Listen To This: "Hop Hop" by Key Wilde & Mr. Clarke

No, not hip-hop, though I'd love to hear what Key Wilde & Mr. Clarke would come up with in that genre, too (I'm thinkin' De La Soul). Instead, we have '50s guitar mixed with some Brian Wilson-esque vocal layering. Lots of fun, just like every other song they've let us listen to. (Track #6 on the player linked above.)

It includes -- twice -- the non-sequitur line, "A potbellied pig in every backyard." A pot-bellied pig is not the first animal that came to my mind given the song's title, but maybe it's a eulogy in honor of Max, George Clooney's pig. (That obit, by the way, is one of the funnier things I've read in quite some time.)

Review: Intergalactic Tour - Seth Decker and the Missing Piece

Amidst the explosion of musical styles in recent kids music -- indie rock, country, rap, what have you -- the pure children’s pop tune or album has almost been forgotten. I don’t know whether it’ll ever make a complete comeback (Billy Joel isn't exactly burning up the adult pop charts nowadays, either), but Seth Decker and the Missing Piece won’t be to blame if it doesn’t.

Seth Decker and his wife Leah Decker founded the Red Door Playhouse in the Atlanta area in 2003, providing theater, music, and visual arts programs for kids and families. On their second album, 2006’s Intergalactic Tour, the band runs through a bunch of finely-honed original kids’ pop that sound like they’re the basis of an evening's show at the playhouse. Over the course of 42 minutes, the band covers every bit of hyphenated pop known to man -- the pop-country of “Call Me Anytime,” the swing-pop of “Bugville Boogie,” or the pop-rock of “Open the Door.”

A couple of songs stand out above the rest. “Edna the Elephant” is a simple piano-based pop tune reminiscent a little bit of Justin Roberts. It’s about a light-on-her-feet elephantine ballerina and is a minor classic of kids’ song storytelling. Less conventional perhaps is the dreamy “Trampoline,” which is one of the slowest tracks on the disk, its gentle tempo a nice match for the song’s subject. The songs do sound a bit like they’d fit into your local adult alternative radio stations amidst the Sheryl Crow and Maroon 5 tracks, though it’s doubtful those artists will be recording silly songs like the ‘70s-pop-with Mexican-accents “Taco Love” anytime soon. (Though at this point in their careers, I’d probably rather listen to “Taco Love.”)

I do feel like I’m missing something in listening to the album, and it’s probably the live show that sounds like it goes (or went) along with the songs. It’s structured as a tour through the galaxies, but the plot thread is weak on record. It’s an indication of the strengths of the hooks here and their execution that I’d be interested in hearing or seeing the, well, missing pieces.

I think this is right in the wheelhouse of 4 to 8-year-old kids. You can hear selections from the album here.

In the end Intergalactic Tour is simply an album of well-crafted pop tunes. While you might enjoy the songs more if you’ve seen the songs performed live, if your family likes the music of Justin Roberts, SteveSongs, or Ralph’s World, you’ll probably find the album worth exploring. Recommended.

(Not-So-)KidVid: Laurie Berkner Meets Steven Spielberg...

... and Joe Johnston.

Did you know that Laurie Berkner teamed up with Steven Spielberg to film a very expensive video for "We Are the Dinosaurs"? Neither did I.

It's the kids' music equivalent of "Thriller"!

Warning: NSFK (Not Safe For Kids, at least those in Laurie's core demographic)

Review: For The Kids / For The Kids Too - Various Artists

Let’s return to a simpler time, shall we? The year? 2002, long before the words “Jack’s,” “Big,” “Music,” and “Show” had ever been strung together in a television programmer’s mind. What happened late that year? The record label Nettwerk had this crazy idea -- let’s have a kids’ music compilation! For charity! And so the record entitled For The Kids was born.

With nearly 5 years of hindsight, the record actually holds up pretty well. By far the most popular track is Cake’s singular rendition of “Mahna Mahna,” from The Muppet Show. It doesn’t quite sustain a younger kid’s attention for all of its three- minute runtime, but it comes close, and as a kids’ novelty hit, it’s perfect. Even more successful as a kids’ song is “The Hoppity Song” from John Ondrasik (Five For Fighting). Ondrasik throws himself completely into the song -- his deranged near-shouting of lines like “You can’t outhop / The Hoppity Song!” is one of the gleeful highlights of the disk.

Indeed, the best songs here are the ones where the artists have fun -- the Barenaked Ladies’ snarky but earnest rendition of Joe Raposo’s Sesame Street song “La La La La Lemon” or Bleu’s “Snow Day.” Some people will find Sarah McLachlan’s rendition of “The Rainbow Connection” from The Muppet Movie gorgeous, and it is, but there’s something about Kermit’s earnestness and banjo that makes the original far superior. Maybe it’s just hard for me to buy a singer with as lovely a voice and face as McLachlan singing about longing at this point. But that’s the adult in me, not the kid. The slow stuff, like Darius Rucker’s “It’s Alright To Cry” and the version of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” doesn’t come off nearly as well as the uptempo material.

Based on the success of the first album, Nettwerk released For The Kids Too! in 2004. Unlike the first disk, which counted on major stars like McLachlan, Ondrasik, and Rucker, the second disk’s biggest stars are Matthew Sweet and They Might Be Giants. But just as Poison Ivy swapped out Drew Barrymore for Alyssa Milano, sometimes being the low-budget sequel isn’t such a bad thing. The sequel relies on more new songs, and there are some very good ones here. Butterfly Boucher’s “I’m Different” has a bouncy chorus and a message of self-acceptance. Paper Moon’s “Your Attitude Towards Cuttlefish” is the “Hoppity Song” of this album, as the lyrics to this indie-pop slowly become ever more ridiculous in explaining the amazing abilities of the little-known fish. The slow songs here -- Robyn Hitchcock’s “I Often Dream of Trains,” for example, or Nada Surf’s gentle and skewed “Meow Meow Lullabye” -- are, as a whole, much stronger than the first disk, though Jason Mraz doesn’t do any better with “The Rainbow Connection” than McLachlan did.

You can find samples of the tracks from the two 40-minute-or-so CDs at most major online stores or for the sequel here. More information on the charities supported by the two albums can be found here.

In the end these are both good disks. For The Kids has a bright constellation of stars and some excellent tracks. For The Kids Too! has a less bright constellation and some excellent tracks, too. I have a slight preference for the sequel, but I could see just as many families opting for the original. For collections put together prior to the current boomlet in kids and family music, they both done good. Sometimes it’s possible to like both Drew Barrymore and Alyssa Milano. Recommended.

Listen To This: "Night Mantra" - Renee and Jeremy

"Night Mantra" is one of the standout tracks on Renee and Jeremy's It's A Big World CD. On Mother's Day it'll be available at their Myspace page. That and a hand-drawn CD case and you're good to go, right?