{"id":424,"date":"2010-09-04T09:04:53","date_gmt":"2010-09-04T16:04:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nothingtoreadhere.com\/?p=424"},"modified":"2010-09-04T11:26:36","modified_gmt":"2010-09-04T18:26:36","slug":"music-for-small-ears-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/n2rh.com\/?p=424","title":{"rendered":"Music for small ears, Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Hello again.\u00a0 Since ending my last post mid-train-of-thought, I’ve had an unsettled feeling, akin to how you might\u00a0feel if you heard the “Shave and a haircut” tune without the “two bits.”\u00a0 So I’m back and ready to re-dive into the world of children’s music.\u00a0 I think I mostly covered the section on classic kid songs, so I’m going to move forward now (knowing full well that I’ll probably be jumping back and forth between sections).<\/p>\n

I called the second category, “Songs That Might Be Classics But I Didn\u2019t Know.”\u00a0\u00a0 On our double cd of kid songs, there’s a good handful of these.\u00a0 I didn’t know the “Mr. Golden Sun” song on there (though my lovely wife did), for example.\u00a0 Another new-to-me song is “My Little Red Wagon.”\u00a0 It’s catchy enough, but part of the song bugs the shit out of me every time.\u00a0 It’s not the song’s fault either – it’s whoever produced these cds.\u00a0 (Strap in, here comes a long ass tangent.)<\/p>\n

Thanks to these cds, I’ve realized that there’s another thing in this world of which I’m not so fond: adults singing in kids’ voices.\u00a0 In “About a Boy,” Hugh Grant’s character hates it when people sing with their eyes closed; stand-up comedian and actor Bryan Callen hates carolers because he can’t stand when people smile at him while they’re singing.\u00a0 For me, it’s picturing grown women in a recording studio talking, singing, and laughing in their best pre-pubescent voices.\u00a0 That said, these cds already had an uphill battle.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Back to the “Wagon” song now: the part that bothers me is after the first chorus when the “kids” have a little “impromptu” chat.\u00a0 “Hey Michael,” says one, “Have you ever thought of painting your wagon green?”\u00a0 “NO!!” he answers, “It’s a\u00a0RED wagon!”\u00a0 Then together: “Yeah!\u00a0 Hahahahaha!”\u00a0 Are you fucking kidding me?\u00a0 That’s what passes for dialogue in this genre of music?\u00a0 Wow.\u00a0 When I was three, I made up a joke: “Why don’t you put mustard on a hamburger?\u00a0 Because you put ketchup on a hamburger!”\u00a0 I think those are on the same level, though it’s worth noting that I was an actual kid when I came up with that and not a 50 year-old woman pretending to be a kid way older than three.<\/p>\n

Crap, now I’m fixated on that cd.\u00a0 Don’t get me wrong, they’re catchy songs and I’ll continue to sing along and dance to them as long as that makes my kids smile.\u00a0 That doesn’t mean I have to like all of their artistic choices though.\u00a0 Speaking of which, they erred on the side of being overly safe and\u00a0politically correct in ways that no one would’ve thought twice about.\u00a0 For example, they sing a version of “We Are Family.”\u00a0 “I got all my sisters with me,” they sing.\u00a0 Then – where there’s no room and it’s nowhere near in rhythm with the song – a voice adds, “And brothers!”\u00a0 Heaven forbid we single out the females in a song.\u00a0 Similarly, they have the “Baby Bumblebee” song that I learned at camp a long time ago.\u00a0 My version had the speaker get stung, then smash the bee in retaliation, lick it up, and then vomit all over the place.\u00a0\u00a0 This one…doesn’t.\u00a0 I can’t even remember what they do instead, but after getting stung by the bee, of course one of the “kids” throws in, “It didn’t hurt though!”\u00a0 I think that’s a much worse direction to go in.\u00a0 Why would we try to teach kids that getting stung by bumblebees doesn’t hurt?\u00a0\u00a0I realize that they don’t\u00a0follow up with, “Let’s go play with that beehive!\u00a0 Yeah! Hahahaha!” but it’s still irresponsible if you ask me.\u00a0 (And yes, I realize that nobody asked me.)<\/p>\n

To be perfectly fair, I really like one choice that they made on this collection of songs.\u00a0 You know “Bingo” (sorry, “B-I-N-G-O”), right?\u00a0 Well I was standing over my kids’ playmat and being a silly dad for them when some pretty funky disco music came on.\u00a0 “Aw yeah!” I said, as I wondered what song it might be.\u00a0 Then the lyrics came: “There was a farmer who had a dog, and Disco was his name-o.”\u00a0 Nice touch, fake children.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ok, I’m stopping here.\u00a0 I plan on posting something sometime soon about the third category, but since I just said something nice about the music, it’s probably a good place to stop before I think of another part that bugs me.\u00a0 Have a nice Saturday.\u00a0 (And Sunday! Hahahaha!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hello again.\u00a0 Since ending my last post mid-train-of-thought, I’ve had an unsettled feeling, akin to how you might\u00a0feel if you heard the “Shave and a haircut” tune without the “two bits.”\u00a0 So I’m back and ready to re-dive into the world of children’s music.\u00a0 I think I mostly covered the section on classic kid songs, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[108,105,107],"class_list":["post-424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-disco","tag-music","tag-wagon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/n2rh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/n2rh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/n2rh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/n2rh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/n2rh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=424"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/n2rh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":428,"href":"https:\/\/n2rh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424\/revisions\/428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/n2rh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/n2rh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/n2rh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}