Phineas and Ferb soundtrack

Shiny, commercial-sounding music from the cartoon (which, again, I have never seen). There's very little on here that wouldn't fit in on your local Top 40 radio station - it's mostly pop/rock with the occasional genre influence like the reggaeton beat and dancehall vocals in "Backyard beach", or "Perry the Platypus" which sounds a little like Johnny Rivers' "Secret Agent Man". The songs are all very competently put together and performed, but there's not much in the way of originality or real personality on here.

There's the occasional highlight, like "My goody two shoes brother" that sounds like it's from a crazy musical, "Chains on me" which I'm surprised Tom Waits hasn't sued them over, and the following hilarious lines in "Little brothers":

Even when you break my toys, you will always be my little brothers
Because you're younger, we're related, and you're boys

Isabelle and Heather like the livelier tunes well enough (all those girls want to do is dance), but it's really just too commercial for my taste.

Buy it now on Amazon

The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie: Music from the Movie and More...

The opening track on this is a disastrous cover of the Spongebob theme from Avril Lavigne, which very near put me off entirely. Fortunately it didn't, as the rest of the CD is (mostly) really good - good tunes from Wilco, Ween and Motorhead, and The Flaming Lips' fantastic "Spongebob and Patrick confront the psychic wall of energy" which is almost worth the price of admission on its own. Not quite as good overall as "Spongebob's greatest hits", but still worth your while.

Very soon I'm going to get some Spongebob CDs for the kids-tunes.com shop, but for now you can content yourself with the other kids film / tv music that I do have in stock or buy it on Amazon

Congratulations on your newborn, now what?

I recently started writing a monthly column, Ask the Expert, in Macaroni Kid Brandon's newsletter. There are so many parents wondering about their child's development. What age should my child ___________? Is it normal for my child to _____________? I hope you will take a moment to send your questions in to Macaroni Kid. In the meantime, I would like to do a blog series on social development of young children. Let's start today with the newborn babies.

Have you ever wondered what it must have been like to be a newborn? There you are, all snugly and warm inside your mother's womb and suddenly...LIGHTS, SOUNDS, TEMPERATURE CHANGE, COLOR! From the start, your newborn baby is very busy making sense of the world around them. Since they lack mobility at this stage of development, they will spend a great deal of time watching, listening, and learning! You will seem them studying everything from your face, to the ceiling fan, to that little speck of lint on the floor next to them. :) Around three months old, they will even begin to coo and vocalize to all of these objects. Use this time during your baby's development for lots of face-to-face interaction and talking. In a Kindermusik class, the youngest babies and mommies enjoy activities such as Peek-a-boo, infant massage, nursery rhymes, and lullabies. It's a special time of bonding and laying the earliest foundation for learning with your new little one.
 
I look forward to answering many more of your developmental questions in the coming months.

About the Artist - Mister Chandler

I have decided to let you know a little bit about the artists listed in the resource Blog. I will start with the artist I added today and slowly make my way through the list.

Today's featured artist is - Mister Chandler

Mister Chandler is a first grade teacher in Northern Virginia. Many years ago, OK - not that many, he was inspired by his brother to learn to play acoustic guitar. A year later he was inspired by a colleague to use it in the classroom. According to her, it would make the job and the students' day more fun, right? Right! Ever since that first attempt to play a song in class, Mister Chandler has been writing songs straight from the curriculum he teaches. Colleagues from other grade levels have asked him to write and record songs for them, too. These days, if he has to teach it, he's instantly thinking about how to play and sing it as well! He hopes you think about purchasing his new CD, "Songs From Room 8" for primary aged students, but even more, he hopes you find new ways to use music in the classroom!

He has a new CD so check him out at http://www.misterchandler.com/

Time out to rock - The Not-Its

The Not-Its are a Seattle-based band playing guitar-based kids rock music. Their singer was formerly in a band signed to Sub-Pop, and lots of other blogs love them ...

There's some good stuff on this, like the call-and-response and Pavement-y guitar melody of "Accidentally", the "la la la"s in "Change my Luck" and the horn section in "Cheetah the buffalo", but ... well, the band has a tendency to drag the beat, so everything sounds like it's slowing dooooown, and the singer's pitching tends to be a bit off (or sounds it to me, maybe it the backing vocals that are off?). Some bands can get away with this kind of thing (Pavement! White Stripes!) but, sorry The Not-Its, you can't. This puts me off to the extent that I can't really tell you whether the songs are actually good or not.

It's a shame, cos the one Not-Its song I know from the previous album has a cool chorus:



Buy it now on Amazon

Class of 3000

Music from the animated series "Class of 3000", which I have never seen. The music was written by André 3000 of Outkast (with K. Kendrick, don't know who he his) - it's funky and hip-hop-y and, well, Outkast-y with traces of Parliament. And jazzy without being boring. And adventurous and creative, wow, and fun. Man, this is fantastic, some of these songs could easily be hits of the magnitude of "Hey Ya". Haven't tried it on the kids yet, but it's going straight onto my grown-up playlist.

Buy it now on Amazon

Charlie Hope - World of Dreams

Charlie Hope's lullaby album - quiet arrangements, beautiful melodies, and Ms. Hope's gorgeous voice. The lyrics occasionally stray into saccharine territory - "You are loved and I'll watch you grow/I believe in you and everything you do" ... someone's going to cringe at that when he/she is a teenager - but given the genre and the fact that these are very well-written songs we'll forgive that.

I haven't used this to try and send anyone to sleep, as Heather finally seems to be past that stage, but it sounds like it'd be effective - "Rain Song" would fit right in on "On a starry night" which was on rotation at night in our house this time last year. If anyone reading this has tried it let me know and I'll report your findings here.

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory soundtrack

Some real children's classics on this, the soundtrack from the 1971 movie (all sung, incidentally, by the cast), like "Candy Man" and "Pure Imagination". There's also the slightly sinister Oompa-Loompa songs, instrumental pieces including the music from the bizarre/scary boat ride on the chocolate river and lots more. It's a real musical treasure trove, with little snippets of dialogue from the movie reminding me how amazing Gene Wilder was as Willy Wonka - so wistful and unhinged but basically kind.

Isabelle, although she has now forgotten the obsession she had with Wonka when she was 2, has really taken to it, asking me incessantly about the different children in the story, and about what's happening in the story as the music progresses. Recommended.