Kids Music Monday: They Might Be Giants, "Here Come The 123s" (et al)
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So, They Might Be Giants.
As a responsible dad *ahem*, I've been trying to expose Isaac to a steady palate of both kid-specific music -- like, say, the Muppets -- as well as more "grown-up" music that will still have appeal to a kid -- like, say, the G-rated version of "Coin-Operated Boy" from the Dresden Dolls, or The Ramones (about which more later, clearly getting him thinking "Beat on the Brat with a Baseball Bat" is a jaunty song about the Red Sox may have been a mis-step on my part).
And this brings us to They Might Be Giants, who seem to have found a way to span both "kid friendly" and "not grating to adults" rock in a nearly unique way -- or at least, "not grating" to a dedicated cult following, of which I can't say I'd never been a member before now.
Truth be told, I always did kind of find them annoying. Yes, I suppose I like Birdhouse in Your Soul, in a "oh fine I guess the world has room for two Shiny Happy People style songs" kind of way, and I suppose I like Istanbul (Not Constantinople), in a "this sounds like a corny Yale yuppie a capella Whiffenpoofs number, but it is pretty catchy all the same" kind of way. But I never liked either song quite enough to bother getting a copy of Flood, or any of their other albums.
But at the same time, a lot of my friends -- who had musical taste I generally found agreeable -- did like them, so I never dismissed them fully. Surely, any band running a free dial-a-song service couldn't be all bad, right? I figured, given enough exposure, they'd either grow on me, or they'd grow very wearisome like Phish or Dave Matthews. Somehow though, TMBG always held a weird stasis for me between "kind of like & appreciate them" and "not really interested but appreciate that they're talented". Or something like that. And I did tag along to one of TMBG's concerts at Tipitina's in New Orleans in the late 90s. I'm glad I went, but the main thing I remember about the show -- and this was probably ominous foreshadowing -- was the clever use of singing puppets.
Which brings us rather directly to last year, when Amazon put their Here Come the 123s on their MP3 store bargain bin one day, and I picked up a copy on impulse, figuring either that I'll like it and share it with The Boy, or I'll also find it mildly annoying but still a step up from, say, Barney the Dinosaur or The Wiggles.
I was blown away.
Nevermind the fact that it's a "kids" album, or an "educational" album. It's just a great album, and it totally deserved the Grammy award it would end up earning a few months later. I got Isaac into it. He loved it too. His favorites: One Dozen Monkeys ("The Monkey Song"), Seven ("The Cake Song"), and "Seven Days of the Week" ("The Days of the Week Song"). The downside here is that, for many weeks, he only wanted to hear those 3 songs, and ignored 3/4 of the album, but whatever. Secretly, those were the songs I liked best, too.
Catching a two year old singing to himself "Oh no, no, I never go to work! Oh no, no, I never go to work!" is one of those joys of fatherhood that can't really be replaced. Though it does get me contemplating the logistics of retiring way early, but then, thanks to the vagaries of Mr Stock Market, that'll obviously not be an option worth considering for more than a pleasant few seconds.
But I digress.
I later came across Pitchfork's review of this, which basically amounted to "I grew up on Schoolhouse Rock, and this is different, so I hate it." This is a bit like the people who grew up on cheesy old Doctor Who episodes, then come across the glossy new Eccleston/Tennant series and dismiss it as tinkering too much with tradition. See also people that prefer the old Battlestar Galactica, or didn't like the new Star Trek movie. I learned a valuable lesson from this Pitchfork review, much as I do from the Doctor Who, BSG, & Trekkie traditionalists: screw them, this new stuff is a blast. Yes, the new Star Wars movies were awful, but you know what? Even still, sometimes the new stuff can be better.
But I digress. Again.
So it turned out that TMBG not only recorded this fantastic kids album, but they did another one, and another before that, and there's yet another on the way (though at this point, not even Wikipedia acknowledges it; perhaps it will by the time you read this).
Better still, they were about to go on tour, and play these songs right in our town. How could we not go? My first concert was Tom Petty with then-unknown Lenny Kravitz when I was 13. It was good, don't get me wrong, but TMBG at 3 might be even better (in a second childhood kid of way? okay okay nevermind that).
So we got the tickets a few months ago, and this weekend, we finally went. I spent the time leading up to the show trying to play more of "Here Come The 123s" -- they probably won't just play the three best songs, though as it turned out, they did include each of them -- as well as Here Come the ABCs. Plus, as it turns out, TMBG has a podcast of videos from the albums, many of which are also on YouTube, e.g.:
Woohoo. I don't care if this is "kids music". As they said about the Grinch, if you can't like this stuff, maybe your heart is just two sizes too small.
So anyway, yeah, the concert. Went with Isaac & his cousins, one older, one younger. The younger one fidgeted, the older one clinged but also danced, but Isaac, he mostly just sat on the edge of his seat and stared transfixed.
Then, he spent the next couple of days telling me he had fun at the show, and that he wants to go back. They're coming back in a year. I already can't wait. :-)
P.S. Is it obvious that I mulled this post over, yet never bothered jotting it down or distilling it to something readable, for like six months? Yeah, thought so. The next kids music post will probably be about the Ramones. Let's see if I can write it before the end of the year. Let's see how much it rambles.
