Time to Rebrand

I had low expectations when I started this website.

I wanted to share some music that was recorded with kids in mind that both kids and adults could find enjoyment in. But my bar for parental enjoyment was pretty low -- I was looking for music that wouldn't drive parents to rip the CD out of the minivan's player and drive over it repeatedly. My tagline -- "Music for kids that the parents won't hate" -- was a reflection of those low expectations.

Even though the tagline is still not a bad reflection of my concerns, I've never been particularly enamored of it. I don't like the word "hate," and there's something distinctly negative about it (something implicitly acknowledged in the headline for the NPR piece I was in -- "Music For Kids That Even Parents Might Love").

It's time to try out a new tagline.

Snakes on a plane!

OK, you're right, not good. So we're going with this:

Kids music worth sharing.

Review: First Time for Everything - John Carlin

OK, let's get the cover out of the way. Yes, it's bizarre. No, I can't explain it. And, yes, the album inside is better.

Now that I've got that out of the way, let's get to the album itself. First Time for Everything is the debut kids' CD from the New York-based musician John Carlin. Carlin, like many kids' artists, had a career as a musician for adults, then started teaching music classes for kids. And, like many of those artists, his debut album is a very DIY affair, with Carlin playing every instrument. What distinguishes Everything from many other DIY albums are the flourishes of musical diversity within.

The album starts off with the guitar-pop of "Eliza" and "Run Around," the latter song about how good it feels just to, well, run around. "Bein' a Dog" borrows some of melodic riff from "Time Warp, while the title track is a sauntering number featuring loose raspy vocals from Carlin. While I liked the original cuts, perhaps the nicest touches are the reworkings of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" (featuring a musical interlude with acoustic guitar that's considerably different from, but very complimentary to, the original melody) and "This Little Light of Mine," which adds a small taste of a New Orleans brass band. The downside to the disk is that the production sometimes muddies the vocals (especially on Carlin's originals), making it difficult to understand them. It's something that certainly can be fixed on the next go-round.

I'm gonna peg the 35-minute album as best for kids ages 3 through 7. You can hear clips of the songs here.

By no means is First Time for Everything reinventing the kids' album. It's just an album with some nice new pop tunes with kid-appropriate lyrics and some old tunes presented with enough dash to make listening to the familiar melodies fresh. But if that's enough for you (and it's certainly enough for a lot of people), you could certainly do much worse. Recommended.

I Spent, Like, Five Minutes On a New Logo...

... and if you want to see it, you'll have to head over to Zooglobble's new Myspace page.

I think you'll agree that I have no future as a graphic designer.

I'd been thinking for a while about setting up a page (because, hey, I think this social networking trend might have staying power), so last month I created the account and have been slowly adding "friends," or, as I like to call them, "kids' musicians and associates I am or am not familiar with". I really don't know what I'll use the page for -- I still expect to post all the good stuff here -- but maybe I'll put that mp3 player there to good use. (And by the way, I can also host mp3s here, too.)

The number of kids' musicians on Myspace has really grown over the past year, even though, as Scribble Monster puts it, "MySpace IS NO PLACE FOR A KID! RUN TO A SAFE PLACE LIKE ScribbleTown!" Just another sign of how parents are taking a greater interest in kids' music. (Or maybe how 6-year-olds are way ahead of me when it comes to social networking.)

"Under Construction" = New Music

The new website for the Little Monster Records label isn't quite ready for prime time, with more "under construction" signs than Berlin in the 1990s. (Yes, I realize that Berlin wouldn't literally have "under construction" signs. Work with me here, folks -- I've never seen so many cranes in a city.)

But probably due to the low-key nature of this website, we don't really care as long as the content's good, and in this case, with mp3s from All Together Now (the recently-released Beatles tribute CD) and upcoming Little Monster releases from Robbert Bobbert, Gustafer Yellowgold, Soulville, and Medeski, Martin & Wood, the content's good. The Robbert Bobbert and Gustafer tracks can also be heard on their myspace pages, but the Soulville and MMW tracks are new to me. MMW's "Where's the Music?" is funky and amusing, and I like both Soulville tracks, too.

No, I have no idea who "Ralph & Ralph" are.

Songs For Adoption

I don't share many details about my life here. I never envisioned this as a "dadblog" -- there are way too many acute observers of either gender of parenting and family life on and off the Internet for me to feel like I could add anything significant to the conversation.

Having said that, at the risk of turning this into a Very Special Episode of Zooglobble, I think this post deserves a bit of an introduction.

On November 18, 2006 families across the United States will celebrate National Adoption Day.

For the first time, our family will be among those celebrating.

Although the day is specifically designed to raise awareness about adopting children from foster care, the day and month -- November is National Adoption Month -- are used to celebrate adoptions of all types.

Our family has two children -- one is a "bio" (short for "biological") child of ours, as the phrase goes in the adoption community, while the other came into our family via adoption. Both children are a blessing to us. Because we've experienced both ways of adding a child to our family, the notion of an "adoption" song is a little odd to me. I view it as a method, one with serious implications to be sure, but still a means to an end. But there are tons of songs about the birth of a child -- why shouldn't there be a few songs about the adoption journey?

Which brings up the point that everybody's adoption journey is a little bit different. A song that may perfectly capture the feelings of one family's adoption journey may be completely alien to another family. And, hey, that goes for childbirth, too.

Here, then, is a short list, which I've generally tried to restrict to very adoption-specific songs. I've cribbed from a few sources. If you're looking for more songs, try here or there. Many of the songs were certainly not written with adoption in mind and could just as easily be sung to a lover, but that's the beauty of music, isn't it? You never know what songs people will find strength in. I've also left off songs that are more about giving a child up for adoption. That's really for older kids, not the audience I'm aiming for here.

If you've got more, leave 'em in the comments.

"Happy Adoption Day," by John McCutheon (off his Family Garden CD or his Supper's on the Table... best-of)
"From God's Arms to My Arms to Yours," by Michael McLean
"The Red Thread," by Lucy Kaplansky, off the album of this same name
"Cartwheels and Somersaults," by Justin Roberts, off Meltdown! -- OK, this isn't really about adoption, but it is all about the joy of adding another child to a family and it spoke to our family's situation wonderfully.