quite as well. Maybe if there were visuals...
What's that? Oh, yeah, this is a TV show. And while the CD, made up of bits from the TV show, holds up OK as an audio-only artifact, I think the Biscuit Brothers concept works best viewed as it was intended -- as a TV show. I'm not going to review the whole thing here, if only because a) this review is long enough as it is, and b) my copy, probably through family user error, got a nice big scratch, rendering one of the three episodes here from the show's first season inaccessible. But even with just two episodes and the bonus material, it's a nice collection. The first episode introduces the characters and the farm and like many pilots, is a bit slow. The second episode, "Rhythm," is easier to watch. The episodes are structured like many "educational" shows -- a common theme illustrated in many ways, such as live action, videos, features with "real kids" -- but, as I said before, the show doesn't take a very hard didactic approach. And the show is very sharply produced -- it looks great. (OK, maybe the animated animal bits aren't Pixar-quality.) The bonus material -- the featured songs from the episodes, plus bonus songs and interviews -- make it a worthy package in general. A second collection, featuring three episodes from the second season, is also available.

The CD (and DVD) are most appropriate for kids ages 3 through 8. You can listen to samples at the Brothers' website. You can also listen to samples of all the tracks at the CD's CDBaby page.

Old McDonald's EIEI Radio is lots of fun, though deprived of its visuals and since it pulls from a variety of episodes, it's a better introduction than something your family would want to listen to over and over unless they're familiar with the show. Of course, if you listen to the CD a couple times, you'll probably want to become familiar with the show. Really, if you give the episodes a few viewings, you'll wonder why this isn't on your own PBS station. Recommended.